AN ACTUALLY GOOD COLUMN FROM DAVID BROOKS ON HOW THE “NEW CLASS” IS RUINING AMERICA:

Over the past generation, members of the college-educated class have become amazingly good at making sure their children retain their privileged status. They have also become devastatingly good at making sure the children of other classes have limited chances to join their ranks. . . .

The educated class has built an ever more intricate net to cradle us in and ease everyone else out. It’s not really the prices that ensure 80 percent of your co-shoppers at Whole Foods are, comfortingly, also college grads; it’s the cultural codes.

Status rules are partly about collusion, about attracting educated people to your circle, tightening the bonds between you and erecting shields against everybody else. We in the educated class have created barriers to mobility that are more devastating for being invisible. The rest of America can’t name them, can’t understand them. They just know they’re there.

And that’s why you got Trump. Related: How David Brooks Created Donald Trump.

UPDATE: A lot of people are mocking Brooks for this, and understandably I suppose. But this is actually news to Brooks, and his readers. We should cheer when a bit of fresh air makes it into the bubble.