Davies discusses the success of the billionaire turned politician.
Last week I wrote about the major players in the upcoming election, and I got some flack for snubbing a certain Donald Trump. I did this because he deserved snubbing. I’ll explain why. Like his gold-plated monstrosity in the Las Vegas Strip, we've witnessed his gaudy, meteoric rise during the past few weeks, and though his policies make little sense, his rise and status as a protest vote says much. It seems the nature of politics in the country has caused such a backlash as to facilitate the rise of such a … strong personality.
Let’s start with what Trump actually stands for. To begin, he believes that climate change “is a total and very expensive hoax” and that millions of people are flooding into the United States. His views on climate change are the complete opposite of the established scientific consensus and his solution to his made up immigration crisis is simple: He’ll build a giant wall. When he’s not keeping imaginary barbarians at the gate and denying the existence of a gigantic national security risk, Trump likes to oppose free trade with Asia and support traditional marriage. Now, supporting traditional marriage is not in itself particularly troublesome for a Republican candidate, but there’s nothing traditional about being married three times.
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Trump also believes that the Federal Reserve's monetary policy is going to cause massive inflation, despite the fact that the inflation rate has been below the Fed’s target for the last seven years — some argue that it needs to be raised. If this is not enough to convince you of Donald’s utter unsuitability for the presidency, he believes that the best way to defeat the Islamic State is to bomb Iraq’s oil fields, and he has bankrupted four companies.
So why is someone who seems so objectively unsuited for the responsibilities of the U.S. presidency so popular? I believe the answer lies, not in Trump’s own policies or personality, but rather with the opposition.
In the last year, we have seen the rise of hashtag activism, large-scale mass protest movements and other political movements that utilize a post-modernist form of cultural criticism. These groups practice a form of political dialogue that is meant to examine cultural assumptions in a critical light, but often — due to a misunderstanding of the academic theories used or because of high emotions — they end up attacking the people holding those assumptions.
The rather militant (not to mention often impenetrable to the uninitiated) language and methods of such activists often make people feel defensive and threatened by the ideas expressed by them as a whole. They feel that the foundations of their society are under threat.
There are some historical cases when people used similar methods, two come to mind — the Catholic Emancipation in the early 19th century United Kingdom and the more militant side of the ‘60s counterculture. In both these cases people reacted by electing the extreme opposite of the activist position, not out of agreement for policies per se, but because they provided a sense of psychological security. They did this by affirming their beliefs about their society in an extreme fashion. Both the Ultra-Tories in the British case and Barry Goldwater in the U.S. case emphasized a reactionary philosophy that was the polar opposite of the activist movements of the day.
To put it bluntly, when people feel the foundations of their society are being swept asunder, they vote, not for the reasoned opponent, but for the person who is doing the equivalent of riding on a farm animal after drinking a fifth of vodka with two middle fingers up to everything the threatening group stands for. If we want to avoid threatening people in such a way, we need to remember that our civil society is built on the concept of debate and engagement, and we must remember that any idea looks like threatening dogma when its ability to be challenged and debated is removed. Remember, because Trump, unlike the others, has a good chance of winning.
Jack Davies is a sophomore studying philosophy. What do you think of Donald Trump’s presidential run? Email him at jd814213@ohio.edu.
