[craigdalton]

I don't think this is new. When I moved from Australia to America in 1992, I was struck by the much greater identification with cultural ideas rather than wealth and class compared to Australia in the 1980s and '90s. I was attacked on a radio TalkBack show, because I suggested that Americans didn't seem to vote according to wealth status like they tended to in Australia. One of the callers said they were happy to have a lower income and lower taxes and therefore less redistribution of taxes if it meant "living in a freer country". They criticised the almost transactional nature of politics without belief that I was proposing as the norm in Australia. So I really don't think this is a new thing for the US.