Missed the mark here.

The American working class is only "the author of its own despair" insofar as it has assimilated the dominant ideology advanced by the ruling class. The awful, self-destructive ideology that pervades the addled brains of Trumpists is a top-down phenomenon.

Umair understands this. He acknowledges that the working class was "swindled into believing" that the remedy for their pain is to double down on the things that caused it in the first place. But, he doesn't fully address why such an obvious con would be attractive to so many Americans in the first place. His explanation stops short of mentioning who conned us and why.

He does note that pundits have a way of tuning out the widespread suffering that has resulted from decades of right-wing economic austerity. But, he blames this on simple "arrogance," and his supposition that "pundits genuinely seem to despise the working class," which may well be true, but is not the whole story.

Political and media elites intentionally, and very successfully, advance a particular ideology because it suits their class interests. That is why, even when pundits can cover tragic stories about homelessness or joblessness or healthcare-lessness, they cannot place the blame on the capitalist system that creates those tragedies.