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Of Nerds and Men; or How Trump Steamrolled the Media and Political Class
The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump has been successful because he is able to dominate the media cycle and “troll” his opponents in the internet parlance. No one who says these things ever seems to explain or understand what this actually means. These terms describe how the underlying relationship between Trump and media and the rest of the political class has manifested itself in the campaign. Our entire political and media class are what can fairly be called “nerds.” Trump is not a nerd. This has allowed Trump to use the media and political class’s social disconnect with the rest of America to manipulate them into making what, to the public, are completely inappropriate and counterproductive responses to the things he says. The story of the 2016 campaign has been one of class clown Donald Trump torturing a series of clueless yet earnest teacher’s pets.
The term “nerd” is an old one and one with a particular meaning. A nerd is someone who, despite often being otherwise intelligent, is unable to pick up social cues and context when interacting with the majority of people such that they often respond in socially awkward or inappropriate ways. Nerds do not fully understand the social situations that confront them. To get around this problem, nerds construct their own subcultures with simplified and agreed mores that are understood by fellow nerds. This allows nerds to operate in an environment that they understand and are comfortable. When taken outside of this sub culture and confronted with someone who doesn’t share the agreed upon assumptions of that group, a nerd is completely defenseless and unable to understand the person confronting them.
When people think of “nerds,” guys in horn rimmed glasses working in labs come to mind. Indeed, this type of nerd exists. These “Big Bang Theory Nerds” are not the nerds who inhabit politics and the media. Big Bang Theory nerds are often too introverted and scientifically inclined for the media or politics. Media and politics are inhabited by what I call “alpha nerds.” These are nerds who are not as scientifically inclined as the Big Bang Theory nerds but are extroverted and clever. Big Bang Theory nerds are much more under the radar. They are too busy learning long division and calculus, playing Minecraft if they are the right age, and going on to careers in science and engineering. Alpha nerds are busy being the teacher’s pet, running for student council, joining the debate club and doing everything else necessary to check the blocks on their college applications with an earnestness few normal people are able to achieve. Alpha nerds get around their awkwardness by earnestly following the rules and meeting the expectation of their teachers, bosses, and those in authority; after all, earnestly following rules doesn’t require much emotional subtlety or adeptness.
Since this type of nerd has gotten around their social awkwardness by following rules, they tend to thrive in bureaucracy and rule based environments. They are often predisposed to becoming petty tyrants exacting their revenge on the non nerds whom they never understood or felt appreciated them. They also are usually dismissive of anyone outside of their nerd subculture. Artificially snobbery and credentialism are things that come naturally to many alpha nerds.
For decades, Hollywood has used alpha nerds as comic foils for normal movie protagonists. The alpha nerd’s inability to understand the social cues and subtleties of anyone outside their subculture, their excessive earnestness and complete defenselessness against ridicule can be used to great comic effect. In Animal House, the alpha nerds of the Omega House — with earnest commitment to God, country and Faber College — are destroyed by their inability to understand or respond to the ridicule of the normals of Delta House. Judge Smails and his band of alpha nerds who run Bushwood Country Club can only react in uncomprehending horror at the antics of normal Al Czervik.
Media and politics is inhabited almost entirely by alpha nerds. Like all nerds, the alpha nerds of media and politics have created own subculture that is easier for them to understand and navigate than mainstream culture. Since they dominate media and politics, their nerd culture is our political and media culture. Washington is the national capital of alpha nerds. They run the entire city and by extension the country.
The political and media elite in this country on both sides are nerds compared to the average American. People talk about the divide between Washington and “flyover country.” The geographic divide, however, is a reflection of the more profound divide between the nerd culture of media and politics and the normal culture of the rest of America. The class of nerds who populate our media and political classes and have made it their own safe ecosystem.
Politicians in the past have — if they were not alpha nerds to begin with — learned to pass as such and speak the language and follow the social cues of the alpha nerd media and political sub culture. In contrast Trump in contrast did not. Like Al Czervik stepping onto the course at Bushwood or Eric Stratton walking the halls of Faber College, Trump not only isn’t a part of the alpha nerd culture of politics and the media, he rejects all of its standards and agreed upon social cues. Confronted with someone who refuses to recognize or be a part of their agreed upon culture, the alpha nerds of our media and politics have completely melted down.
Again and again during the Republican primaries, Trump used the media and Republican alpha nerds’ inability to understand context and larger meaning outside of their own subculture against them. Trump turned his campaign from celebrity side show to serious threat to win the nomination when he said that if elected he would build a wall on the Mexican border at the Mexican government’s expense and deport all 11 million illegals in the country within two years.
The media and his Republican opponents, being nerds, took this proposal literally. Further — since it was a violation of the mores of the political nerd sub culture — they figured Trump saying it was an offense worthy of ending his career. So the media and Republican response to Trump’s proposal was twofold; they said it was impossible and that Trump was unfit for office for even proposing it.
Unfortunately for Republicans, the voting public largely doesn’t live in the nerd sub culture of Washington. Worse still, the public had grown tired of attempts to foist it on them in the form of political correctness. Unlike the alpha nerds in the media Republican party, the voting public understood the context of the proposal. Trump’s proposal came at the end of over 20 years of both parties refusing to take the immigration problem seriously despite the public’s increasing concern and anger over it. Taken in context, a politician standing-up and having the audacity to say he was going to build a wall and send Mexico the bill was like a breath of fresh air. Moreover, the public understood that sometimes people say things to make a point and engage in hyperbole to get the listener’s attention and show them they are serious. The public didn’t care whether it was practical to build a wall and bill Mexico or actually deport every illegal alien in two years. What they cared about was that someone was finally willing to take the problem seriously and demand the political class do the same.
So when the Republicans attacked the proposal as being impractical, the attack had no effect. Worse because they thought Trump’s saying it was enough to end his candidacy, Republicans wound up leaving the impression that Donald Trump was the only one who could be trusted to take the problem seriously or offer any solutions. What plans did Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio offer to deal with immigration? I honestly have no idea and neither do most GOP voters. What people knew about Republicans and immigration was Donald Trump wanted to build a wall and deport every illegal immigrant in the country and Republicans thought that was beyond the pale.
This pattern repeated itself when Trump said after the San Bernardino terrorist attack that the US should consider banning all Muslim immigration until we can figure out how to vet them. Again, the alpha nerd Republicans were unable to see the larger context of his statement and were doomed to give a counterproductive response. The Republican party saw this as another grave breach of the rules of the nerd culture of politics. This time they thought for sure the GOP voters would understand how unfit he was. So the Republican response consisted of variants of “how dare you” and not much else.
Meanwhile, the non-nerd GOP voters saw it as a common sense response to a problem. They also understood that you solve problems by having a dialogue. The first proposed solution is not often the one adopted. Banning Muslim immigrants is, like building a will along the Mexican border, an extreme solution. Islamic terrorism is an extreme problem; perhaps it demands an extreme solution. What GOP voters expected in response to Trump’s proposal was for the other candidates to — if not endorse the proposal — offer their own counter solution. What they got instead was outrage over Trump’s disregard of the mores of the media and political nerd culture the voting public neither adheres to nor cares about. Once again Trump’s opponents left the impression that Trump was the only candidate who took the problem seriously or bothered to offer a solution.
Time and again this pattern repeated itself. Trump would do or say something that violated the political nerd subculture. His opponents would then respond with outrage over his breaking their subculture’s rules but fail to offer a meaningful response to the underlying issue leaving the voters with impression that Trump was the only one who cared about solving the problem. The most common answer given by Trump supporters to the question of why they support Trump is that he cares about them and their problems. This is not an accident. This is the result of the media and his Republican opponents being so steeped in their own nerd sub culture that they were unable to get past Trump’s rejection of it and speak to the public in terms sensible outside of that culture.
The media and political class cannot comprehend Donald Trump or understand what he is saying in the same way the rest of America can. This process is repeating itself in Trump’s general election confrontation with Hillary Clinton. The media and Clinton campaign’s reaction to Donald Trump’s invitation to Russia to provide the 33,000 emails Clinton deleted from her private server is a replay of what happened in the Republican primaries.
Normal America understood Trump was telling a joke to make a larger point about Hillary’s email problem. Trump’s statement is the kind of quip someone would make to the person next to them on the train or to the person serving them their coffee “yeah maybe the Russians can give those emails to the FBI.” Everyone in America except the media and the political class knew Trump didn’t mean it as a literal call for the Russians to hack Hillary’s email.
Were our media and political class not entirely populated with over earnest alpha nerds, they would have gotten the joke and responded appropriately. The way to deal with Trump is not take the bait he puts out. Deal with his humor and poking with your own. A Hillary campaign not run by alpha nerds would have said something like “Hillary lost some good recipes and pictures of her grandkids when those emails were deleted. She would like them back too.” That would have defused the entire thing and made Trump look small and unserious as well as reemphasized the point that there was nothing significant in those emails.
The media and political class — being nerds and unable to understand humor or sarcasm that hasn’t been dumbed down for their particular sub culture — didn’t get the joke and thought Trump was calling for Russian espionage to assist his campaign. Their response was unsurprisingly bizarre to the non-nerd observer and turned out to be completely counterproductive to their cause. By taking Trump seriously and accusing him of collaboration with the Russians, they ended up not only looking foolish and humorless but also inadvertently admitting that Hillary’s email problem was a national security issue, something they have been vehemently denying for months. Moreover, since the rest of the country got the joke, the claims that this made Trump unfit for office have had no effect.
Trump is Eric Straton from the Delta House and the media and political class are the humorless Omegas totally unable to understand or respond to the ridicule heaped on them by the Deltas. Unless the alpha nerds of the media and Hillary Clinton campaign figure out a way to relate to and communicate with the larger American public on its terms the way Donald Trump does, he will continue to own the news cycle and steamroll them.
Published in General
Just simply brilliant. This shows the problem I have been having with the GOPe supporters and the libertarians on this site. It also shows why the media are so high IQ and believe such stupid things.
Yeaaah… “Apparently.” I suppose that my ability to grasp “higher levels of meaning” has been fatally damaged by things like reading books. Or comic books, or the backs of cereal boxes. And other suchlike pointy-headed, nerdish pursuits. This has left me out of touch with the sarcastic, hyperbolic, common folk. Fortunately, I have so many people willing to lecture me on how Trump is really the working man’s Yoda, speaking a wisdom that is beyond my ken. Only He can communicate with the “real people.” “These are not the nerds you are looking for.” So even though I “can’t comprehend” what Trump is saying, I at least have your assurance that it would all be perfectly rational, if only I was able to grasp these higher levels of meaning.
So I will take that under advisement, along with the other possible explanation – which is that Trump is exactly as stupid as he sounds, and that his acolytes are exactly as irrational as they seem. The latter explanation does have one advantage, because it explains Bernie and his acolytes just as well as it explains Trump.
Let’s throw “wonk” in there, too. To the extent that we need a word that covers those who follow a prescribed set of meanings and mores that are understood differently by different groups. I think maybe there was something in Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions discussing how scientific disciplines form that would add to the understanding. I’d really hate to use the word “paradigm” here because I couldn’t define what they are in this case.
I have seen many, many Trump supporters on Ricochet and elsewhere defend his remarks as the God’s honest truth, though you now claim they are mere sarcasm and hyperbole .
Why should we defend the NATO countries? Of course we should deport all illegal immigrants. Otherwise, we don’t have a country. We do kill a lot of people in this country. Prisoners of war are not heroes just because they are captured. There really were thousands of people in New Jersey celebrating the attacks of 9/11. We should have PACs to defeat Cruz and Kasich. (That one just from last Friday.) Bush did lie about WMD. We should kill terrorists’ families. The libel laws are too strict. Michelle Fields may have actually posed a danger to him. What’s wrong with Japan, South Korea, and others having nuclear weapons? Women should be punished for having illegal abortions. And so many more.
In fact, I have written on this site more than once that there is nothing Trump can say that will not be defended by his supporters. Not as hyperbole, not as sarcasm, but as the literal truth. I don’t believe I have been proven wrong.
John, this is a fundamental disconnect, isn’t it? Some people don’t have the hardware and firmware in their minds to handle things outside their ken. Places like politics provides a safe environment for the keepers of the flame types. But, you have to keep people like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin out through any means necessary. Usually it works by cordoning them off. Trump went after the top of the pyramid, though, and this is threatening like no one has ever seen.
For example, McCain knew not to talk about Jeremiah Wright — these rules were written by the people in charge of the system. That’s the left right now.
I have been more and more convinced that these nerds have lost the GOP and they are very angry about this. But, really, they are paper tigers with no real power nor effect. Someone just had to call them on it.
Thursdays @ 8:00p;
Donald Trump: The Yokel Whisperer
Are you thinking of yokels as non-nerds?
Yes, ideology can be dangerous, so let’s jettison a consistent set of ideas in favor of cult of personality and emotion, because it feels good to punish your political opponents with a strongman. I wouldn’t mind Trump’s idiocy if I thought it just was a ruse to get attention, and there was some guiding principle to limit his narcissism and greed. At this point, I see him as Hillary with testicles.
NOUN
Well, does that apply to the majority of the country? That’s what you are implying. The point of this post is that Trump is ignoring a small contingent (niche) and addressing his comments to the larger block of the country. By definition, yokels are only a small part of that large bloc.
Fundamentally not understanding the clear language in this post.
Larry, I’ve disagreed with you on the matter of Trump, but never have found you condescending. It surprises me to see you categorize three sentences of misapplied condescension as “brilliant.”
Not certain it is useful to use a term like ‘reality’ in a world where almost everyone lies and the rest jump aboard.
You simply have to understand why people support Trump. You would be better served by solving that problem. If they are indeed just stupid then keep treating them that way.
Is it your opinion that the majority of the country, even self identified conservatives are impervious to succumbing to their baser instincts? You are confident that the mechanisms of government and society are full proof and will mitigate the pitfalls associated with promoting a clever demagogic strongman.
I believe that complacency can set in in a people. It can be easy to dabble in socialism (like Bernie supporters) or in a retributive strongman and believe nothing really bad will happen. We are fat and happy. That makes us uncomfortable and pensive.
Hey, I’m voting for Trump. I have come to terms with this fate. I do find the phsyco-rationalizing and clever “I’ve got a secret” chin stroking to be a bit much.
I think John’s theory has hit upon part of the problem, but clearly not all of it.
Yes, many people in the Media, Politics and indeed all of the Corporate Culture are nerds at heart and have developed their own insulated culture that as a whole has great difficulty relating to those outside of it.
But there is a dark underbelly to this. Often nerds have felt the rejection of regular folks in social situations often dating back to childhood and have developed a hatred/animosity for those same regular folks,. The Political/Media nerds condensation for regular people has more to it than just a lack of understanding, and that condensation over the years has generated policies that openly favor the Corporate Class and that have severely hurt many middle and lower class regular people. In short, we have developed a political class that hates much of the country.
In turn, many of these regular folks have taken the hint and have developed a strong loathing for the Political Class. Much of the support for Trump and the ridiculous things he says derives from the fact that he is viscerally attacking the Political Class on an emotional level. What he says doesn’t really matter, it’s who he is attacking that does. What we have here is a Class War of hatred.
The problem is that the vehicle that these regular folks have chosen to champion them- Donald Trump – is a liar, fraud, swindler, and perhaps Traitor.
Remember the good old days, when we were told ad nauseum not to insult Trump supporters? No? I do.
Now, it seems de rigueur to insult Trump opponents. If we are not traitors for voting against the national interest (I’ve been called as much) or liars for refusing to tell the truth about why we won’t support Trump, we are too stupid to understand what Trump is really saying when he makes all these inane comments. Or maybe we are just not smart enough to see how smart Trump and his followers are. It is outside our ken. We are not wired to understand. We are paper tigers with no real power or effect.
Have I left anything out? Oh, yeah, nerds.
It’s not that complicated.
Trump has a gift for connecting with people emotionally; the other GOP leaders don’t.
For good or for ill, the emotions that Trump taps are the deepest ones that people have.
He’s playing Mark Antony to Shakespeare’s Brutus. And he’ll continue to play that role after he has power, right down to “cut[ting] off some charge from legacies.”
Terrific and absorbing analysis. Enjoyed reading it
I think this is true on the negative side for the GOPe and conservative columnists, too. I believe that he has targeted them specifically and that they are very emotionally overcome by Trump’s success in the very field they were supposed to be experts in. In fact, I believe they are actively working more against Trump than Hillary and that a sizable portion — because of their anger — will vote for Hillary. Now these are just the nerds that John has identified here and there aren’t that many in real numbers but they are influential and that influence is going to help Hillary and/or hurt Trump.
Anyone have an Octavian handy?
I’m getting such a huge laugh out of this thread! I really should be “liking” these #NeverTrump comments for the entertainment they’re providing! Haven’t laughed this hard reading Ricochet in a while.
Please, more of Trump said this and Trump mocked that person. You’re making John’s point. This post isn’t about defending Trump; its purpose is to expose the inability of the political class (conservative media included) to learn from Trump’s success and respond effectively. A few months into this slow-motion train wreck, I used the word, “unteachable.” It seems it still applies.
Here’s a thought from a nerd … maybe Trump reminds us of every jock with a heart of jerk.
Personally, I will always side with kids being wedgied, swirlied, and shoved in lockers over the alpha-male-scum doing it to impress the girls who’ll put out to ensure their own place in the heirarchy.
Maybe that makes me a loser. Maybe that makes me an elitist. Maybe that makes me a pointy-headed intellectual who can’t connect with the rest of humanity. (Though, hey, I’ve worked plenty of mall jobs and greatly prefer working with the blue-collar over the white.)
I don’t care. I’m a nerd. And I’m proud of it.
(And given my stellar knack of voting for the loser in every presidential primary and election, you probably don’t want me voting for Trump anyway.)
You know this is very condescending, right? So, teach us. How should the nerds respond to Trump effectively?
I not only believe that I understand why people support Trump, I think most critics understand the basis for his support. The “problem” is with Trump, not with a lack of understanding of his supporters. It’s simply a dodge of the highest to order to suggest–as the O/P did–that Trump’s critics are products of the same lack of depth exhibited by the candidate. Can’t defend Trump’s “thought process”? Let’s take shots at his critics. That’s the ticket.
But, do you believe that the people who support Trump do it for the reasons that have been offered here on this thread by the NeverTrumpers? Do you think people are stupid for supporting him — because you know he’s a con-man? I don’t think you clarified.
This whole thread has been about how Trump doesn’t mean what he says, but only his supporters (normal people) understand that he cares about their problems, and the nerds are too “steeped in their own nerd sub culture” to get that. It’s not about people being stupid for supporting him, but being stupid for not seeing why they support him.
It is not stupid to disagree with the OP, is it?
So true. You will notice that there is no defense of the Republican Primary candidates in their losses. How do the NeverTrumpers explain it really? Trump dominates the news cycles for 50 straight weeks and it’s only because he’s a con man. That is just not possible — Lincoln said that you can’t fool all the people all the time.
Take Trump as he is: he sneers at the Republican candidates because they are weaklings and they promise to do so many things but can’t deliver. (I have come to the conclusion that they don’t really want to keep their promises if things get too difficult.) Trump rubs their weakling characters into their faces and they just fume — and our pundits “just can’t believe” that he keeps winning.
WHY is that? Why does he keep winning? Because these people in the political class are not men in full and are not whole people. Indeed, they are nerds who can’t figure out the real world of real people. They are confused by the world that they want to rule over.
I’m not sure the media fit into your tidy binary breakdown. The vast majority of them are Lefties, whose job is to tear down the Republican nominee, no matter who he is, or what he says. Trump is particularly good grist for their mill, because almost every time he opens his mouth, he says something in a
stupidcontroversial manner, that they can easily spin in an unpleasant and unhelpful way.I do not believe that they are too ‘nerdy’ to know what they are doing. They know exactly what they are doing. So while I agree with your premise that the media ought to handle Trump differently, I don’t think, given what they have to work with, that they will. Because they have a different agenda.
As for the small ‘conservative’ wing of the left-wing media, what does it matter what they say? Who cares?
A canny politician, or first-time candidate, would occasionally resist the cheap shot, not give them the opening, and frame his words a little more carefully. (Note well: I am not saying he should change his positions. I am saying he should frame his arguments a little more carefully, and with a little more thought, and with fewer outbreaks of entertaining verbal diarrhea). Because he would understand that some of the fifty-million or so votes he needs, in addition to those he won in the primaries, will have to come from people who are not acolytes or members of his subculture, and who did not support him before.
In the last few days, I’ve seen several comments, even here on Ricochet, from NeverTrumpers who are wobbling. Then Trump says something daft, and they wobble back.
Trump needs to decide whether the votes of the wobbly NeverTrumpers (and others who haven’t supported him thus far) are necessary to his success. So far, he hasn’t given much indication that he thinks so. Perhaps he believes he can pick up enough votes from disgruntled Sanders supporters to put him over the top. I doubt it.
In general, I dislike arguments that presuppose that people must be arbitrarily divided up. This OP is interesting, and even illuminating in parts, but I think that it just replaces one “in” group (the “Establishment,”) with another (“non-nerds”), and that there’s really nothing new here.
Finally, I like a joke just as well as the next person, and most of the time it doesn’t even have to be dumbed down all that much for me to get it.
And I can’t wait till November to find out what this particular joke is, and who it’s on.
If this were true Trump would not have such huge unfavorable ratings. Unless, of course, the world is only made up of 40% real people.