The journalist George Packer identifies four general segments of the American electorate.
These include the establishment of the two major political parties, as well as the populist wings of those parties.
The establishment of the Democratic Party is embodied in the Clintons.
Politically, the Clintons are outsiders in Washington, D.C., and the Democratic establishment abhors them.
Ideologically, however, the establishment has absorbed the Clinton program of the 1990s.
This new establishment agenda might be described as the libertarian program of deregulated markets, but with substantial social investments.
Above all else, this new liberal elite values EDUCATION.
Thus, Packer refers to the Democratic establishment as “Smart America”.
Like the Clintons, this new “elite” are typically upwardly mobile professionals who owe everything to education — and they want this for everyone.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-packer-four-americas/619012/
The new knowledge economy created a new class of Americans: men and women with college degrees, skilled with symbols and numbers—salaried professionals in information technology, computer engineering, scientific research, design, management consulting, the upper civil service, financial analysis, law, journalism, the arts, higher education. They go to college with one another, intermarry, gravitate to desirable neighborhoods in large metropolitan areas, and do all they can to pass on their advantages to their children. They are not 1 percenters—those are mainly executives and investors—but they dominate the top 10 percent of American incomes, with outsize economic and cultural influence.
(“Primary Colors”, 1998, factory speech)
.https://youtu.be/sgXclrh-TpU.
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The problems is that most people don’t want education.
This was actually the real point of the factory speech in “Primary Colors”.
Although John Travolta’s Clinton personally connected with the audience, his message that “we’re gonna send everybody back to school” left them cold (although it inspired Henry, his snobbish yuppy campaign worker).
Many of them don’t even want basic job training in a formal institutional setting because that is alienating and they would prefer an apprenticeship.
In fact, the rural conservative populists of “Real America” hate education and the elitism that it implies above all else.
Real America is a very old place. The idea that the authentic heart of democracy beats hardest in common people who work with their hands goes back to the 18th century. It was embryonic in the founding creed of equality. “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1787. “The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.” Moral equality was the basis for political equality. As the new republic became a more egalitarian society in the first decades of the 19th century, the democratic creed turned openly populist. Andrew Jackson came to power and governed as champion of “the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers,” the Real Americans of that age. The Democratic Party dominated elections by pinning the charge of aristocratic elitism on the Federalists, and then the Whigs, who learned that they had to campaign on log cabins and hard cider to compete.
The triumph of popular democracy brought an anti-intellectual bias to American politics that never entirely disappeared. Self-government didn’t require any special learning, just the native wisdom of the people. “Even in its earliest days,” Richard Hofstadter wrote, “the egalitarian impulse in America was linked with a distrust for what in its germinal form may be called political specialization and in its later forms expertise.” Hostility to aristocracy widened into a general suspicion of educated sophisticates. The more learned citizens were actually less fit to lead; the best politicians came from the ordinary people and stayed true to them. Making money didn’t violate the spirit of equality, but an air of superior knowledge did, especially when it cloaked special privileges.
In fact, Packer points out how this obsession with education is a crushing burden for the children of liberal urban professionals.
From the earliest age, ordinary kids are being prepped for elite university education.
Imagine a society where every child was being trained to be an Olympic athlete.
First, this does not suit most people.
Second, this raises the level of competition to an impossible standard.
Third, it has a devastating impact on the mental health of young people.
Finally, it hurts society because the elites are high-performing robots with awesome technical skills but little common sense, creativity or insight.
America under the leadership of over-educated elites becomes a hyper-efficient yet sterile society that resembles Apple after the death of Steve Jobs.
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It was not a foregone conclusion that the establishment of the Democratic Party would adopt the ethos of the liberal professional classes.
In fact, Bill Clinton originally ran for president as a typical liberal idealist with a rural populist flavor.
Bill Clinton was running against Paul Tsongas in the 1992 election.
Tsongas was somewhat controversial as a “moderate” Democrat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tsongas#Political_positions
Tsongas was generally viewed as a social liberal and an economic moderate. He was especially known for his efforts in Congress in support of historic preservation and environmental conservation on one hand, and for his pro-business economic policies on the other.
Relative to business and economic matters, Tsongas focused in particular on the Federal budget deficit, a cause he continued to champion even after his presidential primary campaign ended, by co-founding the Concord Coalition.
Tsongas was criticized on occasion by opponents as a Reaganomics-style politician, and as being closer to Republicans with regard to such issues. The Boston Herald editorialized that his political philosophy had “far more in common” with 1990s-era Republican Mitt Romney (who crossed over to vote for Tsongas in the 1992 primaries) than with traditional Massachusetts Democrats like Ted Kennedy.[11] In the mid-1980s, he shocked many of the members of the Americans for Democratic Action by telling them that they should focus more on economic growth than wealth redistribution.
He once quipped, “If anyone thinks the words ‘government’ and ‘efficiency’ belong in the same sentence, we have counselling available.”
Tsongas’s pragmatic message was more popular than the Democratic Party had anticipated.
As in the 2020 election, it turns out that working-class minority voters prefer a moderate over candidates who preach class warfare and identity politics.
To some extent, Clinton’s campaign adopted Tsongas’s agenda.
For example, Clinton’s in-house election slogan “It’s the economy, stupid” is today perceived as typical elite arrogance.
Actually, a proper translation of that phrase might be “Paul Tsongas is correct and we were wrong”.
Paul Tsongas died from cancer in 1985.
Today, most Democrats might not remember Tsongas, but he wrote the computer software on which their platform still runs.
For better or worse, he was the Bugsy Siegel of the post-1990s Democratic Party.
(“The Godfather part 2, 1974, That kid’s name was Mo Green)
.https://youtu.be/VsbyvuO_AqM.
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The reaction by the conservative populists of “Real America” is that the establishment of both political parties are now “globalists” who:
- have more in common with each other than with the ordinary American,
- are cosmopolitan and lack patriotism, and
- do not have “family values” (which are actually community values).
Again, the ethos of the Democratic establishment can be summarized as “libertarian deregulation with social investments” — especially in terms of elite education for their own children.
This focus on elite education for their own children might secretly be the personal philosophy of the Republican establishment.
But there is an even bigger point here.
The point is that “globalist” outlook that characterized both political parties might be found in all the elites of every society now.
However, it is hidden behind all sorts of ideologies.
For example, China is a capitalist society (“state capitalism”) that is reviving all sorts of non-capitalist forms of ideology.
For instance, there has been a revival of socialist orthodoxy — even while traditional Chinese culture is also glorified.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/the-future-of-americas-contest-with-china
Xi believes that orthodox commitment to Communism is paramount as his country fends off Western influence. In a speech in 2013, he asked, “Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse?” His answer: “Their ideals and convictions wavered.” In Beijing, an ideological revival is in flamboyant effect.
.https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3105545/xi-jinping-puts-culture-heritage-heart-his-chinese-dream.
Chinese President Xi Jinping once again spoke of the importance of preserving the nation’s cultural heritage during his tour of the southern province of Guangdong.
There seems to be a full-court press on the part of the Chinese government to stabilize China.
This involves mobilizing ideologies that not only contradict each other, but are also at variance with the actual nature of the society (authoritarian capitalism).
The Chinese leader Xi Jinping has his own contradictions.
On the one hand, he appeals to the desire of the Chinese for prosperity, security, and national pride.
On the other hand, his government has badly botched their response to the Omicron variant — and its reaction has been to brutalize the population.
But under the nationalist, traditionalist, socialist surface of his capitalist authoritarian regime, Xi is very similar to the political establishment of the USA or anywhere.
Xi is fundamentally cosmopolitan, elitist, and urbane when it comes to his own life.
For example, his only child and daughter Xi Mingze is a graduate of Harvard University.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Mingze
Xi enrolled Harvard University in the US in 2010, after a year of undergraduate study at Zhejiang University.[6] She enrolled under a pseudonym,[7][8] and maintained a low profile.[9] In 2014, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology, and has since returned to China.[10] As of 2015, she is living in Beijing.
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In the USA, one also finds this chasm between the populist ideology that has taken hold of the Republic Party and the globalist reality of the GOP.
Here we need to make a distinction between:
- Trumpism and
- Trump.
In fact, we need to make a refined distinction between:
- the psychology of right-wing Trumpist populism and
- the critique by and the policies of the right-wing populist agenda.
The psychology of conservative populism might be described as “tribalism without the tribe”.
It involves a desperate kind of escapism swathed in conspiracy theories.
But much of the right-wing critique of the status quo and many of the policy issues are legitimate.
In particular, the conservative populist critique of “globalist elites” is plausible.
Like the other three factions that Packer identifies, the right-wing populist critique and program are valid to some extent.
For example, the pandemic taught us that countries need strong border control and productive factories to protect us from shortages.
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What we find in Trump is a flawed version of the fabled genius of the American people to elect the right person at the right time.
Trump might have been the wrong person — but at the time he was elected he had a valid agenda for the times.
Something like this was stated by the French ambassador when Trump was elected.
The French ambassador asserted that Trump’s election is not a fluke because it reflected long-term trends that few have understood in their significance.
The old ways of thinking have failed and American elites are clueless about the new reality.
Thus, rational alternative policies have not been created, leaving a vacuum in which Trump’s crude worldview prevails.
Let’s look at the dogma of the previous period. For instance, free trade. It’s over. Trump is doing it in his own way. Brutal, a bit primitive, but in a sense he’s right. What he’s doing with China should have been done, maybe in a different way, but should have been done before. Trump has felt Americans’ fatigue, but [Barack] Obama also did. The role of the United States as a policeman of the world, it’s over. Obama started, Trump really pursued it. You saw it in Ukraine. You are seeing it every day in Syria. People here faint when you discuss NATO, but when he said, “Why should we defend Montenegro?,” it’s a genuine question. I know that people at Brookings or the Atlantic Council will faint again, but really yes, why, why should you?
These are the questions which are being put on the table in a brutal and a bit primitive way by Trump, but they are real questions. Where the shift is going to push us, I really don’t know.
You know on the eighth of November, 2016, at 6 p.m., we were calling the people on the [Hillary] Clinton side, the Trump side. We were calling pollsters, and everybody was telling us, “She’s elected.” And we said, of course, “This guy can’t be elected.” It was so shocking to have Trump elected that basically [Democrats’] conclusion was either the Russians are responsible or she was a very bad candidate.
The case of Trump for me, it’s not so much Donald Trump, it’s not so much a person, but it’s a political phenomenon.
My career had started with the election of [Ronald] Reagan, and my career is finishing with Trump. From Reagan to Trump you have, more or less, the neoliberal era—taxes were bad, borders were bad, and you have to trust the market. It’s also the period of the triumphant West … that the West was in a sense doomed to win. That sooner or later all the world will march triumphantly, to the triumph of the market. And suddenly the election of Trump and the populist wave everywhere in the Western world is for me, and I may be wrong, but for me means that this period is over.
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One obvious problem was that Trump and his family are themselves a self-parody of the worst sort of globalism.
For example, in 2017, the Kushner family marketed luxury apartments to wealthy Chinese as a pathway to US residency.
Donald Trump’s administration is facing new questions about conflicts of interest after Jared Kushner’s family staged events in China to woo wealthy investors into luxury developments, with the prospect of receiving US green cards in return.
Members of the audience of 100 were reportedly told that if they stumped up at least half a million dollars for the project they could become US residents under a controversial cash-for-residency program that is known in China as the “golden visa”.
Unlike Xi and his family, who have almost entirely obscured their own personal globalist orientation, the Trumps were hiding their globalism in plain sight.
Also, Trump did not deliver on his promises.
On the contrary, the only policy that Trump seriously pushed for was securing tax breaks to the business executives of the Republican establishment.
If anything, it has been the pandemic that has revealed the necessity and validity of the pragmatic aspects of the right-wing populist agenda.
For example, the pandemic has helped to bring back factories because the pandemic forced corporations to finally face the fact that supply chains are vulnerable.
Yet this lesson might have been lost on the US government.
The US government seems to have discontinued preparations for future pandemic conditions (for example, domestic production of personal protective equipment).
