You're almost right, but "class" and "caste" are not synonyms and cannot be used interchangeably.

> This is how a caste system works.

Not at all. In a caste system a lower caste person will get attacked if he (or especially she) has any success at all. Whether or not what they did was legal or not does not factor into the equation. First priority is that the highest up dalit is lower than the worst drunkard brahmin, even if they have to kill them.

soldiers are disposable, they prolly threw him under the bus hoping that would be the end of the matter and they could walk away with the rest of the money.

Not so much class or caste, but a dual-state where an elite have a normative or lawless state, and specific or arbitrary others suffer a parallel prerogative or punitive state. This is the essence of corrupt authoritarianism.

Most Americans share a delusion of perpetual glory days like a former star high school football quarterback with the refusal to accept factual reality that their country isn't uniformly excellent and is terrible in many ways including being extremely superficial, corrupt, dangerous, unhealthy, unhappy, paranoid, over-reacting, immature, selfish, unfair, disinformed, and unequal.

> their relationship to power

The word "power" is so ironic in human cultures:

It's the people with the guns (and muscles) that have the literal physical power. They could shoot the aristocrats dead if they wanted to.

The aristocrats' "power" is make-believe like the rest of their papers and numbers: The various psychological barriers which dissuade the gun-bearers from ever reaching the "want to" part.

Yes. This is why we have the firearm. The great equalizer of pressures. There are so few "aristocrats" and they are not well protected. That's the game we must play.