In some cases, this was for fairly sympathetic reasons: lost jobs in the rust belt, people in Appalachian communities feeling that they'd been left behind, the opiate epidemic. For others, it was rainbow flags during Pride Month and too many mixed-race couples in ads.
I could maybe see that for the larger voting body, but I’m not sure the “elite” see themselves as connected to the hoi poloi like that
I'd say too things to that. One is that the Trump era has shown the limits of traditional elite control. The other is that, frankly, a lot of that elite has always been old people with reactionary social views.
They spent decades supporting a wordview that aimed to turn society into a giant vending machine, only to realize that it would inevitably be built to cater to the tastes of people they didn't like.
Neoliberalism as ideology has always exhibited an odd mixture of cynicism and utopianism, perhaps best exemplified by the other Arthur Jensen. The one written by Paddy Chayefsky. It doesn't really leave much room for nationalism or traditional communities. youtu.be/35DSdw7dHjs?...