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Rise of the Un-Intelligentsia
It’s not fear of Donald Trump’s becoming president that causes me despair. There are plenty of safeguards and limitations — not only of the office, but of public attention-span — that makes the scariest of his statements (not coincidentally, this category overlaps with those most-desired by his constituency) extremely unlikely to come to pass. For me, it’s having to face two facts that I am always aware of, but can usually safely ignore. First, that we share this country with a super-majority of people who have a multitude of incorrect worldviews and opinions. Second, that when a republic becomes democratic enough, those people may make their voices heard. Seeing Trump supporters’ views being validated is what causes me despair.
In the rush to stamp down the rise of Trump, many people alluded unthinkingly and superficially to the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Pinochet. A much more apt comparison is that of the modern European Right. Not so much the most reprehensible versions like Greece’s Golden Dawn or Hungary’s Jobbik, nor the more respectable ones like Britain’s UKIP, but probably something more like France’s National Front, with it’s combination of protectionism, immigration-skepticism, and (small letter) national socialism. As things currently stand, we run the risk that the two major political parties become the Democrats and an American-European Right. With no natural home for classical liberals, I fear we may become more like Europe than Obama and the Democrat’s wildest dreams.
Some seem to think that Trump is devastating the politically-correct culture; that is, if nothing else, political correctness will be forced to retreat. But it seems more likely to me that Trump’s ability to get away with saying things will not trickle down to greater freedom of expression for Joe Everyman. The media is happy to cover Trump’s daily outrages because they’re good for ratings; the rest of us will just be bigots. If Trump doesn’t complete the American transition into a European-style social republic, he’ll be an aberration that will evaporate as soon as he’s gone.
One of the best aspects of republican democracy is its stability, but Trump the politician is destabilization. This is inherently risky, in much the same way a second constitutional convention would be, because it’s unlikely to turn out how proponents imagine it would. Unfortunately, you can’t blame other people if you succeed in destabilization but fail to get want you want.
I gave this post its title not because Trump supports are unintelligent or because intelligence is synonymous with correctness; to anyone on Ricochet, this is obvious. I use it because the noble sort of pro-Trump thought leaders are heavily relying on a base who are understandably angry, unambiguously wrong, and proud of it, and these leaders should have known better. Democracy doesn’t care how wrong you are if your numbers are legion, and we’re all about to feel the consequences.
Published in General
Cronyism. Let me check the polls on issues voters care about and see if that was one of them. Corruption was not at the top. The economy was with 17%. trump’s appeal was his coalescing of various narrow splinter groups into one group that was large enough to create a plurality in the Republican Primary.
His complaints of immigration won over isolationists, protectionists, and the identitarians. His complaints about US foreign policy won over the isolationists again. His complaints over trade won over the protectionists. His demeanor in public won over the identitarians as a defense for their crudeness. His public personae won over the group who were deceived into thinking he knew business because he was “wealthy”.
If trump signaled actual change then we would be seeing it occurring across the entire political landscape of the Republican Party. He would be changing the paradigm and personnel of the party’s elected officials. Thus far he has only reinvigorated the Rockefeller Republicans in the party.
Salvatore: I have never seen “Hamilton”, and I was laughing so hard while listening to the song that I probably missed some of the words. It’s an Englishman addressing an American, right? Or is it a revolutionary addressing a loyalist? Either way, I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. Thank you :)
I’m glad you enjoyed it. It was George III addressing the colonists.
Yes, but…
I would say that if Trump’s core bloc was large enough to give the nomination to a very disliked outsider, than it was large enough to throw its weight around more forcefully in previous elections.
Which brings me to money: yes, donors and the wealthy will always have more influence in any system – although the rise of Sanders and Trump show that big donors are not necessary for a movement to get its message heard.
But more importantly, our electoral system – and especially the party primaries – mean that small groups of motivated voters can have an oversized influence. It wouldn’t take a large number of voters in many states to force the Republican Senate/House nominee to be staunchly anti-trade – certainly Trump supporters could have exercised a large degree of influence without too much financial support, had they been engaged enough to do so.
I thought it was because he wasn’t PC, or he wanted a wall, or wanted tariffs, or wanted to ban Muslims, or would hire the best people, or was very successful.
One more point: While I again agree that money talks in politics, there is also plenty of evidence that motivated groups can affect policy even without huge troves of hedge fund money – take the anti-abortion movement.
One of my sneaking suspicions is that decrying the influence of money is often used as a smokescreen to obscure an even more painful truth: that the majority just doesn’t care about an issue.
Take immigration. According to opinion polls, most Americans are opposed to our lax immigration policies, so it is easy to conclude that cronyism is the driving factor for such anti-democratic behavior.
But it’s also possible that most Americans just aren’t that opposed to illegal immigration as they say – after all, most aren’t affected directly in a negative way, while they do benefit from cheaper home/restaurant/hotel prices.
There are certainly lots of policies enacted through the sneaky hand of cronyists. But I am convinced there are just as many hated policies which are secretly condoned, if not supported, by a critical mass of voters. Constantly focusing on the influence of money distracts from this very thorny truth.
No, he didn’t. He convinced people that he would use his corruption in their favor. That is the problem.
And, I didn’t say that we should or that we could go back to a property-voting system, but that we could learn from what the system was designed to prevent. On the one hand, we have Bernie Sanders promising to fund handouts with wealth created by others, and on the other hand we have Trump promising to outdo Obama in corruption… and on the third hand, we have Hillary who is corruption personified.
All of that amounts to 3 perfect examples of why our system was designed the way that it was, and why ignoring that has been disastrous. That so many people are not willing to look at our past with anything but scorn is truly discouraging.
I have seen the phrase “European Right” on these pages several times since last night. What do you mean? It seems you’re referring to people in Europe who think there should be borders, and don’t want their civilization and culture overwhelmed by aliens. They don’t like the situation their ruling elites have created for them via the EU. In short, they’d prefer that minorities in their countries (a) tolerate minority status and (b) remain minorities, instead of having their governments insist on replacing the indigenous populations with foreigners.
So it seems the “European Right” OPPOSE the ideas Prez Omega stands for, with his insane rush to bring in 300K Muslim”refugees” which every one knows can’t be vetted– and even if they could: WHY should they come here? And his administration’s lesser known policy of vastly multiplying the number of green cards issued to foreign Muslims.
Then what sense does it make to say Trump is like the European Right and he will only complete Prez Omega’s agenda?
The thing with cronyism is that it exists even when it doesn’t really exist. It exists if you believe it does, and if that belief is so strong you believe yourself powerless to even act. The Trump core was unmotivated for years because it felt itself powerless to act. The pro-life movement, as you point out, acted against the belief that it was powerless – it fought and participated because it knew it could. Same with the NRA. Small groups with not much money, but tightly focussed and highly motivated.
The Trump core has been, for years, both unmotivated and unfocussed, in no small part because it could neither articulate itself, nor believe that it could do anything. Now they have a champion, and now they are feeling their strength.
I did try it. They don’t identify themselves. Even they can’t name one. They know this is just a tantrum with pretenses of a movement. Their page reads like Trump wrote it. Anonymous bloggers now adopt his speaking style when they are writing.
http://journalofamericangreatness.blogspot.com/p/who-are-we.html
I was about to take this post seriously until you compared Trump to Hitler, Mussolini, and Pinochet. How ridiculous. I’m not Trump fan but I am not under Trump derangement syndrome.
There is a serious argument to be made about the Conservative intelligentsia. The problem is Conservative intelligentsia has veered off of reality and become Utopian. The post by St. Salieri is right to the point of what has happened to Conservatism – and that’s Conservatism with a capital “C” – rather than the nature of true conservatism with a small “c”. Capital “C” Conservatism is a developed ideology of of an intellectual elite which has clearly been in disconnect with real life America for quite a while. Small “c” conservatism is a way of life that looks to tradition as a guide establishing and running a society. It has dawned on me for a while now that intelligentsia based capital “C” Conservatism is no longer small “c” conservative and actually just as radical as Liberalism. If you want to read more about Conservative utopianism, read this from The National Interest.
Donald Trump, flawed as he is, has presented to the politically right side of the nation an option of returning to common sense, traditional small “c” conservatism. Judging by the reaction of the Republican primary, it is an option hugely desired, and, I might add, despised by the intelligentsia. It is my experience that the intelligentsia is always behind the curve and doesn’t understand reality.
I’m not going to expend a lot of energy on yet another whiny post about how smart you are and how uninformed and wrong I am. Freedom to choose matters to me, even if it is difficult at times as Judithann notes.
Trump is the destroyer of the status quo and will make mincemeat by November of whichever progressive challenges him. It will be messy, but is a necessary evolution if we are to retain the singular idea of the USA.
What gets my goat most about these anti-Trump screeds is how so many of them are essentially arrogant. As the inventor of Warp Drive drily noted,
“…Rhetorical Nonsense.”
Ya’ll have fun consoling one another.
Did you read the same post I did? The post I read specifically eschewed the reflexive tendency to highlight the superficial similarities between Trump and fascists and instead argued that the closer parallel is to the Front Nationale.
Manny: you said it perfectly. When conservative intellectuals heap scorn on the majority of Americans for thinking incorrect thoughts of one sort or another, conservative intellectuals have gone off the rails. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that the majority of Americans are right, but it has become clear that conservative intellectuals are not the people who can convince Americans that they are wrong.
This is my strong impression as well.
But here’s an unpopular opinion: an electoral bloc which needs a savior to be heard is doomed to fail.
More than money, influence in American politics goes to those who show up and engage (as with much of life). There are obvious exceptions, as Trump is now demonstrating, but the long-term trend is blazingly clear: groups of voters who actively exercise their influence at the ballot box get what they want much more often.
That’s why I’m very skeptical about what long-term changes a Trump presidency would actually bring. I have yet to hear a realistic long-term plan about how Trump’s supporters want to change the political or policy landscape; only that they want to burn everything down.
But even after everything has been burned down, the same interests who got us where we are now will still likely be there to continue their struggle. And if the Trump bloc hasn’t started the difficult work of building a bottom-up movement by then, we’ll be back to the status quo faster than we know it.
He says a more apt comparison is the Britain’s UKIP and other such European right parties, which is to say that Trump is Hitler-light, which is to say the same thing only to avoid the racism. He is saying the same thing, despite the qualification, that Trump compares to Hitler, Mussolini, and Pinochet.
From the OP:
If you think UKIP is Hitler-lite you don’t really know much about UKIP or Hitler. You seem pretty intent upon interpreting Mike as saying something he explicitly didn’t.
As others have already pointed out, the post clearly rejects the comparison between Trump and those historical figures. If you think there is an implicit connection being drawn here, that is your interpretation.
However, given the acrimony on Ricochet lately and the numerous comparisons of Trump to the monsters of 20th century history, it’s also an understandable interpretation.
I’ll give Mike the benefit of the doubt on his intentions. But given that sensitivities on this topic are likely higher today than at any point in the past, I think the prudent move by the Ricochet editors would have been to cut as wide a berth as possible around this problem – by excising any obviously inflammatory terms (such as anti-intelligentsia, Mussolini, or national socialism) before promoting the post.
I am too. But I don’t entirely rule it out.
Good post!
Appreciated this line: “First, that we share this country with a supermajority of people who have a multitude of incorrect worldviews and opinions.“
Mike LaRoche
Thanks for the link to Journal of American Greatness.
My pleasure!
The problem is not who is president; the problem is that it matters so much who is president. The federal government is far too big and it will not be reformed from within. That has to come from something external to the federal government, probably in the form of a convention of the states.
OK, perhaps I stand corrected on that part of my comment, though I don’t quite see it. Still Trump is not UKIP or any other European nationalist party. And yes European nationalist parties flirt with autocratic, absolutists policies. Trump is a negotiator, not an autocrat. This is still part of the Trump derangement syndrome.
Europe all right: He’s Berlusconi, to a lesser extent. It’s an underwhelming proposition: http://thefederalist.com/2016/02/15/donald-trump-is-americas-berlusconi-whose-rhetoric-won-his-country-nothing/
But so go wild cards…
Trump is a socialist. There is no reason to call someone who advocates the government setting medical prices so it can more cheaply pay for everyone’s healthcare and government telling private corporations where they can manufacture their products anything else. He is also a nationalist who claims he will use government for the benefit of those he sees as real Americans by starting trade wars which will harm everyone. If you find the term national socialist too damaged by history, how about social nationalist? One term you cannot use is conservative.
I think we are going to be hearing a lot more (from the Democratic ads) about Trump’s negotiation style. Remember, sometimes even when you are offered a “choice” it is not a negotiation.