American Carnage: Political Culture in the Age of Trump
Introduction
Aside nowadays from attitudes toward guns, immigration, and abortion, conservatives don't really disagree with liberals about much. Public opinion surveys obscure this fact. That is, when abstract ideological principles are invoked without context, for instance when people are questioned about the role of government in 'the economy,' ideological polarization is apparent and growing. With regard to specific government programs that guarantee a minimal standard of living or provide for greater economic opportunity for the working poor, however, conservatives tend to become liberals. In fact, like the majority of the population, the standard conservative is in substantive agreement with the left wing of the Democratic Party especially on the role of government in ensuring progress toward a fair and just society. The dominant notion of a social contract in American society remains essentially something like the New Deal. In addition, the general historical trends of liberalization of attitudes toward cultural issues (with the abovementioned exceptions), and of tolerance toward dissimilar others, continues despite various incarnations of reactionary right-wing populism – the Moral Majority, the Tea Party, the alt-right, etc.
The contradiction between an increasingly liberal society and the increase of conservative self-labeling (which surpassed every other category in 2008), and between the popularity of the New Deal and the rightward turn of the established political parties, would be glaring if not for the fact that public opinion research locks people into a narrow range of choices that mirror debates among competing political elites. The few surveys that have provided the option of rejecting capitalism altogether have produced interesting results; that is, a third of the population prefers socialism when given the option. Political commentators of the liberal left and conservative right have repeatedly made the point that most of respondents don't know much of anything about socialism when they say they prefer it. And yet, the same public generally does not seem to know much about real, existing, capitalism; and it doesn’t seem to care much about the ideologies that support it – i.e., there are mostly symbolic conservatives and symbolic liberals rather than believers (Stimson 2004). This discovery in the literature of public opinion dates back to the 1960s, when ideological conflict in American society could be understood as less dishonest. Converse (1964), for instance, discovered that when people labeled themselves socialist, mostly they were talking about the promises of liberal pragmatism, like greater equality and the need for government programs that 'help the little guy' rather than the wealthy. In the same set of surveys, he found that answers to issue-based questions were mostly missing any 'general' or 'ideological' principles to bind them; thus, answers appeared nearly random. Only 1/7th of the population was deemed ideologically consistent. In recent surveys (Stimson), it appears that the standard symbolic conservative is twice more likely than the symbolic liberal to be ideologically inconsistent.
Obama and the Failure of Liberal Pragmatism
In 2008 there was a rare opportunity to mobilize public support for the transformation of American political economy toward something more consistent with the political value system and tangible self-interest of the greater portion of the American public. The disillusionment with the established political system for, among other things, failing to protect society from the same class of people that Roosevelt labeled economic royalists, made the historical alternatives to capitalism suddenly appear integral to any pragmatic solution. The New Deal was a pragmatic endeavor toward offsetting the immanent collapse of the capitalist system, and toward offsetting the need for an alternative system; even while it left power in the hands of the same people that caused the economic crisis, as John Dewey argued at the time (Morris and Shapiro 1993). The pragmatism of Obama was developed around the need for compromise with the right. The socialist left was not a force to worry about. The liberal left was already coopted. Obama could do no wrong by liberals.
Obama was a better pragmatist than Roosevelt around the topic of diversity. That is, Obama aligned the idea of diversity with American ‘tradition,’ and maintained that there was no particular adversity that needed resolution, but only a need for greater progress. Obama produced an ongoing synthesis of liberal and conservative political values within compelling narratives about the struggles and dreams of real people – including himself. For instance, when he was forced to defend himself against accusations that he was a socialist and a race baiter, he talked about who ‘we’ are as a people. Obama glorified American society by highlighting the fact that in most Western countries there would be no possibility of someone like him, with ‘the blood of slaves’ in his veins, running for president. Even conservative pundits seemed impressed by the rhetoric candidate Obama, since his notion of progress was consistent with their own argument that whatever bad things (like racial oppression) have existed in American society, they are in the past or getting better.
Obama developed the same line of reasoning in his inaugural address, where the political values of Americans across the liberal and conservative divide were cast as pragmatic values that were therefore not mutually exclusive. Their realization involved nothing in the way of systemic change except for the collective need to make difficult decisions involving planning for the future, without blame; and thereby choosing to hope over anger and fear. In the midst of the worst economic collapse since the 1930s, where ‘homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered,’ Obama blamed exactly nobody except ‘the greed and irresponsibility of some.’ He promised good government. This equated with ‘more roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together,’ restoration of ‘science to its rightful place,’ raising ‘health care’s quality’ and lower cost, and transforming ‘our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.’ The people who celebrated his victory, according to Obama, had already chosen hope. Eight years later, in his inaugural address, Trump would affirm every fear short of the apocalypse. The country, he argued, had lost its greatness. Its schools had become practically worthless. Its inner-cities had become too dangerous for people even to walk across the street. Its military had been degraded. Unlike Obama, who claimed that ‘we the people have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears and true to our founding documents,’ Trump gave clear purpose to his audiences: 'total allegiance to the United States.'
Trump understood that American society had not chosen against fear. While inequality grew and opportunity slipped away from millions of people, and while millions failed to recover from the near collapse of the global capitalist economy in 2008, fear of the loss of security, honor, and dreams, had produced an angry populist mood. Trump proved uniquely deft in his ability to reconcile it with traditional and mainstream conservative ideological narrative – including for instance with regard to notions of fair competition, with the caveat that the entire global capitalist system was rigged. The idea that we needed to start winning again did not mean that we needed to become more competitive, or that we needed to make markets more efficient, or any other recognizably conservative argument. There is not even the traditional right-wing populist fantasy of restoring American society to some historical version of itself, for instance the 1950s, when the middle-class was booming; or a nostalgia for community life unburdened by the demands of consumer society or global capitalism or any other source of disintegration. Trump’s version does not bother with nostalgia. Yet, the slogan ‘make America great again’ insinuated some capitalist utopia of the past, while statements about Muslims and immigrants, and retweets of alt-right xenophobic propaganda, made clear enough the color of the utopia. The narrative of lost greatness, not surprisingly, resonated with the standard conservative as well as the alt-right network – comprised of traditional hate groups, like the KKK, as well as by neo- Nazi media like Daily Stormer, Occidental Observer, American Renaissance, The Daily Stormer and Stormfront -- all of which endorsed Trump (Mother Jones10/29/17).
This network claims credit for Trump’s victory and maintains loyalty to him. The traditional and standard right-wing media, punditry, and politicians have been confronted with the choice of getting on board at the risk of being discredited by any turn of events that re-stigmatizes the alt-right and everybody that made common cause with it. Leading conservative voices, like Weekly Standard contributors William Kristol, David Frum and Max Boot, and Washington Post contributors like Charles Krauthammer, George Will, and Michael Gerson, have refused. Ann Coulter and others have not. The editors of the Wall Street Journal have apparently hedged their bets. The Republican Party establishment refused initially, with anybody but Trump, then fell in line. Its fortunes are now bound up with the prospect of an irreversible event or, at least, a long duration – a Trump revolution akin to the Reagan Revolution. Alt-right movement leaders, like Spenser and Taylor, are not hedging bets. They are no longer hiding in plain sight; they are public intellectuals with a following that includes types of people that were until recently standard conservative Republicans.
Symbolic Ideology and Political Values
The resemblance between the traditional right and the alt-right forces the question of the distinction between real and symbolic ideology, and between ideological and political polarization. Traditional symbolic conservatives and the alt-right differ primarily around the question of political values. Whereas the standard conservative affirms in principle that all people should be treated equally, alt-right ‘theorists’ assert that people are inherently unequal. There is no need to goad the members of the alt-right into making a racist statement or affirming a racist sentiment, for instance by asking whether they think black people are less committed to work (i.e. the traditional methods of researchers for discovering hidden racism). There is nothing hidden. Nor is there any need to determine what policies are perceived as fair by the alt-right — the answer is that fairness is not a value that matters over the value of defending white-European culture and the purity of middle-America against enemies. As Jason Reza Jorgani and Richard Spencer, founders of the Alt-Right Corporation, proclaim, whiteness is not a value (Singal 2017). The appeal of the alt-right movement to the standard ideological conservative is therefore limited. The possibility of fusing symbolic ideology with the identity politics of the alt-right depends on whether overt bigotry can be justified as an exception to conservative ideology in the same way that liberals justify intolerance — on a case-by-case basis.
Furthermore, there is reason to believe that polarization around economic issues is less significant than what appears to be the case through public opinion research. That is to say, if self-labeled liberals and self-labeled conservatives disagree more in recent decades about ‘the role of government in the economy,’ along with immigration, guns and abortion, there is reason to think that they are doing something other than merely agreeing and disagreeing – i.e. they are aligning themselves with particular narratives and visions of American society where some groups may legitimately claim entitlements over others, and where some groups deserve to be treated more fairly and others held suspect for unfair advantage. They are purposively talking past each other. Public opinion research generally assumes as much. That is to say, it generally assumes a high degree of insincerity when Americans answer questions about cultural issues; and a high degree of uninformed, merely impressionistic, responses to questions about fiscal policies and foreign affairs. And yet the standard public-opinion survey provides low-information questions without relevant context, and limits the range of options to what is already the established debate among competing political elites. The claim, then, that the American public is inconsistently ideological not only misconstrues a research artifact as fact but, also, misses the relevant point. Both ideological mystification and the ideological legitimation of self-serving opinions and behaviors, may be seen everywhere; but they elude the methods of public opinion research. (They do not elude the methods of political demagoguery, where they serve as resources.)
Qualitative formats normally reveal greater ideological consistency as well as openness to counterargument than what appears in surveys. The public-opinion survey is inimical to the idea of dialogue, which is how people normally express themselves. Occasionally what is produced instead is an augmentation of the format with the inclusion of 'why' questions. Answers, in turn, are invariably circular in the form of ‘because’ statements (Ajzen and Fishbein 1980). In other words, people say they believe something because of some reason which can only serve to justify the original answer in a language deemed socially appropriate. The question that is forced by the same means is what may be deemed socially appropriate, under what circumstances. For instance, the progress in race relations that appears in comparative historical perspective in the public opinion literature, i.e. the same not-yet-perfect progress that Obama claimed as a fact, is less secure than what might be surmised if any current attitude surveys are taken at face value. But the historical trend is real. In another way of saying the same thing, American society is significantly more racist than what public opinion researchers and conservative pundits acknowledge about it. But it is also significantly less racist than it was during the golden age of the conservative imagination – the 1950s. To talk about ‘opinion’ or ‘attitude’ in abstract, in this way, is however meaningless. What matters is that sweeping change of social conditions and circumstances has diminished the opportunities for the expression of racism without incurring social stigma -- i.e. there is no longer the same availability of context. At the same time, receptivity to racist argument produces context, for instance, in social media networks. The problem is not emergent or salient racism, but instead the following: the greater the normalization of bigotry and noxious politics, the easier for people to find exception to normative political values.
The problem in this regard is not that there is reason for people to lie, since all the so-called political values are normative, but that questions about values are posed by opinion researchers in abstract, while people answer with images, themes, arguments, and frames of reference in their head. As a rule, the less they are politically aware and informed, the more that people respond impressionistically (Zaller 1992), where any random, episodic, news events that appear on CNN become a source, or any ubiquitous or constant source of propaganda like FOX News becomes a frame of reference. The difference between the traditional right-wing media like FOX and the alt-right network around the question of political values, is that the former proclaims affinity to ideologically neutral political values, like fairness, then proclaims them a property of the right and attaches them to narratives that justify opinions and actions that are inconsistent with the so-called values; whereas alt-right media figures like Alex Jones and theorists like Spencer, assert the conclusion ahead of time and mock the conservative apologist for diversion. Insult and mockery are not only effective tools of political propaganda (in the absence of strong cultural proscriptions in support of the idea of civic discord as something necessarily civil), but also as a method of asserting greater honesty against opponents who are playing a game. As Taibbi (2016) argued, Trump appeared more honest to many people from start, even while journalists were kept busy trying to expose lie after lie, and while psychologists were trying to figure out what makes him lie incessantly even about trivial matters, because he was refusing to play the game whereby polite contrast in forms of lip-service to abstract, ideological, values, belies the fact that politicians are beholden to the interests of their donors.) Trump spoke to the self-righteousness of the alt-right and the hypocrisy of the standard conservative. The commitment to fairness, in the Trump narrative, was naïve against competitors and enemies who were treacherous and sneaky. The U.S. had apparently become poorer and more dangerous as a result. It produced carnage. The receptivity to this argument was already there.
That is to say, the standard traditional conservative embraces an ideology for the purposes of self-labeling and the assertion of claims that are consistent with identity politics, while otherwise not worrying about ideology. Within the framework of white working-class identity politics that sprang from conservative backlash to civil rights in the Nixon years (i.e. the silent majority), the dominant claim was that society was already fair, and that people who thought otherwise were misfits or socialist agitators or sympathizers. During the Reagan Revolution, another argument became prominent, namely that minority groups have already gained unfair advantage over majority groups. Political analysis that engages the literature of public opinion typically concludes that the majority is not (only) hiding racism but instead harboring notions of ‘fairness’ that are ill-informed and at least in part ideological — i.e., where equality of opportunity is deemed fair, but equality of results is not, and where exceptions are constantly made for people who are too young or old to work, or who, through no fault of their own, are incapable of taking care of themselves (Sniderman and Carmines 1997). The pragmatic solution appears thereby at hand, namely that programs that ‘seem fair’ have a greater chance of selling. This is also the current logic of the Democratic Party. Its sales pitch is the need for universality around programs that turn out to be less than that – like the Affordable Care Act. The problem then becomes that there are salespeople on all sides. The opposition to any concept of universal healthcare, for instance, maintains that it is inherently unfair to healthy people and young people; not that the rich should be allowed to refuse to subsidize the healthcare of other people. In this regard, there is a clear distinction between the extremely reactionary conservatism of late, including of the Tea Party, and the politics of the alt-right. In the latter, commitment to one's own race and identity group are proclaimed more important than commitment to notions of fairness – as well as individualism, choice, competition, etc. Several of the spokespeople and theorists of the alt-right have expressed support for the idea of universal healthcare for people like them, while others see national healthcare as an ultranationalist position (Minkowitz, 2017).
Trump straddles these worlds with apparent ironic detachment. His comments about free/ universal health care didn’t bother the alt-right; while the more traditional conservative faction of his voting base, including the Tea Party, have had reason to not believe him. Trump had already proclaimed loyalty to Reagan and Reaganomics throughout the electoral cycle. The appeal of Trump to the traditional conservative (who is concerned with redistribution) appeared limited only by the vulgarity of the messenger, not the message. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. The people who voted for Trump mostly fell into the same categories of traditional Republican voters (including, for instance, the upper middle class and wealthy people with reason to vote Republican). Mainstream media coverage seemed almost universally to miss this point; adopting instead versions of the narrative that the typical Trump voter was especially disaffected. Rather, what appears in evidence, is that enough white working-class people who previously voted for Obama switched to Trump to sway the results. Public opinion researchers had already documented the growing disillusionment of this population with the Democratic Party in 2014, after the end of the recession, when it became clear that they were not going to join in anything labeled economic recovery. The portion that is especially mystified by the salesman pitches of Trump, where he has ‘the best’ or ‘biggest’ of something that people are told they really need, is less significant, to be sure, than the portion of the population that took Obama seriously when he promised ‘hope and change.’
The refrain within mainstream political commentary that Trump voters believe that he is a truth-teller, and that the media is producing ‘fake news’ about him, is misguided. There is no evidence to suggest that the Trump voter is more misinformed or more credulous than the average symbolic conservative, or Tea Party supporter, or independent who leans conservative. Rather, it can be said, some portion of the public that voted for Trump, deemed him to be possibly or really their own personal champion within the framework of identity politics. They were simply not concerned with any lies, as long as there was no lie about what mattered to them. This includes the promise to build a wall between Mexico and the U.S., and to respond to the dystopian vision of American society (the carnage) that he outlined with efforts to steer the forces of globalization through better trade deals – ones that result in more and better working-class jobs, where ‘America comes first,’ and other countries reverse the direction of which they were accused - taking unfair advantage of the U.S. to the detriment of the American working-class. Other, more traditional, Republican voters kept their eyes on the prize – i.e., the enactment of the Republican agenda of lowering taxes and deregulating financial transactions, including the kind that caused the crisis of 2008, are deregulated.
The same media that showered attention on every Trump speech, rally, and tweet during the election cycle have now become preoccupied with every misdirection by the president. As Chomsky (2017) pointed out, Trump began his presidency with fake scandals; these include claims that millions of illegal immigrants voted against him, and that Obama bugged Trump Tower. The media were kept busy. ‘There, out of the spotlight, the most savage fringe of the Republican Party is carefully advancing policies designed to enrich their true constituency: the Constituency of private power and wealth, “the masters of mankind,” to borrow Adam Smith’s phrase.’ This was written prior to the massive, regressive transfer of wealth through the tax bill. In public opinion surveys, it does not have the support of any part of the population without economic reason to support it. In fact, it has the lowest approval of any piece of legislation over the last 30 years. The repeated failure of efforts to ‘repeal and replace’ the ACA was the result of massive vocal opposition that included street protests, lobbying, and ongoing confrontation with senators and congressmen in town hall meetings. The tax bill was enacted in the House of Representatives in the ‘dead of night,’ leaving no time for any tangible popular opposition to materialize. The weakness of the liberal pragmatist position suddenly became clear. The progress enacted by the Obama administration in ensuring greater access to healthcare and reversing to some extent the regressive taxation of the previous administration, took years in the making through endless compromise with the opposition party; even with conservative members of the Democratic Party. However, it took days of misinformation and diversion, and a few hours of congressional debate, to wipe it all out and more. Meantime, the continued growth of inequality under both Republican and Democratic administrations provided reason for many to look for alternatives outside the system and without regard to the conventional ideological spectrum and what is normative about it.
The Diminished Stigma of the Socialist Label
It appears that the relentless labeling of Obama as a socialist by Tea Party activists and supporters, by the mainstream of the Republican Party, and by the established conservative punditry, produced the inadvertent outcome of destigmatizing the label significantly, especially in the eyes of the young. The charge became especially hyperbolic around the ACA, notwithstanding the fact that it was a market driven. The imaginary socialism of the ACA was tied to ideas about government making ‘life and death decisions’ through its oversight, and about economic redistribution. Redistribution happened by increasing taxes (reversing the Bush tax cuts) to pay for the system, and mandating coverage for a broader range of people, for instance with pre-existing conditions. Public opinion surveys, then and now, obscured the fact that the majority of American had come to see healthcare as a right, and expected more of it, not less.
The legislative proposal from Sen. Bernie Sanders, unlike the Affordable Care Act, represents a form of socialism-within-capitalism that mirrors every other modern society with a mixed economy. Sanders labeled it, ‘Medicare for All.’ A comprehensive report released by Gallup in March of 2016 found mixed support for the idea as misrepresented to them. The survey takes form around two central questions. First, whether the government should have the responsibility ‘to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage’ (51 percent yes/ 47 percent no). The second question is longstanding in Gallup surveys: if they prefer ‘government-run’ healthcare or a system ‘based mostly on private health insurance.’ Fifty five percent preferred private and 41 percent government-run. Highest support was found by the Kaiser Family Foundation in December 2105, where respondents were asked whether they favored or opposed ‘a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance through an expanded, universal form of Medicare for All.’ In this survey, 58 percent were in favor, and 35 percent opposed. The author faults the survey for leaving it to respondents to ‘figure out that Medicare means government.’ The other surveys however leave it to respondents to figure out what ‘government-run’ means. Not any national survey has added even the most important detail of the ‘Medicare for All’ argument, namely that it would be non-profit. Instead, what several survey research companies did (including Kaiser), was add the statement that such a plan would require higher taxes or significant deficit increases. (Woodward and Swanson 2017). In this case, the commentators are not merely commenting about public opinion but producing a right-wing discourse without claiming it.
The Value of Patriotism Without Cost
Public-opinion surveys have also consistently validated right-wing narratives about the military by providing low-information questions without relevant context or counterargument, and thereby inviting symbolic response. In this format, conservatives find the opportunity to appear patriotic. Questions that treat the bloated military budget as an obvious source of money to pay for healthcare and other social goods, are never included. Nor is a decrease in the military budget included as an option when ‘trade-offs’ are listed, for instance when people are asked whether they would prefer a universal-healthcare program that would require raising taxes or busting the federal budget. Nor is any question dealing with the priorities or ‘political values’ of people who claim that they want more spending on the military, for instance, whether they would accept a percentage decrease in the military budget in order to ensure lower deficits, which conservatives claim to be important to them.
President Trump was successful in passing a budget that includes a $54 billion increase to the military budget. Gallup (March 2, 2017) posed the following question: ‘There is much discussion as to the amount of money the government in Washington should spend for national defense and military purposes. How do you feel about this? Do you think we are spending too little, about the right amount, or too much?’ 31 percent said too much and 37 percent said too little. Since the 1960s, increases in the number of people saying ‘too little’ occur just before or just after a Republican president is elected. Increased political polarization appears to explain the greater part of this particular increase, with 62 percent of Republicans answering ‘too little’ but only 15 percent of Democrats. If the Republican voter is the primary source of support for massive military spending, this person is allowed to form any impression freely, unrestricted by fact or context. If the same person is merely making a symbolic statement, it does not come at the cost of appearing not to care about the needs of other people, or the debt burden imposed on future generations. At the same time, this type of person is most likely to agree to deploy it on multiple fronts throughout the world — including fictive countries like Agrabah, the kingdom of Aladdin in the Disney movie by that name, when given the option in a public opinion survey (Kasperkevic 2015). War itself has become something abstract in the conservative imagination – a method of restoring honor, finding purpose, where any pretext will do (see Hedges). Trump’s narrative did not involve the traditional effort to conjure a powerful enemy, but instead it merely asserted a world gone wrong, one in which the U.S. is vulnerable. A more powerful military was needed, in this narrative, to ‘stop the carnage’ and ‘make America great again.’ No less seemed needed among conservative crowds.
Conclusion: Ideology and Identity Politics
Showcasing the military strength of the country against enemy and friend alike is consistent with the identity politics of right-wing populism, including the alt-right – which maintains notions of glory that equate military strength directly with masculinity, against efforts to make society peaceful (to de-masculinize it), and with aggressive foreign policy. In this worldview, woman should fear men, blacks should fear whites, and other countries should fear ‘us.’ The grievance of ‘unfair advantage’ is produced by the traditional conservative through ideological mimicry, where whites matter less than blacks, who get preference on the job, in school, and get away with murder. And it is reproduced through ‘weaponized irony’ within alt-right media, where the end result of pluralism and diversity is the humbled and humiliated white-male. What began as a protest against putative reverse discrimination in the 1980s, has now become part of a righteous argument against the capitalist dystopia by the wrong name. The assertion of aggrieved white working-class identity in disparate public venues beyond the normal cloisters of such politics has embolden multiple segments of the old ugly America — sexist, racist, xenophobic, and anti-democratic.
In response, there is a growing group of conservative analysts and pundits who want to distance themselves from Trump as he locks the Republican Party into a version of identity politics that can only discredit it in the eyes of an increasingly younger, more ethnically diverse, and more tolerant population. But this group has not found the cause of the problem in the association of established politics with the neoliberal reorganization of the economy that has pauperized large segments of the working class, or the financial system that nearly brought the collapse of the global economy and brought misery to untold millions in the United States. Instead, it has found a culprit – Obama. If Obama is to be blamed, it is for trying to strike compromises on limited reforms with an intransigent opposition – which labeled him a socialist. At the same time, the incessant misuse of the term socialism to discredit every attempt to support a government that is even mildly accountable to ordinary Americans, appears finally to have backfired.
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