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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Who Are the Barbarians?

Trump, that Atlantic City Alaric? Or the open-borders, globalist, socially liberal Republican Establishment?
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Peggy Noonan looks into the political crystal ball, and is not encouraged:

We could see a great party split in two. That, I think, is what I’m seeing among the Republicans, a slow-motion break. The question is whether it will play out over the next few cycles or turn abrupt and fiery in this one. Some in Washington speak giddily of the prospect, wondering aloud if the new party’s logo should be a lion or a gazelle. But America’s two-party system has reigned almost since its beginning, and it has kept us from much woe. It has provided stability, reliability and, yes, progress. The breaking or splintering of one of those parties would be an epochal event. Ross Perot in the 1990s was a one-off; the party soon enough healed back into one. Mr. Trump may be a one-off, but the divisions he’s revealed—on how on-the-ground and unprotected people feel about illegal immigration, on the deeper and more dangerous implications of political correctness, on a host of economic and cultural issues—will not, I suspect, be resolved so easily.

If the GOP breaks it will be bitter. The establishment thinks they are saving the party from the vandals—from Trumpian know-nothingism. But Republicans on the ground think those in the establishment were the vandals, with their open borders, donor-class interests and social liberalism.

The distance between the top of the party and the bottom has been growing for years, at least since 2008. The bonds between the two have stretched and stretched, and this year they began to snap. That’s the story of the year, that the snapping became obvious. Mr. Trump and the Trumps of the future are the result, not the cause. The establishment does not see this. They think it’s about him. It’s about them.

If Donald Trump is the strong form of right-wing populism, I’m not sure what strong form it would take on the left. Damon Linker points out an essential truth about Trumpism:

When Frum and Galston and Obama and Sanders suggest that Trump’s success is fueled by the economic decline of the white working class, I find myself nodding along. But it’s important to realize that Trump’s supporters don’t appear to see it that way — or at least not so straightforwardly.

Yes, they seem drawn to Trump because of his hyperbolic talk of a national crisis that has left the American dream “dead.” But there is no evidence at all that they think the proper response is to propose some additional child tax credits and new regulatory tweaks.

Yes, but it’s also true that the culture that made sense to them has frayed, and has been frayed by the same economic forces that Damon et alia identify. It is true that a mob will always be looking for a scapegoat to avoid having to examine its own faults that led to its fate, and that is partly what’s happening here. But I disagree with Damon that the Trump supporters’ cultural populism is nothing more than a manifestation of false consciousness. Seems to me that far too many analysts err in believing that everything is about material concerns, deep down. As has been pointed out before, one reason so many in the white working class are the strongest exponents of religious conservatism, despite the moral chaos of their own lives, could well be that they are all too aware of how terrifying life is when you are poor or struggling, and you are unbuffered by cultural structures that make sense of your life.

Anyway, what would left-wing cultural populism look like in America, if it became a thing? I think #BlackLivesMatter is something like it, though that movement is not nearly as strong among Democrats as Trumpism, whatever that is, among Republicans. This came up so fast among Republicans, this Trump movement, that if I were a Democratic Party insider, I would not rest easy knowing that my party’s fortunes depended on a machine politician like Hillary as president. On the other hand, the popular culture is so heavily defined by left-wing culture that it’s hard to imagine any kind of natural cultural opposition to the Establishment’s view arising on the left.

Whoever is elected president this year has to govern a country under a lot of strain. I have a jaundiced view, and will always find the dark cloud within the silver lining, but still, I find it hard to imagine either Hillary or any Republican, with the possible exception of Marco Rubio, being the kind of president that unites people, even nominally.

UPDATE: Rusty Reno articulates very well the source of much right-wing populism: the “diversity” sham as a veneer for elites to justify their mode of rule. Excerpts:

“Diversity” is one of the pillars supporting the legitimacy of our ruling class. (The other is technocratic competence or “merit.”) In our present situation, the President of Yale justifies his power by appealing to his competence—and to his commitment to “diversity.” The same goes for CEOs of major corporations, heads of major philanthropies, and most political leaders. “Diversity” serves to block accusations that the control of power (and wealth) is an inside game that favors insiders. No, says the ideology of “inclusion,” we hold power, yes, but we do so with a self-sacrificial commitment to use it to empower others.

Moreover, “diversity” is also a bludgeon with which to beat up on any challengers to today’s elite. Republicans? They’re the “white party,” which is another way of saying a party of prejudiced, racist xenophobes. To lack “diversity” disqualifies one automatically. This is a very handy tool with which to dismiss competition for power, especially when you can define “diversity” as you wish, which is what our establishment does.

More:

Populism Left and Right, here and in Europe, senses that multiculturalism serves as an ideology to justify the transformation of American, French, or German elites into global elites. And they’re rebelling, rightly to my mind. Ordinary people rightly see that they’ll be sold out if that’s what needed to promote whatever form of global “diversity” the One Percent sees as necessary to buttress its right to rule.

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