@soryang "class" was not about money, but blue blood heritage money. Case in point is Jacqueline Kennedy. She came from a legacy of high education and old money, but by the time she was entering college, her mom was dead broke, and Jackie was at the mercy of her mom's second husband, a non-blue blood rich man.
During her college years, she was in the right clubs, but had to borrow horses, borrow saddles, borrow clothes, because her neuveau riche step-dad could give a shit about her college life.
When I was growing up, high class meant family heritage of money and power. Today, it is "upper class" stratified by wealth only.

#6.1

I can't prove any of this. I absorbed it over the years.

From what my parents generation told me over the years, the mainstream ivy league high brow types always looked down on Trump as a dumb narrow minded low class tacky con man. This was his reputation among people who frequented the theatres and performances that NYC was famous for. It was a cultural divide. Most well educated people in NYC thought Trump was ignorant. This was the NYC social ambience.

Trump's attacks on the NEA, also pander to the fundamentalist right and the white replacement theory folks that support him, but underlying all that is his resentment of people better educated and smarter than he is, who typically patronized the art and museum scene. The class of NY elites in this category could care less that many in the NY arts milieu were flamboyantly gay and/or black. What else is new? Tolerance of diversity particularly in arts or politics was still a social marker back then of whether you were enlightened or an ignorant bore. Your family having money wasn't enough to be accepted socially with the right people in the upper class, and Trump never really did get accepted. Politics became his entree.

To me Trump's resentment of these city elites, with their snobby artsy airs is what the great unwashed love in Trump. Trump tower, his mansion and golf clubs are his effort to outdo the elites that despised him. When Trump went into the WWE, reality tv, his fraudulent Trump U scam, it was all an affirmation that he was white trash in the eyes of the traditional elites. Ordinary folks identified with him all the more. Part of it is the traditional city mouse vs. country mouse prejudice coming to the fore.

Trump's attacks on universities, and foundations for the arts, such as the appointment of himself as chair of the JFK Center for the Performing Arts is a poke in the eye of the city snob class and traditional northeast elites. Even the conservatives among the distant relatives in my family who could trace some blue blood roots I'm sure look down on Trump. The man just exudes bad taste, rude manners, and an unprincipled and cheap demeanor. Some of those in my generation with some money gravitated toward positions in the big name universities and attained tenured positions. Of course they think they're smarter than Trump. Now it's time for Trump's revenge for the slights and ridicule over the years. Trump now has power over them and that's what counts.

Meanwhile Trump has been showing more of an authoritarian obsession with the arts in his second term than in his first. He appointed himself chair of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and appointed a loyalist, Ric Grenell, as president. Last week he visited the complex and declared his love of the 1980s Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals Cats and The Phantom of the Opera.

At a moment when Democrats, activists and citizens are called to action and not to tune out, artists are no exception. Derek Goldman, artistic and executive director of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University in Washington, says: “There’s the adage that authoritarian regimes understand the power of the arts and of narrative sometimes better than the artists themselves.

This is injustice’: inside Trump’s attack on funding for LGBTQ+ arts