I don’t remember where I first heard that phrase. I think it was a story about a Boston Brahmin woman explaining why her daughter shouldn’t date a boy from Southfield, but in the last 70 years, I’ve heard the same emotion expressed toward gringos dating Chicanos — both ways. I had a Latina girlfriend who made me say my name was Martínez, not Martin, when I met her parents. Whoever is saying it, the real subtext is the same: don’t get out of line, don’t transgress, don’t cross the lines of race or community or class.
Especially class — rich girl and poor boy, a little less-so rich boy and poor girl, but she risks being called a tramp and a gold digger by the rich boy’s parents and friends. Stick with your own kind, don’t cross to the wrong side of the tracks.
So, I’ve watched Trump’s political career since he came out of the closet as a Republican. Up to then, he was accepted, or at least tolerated. He was fine as long as he was a nouveau riche guy from Queens — a little bit questionable, wrong side of the tracks — who contributed to the right museums and the right foundations. His money was good, and all the Right People were happy to accept it. He had a hit TV show. He was media friends with all the Right People — Oprah, Jesse Jackson, and even Al Sharpton. He did civic works that got a lot of good press, although it takes a lot of googling to find anyone who has written about it.
And then he ran against Hillary Clinton.
Suddenly, he was History’s Greatest Monster. Crude, unrefined, nothing at all like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. No Harvard or Yale degrees, no law school — just a bachelor’s, and that from a mere second-string school, the University of Pennsylvania.
Instead of doing something respectable like running for governor or becoming a community organizer, he took over the family business and made a mint while showing up in the society and fashion pages. He put his name on everything, had multiple beautiful wives, partied with celebrities, and didn’t seem to care when people thought he was crass and unrefined.
He tweeted mean tweets; he was controversial.
He was icky.
Oddly, someone else has become a figure in the campaign in the last few months. Elon Musk immigrated to Canada from South Africa, which he fled to avoid being drafted into the military to enforce apartheid. He then immigrated to the U.S. and got a bachelor’s from, coincidentally, the University of Pennsylvania. He founded and sold a succession of startups and made a mint. Unlike Trump, he hasn’t been as visible on the party circuit, but he has revolutionized online commerce, electric vehicles, and tunneling. He has also turned the U.S. into the completely dominant space flight power through SpaceX Heavy Industries. Then he spent $44 billion to take over Twitter in 2022 because he was offended by the censorship the then-owners were conspiring with the Biden administration to impose.
And then he proceeded to make the conspiracy public.
With receipts.
He was brash, he was uncensored, he was glaringly not neurotypical, and he clearly just didn’t have the proper respect for his betters.
He was icky.
The more I’ve watched Donald Trump’s political career since he came out as a Republican, the more I think the Never-Trump derangement has more to do with perceived class than his political positions. He’s not a member of the Club. Oh, he has the money, he has a record as being “civic minded” — but he committed lèse-majesté by challenging the queen, and worse yet, he won.
Elon made himself History’s Second Greatest Monster by refusing to bend the knee and having the F.U. Money to make it stick. Then he came out in favor of Trump.
In both cases, the immunological response of the Right People has been dramatic. Impeachments, frivolous lawsuits, attacks on Trump’s associates and attorneys, and more than 20 investigations by everyone from the FCC and FAA to the Fish and Game people.
It’s crazy and it really isn’t justified.
And it’s really hard not to look at Jonah Goldberg and Bill Kristol and Lawrence Tribe and all the others, and not see it as primarily about the realization that Trump and Elon are just seen as “not our kind.”
