The myth of the “liberal elite” strategically frames liberal values—environmentalism, racial and gender equality, gay and trans liberation, immigrants’ rights, the social safety net—as inherently frivolous, dishonest, a joke. By extension, the people who would benefit from the actualization of those values are “fake” Americans—the nation’s most vulnerable groups being called decadent effetes by the most feckless, corrupt, undeserving legacy hires history has ever seen, people who have all the advantages in the world and still need to buy their kids’ way into college.
