Trump Knows Something You Don't

Why this uncouth, unfit for leadership, sleazy casino magnate is at the cutting edge of politics.

If you are still mystified about the rise of Trump, this is the article you need to read.

His critics dismiss him too glibly. But the fact that such a strange man like Donald Trump has so much popularity tells us something is shifting in the world.

And that shift comes as a result of a seismic aftershock to globalisation.

Globalisation is the process by which the world's economies and cultures have become interlocked and inter-connected.

Two examples help us to understand it:

1. Money lenders in the US take gambles on risky mortagages and crash their economy. Here in South Africa people somehow lose their jobs as a result as demand is sucked up worldwide.

2. I remember travelling to Malawi a decade ago. Even in its quietest corners, I came across young children wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the images of American rappers.

The great hope after the end of the Cold War and the fall of Communism was this idea of a new global village, where democracy and free trade inspires a free and prosperous world, progressing under the auspices of a Pax Americana.

What was ignored in this is that humans are not really globalised creatures.

Yes, we enjoy getting cheap stuff made from around the world, but we also quite like the idea of our towns having their own stable industries, with steady jobs, living with people with whom we have a shared history, culture and traditions.

The problem is globalisation blew this all away.

Manufacturing jobs went East; we all started watching the Kardashians; eating McDonalds; and our cities and towns became more and more cosmopolitan.

Yes, lots of people in poor countries suddenly got factory jobs, and yes, consumer goods became a lot cheaper.

But the free movement of capital around the world equally made true Marx's famous observations about the nature of capitalism - everything gets commodified (think "Christmas in July"), and people end up doing jobs that mean nothing to them (the alienation of labour - think putting a cheap toy together in China).

And so towns in the West lost their old blue collar manufacturing jobs (think almost every Bruce Springsteen song), their sense of culture, and their social cohesion.

Throw in an unprecedented increase of immigration into the mix; a Great Recession; a terroristic pushback from radical Islam; stupid wars in the Middle East; and you have a basic picture of where we are at right now.

In the US, the results for lower to middle class whites have been horrific - and it has received very little media coverage. Painkiller addiction, alcoholism, and suicide rates have gone through the roof for such people. Take a look at this important study on the subject.

And these people have had no political voice, and no real leadership. (They still don't, even with, or especially with Trump now being their public voice.)

The Bushes led them into terrible wars and cut taxes for the wealthy. Obama mocked them by saying they have nothing to cling to but "guns and religion", and in general the corporatization of daily life continued, with profits for Wall Street firms soaring even after the Recession.

Enter Trump.

He tells these people he will get rid of the illegal immigrants, stop stupid wars, and look after them. Perhaps most importantly, Trump shatters the typical standards of political correctness. Nothing he says has gone through consultant and polling tests. His very mistakes and offensiveness become assets in a society in which politicians are, perhaps rightly, hated.

In the Republican Party, he subsequently blows all his rivals out of the water.

Now we can criticize Trump the man ad nauseam, but we must recognize he is a symptom, not really a cause, of a real crisis.

JD Vance, author of a book about this crisis, "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis", explains why these social fractures have created an opportunity for Trump, in an interview he gave to American blogger, Rod Dreher.

"These people–my people–are really struggling, and there hasn’t been a single political candidate who speaks to those struggles in a long time. Donald Trump at least tries.

"What many don’t understand is how truly desperate these places are [white, working class America], and we’re not talking about small enclaves or a few towns–we’re talking about multiple states where a significant chunk of the white working class struggles to get by. Heroin addiction is rampant. In my medium-sized Ohio county last year, deaths from drug addiction outnumbered deaths from natural causes.

"The average kid will live in multiple homes over the course of her life, experience a constant cycle of growing close to a “stepdad” only to see him walk out on the family, know multiple drug users personally, maybe live in a foster home for a bit (or at least in the home of an unofficial foster like an aunt or grandparent), watch friends and family get arrested, and on and on. And on top of that is the economic struggle, from the factories shuttering their doors to the Main Streets with nothing but cash-for-gold stores and pawn shops.

More:

"The two political parties have offered essentially nothing to these people for a few decades. From the Left, they get some smug condescension, an exasperation that the white working class votes against their economic interests because of social issues. Maybe they get a few handouts, but many don’t want handouts to begin with.

"From the Right, they’ve gotten the basic Republican policy platform of tax cuts, free trade, deregulation, and paeans to the noble businessman and economic growth. Whatever the merits of better tax policy and growth (and I believe there are many), the simple fact is that these policies have done little to address a very real social crisis. More importantly, these policies are culturally tone deaf: nobody from southern Ohio wants to hear about the nobility of the factory owner who just fired their brother."

This is where, according to Vance, Trump fits in:

"Trump’s candidacy is music to their ears. He criticizes the factories shipping jobs overseas. His apocalyptic tone matches their lived experiences on the ground. He seems to love to annoy the elites, which is something a lot of people wish they could do but can’t because they lack a platform.

"The last point I’ll make about Trump is this: these people, his voters, are proud. A big chunk of the white working class has deep roots in Appalachia, and the Scots-Irish honor culture is alive and well. We were taught to raise our fists to anyone who insulted our mother. I probably got in a half dozen fights when I was six years old. Unsurprisingly, southern, rural whites enlist in the military at a disproportionate rate. Can you imagine the humiliation these people feel at the successive failures of Bush/Obama foreign policy? My military service is the thing I’m most proud of, but when I think of everything happening in the Middle East, I can’t help but tell myself: I wish we would have achieved some sort of lasting victory. No one touched that subject before Trump, especially not in the Republican Party."

So when Trump says he will Make America Great Again, when he complains that "America never wins anymore", and when he makes these statements in such a way as to annoy the media, and the educated classes, his base of support, out of some desperation, cheers him on.

That is why, despite the polls currently showing an easy Clinton win, Trump could still pull this election out of the bag. It is important to note he has not yet spent any of his own money on political advertising, and there has not yet been a debate.

Equally, Clinton is part of that same Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama nexus that saw Wall Street do well, ever increasing foreign wars, and nothing really offered to the people struggling with the fall-out from globalisation.

Trump recently made a pitch for black voters too, saying, "You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed -- what the hell do you have to lose?"

No other candidate has ever spoken like this.

And for people who want to blow up the system, such words carry a lot of resonance. Trump is an outlet for a whole world that has lost all its institutions, which used to mediate these frustrations.

Look, Hillary is still likely to win, and the creaky American status quo will likely continue. (It must be remembered by all Trump critics, that Hillary does not really provide a strong contrast in this election - the choice between her and Trump in power is not nearly obvious enough.)

But like a leaking pipe, the reason for Trump's support is not going to just disappear.

It may be time for citizens all over the world to question the basic assumptions we have used in running our global economy and sustaining our culture, so that struggling people don't feel like they have nothing to lose in putting a Trump in power.

We need hometowns again, and steady, valuable jobs, and neighbourhoods, and healthy families, and more peace, and a greater sense of hope.

Without these things, politics around the world is just going to get a lot uglier as more and more voters come to believe that the old politicians are more of a joke than an orange reality TV star.