Sublime

ANDREW J. BACEVICH,

The oldest conflict in American politics is the one between individualism and centralism. Reagan changed the terms by inverting them: the descendants of Jefferson’s yeoman farmers, with their desire for independence, became sturdy car-company executives and investment bankers yearning to breathe free of big government. The heirs of Hamilton’s

In 1964, eight years before I was born, my family moved from Titusville to Ensley. Ours was the third Black family on the block. And the last White man on our block, which changed from White to Black across a few years, diligently kept up a sign that read “Zoned for whites.” Each morning on the way to school, the neighborhood boys kicked it down.

The bomb had been assembled, delivered, and detonated by a Kuwaiti named Ramzi Yousef, under the supervision of his uncle Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who would later be identified as “the principal architect” of the attack against the same buildings on September 11, 2001.

Therefore, Trump does not represent the transition to the new era. He is instead the first tremor who appeared decisive to his supporters and frightening to his opponents. Trump is the first indicator of a struggle between two classes. But while the ascending class has not yet reached its limit, the descending class is continually bleeding power.

tribe. These divisions impoverish each narrative into a cramped and ever more extreme version of itself.

At the heart of our divisions is almost half a century of rising inequality and declining social mobility. Americans tolerate more economic inequality than citizens of other modern democracies: if anyone can become anything, today’s unequal results are fair and might well change tomorrow. That was never completely true, but now it’s plainly false.