Increasingly we live in enclaves of the like-minded. This congregating, like gravity, seems natural enough but the case can and has been made that such a sorting is devastating for democracy.

And while we are used to hearing how liberals and conservatives occupy different galaxies this is not the sole way to discern the sorting. Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010  returns the conversation to the question of class. Interesting, this, coming from a conservative libertarian. But then Murray's invocation of an "elite" more or less means uber-educated progressive, liberal. Affluent.

The gist: Murray argues that America's cultural and cognitive elite have puffed themselves up into such a bubble that they now float above the many…bear no relation to or understanding of the great mainstream, especially the white working class. More pointedly these elites, as is the tendency of an elite, are faring just swell while the lower class is floundering if not washed up. This is bad for the commonwealth. Is there still a commonwealth?

This PBS Newshour post from last year includes Murray's self-test to determine the density of your own cultural bubble. Can it be taken seriously? And then it's an open question on what, if anything, can or should be done. 

Occupy Elite Street?