The great divide in the West is now immigration. On which side of the issue you fall, determines where you are on the political spectrum. If you have been paying close attention over the last two decades, this has been increasingly obvious. If you have just started paying attention, it may be a bit of mystery. After all, politicians in both parties dismiss the issue. The press is unwilling to cover it, other than perfunctorily. In polite circles, the “I” word is close to being the “N” word.

Even stranger, particularly in America where the never ending election season is boiling like never before, is that politicians are allergic to the topic. Donald Trump has made immigration his central issue and risen in the polls, yet his competitors refuse to discuss it. When asked, which is rare, they get a frightened look as if they have been asked about their desire for young boys. There’s real fear in their eyes.

What’s going on?

Rich people have always controlled our politics. That was true long before we had politics and no one should be shocked by it. Big business, unions and large issue groups have vast resources to lobby government so they have a big influence on policy. This is not a bad thing. It’s just a reality of life that often gets forgotten as we swim in a sea of Progressive nonsense about the power of democracy.

This was never much of a problem as there were lots of big business types who disagreed with other big business types. Unions opposed business and special interest groups opposed all of them. Plenty of money poured in from all sides so that the money game was just a reflection of public sentiment. A man could buy a legislator or even a few of them, but no one could buy all of them.

That’s changed a lot in the last few decades. The technological revolution and the technocratic revolution has unleashed a new force in politics and that’s the global elite. Mark Zuckerberg’s company makes money all over the world. Apple makes more in China than in the US. Countries are no longer places to global business. They are markets. Consequently, the super-rich are no longer citizens of a country. They are citizens of their class, the global elite.

What’s different about these rich people is they are untethered from their host countries. Their first loyalty is to their class. As a result, they coordinate their efforts across borders, parties and cultures. George Soros is a citizen of where? Who knows. He finances the looting of Ferguson Missouri and he backs pro-immigration parties in Europe. He has no national interests because he has no nationality.

The political and media class are the servants of this global elite. They fly on their jets to Davos and they rely on their largess to finance their think tanks and media companies. The American Enterprise Institute, for example, has no customers and conducts no commerce. Yet it has offices in Washington and 150 people on staff. Who pays for that? Donors, of course, and those donors are not school teachers and shop keepers.

The result of globalization is that a smaller class of people than the former ruling classes has a bigger impact on the national affairs of every country. The old way had rich people trying to buy influence with elected officials. The new way is elected officials trying to curry favor with the rich people, in the hopes they will finance their campaigns.

When the cost of running a campaign for Congress is over $10 million, you have to raise $15,000 every day to keep your office. Hillary Clinton will spend one billion dollars in her presidential run. The only way to raise that sort of money is to have the global elite on your side. Thus we see the Golden Rule: The man with the gold makes the rules. In politics now, it means the donors are the only constituents that matter.

That’s why everyone involved in politics panics whenever the “I” word comes up. Immigration is the one subject where the vision of anointed is revealed. On the one hand, global elites wish to get rid of citizenship and national governments because they are a nuisance. On the other hand, they imagine a world where the masses beneath them live in enforced equality. Their solution to inequality is to make everyone a peasant.

That last part is what no one discusses. The elites imagine a world like the college campus. At the top are the trustees who hire administrators to culture and cultivate the undergraduates who live communal lives. The new definition of socialism is the redistribution of happiness and self-actualization by a cloud people who rule as if they are gods.

This explains the gasps and shrieks from all quarters over the uncouth rantings by the novus homo with regards to immigration policy. Trump is a billionaire. His stance on immigration and his presentation make him a class traitor. That’s what’s triggering the irrational and emotional response to Trump. It’s why Progressives went bonkers over George W. Bush. It’s one thing to be mistaken. It is another to turn your back on your kind and side with the peasants.

There’s something else. The unhinged response to Trump by guys like Kevin Williamson is not really about the “I” word. It’s fear that the old Red Team – Blue Team song and dance is no longer going to play with the crowd. This is not just a Conservative Inc problem. The pearl clutching by Ezra Klein over Bernie Sanders rejection of open borders has the same source. The pajama boys fear they will be dragged into a discussion they can’t have because they can’t win.

One last thing before I end this foam flecked rant. In Europe we’re seeing old Left and old Right locking arms opposing immigration. On the other side are the kept men of the ruling class. A similar thing is brewing in America. Look at the sympathetic, if somewhat bemused, coverage of Bernie Sanders by the Dissident Right. Something similar is happening on the Left with regards to Trump.

In a multi-party proportional system like you see in Europe, this sort of fluidity is easy to accommodate as there are minority parties where voters can migrate to when the main parties are lacking. In America, with our rigid two party system, everything is invested in the status quo.

The media, financial arrangements, lobbying efforts are contingent on the Red Team – Blue Team purse fight. The “I” word threatens the whole thing because it scrambles the loyalties. If all of a sudden blacks are more concerned with the “I” word than the “N” word, Blue Team has a problem. If suburban white people stop listening to promises about shuffling commas around the tax code because they care more about immigration, Red Team is screwed.

The “I” word put everything at risk so the people in charge are putting everything they have into make the “I” word more taboo that the “N” word.