Frightening if true, and I suspect it is (UPDATED)

Waving goodbye to the King’s loyal subjects. — Evacuation Day, Nov. 25, 1783

Rasmussen survey shows that the elites are out of touch with the rest of America

Meh — you can generally frame a poll to produce any answer you’re looking for, but the results of this one don’t strike me as surprising or unexpected; in fact, they’re depressingly plausible

Isaac Schorr:

The United States has a wealthy, partisan elite class that’s not only immune from and numb to the problems of their countrymen, but enormously confident in and willing to impose unpopular policies on them.

… The problem is starkly illustrated in a new survey Scott Rasmussen conducted on behalf of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, which divided respondents between elites (people with at least one postgraduate degree, earning more than $150,000, living in ZIP codes where the population density exceeds 10,000 per square mile) and the general public.

Rasmussen also recorded the responses of a subset of elites — “super elites,“ if you will — who graduated from a few prestigious private universities, including members of the Ivy League, Duke, Stanford and Northwestern.

It’s near impossible to behold the results and not acknowledge they’re indicative of a fundamental disconnect between two Americas.

That disconnect should be of as much concern to proud aristocrats as it is to the peasantry.

It should come as no surprise that between America and its upper crust, a much higher proportion of the latter (73%) consider themselves Democrats and approve of Joe Biden’s performance as president (84%).

…. Seventy-four percent of the elites and 88% of super elites report their personal finances are on the upswing…..

But it is still striking that the class disproportionately represented in positions of influence does not feel the same, very real economic pains the rest of America does.

Why? Because that makes them less likely to take steps to alleviate that pain and even more likely to worsen it in pursuit of their ideological objectives.

Government control

This truth was borne out by the three groups’ answers to other questions.

A stunning 77% of elites and 89% of super elites support the “strict rationing of meat, gas, and electricity.”

Seventy-two percent and 81% would ban the use of gas-powered cars.

Oh, and 47% and 55% believe the government affords Americans “too much freedom.”

It’s that last position: the government “affords” Americans too much freedom that worries me; we had a revolution to throw out this country’s original overlords, people who believed that the King and His nobles held the lives of the peasantry in their hands, that they held the power, in their wisdom, to decide how much freedom to “allow” the peasants to exercise on their own. We threw them out and established a country based on the opposite premise: that it was the individual who was endowed by his creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life,liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

It’s probably getting near time to ship these believers in the divine power of kings back to England, again.

UPDATE: Here’s more from the poll, courtesy of John Hinderaker at Powerline:

So how do the elites want to limit our excessive freedom? A shocking 77% say they favor the “strict rationing of gas, meat and electricity.” That basically means living in a poor, totalitarian state like the USSR. And by 89% to 10%, the Ivy League elites want to see “strict rationing” of these most basic commodities.

These “elites” are fascists. Large majorities want to ban gas stoves (69%), gasoline powered cars (72%), non-essential air travel (55%), SUVs (58%) and air conditioning (53%). The Ivy League elites are even worse: the corresponding numbers are 80% for gas stoves, 81% for gasoline powered cars, 70% for non-essential air travel, 66% for SUVs, and 68% want to ban air conditioning. There is no polite way to put it: they are fascists.