EACH CLASS HAS ITS OWN FORM OF NASTINESS.

I sometimes think the middle class, the class that most loved and supported Hitler, is nasty in part because it feels itself so terribly judged by the reality of the class spectra above and below it. The middle class's capitalist belief that the cream inevitably and justly rises to the top and becomes rich makes the middle class feel inferior to these wealthier persons, but its lingering Christian faith that God will take the side of the poor and turn the tables against those better off than them makes the middle class aware of some great nemesis deservedly coming its way. It therefor sees itself as a class of ne'er-do-well losers and over-privileged gluttons at one and the same time.

A poor person might trust in God's vengeance and a rich person in the authority of her bank account, but the person in the middle is damned whether she worships God or Mammon. Hence the bile. She can't win -- short of giving up what she has to the poor or clawing her way to the top of the money mountain. Her only road to a kind of shaky self-respect is to see herself as the inexplicable victim of both rich and poor. But she, like Hitler, is always fighting a two front war, and that is a very unstable proposition.