"In the 21st century, I think the heroes will be the people who will improve the quality of life, fight poverty, and introduce sustainability." – Bertrand Piccard
People are, by nature, determined to classify each other by gender, race, perceived attractiveness, education, social class, wealth, politics and innumerable other ways. In our age of identity politics, such modes of classification, sorting into "undesirable" and "desirable" groups, and tribal antagonisms galore have come to define the American way of life. Let me complicate things further by suggesting yet another but possibly helpful classification: the working classes versus the quality of life elite.
The great preponderance of all the people who live today and who have ever lived were survivors. Once driven from the Garden of Eden the lot of humankind was a short and brutal life where beasts of the night, starvation, raping and murderous raiding groups, infectious disease and a brutal climate made each day a struggle to survive for self and kin. The cavemen and women, the slaves who built the pyramids, the feudal serf, the "meek" of Matthew 5 and the working classes of today have always vastly outnumbered the rich, the powerful and the privileged classes. Thus, surviving has always been the "normal" way of life and wealth and privilege a statistical anomaly.
Once expelled from Eden, woman was cursed with the pain and sorrow of pregnancy and childbirth, and man was forced to give up a life of leisure and "till the ground" to survive (Genesis 3). Thus, from the very beginning, man was forced to "work for a living" in order to survive in a brutal and unforgiving world. Work-to-survive is truly the leitmotif of human history and a foundation structure of human psychology.
The working person's life is a relatively simple one epistemologically – be born into a kind and loving family, enjoy that family support during the growth years, establish some kind of vocation in early adulthood (often following family tradition), work hard at his or her job, find meaning, strength and support in religion, get married and have children, and then later dote on grandchildren! This is roughly the basic life pattern of most of the people who have inhabited planet earth. The late Billy Graham spoke to these people better than anyone, and president Trump does a fair job today.
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The bright side of the working person's life is a sense of accomplishment and meaning in hard work, surviving the trials of life, enjoying family and church togetherness, and enjoying a kind of cultural continuity across generations. The darker side is that he or she always dependent on the "upper classes" to provide jobs and a fair wage, to educate children, to provide entertainment and to invent all kinds of conveniences like air-conditioning, automobiles and someday trips to Mars! In sum, the quality of life of the working person and his/her cultural continuity across generations is fundamentally dependent on the goodwill of the elitists in power – whether they be pharaohs, kings, ruling bodies, or presidents.
Positive and healthy QOL – the 'Good Life'
"Quality of Life" is a very complex concept philosophically and scientifically. For many, QOL means "happiness"; for others it's "well-being"; and some add the notion of "meaning in life." There are also a number of psychological tests providing empirical measures of QOL – including one assessing the well-being of your dog! We may not know exactly what QOL is, but we all want it. The United States and much of Europe seem to have greater quantities of it than anywhere else, and the rest of the world wants to "immigrate" and get their share.
Modestly defined, QOL is a positive notion and refers to something like the "good life." That is, a person enjoying the "good life" form of QOL is physically healthy and has access to medical resources as needed, has a good job he or she likes and finds meaningful, is probably religious and concerned with the afterlife as well as the present, has a loving spouse, well-mannered children and extended family, and gives as much to society as he/she receives. Every struggling, hand-to-mouth and down-and-out "survivor" dreams of achieving this kind of desirable and fulfilling good life.
I have just described the kind of person the extreme and left-leaning QOL "gone mad" ruling class hates with a pure purple passion. These are the "deplorables" of Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton's "trailer trash" women, Obama's backward Christians, Pelosi's seekers of "crumbs" and "Trumpsters" of every shape and sort. In fact, these left-hated pariahs are the true backbone of the country who were center stage in the formation of the nation and are now the ones whose hard-earned taxes are used to further the anti-American and Marxist prerogatives of the globalist and decadent ruling elite.
QOL gone mad
True and lasting quality of life comes first from our walk with God and secondly from the love and respect of family and community. But what about those secularists, humanists, socialists and Marxists who see themselves as "living gods" who have a mere lifetime to save the rest of us from our moral backwardness and religious superstitions? Their mission is to gain as much wealth and power as possible, to enjoy the pleasure of every moment to the fullest (especially sexual ones!) and then assuage their guilt and moral emptiness by espousing every silly "liberal" and do-gooder policy imaginable.
But it does not work for them – much less for us. When people manically try to take Quality of Life beyond its modest "good life" limits and become the richest, most powerful and most "superior" person in the world, a fulfilling life rarely follows. Instead, we have the intellectual silliness, the moral vapidity and the world-class marital mayhem of Hollywood, the immature, narcissistic and spoiled-brat displays of overpaid football players who fail to stand for the national anthem, the sexual desperation and abusiveness of a Harvey Weinstein, and let's not forget the sublimely happy and fulfilling lives of Michael Jackson and Howard Hughes! These are people one would want his or her children to be worlds away from – yet, old and young alike are inundated with their perverse values daily via TV, movies and the internet.
Conclusion
Extreme and manic QOL has produced widespread decadence, nihilism and destruction of the social fabric in the elite classes – yet, with their wealth and social power, they survive. Ultimately, the working classes are the real victims, and the assault on their Christian values, work ethic, family unity and continuity, and psychological and spiritual well-being is devastating. Throughout most of human history, the excesses, immorality and spiritual bankruptcy of the ruling elite had little or no direct effect on the survivor and working classes. Their sins and intrigues remained hidden behind castle walls.
Today a teenager with a smartphone and a computer learns more in an afternoon about the perverse antics of the QOL elite than did any slave or serf in a lifetime. Indeed, the sex-and-drugs glorifying forces of evil can be in your child's bedroom in nanoseconds.
To "make America great again," we must take it back from the morally dysfunctional and manic QOL elite who have already made the once-beautiful state of California "the worst state in America."