“Populist movements, Bell believed, are a response to the anxieties of what Hofstadter had called “status politics,” or the uncertainty generated by the fact that in America, you can never be sure where you really stand in the social hierarchy. In this sense, the curse of populism is intimately connected to the blessings of social mobility. It is because we lack firm status positions that status becomes so important in our politics.”

From The Politics of Petulance: America in an Age of Immaturity, by Alan Wolfe. p. 48