The evidence is not hidden. Ninety percent of the wealth in the United States is held by 1 percent of households. Intergenerational class mobility has been stagnant for several decades. The racial wealth gap continues to persist. It is so extreme that economists and other experts predict that African-Americans as a group will have zero wealth by 2053. “Tax reform” has continued to divert money upward to the very rich and away from all other Americans. Political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page have shown that America’s elected officials are almost wholly unresponsive to the political demands of the average American.

There can be no real democracy in a country where the courts have decided that  money is speech. Such a power dynamic suppresses the political power of most citizens and grotesquely favors rich people and large corporations.

Despite these facts, poor and working-class Americans are extremely patriotic and nationalistic — much more so than any other group in the country.

Why is this? How do poor and working-class Americans reconcile such enthusiastic support for […]