How the Progressive Elite Helped Create the Trump Phenomenon
It happened back in 2020, during an episode of the now defunct Reliable Sources on CNN, which aired a couple of weeks after the election. Host Brian Stelter opened the show by noting that the media had been focusing entirely on the supply side of the MAGA news phenomenon, while no one was talking about the demand side. So he announced that the upcoming hour would be dedicated to exploring the demand side of the equation – why so many people were craving the kind of “garbage” FOX News and One America News and Alex Jones and Newsmax were peddling.
Stelter then proceeded to orchestrate an entire hour-long, multi-panel discussion, in which there was not a single mention of the demand side, and hardly a word about the people who wanted to watch and read that stuff and why. Instead he and his guests launched into their usual condemnation of FOX News, and its extreme far right competitors.
But what really struck me at the time, and in my research for the piece I wrote shortly afterwards, was that no one seemed to notice the disconnect between what the show was supposed to be about and what was actually happening on the set.
That was not the first time I’d seen questions about the how and why of the Trump phenomenon go unanswered and unexplored. And it was certainly not the end of the media’s obsession with the who, what and where of the Trump age. In fact for the most part, that remains the focus, not only of the media, but of political circles at large – rather than how it is happening, and why it is likely to continue to happen, unless the country and the world can find a way to come to terms with the corrosive powers of Donald Trump.
That said, some, like David Brooks of the New York Times, have been able to provide insights into the historical context for Trump’s dramatic rise. In Brooks’ case, that meant going back a generation or two to the Vietnam War, and the political and economic divide created by higher education and other economic and social factors, that help determine today’s social and political winners and losers.
But considering the relevance and urgency of the matter, there has been surprisingly little written about how to truly understand and then deal with the Trump phenomenon. Perhaps that’s because, to many, the reasons for Trump’s success seem all too obvious, while to others (somewhat conversely) they seem irreconcilable and hopelessly bound up in deeply-entrenched cultural factors.
But I would argue that the causes are not at all obvious to the casual observer, nor are they necessarily all that hopeless and irreconcilable.
As we now tend to understand, the main reason for Trump’s appeal to his voters is that he is eager and able to stick it to the world, especially the parts of it they feel need sticking. Which generally means the liberal elites who run it, the ones Brooks identifies in his piece. To Trump’s supporters they are the college-deferred draft dodgers, who rather than going to war in Vietnam, went to war on Wall Street and Washington and Hollywood and the New York Times. And as a result, they and their offspring are now the wealthy and powerful elites who run the world.
And because that first generation felt they were largely right about the Vietnam War, they came to believe they were right about pretty much everything. And since they tended to run the institutions which determined the shape and direction of our world, their beliefs generally landed them on the right side of history. All of which meant they no longer felt they needed to consider the attitudes and opinions of those below them in the cultural order of things.
And as a result, they largely became indifferent to their own biases – or even the fact that they had a bias. Which in turn excused them from having to see their point of view in traditional left/right terms – since to them it was a view which covered the entire spectrum of perspectives held by those who have “the right kind of views, because they are the right kind of people.”
And that helps explain why they and their progeny now look down on what is happening in places like Trump country, as ugly, dirty, sinful, idiotic, repulsive and otherwise unattractive and beneath their supposedly lofty status, as upright citizens of their uptight world. And as a result, nothing that happens among those “deplorable” members of the citizenry is ever discussed, except when served with huge helpings of disdain.
That sense of disdain is of course palpable among those who are the target. And it fuels their delight in Trump’s pummeling of the castle walls, and his occasional direct hit which knocks one of them from their lofty liberal perch.
That said, none of Trump’s actions result from a particularly conservative ideology, or for that matter, any ideology at all. Rather, they are the result of a personal narcissistic agenda, which can be summed up fairly succinctly by saying it is all about what is good for Donald Trump.
But that reality only differs from that of the ruling class in the sense that their “ideology” is the result of a collective bias, a collective narcissism if you will, rather than a singular one. But as with Trump, that collective agenda still centers around what is good for them – even as they try to convince themselves and the world, that it is equally beneficial to those who are less well informed and less well educated, and therefore less “awoke and aware” than they are.
And to get a sense of how ingrained that collective ideology tends to be among those who run the country, let’s consider the parameters of political debate today, and the sorts of issues that tend to determine who gets elected to public office and the kinds of views that put them there.
And let’s do that around one of the broadest possible areas of discourse – gender, or if you prefer, sex-based issues – by listing all the political issues on one side of that general ledger. So let’s talk about the political issues that focus on men.
I hear crickets.
And that is of course because there are no political issues that focus on men, certainly none that are seen as having anywhere near the notoriety, focus and acceptance of those which focus on women: such as abortion (and reproductive rights in general), equal rights, affirmative action and the glass ceiling, sexual harassment and abuse – all of which are primarily, if not entirely, focused on female voters – and in a way that leaves little room for male voters and their needs.
Are there social problems that trouble and afflict men in particular? Of course there are, and plenty of them, starting with their much lower life expectancy, partly due to the fact that men are the victims of the vast majority of suicides and drug overdoses, not to mention their much higher rates of incarceration, homelessness and addiction, along with a raft of other social ills. Yet these issues are almost never discussed, primarily because they do not generally affect the kinds of men (and women) who run the country.
And I’m not going to discuss them here, except as a class of issues, and only in terms of their importance to the rise of Trump. Because taken together, they constitute the one element, which while being relatively simple to address, is absolutely critical to the Trump phenomenon.
Because while the political class may not be talking to working-class men, Trump surely is – and in ways those in the ivory tower can neither appreciate nor understand. And because of that disconnect, gender issues as a category seem a particularly instructive way of demonstrating the nature of the political and cultural bias of the ruling elite, and how that bias became ingrained in the system they created – and more to the point, how that eventually led to the rise of Donald Trump.
As already stated, the reason certain issues are not discussed politically, is that they are not important to those who run the country. And because those members of the elite have become the overwhelmingly dominant force, politically, economically and socially, no one at that strata (and therefore no one with a powerful enough voice) ever notices their absence. Which is one of the factors that have allowed the ruling class to create and otherwise shape the institutions that make up our world – and do it in ways that help develop, support and perpetuate their views.
In the case of gender issues, that is primarily the result of a multi-institutional political and media structure which has come to be dominated by communications experts. And in political circles, those experts generally come from, or are heavily influenced by, the world of advertising – a world that focuses primarily on women, due to their power as consumers. But that bias is also present in the executives who shape much of the programming, policy making and news coverage of what is historically the most powerful form of communication – commercial media.
By “commercial media” I’m referring to that which is funded primarily through advertising. Which means those media outlets are seeking the same audience the politicos and the ad executives and their advertisers are predominantly looking for – women. That is why commercial media outlets have been happy to play along with the political imperative of focusing on women’s issues in politics. It’s because they are generally after the same audience and therefore have that bias in their programming.
And if every candidate and media outlet places its focus on women throughout an entire election cycle, then women and their issues are bound to determine the result. So rinse and repeat. And that perpetual feedback loop, along with other sex-based cultural biases, is what has led to the systemic bias in gender issues which afflicts politics today.
And that bias was so dominant in 2016, that when Hillary Clinton seemed unable to coax more men into voting for her (even those who were generally part of the Democratic base), no one seemed to have a clue as to why.
Clinton and her campaign of course blamed it on the men themselves (always a recipe for success), and the fact that those men were all sexists, anti-feminists or misogynists of one sort or other. And no one batted an eye at that response. Because no one seemed to understand the real reasons more men didn’t vote for her – even though those reasons were really quite simple, and rather obvious.
First of all, it was because she never asked them to. Sure she told them to, and berated them for not doing so. But she never asked them to, or offered them a single reason why they should. Because during her entire campaign she did not lobby for, or even suggest, a single issue that focused on men and their particular concerns. And no one with a powerful enough voice, either inside or outside the campaign, pointed this out, because they too had no idea what was happening or why, since they were wearing the same cultural blinders.
And while gender issues are only one category among many, they clearly show how and why certain issues become the focus of politics, media and society. It’s all determined by the cultural elites who run things and their collective bias. And when that bias gets baked into the institutions they create, it is done in a way that inevitably, perhaps unavoidably, disadvantages certain groups and individuals.
And today the bulk of those disadvantaged individuals are collectively known as “Trump supporters.”
Trump’s voters see this, and may even understand the process – though perhaps not intellectually. And Trump likely doesn’t see it that way either. But they all know it intuitively. And it is that intuitive sense, along with their cultural resentment, that generally tends to drive them.
Trump is driven by his personal resentment about having been ridiculed and rejected by rich New Yorkers in real estate, on Wall Street and in the media – along with their friends in Washington, Hollywood and beyond. And his supporters feel that same sort of resentment, and are able to express it by cheering his attacks on those same elites and what they stand for.
That is the nature of the most powerful political dynamic in America today. And it is a dynamic that is likely to put Trump in the White House once again. Because as things currently stand, there is nothing the elites can do about it. And that’s because Trump’s entire war on the established order is being waged outside the system they created, if not outside their understanding of the world as a whole. And that means it is totally outside their range of influence and comprehension. Which is why they are having such difficulty combating the man and his movement.
Primarily it is his politics which operates outside their system. That is why the standard bearers of the Republican Party have no say in what goes on among what is supposedly their own base. But a similar result will probably befall Trump’s legal issues. Because they too seem likely to be decided through non-systemic, extrajudicial means, such as jury nullification and other such hacks – if at all. And that leaves the entire system under attack and vulnerable to being irreparably damaged, if not destroyed. And the reason the country’s leadership has no idea what to do about that, is because they are stuck inside the box created by their own system, and have little understanding of how to operate outside its parameters.
But those who run that system and want to keep it running, are going to have to find some way to deal with the powerful and destructive force that is Donald Trump. And if they don’t figure that out soon, and I would argue that means before the next presidential election, they are going to have a constitutional crisis that may dwarf anything that has come before. Because as an intruder within the American political system, the Trump phenomenon is not a feature but a bug – and one that is likely to crash the entire system.
And as historians and anthropologists have shown, societies generally collapse shortly after their peak, and as a result of the very factors that once led to their success, because their leaders get stuck in the box of their own thinking and methodology. So when problems arise, they double down on what they’ve been doing, thus intensifying the kinds of activities that caused the problems in the first place.
Meanwhile, they and their citizens increasingly turn their attention to the loudest, strongest, most central, most generic voices from within, representing the opinions and beliefs central to that system, whose ideas have in the past kept the society chugging along on its rails. All of which only makes things worse, causing the problems to rapidly show ball and the society to collapse.
That is why when a society is threatening to jump the tracks and fall off its rails, views from outside that system are needed in order to see the direction which that society needs to take if it wants to get itself back on track. But in a global world, which has a global economy and global culture within a global society, it is hard to find a vantage point outside that world, from which to gain that kind of perspective.
And that is where ideas from writers, artists and others who tend to live (or at least think) outside the box of that system, are essential. Because in the world of today, even as voices throughout the media and beyond are sounding the alarm about the upcoming constitutional crisis, no one seems to have a clue what to do about it. And any “solutions” being suggested, such as those enacted through the courts (including by forcing Trump from the ballot) are only likely to hasten the coming constitutional implosion.
Meanwhile, even as many of those in power seem to believe that the democratic system may not be up to a head-to-head battle with the likes of Donald Trump, those with the means to act, just seem to be sitting trapped and frozen waiting for the crisis to happen, hoping that when it does they will know what to do. But as we have seen with COVID and other such threats, it’s a lot easier to avert a disaster than to deal with it once it’s upon us.