Every year 3 million visitors make the pilgrimage to Ellis Island.  It is estimated nearly forty percent of all Americans can trace their ancestors to the 20 million immigrants that were processed through New York and Ellis Island from 1892 to 1954.  These prospective citizens were determined to escape authoritarianism, soul grinding poverty, war and its aftermath, immutable class structures as well as religious and ethnic persecution.  

Once here they would immerse themselves in learning English and the nation’s founding documents in preparation for the most gut wrenching (passing the oral citizenship test) and emotional (the swearing in ceremony) day in their lives.  Thanks to their life experience and their determination to be citizens of the only nation in the history of mankind to be founded on the principle that all men are created equal, these newly minted Americans were among the most loyal and most well-versed in the nation’s founding.

What would the vast majority of those that willingly left everything behind to travel for up to three weeks, oftentimes across a storm-tossed ocean and relegated to the unsanitary and wretched conditions in steerage, think of the impeachment of Donald Trump?

Nearly all of the nations whence these immigrants came were governed by an immutable class structure.  At the apex of this rigid class pyramid was either a monarchy and its attendant birthright nobility or a dictatorship and its coercive administrative hierarchy or a communist oligarchy and its implacable bureaucracy.   Class mobility was at the whim and discretion of the autocrat or the oligarchy.

These nameless and faceless masses had virtually no say in their nation’s governance and they were at the mercy of the economic and foreign policy of the ruling elites.   They were viewed as being grossly inferior, uneducable and deplorable -- thus mere pawns to be sacrificed in the country’s wars and were little more than indentured servants to the ruling class. 

On the other hand, thanks to a Constitution constructed to prevent the ascendancy of any one faction into a position of permanent power and the evolution of a rigid ruling class hierarchy, the United States possessed the framework and opportunity for anyone to succeed and live in peace and economic security thus attracting millions to its shores.

However, beginning in the 1960’s many of those that came through Ellis Island began to notice a change in the relatively benign and Constitution-oriented governing class.  With the exponential growth of government, a new and potentially destructive class structure began to evolve, one that was reminiscent of ruling class supremacy in those nations they had escaped. 

A mindset, alien to 170 years of American history, took root amid overwhelming peace and prosperity.   A growing faction in the country began to believe that they were pre-ordained to govern as they were superior to the unwashed masses, particularly racial and ethnic minorities as well as those steeped in religion and morality.  Over the years the proponents of this belief infiltrated the universities and the media-entertainment complex creating an ever-growing army of narcissists and authoritarians which mutated into today’s American Ruling Class.

Angelo Codevilla writing in the American Spectator identified the characteristics of the American Ruling Class as follows:

Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as taste and habits.  Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct.  Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector.

Its attitude is key to understanding our bipartisan ruling class.  Its first tenet is that “we” are the best and brightest while the rest of Americans are retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained.

Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself.  While it stakes its claims through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof.  Like left-wing parties always and everywhere, it is a “machine,” that is, based on providing tangible rewards to its members.  Hence our ruling class’s standard approach to any and all matters, its solution to any and all problems, is to increase the power of the government-- meaning of those who run it, meaning themselves.

By taxing and parceling out more than a third of what Americans produce through regulations that reach deep into American life, our ruling class is making itself the arbiter of wealth and poverty.

The ruling class is keener to reform the American people’s family and spiritual lives than their economic and civic ones. It believes that the Christian family (and the orthodox Jewish one too) is rooted in and perpetuates the ignorance commonly called religion that is the greatest barrier to human progress.  This dismissal of the American people’s intellectual, spiritual, and moral substance is the very heart of what our ruling class is about.

[Lastly,] America’s best and brightest believe themselves qualified and duty bound to direct the lives of not only Americans but of foreigners as well.  Its default solution to international threats has been to commit blood and treasure to long-term, twilight efforts to reform the world’s Vietnams, Somalias, Iraqs and Afghanistans.

Since the Reagan era, the American Ruling Class has succeeded in electing George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, all of whom were members in good standing.  Thus, by 2016 the ruling elites were thoroughly entrenched and dominant throughout the halls of power.  They were prepared to govern this nation for many years to come as one of the flaws in the magnificent governing blueprint set up by the founding fathers was the reality that this government can only function with just two major political parties.  Both political party hierarchies had and fully intended to continue nominating candidates for the presidency and Congress who were either beholden to or members of the ruling class.  The rank and file voters were left with only superficial differences in the choice of candidates.

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was an act of defiance and a rebellion by the deplorables and a devastating blow to the ruling elites.   With his election, President Trump began the process of a Republican Party divorce from the establishment -- which is now well underway.   Thus, the ruling class’s political hegemony is severely threatened.   They cannot achieve their endgame without de facto control of both parties.  Which is why Donald Trump may well be the most influential President in modern American history.

The Democrat party is now becoming near exclusive home of the ruling class, as can be borne out by recent Congressional elections.  Before the 2018 mid-term elections, the richest 66 House districts were split 38 Democrats and 28 Republican.  After the election the Democrats held 56 and the Republicans 10 In the 15 districts where at least 50% of the population have a college degree, all are represented by Democrats as of 2018, whereas the Democrats controlled 13 of 15 in 2016. 

Being relegated exclusively to the Democrat party means that the ruling class must accommodate and adopt the radical tenets of the much larger Marxist/socialist wing of the Party if they wish to win the Party’s nominations for elective offices.   A self-defeating and ultimately destructive path as militant socialists will, in due course, consume them.  Alternatively, and in league with their propaganda arm, the mainstream media, the ruling elites have pulled out all the stops and abandoned any ethical, moral or legal restraints to get rid of Donald Trump and recapture their previous hierarchical influence in the Republican Party.

The abominably fabricated and unconstitutional impeachment farce is the culmination of three years of frustration and determination to rid the nation of the “threat” that is Donald Trump’s takeover of a major political party and transformation of it into a vehicle of populism.  Which would allow the citizenry and not the elites to determine the course of the nation’s future.   In reality, impeachment, endless investigations, fabrications and the constant vilification of Donald Trump are aimed at intimidating the nameless and unwashed masses who had the temerity and insolence to vote against the wishes of the ruling class. 

Out of 20 million immigrants there are perhaps less than 100,000 of us living today that have any memory of being processed through New York and Ellis Island during the 60+ years it was the gateway to America.  The determination to invalidate an election and destroy the Constitutional foundation of this country for the sake of achieving unfettered political supremacy is not the United States we have come to know and love.  Despite their protestations to the contrary, the ruling class and their public face, the Democratic Party, does not love this country and its people and are, in fact, little different than the ruling elites that caused so many to seek refuge in America.

Graphic credit: Blue Diamond Gallery