Why would the much-married Donald Trump, billionaire, self-promoter, real-estate developer, and leading figure in the world of flashy entertainment, a man who until recently apparently accepted the views of his class on hot-button political and social issues, suddenly become the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination?
The man’s been successful in a variety of very competitive pursuits, so he’s no dummy. He’s put together large projects in New York City, so he knows something about practical politics and dealing effectively with complex situations in ways that bring difficult people together. And he obviously knows how to get and use publicity, a crucial skill in an age in which spin and image swamp achievement and reputation.
But all that is not enough to explain his sudden rise. The missing piece of the puzzle is the artificiality of public life in the United States. In a land of chain stores, internet memes, pop-culture formulas, and endless consultants, Trump has his own highly charged way of communicating. Whatever the topic, he attracts notice when he speaks...
A ruling class that loses its grip on reality is going to have problems, and so is the society it governs. So the people have an obvious interest in restraining rulers who start acting destructively, and letting them do so is a basic function of popular participation in government. Nonetheless, that function now seems out of reach. Public life has largely been nationalized and internationalized, and discussion has—in spite of sniping and occasional guerilla attacks—been captured and pacified by mainstream scholars, pundits, and journalists. In a mass society with ever weaker family, religious, and communal ties, the educated and ambitious care only for career, so they get along by going along. To do so they have developed the habit of ignoring or denying inconvenient aspects of reality, and they have made that habit a marker of social class and political and moral decency: If you lack it, you’re not the sort of person who should be listened to.
Domination of public life by p.c. elites has thus made it impossible for ordinary people to assert their complaints publicly in an acceptable way, so their objections can easily be shrugged off as the outbursts of ignorant bigots who will, in any event, soon become demographically irrelevant.
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