Simply put, they hate Trump because he represents ordinary Americans — those who are not part of the political and corporate elite, who lack the advantages and connections of the Deep State, who are not media, academics, or celebs.  President Trump puts ordinary Americans first, and it drives the elite nuts.

The elite have spent so many years enjoying their advantages, including the psychological advantage of despising ordinary people, that they panicked when someone tried to take it all away from them.  They can't go on living without that warm, reassuring sense of superiority.

Contempt for average Americans was palpable in Hillary Clinton, which is why she lost the election of 2016.  It was just too obvious.  Joe Biden conceals it somewhat better, or perhaps he just cares more for other advantages of office — for both himself and family members.  Either way, he is taking advantage of ordinary people.   

What really upset the elite was that average Americans were beginning to believe in themselves.  Their wages were rising for the first time in decades, and they felt proud to be restoring America to what it could be.  If Biden wins, that will be lost.  The everyday American can crawl back to his cell and watch the country stagnate for another four or eight years.

What if the deplorables — the guy who delivers the bread to your supermarket, the woman caring for three children at home, the insurance salesman, the Target checkout clerk — were actually smarter than the Washington types, smarter than you in the universities and the media?  For the elite, it would mean that the world had been turned upside-down.

That's exactly what President Trump began to accomplish in four years.  For four years, those everyday Americans were treated like something special, listened to, moved to the front of the line.  Trump rallies were exciting because they were primarily a celebration of the rise of the real America — of those who get up five mornings a week to an alarm clock, start the car in the cold, drive to work in the dark, put in eight or ten hours, come back to football on TV in a two-bedroom apartment, bathe and sleep, and do it again and again.  On weekends, they coach and volunteer and attend church and care for family and neighbors.

This is a way of life that the Washington elite despise.  They prefer $300 restaurants, chauffeured limos, escort services funded by lobbyists, drugs and alcohol, junkets to exclusive resorts, secret bank accounts, and the status of high office.

The elite think they are so far above us, but they are not happier for it.  It's the parents in Oklahoma with their newborn child, the kid in Indiana receiving his first promotion, the grandparents in Florida living on not much more than Social Security but still giving of themselves — these are the great Americans who understand what President Trump is talking about, and they are the Americans he understands and respects.

Can you say Obama understood and respected these ordinary Americans?  Or the Clintons, or even the Bushes, with their New England heritage and Texas money?  Or Nixon, LBJ, or Kennedy with his serial adulteries?  Or Carter, with his twisted ideology of "save everyone in the world at the expense of the American middle class"?  Only Reagan and Trump put ordinary Americans first.

Now, unless the Supreme Court steps in, it's back to "normal."  Already the word has come down from Biden appointees — herd the riffraff back to their pens, tape their mouths, steal their votes, and strip them of their rights.  It's high times again in Washington.

What is really important to the elite is the illusion that only they know what's "smart" and what's right.  "Smart" was the byword of the Obama/Biden administration, and it implied that anyone who questioned their policies — policies designed to enrich the elite — was truly dumb.  It was their way of ending the discussion, like saying "the science is settled."  Now, from being "smarter" than we are, the next step is to prosecute those who oppose them, and they're halfway there with the accusation that those who question anthropogenic climate change are "deniers."

The elite are evolving from political snobs to something more sinister.  It's not enough to condescend to conservatives.  Now the elite want to imprison them.  The persecution of Gen. Flynn by a politicized Justice Department should be a warning to the rest of us.  Michael Flynn is a hero for standing up to it, but most Americans would probably buckle under the pressure, and we'd be living in a totalitarian state.  We're close to that already. 

There are many policies to fear from Biden/Harris, but censorship and persecution of opponents may be the worst thing.  Progressives have a history of elevating their goals above the law and established practice — Woodrow Wilson's Espionage Act, FDR's attempt at court-packing, LBJ's bullying of Congress and the courts, Obama's pen and a phone.  Obama/Biden was the most activist administration since LBJ, intent on promoting universal abortion "rights," open borders, and globalist policies that weakened the United States, and they used the Justice Department and FBI, along with many other agencies, to persecute those who opposed them.  What they especially attacked was the traditional faith of the heartland.

Hobby Lobby found that out, so expect there to be more Hobby Lobbies under Biden.  When the CEO and Founder of Hobby Lobby, David Green, stood up for what he believed and refused to fund contraceptive coverage mandated under Obamacare, Obama's Justice Department sued with the intention of fining and imprisoning him into submission.  Green refused to bow to the Deep State and ultimately won in the Supreme Court.

Thanks to President Trump's appointees, the Court may be the salvation of others like David Green, but it can go only so far.  And there is nothing except a Republican Senate to prevent Biden from packing the Court with liberals.

Even the Court can't defend us against the corruption of the political elite.  They believe they have a right to practice graft and influence peddling, and to reap the benefits of drugs, fine liquor, call girls, and the rest.  Eliot Spitzer and "Client 9" aren't the only politicians caught up in prostitution — Hunter Biden may be worse.  As progressives see it, this behavior is just something to smirk about and look the other way.  They think it's provincial to think there's anything wrong with Hunter's behavior.  Will Hunter Biden's behavior change if his father becomes president?

The one thing progressives will not surrender is their sense of superiority to the American people, and their tactics are becoming more aggressive, shifting from disparagement to criminalization.  Should Biden take office, expect the censorship and persecution of conservatives to continue and increase.  The only way to stop them is to speak the truth and hope the public will vote them out of office.  

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.