For the last 50-plus years, "the peaceful transfer of political power" meant a four- to eight-year rebranding of the ruling paradigm designed to preserve the policy, perks, economic, legal, and legislative advantages of the governing class.  In 2016, election ushered in a division some say is as significant as the election of 1860.  Many think it is the clear division of political ideologies.  While this is true, there is another split, and in my opinion, it is generally not recognized and ultimately more profound.

First, some context.  The complex, interdependent infrastructure that supports modern life in America operates with such reliability that unimaginable amounts of goods and services are conceived, produced, and distributed with seamless regularity.  It takes a massive natural catastrophic event to interrupt it.  The downside is that the demands are so great that a broad interruption lasting two weeks or more would result in chaos in every major city.

What does this have to do with this divide?  The divide can be generally thought of in terms of two groups: those with the skills that maintain the modern infrastructure and those who lack those skills.  For example, a person might be the most brilliant, accomplished brain surgeon in the world, but he is dependent on someone understanding, building, and maintaining electrical power generation and transmission or having the skills to design and build emergency power generators.

A more down-to-earth example: What would happen to the business you work for if the power went out for a day?  Would the business function?

There are countless people whose skills and detailed coordination of complex systems enable modernity.  Somewhere along the line, those who benefit from modern infrastructure but lack the contributing skills decided to bite the hand that sustains them.  The disdain and contempt of the media, academics, students, comics, MSM, progressives, etc. for those who engineer, build, maintain, and repair modern infrastructure, goods, and services has become particularly virulent and now violent.

One indication is that Harvard, with input and guidance from others, organized an excursion to introduce some students to the reality that supports their worldview.  So detached have these elite students become that an expedition had to be mounted to expose them to reality outside their experiences.  A situation where never have so many known so little about so much will not weather a prolonged disruption with stoic endurance.

Perhaps it is no surprise that a populace encountering a level of unprecedented material abundance would, after sufficient generations, act is if it were like oxygen: it's just there, always has been, always will.  That belief will be put to the test.  What the future holds is anybody's guess, but I'd be nice to those who know how to do something practical.