Cultural class traitors

There are class traitors like Tom Steyer who support California’s “billionaire tax.” Then there are cultural class traitors like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who support flamboyantly snuffing out Fauci votive candles live on CNN, outfitted in his family’s signature skinny tie.

Aaron Rodgers went on an extended rant about Anthony Fauci on ESPN Monday. “What are you going to say about me now?” he shrugged. The day before, one of ESPN’s on-air personalities lauded a coach for pushing back on Sophie Cunningham who recently said “I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.” For this, The Guardian described Cunningham as “anti-black.

Earlier in the summer, UFC came to the White House lawn and affluent pundits took issue not merely with the event’s excesses, but with Donald Trump’s embrace of the sport itself. (Flashback to 2017: “If we kick [foreigners] out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts — which are not the arts,” said Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes.)

When Charles Murray wrote Coming Apart in 2012, he pointed out that affluent Americans were clustering geographically in the most powerful zip codes. This, he argued, meant cultural tastes were increasingly sorting along class lines as well. Murray’s fictional Belmont and Fishtown were less able to understand one another, which is most egregious for the denizens of Belmont who disproportionately exert control over Fishtown.

In addition to economic haves and have-nots, America is now a land of cultural haves and have-nots. If you’re mad at Fauci or pleased with Cunningham you do not “have” much representation in legacy media, elite cocktail parties, or other non-political centers of power. With few exceptions, it remains fashionable at CNN and ESPN and in their overlapping social circles to muse about Caitlin Clark’s white supremacy and marvel at Fauci’s ability to withstand MAGA.

This is an enormous source of tension, which Trump recognized early. Now, though, democratized media is creating a lane for the cultural have-nots, and Belmont’s cultural class traitors (including Trump) have found audiences outside their own bubbles. On ESPN, Rodgers was greeted with rowdy cheers from the live audience as he mocked Fauci. In 2026, he won’t weather the same level of controversy he weathered in 2021 because his opponents have less power and his boosters have more.

This is an awkward time for the Democratic Socialists of America to surge, but Zohran Mamdani blazed a trail that allowed DSA candidates to start finding receptive audiences outside Brooklyn: Tone down the identity politics and focus on economic disparities. Bernie Sanders swept states like Kansas and Wisconsin and Nebraska this way in 2016. It’s obviously more complicated now for candidates like Francesca Hong who posted through 2020, and the general election will focus heavily on pitting her claims to support the “have nots” with her prior opposition to Thanksgiving.

The scope of Trump’s personal corruption and a flagging economy will give Hong and others a boost in November, undermining Republican claims to represent the downtrodden. But for as much as we’re bound to hear about the class war, bear in mind taxes and redistribution are often the tip of the iceberg.

Cultural class traitors are reflecting back trends Murray picked up on more than a decade ago. This representation could prove to be a relief valve or a hefty dose of gasoline on the fire.