Last week, famed New York Times columnist David Brooks penned a widely discussed column that encouraged his culturally elite readership to consider an alternative Trump -era narrative, one in which they, not the “distrustful populists” and “less-educated classes," as he described them, are the bad guys.

Anyone familiar with Brooks’s speaking voice can imagine him testing his thesis at a dinner party on the Upper East Side while aproned servants pour the pinot and spoon the soup. His tone is nearly satirical; he analyzes the working class as if they were bugs under a microscope, not real people with valid concerns. Stylistically, it’s a cringe-fest from go.

But Brooks deserves more than a silver spoon’s worth of credit for challenging his thoroughly enbubbled audience to walk a mile in the underclass’s shoes. He correctly notes, for instance, that the erosion of moral norms around family and childrearing endorsed by the liberal elite has been destructive for the marginalized communities they purport to champion. Single parenting, which is a profound hindrance to social mobility , is almost exclusively a phenomenon among people without a college degree. Meanwhile, college-educated liberals have continued having children within the bonds of marriage, all while enjoying the social benefits.

He also correctly notes that the educated elite use language as a class barrier. Words such as “problematic” and “Latinx” serve to exclude and punish the culturally inferior. The shifting norms around language baffle and alarm the non-college-educated masses. To them, this newspeak is at once absurd and threatening, and the elite class enforces their ever-evolving standards with merciless glee.

But Brooks earns his highest marks for pointing out that the flow of information is disproportionately controlled by graduates from elite institutions. Citing a 2018 study from the Journal of Expertise, Brooks notes that 50% of staff writers in the newsrooms of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal graduated from a tiny collection of elite universities.

Once a profession defined by its reflexive skepticism of the powers that be, American journalism has become the first line of defense for entrenched cultural authority. White House press secretaries now step immediately into six-figure gigs on MSNBC, and no one is ever called to account for blowing a story, but only for defying the dominant cultural monolith. If Jimmy Breslin defined journalism in the 20th century, Jen Psaki defines it today.

The nonelite understand perfectly well the problem with a news media that blows one major story after another, including the three years it spent frothing about Russian collusion only to produce bupkis. Brooks, who admits to being a “card-carrying member” of this class, deserves credit for pointing toward this dysfunction.

And yet, there is so much more ground he could have covered to explain the justifiable scorn many feel toward the cultural blue bloods. Brooks attempts to explain how the elite maintain their lofty status by taking advantage of “systems of oppression.” But these and other abstractions deflect responsibility from the people who purportedly benefit the most from their existence. Working-class people are tired of being disparaged as racists for desiring a secure border by those who’ve never lifted a finger to help refugees. There's a reason we never hear about liberal elites heroically adopting immigrant families. That's because that never happens. We similarly never hear about morally enlightened white women resigning from their lofty positions so that women of color can take their place. The non-elite rightly view much of the "woke" thing for what it is: cheap theater.

Perhaps nothing justifies scorn toward cultural elites more than the increasingly open disdain they demonstrate toward the most beloved blue-collar professionals: police officers and soldiers. It’s impossible to overstate the damage the ubiquitous taunt "All Cops Are Bastards" (often expressed online in the acronym "ACAB") had on the perception of progressives among blue-collar people. The elite once honored these professions, at least when it suited them, such as in the aftermath of 9/11. But today, reverence for the police or the military, or, heaven forbid, the flag their families have venerated for generations, is grounds for immediate cancellation on the Left.

Brooks begins his piece puzzling over the fact that anyone could support former President Donald Trump following his many indictments. What he should ponder instead is why anyone with police officers or military members in their families would ever support people who hate them. It is understandable that they'd support anyone who looks strong enough to defeat those who call their family members bastards. They are not united by Trump so much as they’re united against a cultural elite that openly loathes them.

An old mentor of mine had a perfect term for intellectually unimpressive liberals who sneer at the working class from a lofty perch of inherited wealth, legacy admissions, and a cursory command of the latest moral fads: green trash. Now, I have personally never voted for Trump, nor would I ever (probably). But I’ve always “gotten” it. He’s a big orange middle finger to the arrogant and unimpressive elite set that has never been content to live and let live but only to disparage and dominate.

The green trash aristocracy is lucky to have a friend such as Brooks to challenge their own seemingly impenetrable biases. It was painful to read, but perhaps it will do some good in the long run.

Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner and the founder of Crush the College Essay. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, the National Catholic Register, and the American Spectator.