Topic: Decline of the West
A remarkable feature of Trumpian populism is its malignant influence over both the supporters and the opponents of President Donald J, Trump. Among the former we find celebrity pundits like Sean Hannity, retailed to their fans for years as conservative stalwarts, abruptly transformed into shameless apologists for every offense against truth and morality perpetrated by Trump and his cronies. Listening to Hannity’s denunciations of the “deep state” and his vilification of Trump’s critics, I have often felt like pitching my glass into the TV screen. So to avoid a sad waste of good liquor, I no longer inflict upon myself the raving and ranting of that sycophantic phony.
But let us give Donald Trump his due. He also brings out the very worst in those who loathe and despise him. Assassination porn, fantasies of impeachment and dystopian malarkey send thrill after thrill up the collective leg of the Left. Trump’s supporters are routinely denounced as crazed gun-toting, racists, homophobes, misogynists, etc., etc. The hate-Trump Left, no less than the Love-Trump Right, seems incapable of seeing the man for what he is.
And what is he? Well, he’s nothing particularly new in American history. Trump didn’t invent populism, that not-really-conservative, dumbed-down, lowest-common-denominator, know-nothing ideology of the ignorant aggrieved. The shade of Huey Long no doubt beams with admiration of Trumpism. Perhaps even William Jennings Bryan nods approval from time to time. What’s new about Trump is not his populist message but his mode of operation, an amalgam of the celebrity culture and contemporary social media. This magnified his presence on the political stage and opened channels of communication bypassing those self-nominated gatekeepers of American political culture, the traditional mainstream media. Trump refused to play by the rules so therefore he couldn’t possibly win: thus reasoned the journalistic and political establishments. (I include myself in this criticism.) Not until the game was almost up did anybody see it coming: the knockout punch that floored Hillary Clinton, clearing Trump’s path to the White House.
Yet the substance of Trump’s populism is actually rather traditional: suspicious of free trade, inclined to protectionism, nationalist, isolationist, anti-immigrant, celebratory of “average Americans,” deeply suspicious of the Establishment, not particularly conservative. When Trump does mention a conservative principle, it seems as deeply felt as “Have a nice day.” In some respects, indeed, his populism resembles that of Bernie Sanders, the equally dumbed-down champion of that ideological oxymoron, “democratic socialism.”
What makes Trump distinctive is his open contempt for both propriety and the truth. He seems literally not to care whether the things he says bear any relation to reality. Last week the Commander-in-Chief supposedly banned transgendered people from service in the armed forces. But he did so via a tweet that, so far as anyone knows, has not been followed up by the kind of presidential directive necessary to give effect to such a ban. Also via Twitter, Trump has carried out a campaign of public vilification directed against his own attorney general. Before that, he fired the Director of the FBI in the most brutal and humiliating manner possible. Recall the dust-up over the relative sizes of his and Barack Obama’s inaugural crowds. Directly against the evidence of everybody’s eyes, Trump and his cronies insisted—insist to this day for all I know—that The Donald’s crowd was bigger. This ludicrous episode proved to be an omen, for Trump’s conduct in office since then has been very effective in driving his enemies on the Left over the screaming edge of madness.
And it’s not a pretty sight. Sean Hannity’s behavior may be unforgivable, but I can’t condemn the Rust Belt, Middle American voters who pulled the lever for Trump. They have a legitimate grievance against the political class—which seems, to put it no more pointedly, unconcerned about Middle America’s problems and priorities. Trump didn’t corrupt American politics but merely took advantage of a preexisting condition. Nor is the Left’s dislike of and contempt for his supporters anything new. The Left considered Middle America to be deplorable long before Hillary Clinton made the sentiment explicit. The unspoken assumption behind the theory of the ascendant Democratic majority was a belief that working-class white Americans would soon become extinct—and good riddance. The Trump Ascendancy has merely liberated the Left to say plainly what it really thinks about its fellow Americans: “You are stupid, ignorant, hateful and retarded.”
The resulting polarization of American politics, bred of mutual contempt and ill will, may well make this country ungovernable for years to come. For all the blather about bipartisanship nobody really believes in it any longer and it seems to me unlikely that either major party will be able to cobble together an effective governing majority. No matter who has control at the top there will be Resistance, gridlock, spreading lawlessness. But perhaps we need some such profound political crisis, whose climax would break the logjam and open a path forward. Because right now, America’s going nowhere fast.
