People in Britain do sometimes (I say sometimes because I know a few who do - I can't speak to what the majority think!) try to compare Britain to the U.S. in this particular regard, and you really can't. It isn't that there aren't some general similarities - there certainly are. One of the key differences, culturally, is that Britain always respected education and the bettering of one's self intellectually. America has always been anti-intellectual, proud to be rough and tough and adventurous and always contemptuous of "those faggy intellectuals in their ivory towers."
That's one of many differences, so I don't think a straight comparison is valid without a lot of caveats. That said, yes, the low-paid, poorly educated people do feel threatened and excluded by intellectual elites (not so much, I think, by the rich, who show clearly, quite often, that they are not intellectually superior to anyone). The U.S. has a lot of citizens who are high school dropouts, under or unemployed, avowed Christians (though you wouldn't know it from their behavior) who do actually believe that only white Christians like themselves should be in the U.S., should have jobs, should have rights - that treating those different from themselves as citizens with equal rights somehow is taking away their birthright - they long for an imaginary era where white high school drop outs had good paying jobs. Those days are long gone. Trump was never going to bring them back, and it isn't the fault of brown people or uppity women. That's an ignorant and bigoted position, one that it is very difficult to warm to or sympathize with. These are people who blatantly dismiss facts (such as that men like Trump are PRECISELY the problem) because they don't align with their personal preferences as victims of "diversity."
I understand that many Brits feel uncomfortable in a similar way with the waves of immigrants (hence Brexit, etc) and it's true that this fear of "other" is fueled by intolerance and ignorance (and fear).
But there are too many cultural differences to really equate the two populations, I think.
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That's one of many differences, so I don't think a straight comparison is valid without a lot of caveats. That said, yes, the low-paid, poorly educated people do feel threatened and excluded by intellectual elites (not so much, I think, by the rich, who show clearly, quite often, that they are not intellectually superior to anyone). The U.S. has a lot of citizens who are high school dropouts, under or unemployed, avowed Christians (though you wouldn't know it from their behavior) who do actually believe that only white Christians like themselves should be in the U.S., should have jobs, should have rights - that treating those different from themselves as citizens with equal rights somehow is taking away their birthright - they long for an imaginary era where white high school drop outs had good paying jobs. Those days are long gone. Trump was never going to bring them back, and it isn't the fault of brown people or uppity women. That's an ignorant and bigoted position, one that it is very difficult to warm to or sympathize with. These are people who blatantly dismiss facts (such as that men like Trump are PRECISELY the problem) because they don't align with their personal preferences as victims of "diversity."
I understand that many Brits feel uncomfortable in a similar way with the waves of immigrants (hence Brexit, etc) and it's true that this fear of "other" is fueled by intolerance and ignorance (and fear).
But there are too many cultural differences to really equate the two populations, I think.