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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
Great analysis.
I have found that making fun of new policy analysts, especially those who came directly from campaign staffs, gets them in line quicker than econometric models or white papers.
I’m afraid I don’t find this convincing. In fact, it is a nerdy kind of analysis. The world is just not divided this neatly by a very long stretch. I guess it’s an attempt to explain populism, but populism is just what it seems. It is driven by: Hey, I like that guy, I kinda relate to him, I think he gets me, he’ll do something different. Once the populist voter has decided this, that’s all there is to it. No need to rethink it. For some other voters, it’s driven by anger about perceived, and some real, failings of the people who have been in office for awhile. Just not seeing that dividing the nation into Nerds and Normals is much help here.
There’s a lot to the theory you put out here. I’m not a Trump fan but have found myself getting suckered in on several of these ‘gaffes’ and ‘mistakes’, the most recent being ‘Trump advocating that the Russians hack in to Hillary’s server’. After reading a couple ‘pearl clutching’ articles about it, I actually watched that portion of the press conference. What a nothing burger. It was funny/harmless and is the type of thing that should be stated. She should frankly be in jail from this stunt-I hope the Russians do release any damaging information they may have on her.
I’d like to see more precision from him though on say the ‘Muslim Ban’ – I think he’s gotten better on that answer as the months have gone by but it initially seemed like uninformed bluster.
He needs to ‘tighten things up’ but I have noticed improvement.
I would have never thought of myself as any kind of elite nerd but again, there’s a lot to your theory – everything has become so ‘professionalized’ that Flyover country is simply ignoring much of what the Professional Observers of Politics advocate.
I was going to say something in a similar vein but from a different perspective.
For what we would call the Jack Kemp wing of the Republican Party, Trump came in, beat them up and stole their lunch money. Even when it was clear that Trump was an existential threat to the content and style of their politics, they pretty much took the beating. Maybe people like Paul Ryan and others will hold their positions as legacies, but if they couldn’t fight to defend themselves, I doubt anyone else will trust them to fight on their behalf in the future. This isn’t to say that Trump’s will be the only faction of the Republican party. I think Cruz and Kasich will represent their own factions, however large or small. But the wing represented by Ryan and Rubio can only see its best days in the rear view mirror.
That’s interesting. I’ll admit I was a Cruz guy (mainly due to his willingness to take on the GOP) – curious as to why you think the Ryan & Rubio wings will be in rearview mirror? Immigration?
Can’t agree with this either. Look, nothing happens without ideas. The Reformicons have the best ideas out there, bar none. And they are ideas that deal with the very problems that led to the rise of Trump. Do you really think that we’re now in a world where the shifting sands of Trumpism are going to rule the day? Nothing solid is built on shifting sands. We need some there there. The lack of there becomes very obvious when some there is needed.
I’ve thought this too, but what keeps coming back to me is why do people I find to be intelligent and well-read, either take Trump comments literally and find them beyond the pale, or take them figuratively as the starting point for a discussion on real problems. There is some sort of weird gestalt in how people react to Trump’s remarks. People who probably agree 95% or more on other issues vehemently argue on this.
I don’t think it’s just populism. That doesn’t explain the response to the Russian hacker comments. I am someone who voted for Cruz after he suspended his campaign.
This is a pretty interesting explanation the rise of Trump and the inability of the political and media classes to stop him.
I’m not entirely convinced but it’s better than most such attempts, which largely rest on the perceived bias or lack of apprehension of his voters.
Lack of fight. Even if you have perfect ideas, if you aren’t willing to stand up for them, what’s the point?
I’m not one of those who thought that they could do lots and lots without control of the White House. But I keep getting the sense that they think that taking a stand or making the argument is too indecorous.
Before this election season, I thought Congressional Republicans should put together a popular agenda and force filibusters and vetoes of popular items. The only one they did was the Keystone Pipeline.
And then with Trump, it seems like they pretty much gave up after Rubio looked like he was out. Cruz was still in the race and still had a mathematical shot. #NeverTrump really did have a huge #AlwaysRubio contingent who gave up and went home.
I don’t blame people for not winning. No one wins every fight. But fighting is more than just having the numbers to block cap-and-trade. That’s defense, not offense. A bunch of mannequins with an R on their desks can do that. That is the barest of bare minimums.
If you can’t show people that you will stick your neck out for them, they won’t follow.
Don’t forget that they fought tooth and nail to restore the Ex-Im Bank.
That alone tells you all you need to know about Republican priorities.
No, not completely defenseless, nor completely unable to understand. I speak not only as one of the “Big Bang Theory Nerds” myself, but one who was for a long time pathologically shy – even for a nerd – on top of that. It does not, in fact cut us off from relating to people outside our subculture (assuming we even have a subculture – the nerdiest among us may not even fit well into “nerd subcultures” either – I didn’t). We just have to consciously work at it more than others do.
Dunno if you’ve ever read Paul Graham’s magisterial essay on the topic of nerds – maybe you did and some memory of it even informed your essay.
It is true that if you don’t spend your school years making the popularity game a primary focus, you’re likely to lose out on developing that social “knack” as unthinking habit. But what habit does not supply, thoughtfulness often can. Often not in the exact same way, but if your goal isn’t necessarily status-jockeying, but just treating those outside your in-group well, thoughtfulness will usually do.
I am a nerd and to a large extent I approve of this post.
Welcome back, John. I disagree with you almost entirely, but we’re glad to have you here.
There’s some truth in this, but it also fails to account for even the possibility that some non-nerd might have taken exception with what Trump said or how he presented it.
While it’s absolutely true that Trump not only won the primaries but did so with substantially more votes than anyone ever before, it’s also worth noting that he didn’t get anywhere near a majority. “Regular people” came out in droves to vote for Trump, but even more came out to vote against him.
But another way, most of the Republican electorate saw Trump and chose to go with one of the nerds. Those nerds were — I think this also bears repeating — hardly all of a kind.
No one knows how to take Trump’s comments. If you’ve decided you like him, you don’t even try. If you’re trying to make some sense of him, you are still guessing most of the time. I think the problem you are talking about is not the nerd/normal divide. I think it is that Trump is just a big ‘ol blowhard who gets to try everything out and then say he was joking if it doesn’t work. This article from The Onion pretty much captures it.
http://www.theonion.com/article/trump-sick-and-tired-mainstream-media-always-tryin-53375
I think that there is a discomfort with the idea of the BHAG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Hairy_Audacious_Goal
I aspire to be a nerd, but alas, am not. But as a non-nerd, I just find Trump a big head-scratcher. As in, what the heck is that guy trying to say?
That raises a somewhat different issue, but one relevant to this election season, which is that a large portion of the Republican Congress is not committed to smaller government. For small government folks, that should be an easy one.
In fairness, I think Ryan opposed Ex-Im Bank re-authorization.
Yes. The bifurcation doesn’t work and neither do the terms. Many of the points made are valid, at least in some part. I am suspecting that we are witnessing a process very much influenced by masses using the internet as their information source. This has made TV Broadcast and print media much less influential, and consequently of much lower quality, than in earlier days. Some of the highest quality analysis and opinion originates with new, entrepreneurial sites and leave the old standard sources (and their low quality product) in the dust.
So now, with the internet, everyone lies and everything out there needs to be treated that way until someone’s actual performance can instill some trust.
I thought no one used the word nerd any more since Bill Gates basically destroyed the master of the universe aspirations of big handsome (and often a little dumb, let’s be honest) jocks.
I didn’t read the entire post but if you are not a nerd, you have to be by Breakfast Club rules either a jock (Emilio Estevez in the movie), which Trump most certainly is not, or an angry rebel (Judd Nelson) which Trump is pretending to be, but is not.
Therefore hypothesis fails.
Trump is a vulgarian. The reason that he rose in the politics of this year is that the anger engendered by seven years of the Obama administration and political correctness of the last quarter century has simply reached a boiling point. I don’t believe that the media was ovewhelmed by Trump. I believed in the beginning, as I still believe, that they saw in Trump the one candidate that the presumed Democrat candidate, Hillary Clinton, could beat. His vulgarian, boorish behavior made him an instant headliner. He could be lionized and displayed on front pages on a daily basis while his more serious opponents in his own party faded into deeper and deeper obscurity.
Once his nomination was secured, just as I predicted months ago, the media, with the exception of Breitbart and Foxnews, already heavily marginalized, were the only ones paying any real attention to him. This was anything but a media overawed. They were in full control from the beginning, feeding Trump’s insatiable ego, building up his importance and inevitability with one intent, to drop him like a hot potato once he was in the position they wanted him in. It was all pretty brilliant manipulation of a vulnerable and naîve Republican base. And, of course, in the final analysis the “leaders” of the party fell in behind their mesmerized followers.
I think air quotes would be a good addition to opposed there – I don’t think he used the influence of his office to try and block reauthorization the way he could have – either because he wanted support of the Bank’s backers or just didn’t want to spend political capital eliminating a New Deal agency.
I’ve been trying to explain this phenomenon in my head since the “debates.” Thank you.
I think a factor in why we ended up with Trump is that none of the original sixteen candidates knew how to handle him, how to “best” him. They either kissed up shamefully or walked away.
He wins partly because his flippant remarks catch people by surprise.
I never meant to imply he did. Just because you disagree with the position or don’t support him doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t understand what he is saying. My point is the political and media class didn’t understand what he was saying and responded in completely counter productive ways.
I think you let your dislike of Trump and anger over losing to him make you blind. His followers were not and are not mesmerized. They just appear to be to you because you do not fully understand what he is saying. And that is why your side lost.
People want someone who will fight for their interests. I like the phrase I used in my last comment, so excuse the repetition. They want people who will stick their necks out.
The old saying is true: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
That’s why the absence of fight is so alarming. It hints that a lot of people really don’t care.
You completely misunderstand the post. People in media and politics are as general rule completely uncomfortable in and around average Americans, because they are terrible at picking up the social cues and context necessary to understand what normal Americans say. That is what makes them “nerds”. Indeed, all PC is and why our media and political class took to it, is the elimination from the language of any words that require subtly and emotional adeptness to use in a non offensive manner. Average Americans use Non PC language all of the time. But they have the ability to communicate and understand each other in ways our political and media classes do not.
I believe its more a sub-cultural class differences and good old fashioned tribalism.
Is there nothing it can’t do?