“I am requesting with this press conference that Gov. Patrick Quinn order the Illinois National Guard (and) the Illinois State Police (to) come to Chicago and work with our mayor Ron (sic) Emanuel to provide safety for the children, especially…”

State Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago). HT: CBS News.

Ah, The Bubblelands. Those who live in places that Charles Murray described as Superzips in his analytical masterpiece Coming Apart. We have such a wonderful cognitive elite in America. How they enjoy their sojourns to Davos or a jolly old talk at one of this year’s TED Conferences. Life is easy in these blessed enclaves. It’s harder when you cross the tracks and step into a world far different from what our current leadership views as America.

Outside the high walls and far from the gilded mansions another America lies stricken with cancer. Their culture dissolves, their cities are so violent that their own elected representatives call in The National Guard. The ambulances no longer make it in time to save you from “The Big One.” In Detroit, as municipal bankruptcy ensues, people laugh at the idea of being saved by an ambulance.

The New York Times linked this debacle to the municipal finances of one very poorly managed municipality. This is an epic fail. It’s what we expect to read from out of touch Bubbleland. The roots of this failure go to the core of the dying America culture beyond the palaces of wealth and splendor in places such as Great Falls or McLean. In Mclean, the children go to the nationally recognized Fairfax County Public Schools if they don’t attend “The Langley School, The Madeira School; The Potomac School; Oakcrest School; Saint Luke School; Saint John School; Brooksfield Montessori, and the Country Day School.”

Outside this wonderland of material wellbeing and cognitive dominance, we have a separate 3rd World school system where students bone up on their Goerge Ornell. You can also check out F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gypsy if you missed the movie adaptation.

This division leads to an intense relationship of contempt versus distrust. Here we see our Commander in Chief lecturing us on our lack of faith in Government.*

This sort of “Villains ye were, villains ye remain” approach to addressing the nation leads to biting level of condign cynicism we can see expressed towards both the leadership and the institutions of the nation. People who see themselves belittled reach for the anti-hero. Their mistrust for societal institutions is personalized in their belief that the people who work in these institutions are amoral and dishonest.

What happens to this society? Perhaps we go Egypt and endure revolution all the way to the bloody, primeval bottom. Or do we just evolve in separate, mutually detesting classes of people. H. G. Wells wrote of the Moorlocks and Eloi. This would certainly not be the stuff of E Pluribus Unum. Nor would this ultimately lead to a prosperous nation.

Given the public school reading list that featured Goerge Ornell, we may be a generation away from the Old Norman custom of having our elite converse above the rabble in The High Speech of nobility. Sadly long gone are the Schoolhouse Rock days of there being no more king. The Republican Party must reform and rebel against this destructive trend of social divergence. There are 280 million or so Americans not to The Superzip Manor born. Their futures and America’s depend on us being the force for good here.

*- Like Lord Vader he finds it disturbing.