On the upside

It helps that his mother got a job at the local Walmart. Dealing with rude customers is unpleasant, and the job pays a low wage. On the upside, the commute is short. --End Times, Peter Turchin

это он про Стива пишет, из deplorables, довольно убедительно. и дальше - про интеллигентную Кэтрин, смешно:

"What immiseration?” countered Kathryn. “Life has never been better than today!” She then advised me to read Enlightenment Now, a then just published book by доктор Опир Steven Pinker.

и про anti-incumbent voting интересно:

...low subjective well-being is a powerful marker of discontent and is highly correlated with anti-incumbent voting. In 2016, in particular, it was the strongest predictor of county-level voting for Trump.

последний раздел в 4-й главе, The Revolution Devours Its Children, особенно точно описывает происходящее сегодня. вспоминается Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; из The Second Coming. там много инетересных наблюдений.

Early states were usually governed by militocracies, whose main source of social power was simply force. This was a consequence of one of the most important principles of social evolution, namely that “war made the state, and states made war.”

тут вспоминается "...physical force, that unmistakable evidence of sovereignty" - Hawthorne, Blithedale Romance.

в пятой главе раздел The Formation of American Ruling Class познавательный. цитировать сложно.

но в целом книга оставляет желать.