This election cycle has been the most interesting I’ve experienced in my lifetime, and I suspect that’s true for those much older than I am, as well.
What’s really interesting is how much it defies the conventional wisdom of US politics. Normally people are resigned to the idea of “money wins”, but Trump, and to a lesser extent Sanders, have been defying this rule. To a shocking degree, in some cases. What is it that makes Trump so cost-effective in the primary?
Part of the explanation probably lies with his policy stance, although I don’t think that can possibly explain all of it. Trump’s policies are an eclectic mix of left-wing and center-right ideas that, when taken as a whole, don’t really completely please anyone. He probably gets the most credit on the immigration issue, where he’s the only candidate who seems willing to insist on border enforcement, a popular issue.
Is it his bombastic personality? Probably a bit. American politicians seem to face some odd social pressures. Something has to explain how they come across as so plastic and fake. I’ve seen corpses with more personality than your average mainstream US politician. Trump, bombastic and ridiculous as he might be, comes across as much more authentic. This can probably be attributed to his speaking style, which is very off-the-cuff, and at times feels more like a conversation or a stand-up act than a speech.
But I don’t think Trump’s ascendancy is all Trump. I think we’ve been bought to where we are by decades of poor government.
What makes people trust a government? Two big factors must be the perception of competence and benevolence. The American government, after World War Two, was probably perceived as being decently competent and benevolent. I wasn’t alive back then, I’m only guessing from what I’ve read, but it seems likely. I think the US government held on to this perception for quite a while.
In fact, the first big cultural moment that caused people to lose confidence in the government, the first crisis, was the Vietnam war. The inability of US firepower to decimate jungle guerrillas made the government seem incompetent, and the focus on overseas atrocities by national counterculture movements made it seem malevolent.
The moon landing probably salvaged the government’s image of competence. But the image of government benevolence was irrevocably shattered, and nothing ever really restored it. I remember growing up in an environment of deep contempt for the national government that went far beyond an attitude of healthy skepticism of politicians. Presidential candidates were assumed to be inveterate liars at best, frothing lunatics at worst. It didn’t help that national-level politicians seemed to be completely unaware of this attitude, and seemed to assume that they had the moral authority to be ranting about things like “New World Order”.
But one thing that was assumed was their competence. In fact, if anything, some viewed national politicians as hyper-competent. The TV show “The X-files” probably did a good job of capturing the feel the average American had for our federal government. Sure, on a low level, there might be good people doing their jobs, like the show’s protagonists. And in a few episodes, there were even a few high-ranking officials that were decent people, just trying to do their job and figure out what the hell was going on. But the higher up you went in the government hierarchy, the more likely you were to begin running into malevolent authority figures. But, significantly, these authority figures were all hard men, often military or ex-military. Quiet, too. Secretive. Entirely capable of massive, complex conspiracies and cover-ups.
It seemed that Americans, although they suspected that the federal government was malevolent, were willing to accept this as long as they were competent, as well. In fact, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that some people seemed to take a perverse sort of pride in this. We may be ruled by liars and snakes, but by God, they’re the best damn liars and snakes that history has ever seen.
The next two presidencies would shatter that illusion.
Whatever else you want to say about George W Bush, it seems almost certain now that he’s going to go down in history as one of the worst American presidents to ever be elected. His opportunistic initiation of the second Iraq War, and his administration’s clumsy attempts at strategy, quickly destroyed any sense of unity the country had after 9/11, and seriously damaged the perception of government competence.
People voted for Obama because he essentially promised a restoration of government benevolence. Obama would have been best served by withdrawing from the middle east in general, and investing in some moralizing domestic project, something on the order of the moon landing, in order to increase public confidence in government competence. Instead, he bombed even more countries than Bush had, seemed to double down on the frankly retarded vision of US-inspired democracy in the middle east, and led an economic “recovery” that consisted mostly of people who had lost jobs going back into much lower-paying ones. The democratic party had always been perceived as the more benevolent political party. Very few people believe that anymore.
Like Vietnam, we had been through a long, disastrous war that ultimately did more harm than good. Unlike Vietnam, we had no massive symbol of government competence and capability, such as the moon landing, to restore public faith. Public approval rates of the federal government are at historic, miserable lows. The government is largely perceived as both malevolent and incompetent.
If national, establishment politicians gave a damn about public opinion in the slightest, they would have offered up serious candidates on both sides of the aisle. I’m thinking maybe a steely-eyed former general from the republican who would vow to bring our entanglements in the middle east to a successful close, or a liberal who promised to focus on domestic issues from the democrats. What did they give us instead?
On the republican side, they fielded a bunch of has-been clowns and seemed to be putting all their money on Jeb Bush, of all people, while on the democratic side, they pretty much promised Hillary Clinton the nomination, the politician who has done more to steer Obama toward an aggressive foreign policy than any other, whose policies are essentially indistinguishable from a neoconservative, America’s currently most-hated political faction.
In such an environment, to nominate two dynasty candidates was a sign of incredible contempt, or tone-deafness. Either the mainstream national politicians of this country don’t give a damn about public opinion, or they are so ridiculously isolated from reality that they actually thought these two were perfectly acceptable choices to offer. And then the pundits began to speak, and the breathtaking ignorance was just unbelievable. I remember being floored, absolutely floored, by early announcements by supposed ‘experts’ that Jeb would be popular. How in the world could you possibly believe this?
It became crystal clear. We didn’t live beneath a benevolent, competent government. We didn’t even live beneath a X-files, malevolent, competent government. We lived beneath a malevolent, incompetent government. Our favored candidates were a chubby-faced stuttering jackass that seemed more appropriate as a librarian than a president, or the single most hollow woman I have ever seen in politics. Their minions were not rugged shadow government officials, but pathetic paid media worms so completely detached from reality, fat, soft little men advocating for wars they wouldn’t last two seconds in. Not only were our leaders malevolent and incompetent, they were completely detached from reality.
That’s what set the ground for Trump and Sanders. Trump’s bullying of Jeb Bush was the most engaged I’ve ever seen people be in politics. And as vicious as Trump was on the national stage, online, things were even more (hilariously) cruel. It was not uncommon to see comments like “I hope Jeb kills himself” with the replies being something along the lines of “Oh please oh please oh please”. And the more the pundits have screeched against him, the more people have love him. Pundits can no longer make a valid claim that they can predict or shape opinion, and people love watching these sad little maggots squirm.
Trump is not some sort of political genius. Our current political class is just retarded. They don’t know how to govern, and what’s worse, they no longer even know how to win. That’s why Trump has been so cost-effective against them.
I don’t know if Trump will make it to the White House, or if he does, if he will be able to restore some of the government’s reputation for competence and benevolence. And who knows. Maybe once in power, Hillary will reverse her entire history and become a benevolent, competent governor.
But we better hope the next president is, at the very worst, simply mediocre. Anything less than that and the next step to discontent is to begin talking about secession.
cultoftheegg 