America’s Alternative Polarization

With the U.S. midterm elections around the corner, the Republicans have become aggressive through the rising force that is the tea party and are poised to take back the majority seats in the House, and even the Senate. President Obama and the Democrat congressional leaders, who made a clean sweep of the election two years ago, are facing a very awkward and difficult situation.

Most pundits agree that the fundamental reason for Obama’s and the Democrats’ political slippery slope was America’s continued weakness, especially with the unemployment rate remaining high. The lower- and middle-class did not even experience any upsides of the economy’s superficial rebound and are pessimistic and disappointed about their own prospects, as well as the country’s.

The economic quandary of the middle- and lower-class, however, is a sign of the intensifying polarization of incomes in American society for the past few decades. According to the Economist, from 1970 to 2008, America’s Gini coefficient had increased from 0.39 to 0.47. Since 2000, the actual median income of American families has been declining. The wealth and income of the rich, however, has been rising. The top 10 percent income was almost half of the income of the entire population, and the richest 1 percent possessed one-third of the entire wealth of the nation. The list goes on.

Such a sharp polarization of wealth should logically be in the favor of the Democrats who advocate “robbing the rich to help the poor.” The ingenious strategy of the Republicans and of the American right, however, was to turn the middle- and lower-class whites’ dissatisfaction with reality from the gap between the rich and the poor to America’s alternative societal alienation — the polarization of the fruits of elitist education and resources.

One basis for such a strategy is that the tolerance of the traditional American culture toward the gap between the rich and the poor far exceeds that of Europe. The attitude of “hating the rich” was lower than that of Europe. However, American culture is very sensitive about upgrading opportunities in society. The Republicans made subtle use of such a social culture, as well as polarized American society in the area of elitist education to encourage and provoke the “hating of the elites” mentality in the middle- and lower-class whites. The Republicans are making a comeback in the midterm elections.

The polarization of the American elitist education has direct relation with the meritocracy that the American elitist education promoted after World War II. Under such a principle, the American elitist education opened itself to selection of elites from all strata of society based on the criterion of capability, having turned from its previous practice of giving privileges to mainly blue-blood families. The products of the American elitist education have also turned from mainly wealthy and powerful white men to a wider representation of the different races. President Obama is the best example of such a historic change.

The Educational System of the Elites Has Become the Scarecrows of Division in Society

The problem is that the “capability” here is still basically based on the objectively quantifiable academic results. The intense competition for elitist education opportunities led to a continual rise in academic and other admission criteria, and its cumulative effect was that, other than Asians, the American elitist education opportunities were gradually becoming limited to the upper class and elite families who have financial and societal resources, and who place importance on the development of their children’s education and intellect.

Even for the blacks, and other minorities in the Ivy League institutions who were “taken care” of by the Affirmative Action policy, the statistics showed that the vast majority of them came from the rich upper class. Obama, who was raised by his rich maternal grandparents and graduated from a noble high school, is yet another example.

Though the Republican upper class represented by George Bush Jr., an alumni of both Yale and Harvard, is also a product of the elitist education, the Republicans have shrewdly maintained an anti-elitist idea with a grassroots movement. When Democrat Obama became president, however, he conspicuously established an elite cabinet administration with the strongest Ivy League colors since President Kennedy.

In summary, the product of the American elitist education does have a strong liberal leaning. For instance, among Harvard students, 72 percent admitted that their political attitude is more left-leaning than America as a whole, and only 10 percent thought themselves to be more right-leaning.

At the same time, under the mega trend of globalization, the social upgrading opportunities in America will gradually be dependent on specialized knowledge, and a large number of blue-collar middle-class workers will be pushed, and their economic and social statuses will continue to slide. They cannot help but develop or intensify their grudge against the upper-class elites.

The Republicans and the tea party thus blatantly publicize this: The Democrat liberal elites are enjoying high positions and living in comfort, and do not empathize with those below; they are out of touch with the lives of American commoners. This resonated with a large number of middle- and lower-class whites who were facing employment and economic difficulties. Obama and the Democrat leaders were not only faced with enormous pressure in the midterm elections, as newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have pointed out, but the whole elite class felt the “suppression” under the tea party. Former Harvard headmaster Lawrence H. Summers’ resignation as Obama’s premier economic consultant is closely tied to such political pressure and is representative of a sacrifice under the Republicans’ “hate the elite” strategy.