I’m fond of saying that America has been colonized by pod people. Unlike the racists white colonists that oppressed the noble people of places like Africa and the Americas, these colonists sort of look like the people over whom they rule. They even speak the same language, for the most part. Rather than secure their place by force of arms, the new colonial class has convinced the natives they are on their side as protectors. It’s why they invest so much time telling some natives that the other natives are a danger. Divide and conquer.

Maggie’s Farm had a link to this story on Legal Insurrection. She seems to think it is really cool that the ruling class is all-white. She describes herself as “an attorney, writer, and digital strategist from Dallas, Texas.” You can’t help but get a bad vibe from the expression “digital strategist.” It sounds like a fake job for women. Tech firms tend to load up their marketing and human resources departments with women to counter the fact their talent is all white and Asians dudes. They give the ladies of marketing titles like “digital strategist.”

Anyway, the vast chasm between the ruled and the ruler is hardly news. The interesting bit is that the political divide looks a lot like what’s happening in trendy coastal cities. Upper middle-class whites are systematically driving out non-Asian minorities. Washington DC is getting whiter by the day. This old list shows that DC, like other trendy ruling class places is becoming less vibrant. Harlem went white a few years ago and is on its way to looking like Reykjavik. It only makes sense that the governing class would follow the same path, getting whiter, richer and more self-absorbed.

That last bit is not unimportant. I was watching Red Eye the other day and the topic was drugs. Legalization is now cool amongst those living in the bunker communities. The cast of Red Eye is emblematic of the SWPL-types now running the culture. One of the guests was a cute little girl named Katherine Timpf. She said something along the lines of “I live in Harlem and see people selling drugs every day.” They all nodded without the least bit of irony. They are totally unaware of what’s going on around them. Dylan from upstairs who had a heroin problem is a different breed of cat from D’Quan who slings dope on a Camden street corner, but no one in hipsterville knows that.

But, that’s thing with the colonial class. They don’t really know they are a colonial class and they don’t seem to know there’s a world outside of the Potemkin villages they are building for themselves in the coastal cities. There’s a blissful unawareness that most obviously shows up in political attitudes. When you live in a quaint little Victorian on a block filled with sophisticated hipsters like yourself, you trust the system. The cops are your friends and the people with who you work in government are your well-intentioned neighbors. In a world where there are never any layoffs or pay cuts and no such thing as a recession, it easy to be naïve. They are the Eloi and we are the Morlocks, except they live off us, instead of the way Wells imagined it.