Peggy Noonan for the win:
When you are reasonable with people and show them respect, they will
want to respond in kind. But when they feel those calling the shots are
being disrespectful, they will push back hard and rebel even in ways
that hurt them.
This is no time to make our divisions worse. The pandemic is a story not only about our health but our humanity.
She is revisiting a theme she was working back in springtime 2016, when she observed potential Trump victors were "unprotected" in then-President Obama's society, vs. the more credentialed, secure "protected" people of the overclass....
The overclass are highly educated and exert outsize influence as
managers and leaders of important institutions—hospitals, companies,
statehouses. The normal people aren’t connected through professional or
social lines to power structures, and they have regular jobs—service
worker, small-business owner.
Since the pandemic began, the overclass has been in
charge—scientists, doctors, political figures, consultants—calling the
shots for the average people. But personally they have less skin in the
game. The National Institutes of Health scientist won’t lose his
livelihood over what’s happened. Neither will the midday anchor.
I’ve called this divide the protected versus the unprotected. There
is an aspect of it that is not much discussed but bears on current
arguments. How you have experienced life has a lot to do with how you
experience the pandemic and its strictures.
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