All language subtitles for Grayson Perrys Big American Road Trip - 1x02_track3_eng

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Perfect. Looking up.

Great.

It's coming up towards
crunch time in America,

as the country heads towards
a presidential election

and the decision about
whether to re-elect one of its most

controversial leaders ever,
Donald Trump.

We will never kneel, we will stand
proud and we will stand tall.

Black Lives Matter!
Black Lives Matter!

I went there last summer
because I wanted to try

and understand some of the divisions
that were opening up there -

divisions around race, class,
identity and economic opportunity.

I made three American journeys,

each to a very different
part of the States,

and each exploring one of the big
cultural fault lines in the nation.

I'll be making some art
about what I saw there,

and because I'm a biker
as well as an artist,

I travelled on a motorbike
I designed for the trip.

The battle lines in America
have since become even more bitter,

with the chaos of the pandemic
and protests against racial justice

and police violence
erupting onto the streets.

But what my travels there showed me

is a country whose divisions have
some unnerving lessons for us all.

Great, that's beautiful.

It was high summer in America
when I made this journey.

I set out in search of
a very particular tribe,

a group I knew it wouldn't be hard
for me to spot,

as I'd be the first to admit
that I'm one of them myself.

In this episode,

we're going to talk to some people
who are doing pretty well.

They tend to be on the coast
of America.

You might describe them
as the liberal elite

if you were feeling less charitable.

I've come here to confront
one of America's less talked about

but most uncomfortable divides -

the growing gap between
the well educated and successful

and the rest.

To start this journey,
I'm going to Martha's Vineyard,

an island off the coast
of Massachusetts,

and I think this island
and its people

are separated by a lot more
than a stretch of ocean.

Martha's Vineyard
is a summer playground

for America's wealthy liberals.

The Clintons vacation here

and the Obamas own
an $11 million beachfront home.

It's also the setting
for the 1975 film Jaws,

Steven Spielberg's classic portrait
of a holiday community

in deep denial about the danger
lurking just offshore.

The forgotten men
and women of our country

will be forgotten no longer.

You came by the tens of millions to
become part of a historic movement

the likes of which the world
has never seen before.

All across America and beyond, anger
at so-called elites is on the rise

and populist politicians like Donald
Trump have been able to exploit it.

Whether Trump wins or loses
in November,

the questions about what led to him
are not going to go away.

No Art of the Deal, I see.

To start to understand
the people who come here,

I went sailing with
custom boat builder Matt.

That's the first boat we built.
We built it for James Taylor.

What originally, you know,
drew you here?

Well, Pam and I sailed here in 1972.

We were hippies.

Martha's Vineyard in those days
was a place where writers

and artists and professors
and musicians would come

and have very inexpensive camps,
a lot of them with no plumbing.

Do you want to steer? Yeah.
What am I steering towards?

Uh... America!

Well, yeah, we are a little bit out
from America here, aren't we? Yeah.

But now, you know,
Martha's Vineyard, it's a place

where the rich and the powerful
hang out now. They do.

But they haven't kicked us out yet.

How much is one of these nice houses
along the front here?

They are all over a million,

and then the big ones,
they can be up to 10 million,

and they're even higher
on the other side, the west side.

The breeze picked up for us,
we're scooting along.

Yeah, absolutely. You've got a nice
touch at the helm, by the way.

I think people are coming here
to escape that other America,

over the other side of the water,

Trump's America -
the brash one of strip malls

and plastic fast food joints
and its sort of flashy wealth.

Over here, you leave your
yellow Porsche in the car park

on the other side of the ferry

and you drive about in
a battered old truck,

pretending that you're
down-home here in this

kind of handcrafted loveliness
that is Martha's Vineyard.

For a place that screams its sort of
bohemian, creative credentials,

I've never been to a place where
all the men dress the same!

They're all wearing faded coral
Ralph Lauren shorts.

It all feels a little bit
twinkly-twee,

like the spiritual home
of a knitting blogger.

I got invited to a dinner for 17
at the home of

legendary local hostess
and socialite Rose Styron,

widow of the famous novelist
William.

It's a very, very good people place.
Yeah.

My fellow guests are all
impressively credentialed figures

from the worlds of business,
the media, academia and the law.

Fantastic, because there's
so many terrific people here.

They talk about...
They talk about elite, the elite.

Do you ever see the elite?
They're not elite.

You're the elite. You are the elite.

There's been a lot of talk
about the 1%,

the mega-rich whose share
of national wealth has ballooned.

But the 20% just below the 1% -

the professional, well-educated,
upper middle-class -

are also floating away from
the rest economically.

This group might loathe Trump
and everything he stands for,

but when I asked them whether
their success could have played

any part in his rise,
things took an awkward turn.

I wanted to ask you openly, anybody,

why are you in Martha's Vineyard?

Don't you think, though,

the most important thing
is that it's an island?

Yes, I think you're bang on.
So, we all see ourselves as special,

and so this is an elite island,

where people have
separated themselves

from the continental United States
by 45 minutes of water,

and it's a new life
and none of those people are here.

Well, like you said,
we're on an island here, you know.

It's like, "Oh, we're lovely!
it's all lovely, isn't it?

"Look at those lovely tasteful
houses and everybody's neat

"and everybody's smiling as they
ride their bicycles along..."

Where are you getting that from?
Well, today...

Who's telling you that?

Well, I've been...
Where's that coming from?

How long have you been here
to have that impression?

Because that's ridiculous,
I'm sorry.

I love you, man, and we're going to
be friends forever,

but you have not been here
long enough

to make the statement you just made.

I just did a panel, which I do every
year, at the Old Whaling Church,

and we had people from
the left, from the right,

from the middle and from the crazy.

To say that this is
a one-dimensional place

where everybody thinks the same
is bullshit.

OK. So I'm here in Martha's Vineyard
because it is a flag that says,

"We are so liberal, we are power,
we are money, we are East Coast,

"we are kind of lovely, sort of
faded, olden days-y loveliness."

And it feels to me, as an outsider,

as a kind of theme park of
sort of liberal tastefulness.

Well, for one thing,
Martha's Vineyard is not a place

in which we wave a flag of
money and power.

People think a lot alike,
but we do have a lot of discussion.

What do you think it is, then,
that you need to do?

Because obviously,
that message is not getting through.

Once we do get rid of...

..vote Trump out
and a new leader will emerge,

perhaps that person
will be able to explain

what we have in it together.
Well, I think it's...

The question that begs me is,
you know,

with the present situation here in
America, how much are you to blame?

Mm. You know, what is it
that you've done, or not done...?

The 15 of us?

Or... Yeah...

What is this programme about?

I wanted to have
an intelligent conversation

about why Trump happened.

Well, I didn't talk about that,

and so many of us...
But you might have illustrated it.

I'm here in Martha's Vineyard

because I'm interested in what
Martha's Vineyard represents.

In terms of what?
In American culture.

In terms of what?

I mean, in terms of what?

Martha's Vineyard is not a place
in which the people around

this table feel particularly
class... classified.

And in fact, on this island,

I think that that characteristic
is particularly

either diminished or absent.

So, if that's what you think we are,
you're wrong.

What is it about these people,
who are incredibly self-aware,

incredibly perceptive about society?

Why has the kind of liberal,

well-educated, er,
coastal elites of America

been outmanoeuvred by Trump
and his campaign?

You know, why did that happen?

What were they not seeing?
What was their blind spot?

And I think that, in many ways,
they don't like...

They were uncomfortable with
the idea that they were

a caricature of themselves.

You know, they didn't want
to be put in a box.

They like to think
they're incredibly individual.

And, of course, we are all...

We all, all of us,
have a collective identity,

and the uncomfortable thing
that we often have to confront

is that we are unaware of that,
because it's working for us.

We are part of a super-smooth,
well-educated liberal elite

that is being glided to
the top of the pile,

and it's not being challenged
because it works in this society.

And then for me, perhaps, to
point out that you might be a group

and you're doing very well on it,
thank you,

and maybe you might want to start
kind of questioning your privilege,

that's uncomfortable, particularly
with people who think they are

on the side of justice, they are
on the right side of history.

It's very uncomfortable for them.

I'm travelling to the spiritual
capital of liberal America,

New York City.

I've been trying to understand the
consequences of the growing distance

between the nation's metropolitan
upper middle classes and the rest.

This morning, the death toll
in New York State is nearing 1,000.

Hospitals are reeling,
with New York City's mayor warning

they will run out of supplies
by this weekend.

I had no idea of the tragedy
that would unfold here

and the impact it would have on
the presidential election to come.

But what I did find was a bubble -
a city whose stark divisions

between the relatively wealthy and
successful and the poor

have been thrown into sharper focus
by the disaster

that's happened since.

Here I am in lovely,
liberal Brooklyn.

This is my kind of place.
It reminds me of where I live.

They remind me of my friends.

And I think that one thing
that's happened

since Donald Trump is that suddenly,
"the liberal elite",

of which I am, you know,
I'm quite happily to admit

I am a member of, suddenly,
"Oh, God, we're LABELLED now!

"Ooh, you mean that's us?"

Part of the anxiety now
is that suddenly, us,

the good burghers
of the liberal elite,

have been made to feel a bit
self-conscious, and maybe

we're privileged, and what can we do
to somehow make it less anxious?

It's tricky.

Cos it's nice, it's comfy.

During my time here,
I'll be staying in Park Slope,

a tone-y, brownstone-y
neighbourhood in Brooklyn

with some of the best elementary
schools in the city.

And you can tell how distinct
the tribe who live here are

by something really basic -
the way they shop for groceries.

At the Park Slope Food Co-op,

you can't just walk in the door
and buy the locally sourced produce,

you have to sign up to work an
unpaid two-and-three-quarter-hour

shift every four weeks in order
to become a member.

Joe co-founded the co-op in 1973.

So this is the way
a member comes in.

I'm active,
that means I can go shopping...

That wasn't you on that photo there.
That's a much younger guy!

I don't know,
it looks a lot like me.

Well, I am a little older.
I can't help it.

It just keeps happening.

Everybody who's shopping here,
all these people own the place.

Everybody you see here
is a member-owner.

So this group of people works
together every 28 days,

again and again. The same people?

The same people, so they get to know
each other, hopefully,

and like each other and learn how
to work as a group together.

We have hundreds of these groups
throughout the 28 days...

So, how many members? 17,000. Wow!
17,000! Yeah, yeah. I'm impressed.

"It's too many," she says.

New York is one of the most
unequal cities in America,

and more than a million New Yorkers
experience food insecurity.

But here was an oasis
where Brooklynites play

once a month at
performative equality.

I dropped in on the cheese cutters.

I saw Betrayal with Tom Hiddleston.
It's a Pinter play.

The Times gave it a very
good review.

So what's your day job?
I'm an English professor.

Well, now I'm retired,
and I'm an ex fabric designer.

I'm a linguistics professor.
Jordan's an architect.

We come with our architectural
questions every month, right?

I do some of my best socialising
at the co-op.

I run into people I know every time
I'm here.

All of my friends are members.

Is it like a kind of, er,
Masonic cult?

I'm sure it's been called worse.

Um... No, it's more of a social
club, in addition to a supermarket.

Is it a kind of hub of
shared values?

Well, yeah. I think so, I think so.

I think people...

I mean, this neighbourhood
in general, you know,

the city in general
has broadly shared values.

Right in the heart of this global
metropolis, Park Slopers have built

themselves a little village, and
a culturally exclusive one at that.

What I'm finding on this particular

journey around the East Coast here
is that the sorts of villages

that people are finding,
maybe like in Martha's Vineyard,

and maybe here,
and maybe in Brooklyn,

is that we're finding villages,

they're not like the villages out
in, you know,

where people are random.

These are villages where perhaps
everybody has a good education,

everybody has a sort of similar
political persuasion,

everybody has sort of signed up
for a certain sensibility.

Social mobility has been
stalling in America.

But is it just the sky-high property
prices that are barriers

to entry to places like this,

or is it the unwritten cultural
codes that apply here?

In Prospect Park,

I met some members of local
community group Park Slope Parents.

Here you are in Brooklyn -
lovely Brooklyn -

and, you know, this, and this,
and the Park Slope Food Co-op

and whatever, you know, they are
kind of villages, aren't they? Yes.

It's funny, because people always
say to us,

"Why do you still live here?

"You could get all these
things back home."

What's your reply?

Well, I wouldn't get these people
back home. Yeah?

And I wouldn't get
a chosen lifestyle.

But I think, like, back home,
it feels like you kind of have

to sit into whatever exists, and I
don't feel the same way living here.

I'm looking for people
who excite me.

That's not necessarily, for me,
people like me.

That diversity of thought
is a thing that I don't get

when I go home, right?

It's the thing, like you said,
that you go back to

and you're reminded of who you were
and who you are today.

Do you really get diversity
of thought here, though?

That's the question
that's on the tip of my tongue.

Like, we all live here
because of our desire for diversity

and for different points of view,

but the truth of the matter is,

we continue to self-select
into these, you know,

conversations and ideas and values
that are never challenged,

and when we're talking about this,
where we want just enough diversity

around us to get those
incredible soup dumplings or,

you know, that incredible
takeout from the Indian joint

or, you know, whatever it is...

A kind of rom-com diversity,
I suppose.

Yeah, in a very sort of
quaint, contained way.

But when you have people who are
really struggling and, you know,

there is a project being built
near your neighbourhood or something

like that, and even a homeless
shelter coming into Park Slope,

like, all of a sudden,
the idea of others coming too close,

you'll start to see,
is a little too uncomfortable.

In the 1950s and '60s,
if you were middle-class in America,

you tended to watch
the same television shows,

drive the same cars,
drink the same brands of beer.

And with that came a degree
of shared understanding

of what it was like to live
in America.

But as the most successful 20%
of Americans self-segregate

into culturally distinct
and opportunity-rich neighbourhoods

like Brooklyn, it has grown easier
to stoke resentment against them.

I'm talking
about the cultured, cosmopolitan,

goat's milk latte drinking, avocado
toast eating insiders' elite.

I believe that everybody counts.

And so does the President
of the United States of America.

Just across the Brooklyn Bridge
in Lower Manhattan, I met Eve,

a colour consultant to the anxious
homeowners of New York.

I help people pick
paint colours for their houses,

because people are getting
more, I guess, concerned

about how to find the right colour.

That word screams at me - concerned.
Yeah, the panic,

the colour panic sets in!

I think it's just like an uptick
in anxiety, and then, you know,

when there are 100 whites...

100 whites!

You know, that, like,
keeps people twirling in circles,

wondering, like, if they're picking
the right one.

My metaphor klaxon is going off when
you said 100 whites!

I like that!

How do you think that people's
sort of choices have become

so agonised nowadays?

What other sort of things
are pressing down on them,

apart from their own personal taste?

I see a lot of my clients are really
influenced by trends,

I mean, right now we are coming out
of what I consider the Grey Age.

Everything has been grey,
like, grey, grey, grey.

Grey walls, grey furniture,
grey everything.

In London, you can tell the force
of gentrification, the tide...

By the grey?
The grey window frames. Absolutely.

Absolutely, you can tell -
"Oh, they're coming."

One of Eve's clients, Bill,
had been stressing about his sisal.

So this sisal is going everywhere,
every single surface, wall-to-wall.

And it also goes into the bedroom,
right?

The bedroom, the entrance,
the kitchen...

Not the bathroom,
but absolutely everywhere.

It's just going to be all black.

Wow, so it's going in the kitchen
too, all right.

All black, wall-to-wall. What are
you seeing here in terms of...

Like, is this still the bright...
This is the pink. Yeah, violet pink.

Going back to the grey
window frames,

we knew with the grey window frames
that a certain sort of person

was moving in,
and they were markers,

they were boundary markers as clear
and defined as Donald Trump's wall.

And what kind of taste decisions
do you think your clientele

are making to kind of insulate
themselves from the rest of America?

Yeah, I think in terms of
separating out,

a lot of it is about saying,
you know,

here is the evidence
that I have more taste than you,

more money than you,
I don't vote like you, you know.

And do you think the social forces
that are happening

at the moment are making perhaps
the top 20% of the income group say,

"Yeah, I'm doing OK,"

when suddenly, Trump is calling you
out and he's calling you the elite?

I can't stand that word. I find that
such an annoying and offensive word.

Are you triggered by the word elite?
Yeah, I am!

But it's such a...

Wait a minute, you're not an elite?

Get out!
I didn't know I was an elite.

Can you just remind everybody
how much we're spending here?

Oh, yeah, you're elite.

I just don't like the word,
it's such an ugly word.

But also, what bothers me about it
so much also is that it's

attributed to people who have
an education, and isn't that what

America is supposed to be -
one of our basic, you know...

Yeah, it's confusing that way.
..flag-waving ideas is education?

But it's always used as... It's used
as a hammer against educated people.

To call them elites.

Who would have thought
that what shade of white

you are painting your lounge
could possibly be a signal that you

were travelling in a different
direction from the rest of society?

I mean, and it's the fact that they
are so considered, and they care,

and it's exquisite, and educated,

that people are
signalling to themselves

and to their friends

and to the wider community
that they are a different tribe,

and I think there's a kind of
retreat, and it's interesting

they're kind of nesting in their
Farrow & Ball loveliness.

They are putting up a sort of
beautifully weathered stockade

against the rest of Trump's America.

Hunkering down with like-minded
liberals might just seem

harmless enough, but increasingly,

what it all boils down to
is access to education.

Now more than ever,

you need a graduate education
to succeed in America.

A gulf is opening up
between those who have got one

and those who haven't.

A division which President Trump
has been able to exploit.

We won with
poorly educated -

I love the poorly educated.

We're the smartest people,
we're the most loyal people...

I've travelled up through
New England to Amherst,

a pleasant, white picket fence
college town in Massachusetts.

I'm trying to understand the gap
between America's super educated

top 20% and the rest -

the San Andreas fault
of the American culture wars.

70% of the students in America's
200 most selective colleges

now come from the top 25%
of the income distribution.

The culture is
shaped in the universities,

and if they're being brainwashed
and they've been,

essentially since the progressive
era of the 1920s in this country.

And it seems like it's getting
worse and worse.

UMass Amherst ranks in the top 25
public universities in the country.

What a welcome!

Hello, I'm Grayson.
Nice to meet you. I'm Breanna.

Hello, Breanna.

This is the sorority house. Yes.

What is a sorority house?

It's a sisterhood. It's a bunch of
girls who come together

who have similar values,
and it's a great support system.

Fraternity is the male version
of a sorority.

OK, well, show me around, then.

Wow. This is a first for me.

It's rush week here at UMass,

the time of the year when the
college's sororities

and fraternities, throw a series
of open-house day events

in order to select
their new members.

Because we've so many girls
come through our house,

we go through and say, "OK,
do we like this girl?

"Do we not like this girl?"
And like why.

And then,
based on the girls we like,

I put them into our system first.

The girls that we don't like
so much go like in the middle

of our system, and the girls who
we don't like at all

go at the bottom, and usually the
girls at the bottom don't come back.

So, the girls at the bottom
could still rank us,

but they still may not
come back here.

Oh, I see, cos...
And that's when girls cry.

What are these
things on the wall here?

So, these are all of our
class paddles.

So, after we get a new member class,

each of them make a paddle
with all their names on it,

just as a memory,
and we keep all of them.

Wow. I like these objects.
They're really interesting.

I like the fact they're different,

and they'll tell a sort of history
of kind of popular culture.

Exactly, and they all represent
that class that's going through.

I think they're great, yeah.

Do you want to see a room?
Yeah, let's see a room.

It's OK, it's me.

It's nice, isn't it?

It's an interesting...
It's like a family.

Yeah.

It's nice, because they take you
under your wing

when you're a new sister,

and like, they look out for you
and they mentor you.

What's the afterlife of a sorority?

In Britain, we have this idea
that these are kind of networking...

Yeah, we know our alumni,
so they come back and they help us

network and stuff, so like, they'll
come back and hire sisters for jobs,

and like, they get really involved
and really care about the house.

And, like, they want to see us
be successful also.

Potentially, it's a
pretty important decision

that's happening in this week, you
know, for the... Yeah.

..for the lives of the people
involved.

Yeah, because we're not here just
to, like, mess around.

You know, like, we're here
for a reason.

This is a ritualization
of the kind of pathway

to the American dream, you know?

These people, at a very early
stage in their lives,

are looking for inroads,

they're looking for ways that they
can make connections,

that they can establish networks
that'll get them jobs,

friends, persuasion, opportunities.

It was time for the traditional
Bid Day party,

when the sororities
welcome their new members.

Iota Gamma Epsilon have chosen
a hippie theme.

These nice young people
aren't the Kennedys,

but they are the next generation

of the American educated elite
in embryo.

Just by getting accepted into one
of the nation's prestigious

institutions, they're on their way
to membership of the top 20%,

and to all the bounty
of the American dream that holds.

It just so happens that a process
that starts as innocently as

a pizza party with a hippie theme

ends up as a kind of corralling
of the capitalist resources

of a major world economy.

College-educated Americans might
actually have been hippies once,

but since then,
they've figured out a way to make

success in a meritocracy something
your kids can inherit from you.

I want to understand how these
advantages appear to people

who are starting out with
none of them.

So, I'm travelling to another
village - Flushing,

in the New York borough of Queens.

The American dream -
what's the classic story?

People come to this country,

they work damn hard
to achieve their goals.

So, I've come here to
Flushing, Queens, New York,

to meet some people
in the Chinese American community.

And they've got a very clear-eyed
view of what they need to achieve

to get their seat at the top table.

For most poorer families
in New York,

which high school your kids get to
go to is a postcode lottery.

But there is one striking
exception to the rule.

Eight of the best-performing schools
admit their students

on the basis of a single exam -
the SHSAT,

open to every child in the city.

It's a rare route to the top
which Asian American communities

in particular are willing to
bet the farm on.

12-year-old Eugene's family
came to the US from China

when he was a baby.

We had breakfast together.

And what am I eating?
Its rice and...?

It's congee with
preserved duck egg and pork.

Oh, wow. OK, this is a first for me.

Eugene's set his heart on
the hardest to get into

of the eight schools covered by
the test - Stuyvesant.

Where would you like to go
after Stuyvesant?

After Stuyvesant, I would like to go
to Princeton.

Right.

To pursue a degree in medicine.

So, the chances of getting
into Stuyvesant are what?

What do you think are the odds?

I'd say 1%.

1%?

So, that's pretty stiff odds.

Yeah. I'm basically like
nonstop working.

I've given up most of
my free time.

So, all this work you're
doing for this test, you know,

so you can get into this really,
really good school,

is that sort of fair that
you're doing that,

or would it be fairer if you just
went to the local school

where everybody else went?

It's not fair that if you're just
going to go to the local school,

because in New York, there's
something called the Zone Program,

where, depending on where you live,
you go to school.

Some people, they have to live in
certain neighbourhoods

so that they can afford it.

So, the SHSAT really gives like
a chance for people

who aren't as privileged to like be
able to have a very good education

and a very good life.

Hmm.

Such is the focus in Asian American
communities on the SHSAT,

a booming industry has arisen,
coaching students to pass the exam.

Eugene took me
to his test prep centre,

one of more than 400 in the city.

If we're pouring 75 gallons,

this is your conversion factor, OK?

Once you have that conversion
factor, where do we go next?

Stuyvesant admits around
850 students a year,

and in 2019, 153 of them did test
prep at one of the A+ academies.

I spoke to the director, Lulu.

What do you think their kind of
end goal is?

The parents want their kids
to have a better life.

They don't have the connections.

They don't have, you know, uncle Jim
who works at so-and-so firm

that can get you the internship.

They don't have the
money for private schools

or special treatment or whatever.

So, what they have is,
they have the ability to work hard

and navigate through a meritocratic
educational system

and get the education that can
empower them to the next level,

to a good college, to a good job,

so that they can achieve what
we call this American dream.

How does this kind of very clear,
understandable system

compare to other ways that people
might get on in America?

Well, I think that the
word is fair, right?

It's one standard,
one bar that is for everyone.

Race-agnostic, you know,
gender-agnostic, income agnostic.

They don't even check your name.

It's, you know,
it's just your score.

Yeah, cos it highlights something
about the kind of advantages

that a lot of Americans have
that they don't realise they have.

Right. It's kind of, it's hidden,
it's not, you know,

it's not easily seen,
unless you don't have it.

Is Eugene going to get into
Stuyvesant?

If I had to bet my money on it,
I would think he can do it.

So, Eugene, do you think that the
American dream is open to everyone?

Yeah.

Well, it depends
what your American dream is.

If your American dream is
like obtainable and you're willing

to work hard for it, then
I believe it is open for everyone.

A lot of people that live in these
very expensive apartments

we can see all round us, you know,

do you think it's fair that they get
a lot of the opportunities

that you are working really hard
for,

without really working
quite as hard as you?

I believe that you have to work hard
to obtain something,

or else the thing that you have
obtained isn't like truly yours.

You didn't put in the effort
to get it.

Wow. Can I fist bump you to that?

That's brilliant.

That is such a good answer.

Increasingly, on this journey,

I'm becoming aware that there's
some anomaly in the kind of

political landscape of America
that I'm sensing.

Erm, I mean, traditionally,
the parties of the left -

the Democrats - they were set up for
people at the bottom of the pile,

to give them equal opportunities.

They're the party of the people.

And yet, in the last election,

if you look at the counties
who voted for Hillary Clinton,

the Democrat candidate, they account
for 64% of the GDP of this country.

64% of the wealth
of the United States

was located in the counties
that voted for Hillary Clinton.

And who lives in those counties?

The well-educated.

And people like Eugene,
through his hard work

and his clear-sightedness
of where the opportunities lay,

he's hoping one day
to be on the inside.

The problem might be, of course,
that there is a stockade at all.

I've travelled up the coast
to the last village

I'm visiting on this journey,
the town of Westport, Connecticut.

It's now largely a commuter town,

and the ninth-wealthiest
community in America.

In the 2016 presidential election,

Westport voted by 68%
to 27% for Hillary Clinton.

It can be hard for us all to see
ourselves as others see us,

but this journey has helped
me see the coastal elites

as a Trump supporter may.

Trump has cleverly driven
a wedge between places like this

and other parts of America.

It's a manoeuvre which played a key
part in his success last time,

and is shaping up to be his
strategy again.

At what might well be the poshest
protest I've ever attended, I met

art teacher, homemaker and local
Democratic party activist Darcy.

We're all standing in Medina
in Morocco and it was

so beautiful, the love that I felt
in that moment.

And I went back to our hotel,

and I opened my Facebook
to find that

a swastika had been discovered
at my high school that I went to.

And that really...

..hit me, that something was very,
very wrong with our country.

Darcy took me for a spin
in her Tesla

to the neighbouring town
of Bridgeport,

and it seemed a world away.

What's the relationship
of Bridgeport to Westport?

Well, proximity-wise it's
incredibly close.

But in every other way,
it's incredibly distant.

The inequality between Bridgeport
and Westport is so vast,

it's about race and poverty.

And those are the two things that,

for some reason, aren't a big
part of the conversation.

People like to argue about guns,
you know, immigration laws,

they like to argue about women's
health, abortion laws,

abortion bans.

Inequality is a difficult
thing to bring up.

You can talk about the kind of
culture war, so to speak. Right.

But you can't talk
about their really economic

and social issues that are
at the base of it. Right.

What's wonderful about Westport
is that people are fighting

for things that don't affect them.

I mean, you see people on the bridge
screaming about, you know,

immigration laws and they're
not immigrants.

You know, we don't really have
immigrants in Westport.

The people that do their gardens
might be immigrants though?

That's for sure.

When I come home and I, you know,

lie by my pool it feels very...

..ah, dirty sometimes.

I feel very guilty and very, like,
I don't want anybody to see me

doing this, because it's not fair.

It's just not fair, you know, and...

But you're not going to give it up?

Of course I'm not going
to give up my life, but I give.

You're a liberal, but you wouldn't
describe yourself as a socialist?

No, no.

You know what? I wish
I was a socialist.

That's what it is. I'm a...

..aspiring, that's my ideal...

..is to just be able to say,
you know, "Here you go."

Wouldn't it be lovely if you were
just an arch capitalist?

Right. And all you cared about
was making money?

Yeah, oh, my God, life would be
so easy. It would be, wouldn't it?

I'd go to sleep, I would
sleep soundly.

I look at the ballot paper sometimes
and I think it would be so easy

to be a right-winger. Yeah.

I wouldn't have the guilt...

Life is so simple!

You don't have to worry about
anybody else

but yourself and your family...
Yeah, it would be... Your money.

Talking about the guilt and shame,

they do seem central to...

..erm, a lot of the experience
of the people

I've been talking
to in various ways.

Their ecological values,
their educational values,

their personal values.

They're all good, but they all
seem to add up to an exclusiveness.

Yeah, and then what happens
is the perception is,

look at all these people who
stand for these ideals.

They're all wealthy,
they're all educated,

they're all living in this
part of the country

because that's where the wealthy,
educated people tend to live.

It's not helping them at all,
because they're seen as elitist,

out of touch.

And they are, terribly out of touch,

erm, with working class America
and poor America.

And I'm one of those people.

Because Westport's a bubble,
I mean, it is part of a very,

very, very thick-skinned bubble.

I mean, time and time again we've
all been surprised

by our own countrymen,

you know, on elections and round
certain social issues,

and the surprise shouldn't be
a surprise, you know,

if we knew more about who we live
with in this country,

but we're constantly shocked.

It shows when we're shocked that
we've been living in a bubble.

Darcy is one of the very few people
I've met on this journey

who's willing to admit they're
a member of the liberal elite.

But everything I've seen confirms
for me that they -

hey, let's be honest about it, we -
are indeed a thing.

What's happening in the US
is happening in the UK.

Growing division caused
by inequality is an issue

here as well as there.

And if its beneficiaries want to
escape the consequences,

they're going to need
a bigger boat.

Through the kind of invisible
forces of education

and the coded language and the
shared politics and values

and little, sort of, tasteful
messages they're giving out

left, right and centre about their
food and their houses and whatever,

they're kind of making
an exclusionary barrier

and it has a real effect
on other people,

it keeps them out.

And I think that this group does
not want to admit to it.

Because they are good, they're
not doing it on purpose!

But...

..I think they've got to look
at themselves, because...

..the liberal elite, they've kind
of taken their eye off the ball

and there's an elephant in the room
that is the consequence of them

not paying attention to
the rest of America

and that elephant has got fuzzy
yellow hair and a very orange tan.

And I think Mr Trump...

..is the result
of their complacency.

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