So, I graduated in 1976, but your analysis still largely applies. There is a great divide in this nation between the Ruling Class elites (many of whom were still in college and graduate schools in the '70s) and the Country Class taxpayers. The elites also benefit from a Client Class of poor and lower middle-class government dependents, largely cut off from what used to be the American Dream by the efforts of their own supposed benefactors.
After all: who was it who set about to take over the schools, the bureaucracies, the foundations, the cultural institutions, the media/entertainment complex? Who spread the Progressive gospel - anti-capitalist, anti-family, secular humanist and globalist claptrap?
And now, they are on to poisoning the minds of another young generation, in preparation for their final assault on what remains of American exceptionalism.
What do we do about it? Well, it would be a lot easier if conservatives still had a functional major political party to depend on, but along the way, many Republican leaders, co-located in Washington, DC and New York, and found that they had much more in common socially and culturally with their left-wing Democrat cohorts than with their own party's base.
I don't know precisely what we need to do in 2014, but I am thinking about it daily. The Tea Party can be a huge factor, but local organization will be absolutely essential to building a true nationwide movement - and that is what will be required. Either the GOP will come with us or split off into a RINO rump. I have no idea which will happen at this time, but the status quo is surely unacceptable because nature abhors a vacuum, and a vacuum is what presently passes for Republican leadership. A really dumb vacuum, at that.
Worried sick over this. The Team Obama campaign is one of massive distraction and is working like a champ. If we go to a Three-Party Lineup, Rino-TP-Democrats, we shall become a People's Republic of Northern Aztlán within a decade. We have MONTHS to develop a Program, a Plan to implement it, and to find, please Jesus, some kind of credible leader (and frickin' spare me Rubio and Cruz who should remain, if they have a shred of decency, strong Republican SENATE leaders)