the pattern of politics in today’s Western democracies is best described as a struggle with three sides—the overclass and two segments of a divided working class. Working-class immigrants and some native minority group members whose personal conditions are improving compete with many members of the native working class, mostly but not exclusively white, who find their economic status, political power, and cultural dignity under threat from below as well as from above. The only winners are a third group: the mostly native, mostly white overclass elites who benefit from the division of the
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