Trumpism in Historical Perspective (2/2)
This is part two of a series. (part 1)
Future of Trumpism
After inciting the insurrection on 2021–01–06, the mainstream made their voice loud and clear.
Social media including Twitter and Facebook permanently banned Trump’s accounts. Amazon, Google and Apple banned Parler, Trump supporter’s most popular app to share their hatred. Various blue chip companies declared stopping donations to politicians who voted to object the vote certification. Officiers from the Trump administration resigned one after another. Influencers from different backgrounds publicly condemned Trump, his violent supporters and the insurrection.
Of course, Trump still has a significant amount of loyal grassroot supporters. But the holistic picture no doubt suggested a weakening Trump influence, both inside and outside of the GOP. If current dynamics don’t change abruptly, the most plausible future of Trumpism is becoming marginalized and slowly evolving to a group like Ku Klux Klan(KKK).
After leaving the whitehouse, Trump will continue to promote himself and populism ideology as hard as today. Fortunately, they need very unusual external shocks like unprecedented natural disasters or extreme approaches(military coup) to regain power and support from the majority. Trump probably has already turned every stone, in the process, effectively stress tested the US democracy infrastructure and to some extent, the resilience of the society.
While Trump lied most of the time, his statement about MAGA being just the beginning is truthful. Not only he will carry on himself, I will be surprised if Donald Trump is the last such extremist leaders(far right or far left) who
- capitalize on the widening wealth gap
- disregard any rules, laws and moral standards
Trump served as a success example and tested the limits for them. They will learn from Trump’s lessons and go further. As long as the wealth gap in the US is as large or keeps widening, they will eventually succeed in destroying democracy and becoming powerful autocrats.
Most sociological predictions into the future, even from most learned experts will be proved wrong. However, I will summarize my prediction and check back after 5 to 10 years, just for reference.
- Trump will keep promoting his populism ideology and fighting the establishment as hard as year 2020
- Trumpism will lose popularity and gradually become marginalized
- More far right populism leaders similar to Trump, likely more powerful and dangerous, will rise to power
For the history of the GOP’s sliding from conservative right to populist, refer to Where Trump Came From — and Where Trumpism Is Going.
How to fight against Trumpism
Close wealth gap by strong economic growth
As I mentioned in part 1 of this series, the fundamental power of Trumpism is the widening wealth gap. Looking back to 2000 years in human history, the wealth gap in each country repeats in a clear cycle: peace -> order and prosperity -> wealth gap -> war -> peace. So war is the only solution in the long run.
WWI and WWII dramatically reduced the wealth gap between the top 10% population and the top 50%. Though the bottom 50% still owns almost nothing. After WWII, the wealth gap, though big today, grows much slower than in history. The main reason is the wealth growth driven by population growth and technology. Trumpism aside, one of the biggest threats faced by everyone today is the race between economic growth(g) and wealth accumulation speed(r). (refer to Capital in 21 century for detailed reasoning) Through history, real investment return(r) is steadily 4~5%. g has been below 2% globally for decades and is trending lower. In most of human history before technology revolution, g is almost zero, which explains the high frequency of wars that are inevitable to close unbearable wealth gaps.
If g continues to lag behind r, Trumpism or other extremists will be unstoppable and we will have a very destructive war. While it’s not sure if nuclear weapons will be used, many believe it will be more deadly than WWII because there are many weapons of mass destruction developed in secret.
So it’s clear that the best way to stop Trumpism or all populism is economic growth. The government needs to radically invest in education and infrastructure which are proven to be the two best investments for long term economic growth.
Reduce Trump’s influence in social media
All populists figured out a way to promote their extremist ideology before the Internet age. So while most Internet companies, even Snapchat, banned Trump from their platform and it’s the right thing to do, it won’t be sufficient in the long run. In the near future, those blows, especially Twitter’s ban, will definitely be effective and will contain the damage to a large extent.
Unlike the GOP, few legal media will tolerate Trump. Some small social media apps may choose to accommodate Trumpism to grow user traffic, but Parler’s example made it clear that such a strategy is likely a fast track to death.
Ideology with tens of millions of support can’t cease to exist overnight, but they can be marginalized gradually. In the end, It’s a race between the speed of marginalization and his speed continuing to capitalize on the wealth gap. Regardless of the technology, all populism leaders in history found ways to idolize themselves very successfully, as long as there’s a big enough wealth gap to power it.
All in all, I still advocate everyone to unfollow Trump(when possible) and to report hate speeches on all social media. Temporary mitigation sometimes is as valuable as a long term fix, the whole universe will be in a dead heat state in the long run anyway.
Donald Trump’s unyielding power
Donald Trump shared a trait with most consequential leaders: he is future oriented. Instead of starting with what’s possible from history, he envisioned a future he likes and pave the way from the present to his vision. He leaves no stone unturned in this process. This is an extremely powerful mindset and usually leads to mind-blowing consequences when combined with the right ingredients. Since he is not bounded by reality or history, some of his behavior will be deemed stupid. Suggesting disinfectant injection as a cure of Covid-19 is one such example.
This same mindset also lead him to try every imaginable way to overturn the November 3rd election:
- plain recounts
- pressuring officials in every certification process
- filing countless seemly long shot lawsuits
- pressuring Mike Pence to go rogue on ceremonial certification
- promoting conspiracy theories to mobilize ill-informed supporters
- threatening GOP politicians with his influence on conservative voters
I’m 100% sure he also considered influencing military officials, mobilizing national guards for coup, threatening with nuclear buttons and other outrageous approaches. They are not adopted because of being infeasible. For example, Nancy Pelosi found out that the President can’t unilaterally launch a nuclear bomb. General can resist his order if deemed as illegal. Also, the several joint statements from military chiefs and retired defense secretaries are possibly responses to Trump’s attempt to influence the armed force. This mindset is Trump’s most dangerous power in my mind: he will keep on trying until succeed, unyielding to any setbacks, moral or legal norms.
Fortunately, Trump does lack key ingredients to successfully defeat democracy at this point.
Foremost, the design of US political systems is proved to be resilient. It turns out a sitting president doesn’t have the power to break it under today’s political landscape.
Secondly, the shrinking moderate class is still too big to be overwhelmed by his right populist voter base. This is further proven by David Perdue’s defeat in GA’s Senate runoff. He was in a 49.73% to 47.95% lead in November’s general election and ended up losing 49.4% to 50.6% in the following runoff in January. It’s hard to believe he is not significantly affected by Trump’s behavior post election. The moderate voters have made their choice.
Thirdly, Trump behaved like a far right populist, but he didn’t really have such ideology. His priority is self-promoting. In nature, he is an overgrown Internet celebrity disguised as a political strongman to pursue his own agenda. “Trumpism cannot be declared a ‘success’ or a ‘failure’ because it did not exist. The administration, which neither emerged from nor erected institutional infrastructure or an intellectual framework, lacked both overarching vision and an integrated policy agenda.”
Last by not least, COVID-19 crisis exposed it to the public the Trump administration’s incapability of governing. This fact should be apparent from examining his history managing his own business, but most people simply don’t read. All Trump’s business run in this pattern:
It’s amazing how similarly Trump ran his Taj Mahal casino and the United States government.
I don’t want to list Trump’s flaws here in case he or the next extremist leaders will take advantage of the insights. Truth be told I think Trump’s tactics are mostly sound and optimal. He has maximized his realization of his goal given the resources he had.
