I missed this revelatory explanation by David Brooks until Kathleen linked to it.

It's really helpful, but Dave, if you're reading, let me see if I get the nuances of your analysis. I'll take it bit by bit, just to make sure I follow. Sorry to be a little pokey about it, but I want to cover all the bases.

So: The Republicans repeatedly revise the tax code in favor of the extremely wealthy. The Democrats point this out, and American people who are not at all benefitted by this tell them to get bent, and elect either more Republicans, or (occasionally) Democrats who won't in any obvious ways challenge this; all in all, a striking gap pertains between economic self-interest and the voting habits of a great number of people.

Seems obvious enough, but now we dig into the causes for this odd behavior. Let's see if I've got it all down: first, people "vote their aspirations" -- everyone hopes that they'll be rich soon, and they don't want to pay high taxes when they do. This actually makes a lot of sense, and seems quite true; but it doesn't fully explain voters' propensities for allowing these payoffs to the really, really wealthy.

But, oh yeah, there are lots more reasons: like, Americans don't suffer from "income resentment" because, apparently, if you're an average Joe "you are not brought into incessant contact with things you can't afford." Apparently, outside of New York and L.A., everyone's experience is so nearly equal, finances-wise as makes no never-mind:

"You can afford most of the things at Wal-Mart or Kohl's and the occasional meal at the Macaroni Grill. Moreover, it would be socially unacceptable for you to pull up to church in a Jaguar or to hire a caterer for your dinner party anyway. So you are not plagued by a nagging feeling of doing without."

I guess that the above means that most people would find having more money a burden!

Plus, as if that isn't enough to explain why so many support candidates whose policies run rather clearly against their own financial interests, there's also the fact that many of us "admire the rich" and "resent social inequality more than income inequality." And it's important to understand that Americans "don't have Marxian categories in our heads." Translation: we care more about a CEO's down-home manner than his decision to close the factory outside of town, and view society (that's your interesting metaphor, Dave) more like the tables at a high school cafeteria than like the layers in a cake. Each group is "pretty sure that their community is the nicest, and filled with the best people, and they have a vague pity for all those poor souls who live in New York City or California and have a lot of money but no true neighbors and no free time."

Thus, Brooks concludes, the senselessness of an appeal to voters to reject policies that only benefit the wealthy. Class conflict, Brooks says, is too pessimistic for the American people. The Democratic party needs to be "optimistic" and can't run against the wealthy, (except for those who have already been convicted of crimes). While it may look at first glance like this "optimism" is a synonym for a "delusions about money and power which keeps people from protesting massive tax swindles," that can be cured by getting better in tune with the essentially sunny American character.

So, to sum up: the electorate understands clearly that Republican tax cuts will only benefit a very few, but loves and wants to emulate those few so much that they're happy to hand over the long green to them. They hope at some point to be rich, but don't really care too much -- since they know nothing about a wealthy lifestyle, never seeing it on TV or anything like that --and if they did have money but they'd feel awkward. They dislike snooty-tooty types from New York, but never ever get jealous of other people locally who've made a pile. And their distaste for class-based thinking has nothing to do with the demonization in this country of the ideas of economic justice, the term "socialism," or the desperate fear that by admitting to the reality of economic class they might lose social standing (because those two things have, luckily, never been linked in American culture!)

It's a relief to me to get this straightened out, finally. Here I was, thinking that it had something to do with the economically powerfully propagating and maintaining the myth that what benefits them benefits all. That it was connected in some small way to the fact that the foxes are reporting on the goings-on in the henhouse. Live and learn.