the usual, rather half-assed explanation of 'the trump phenomena' is 'fear and anger.' but everyone on both sides seems to be fearful and angry these days. what these things denote in relation to trump is 'the fear and anger of white men,' which is a way not to just say 'racism.' actually, i do think that's in there.
i'd like to centralize another dimension, however: the utter emptiness, repetitiveness, safety, and stupidity of american political discourse over the last few decades. i might call the way politicians such as the clintons, gore, kerry, the bushes, and damn near everyone else expresses themselves mechanical, primitively manipulative, and cowardly. a lot of it emerges from university communications programs, and orbits around focus-grouping words or phrases and polling both positions and formulations, and its effect is to conceal the human beings doing the uttering, to create an utterly impersonal form of expression divorced from humanity, the experience of the person doing the uttering, and individual differences. the latter effect has been central both to apathy and hyper-polarization: on each side, people say exactly the same words in exactly the same order, over and over, and in the ideological 'echo-chambers,' non-politicians come to sound just like politicians.
i have never seen a worse example of this than the professoriate, all of which mumbles leftesque talking points in unison. but it is also almost incredible what it has done to opinion journalism; it has made the new york times opinion section empty and unreadable and redundant, for example. also, in both these cases it is quite pointless, as people aim to manipulate audiences that already agree completely. central to it is vilifying the other side, which isn't even there to hear, and for good reason. it is central to our division into two realities, both of which are simplistic, dishonest and robotic.
i believe that this sort of thing makes the people who utter it, whether 'leaders' or followers literally stupid: people with nothing at all to say for themselves, with no point to make or flair with which to make it. but it is the easiest thing in the world to break through. all you have to do is say what you think in sentences you compose yourself; just the minimal standard of human communicative competence and a tiny dose of social courage. trump is very very good at this, and it takes guts to do what he's done in this nation led so long by cowards. it looks instantly like strength and leadership and ability, because mechanically repeating what other people are saying is a kind of retardation. i think anyone with minimal linguistic competence and some sort of decent values could do this simply by resolving to do it, and i hope that trump, whether he wins or flames out right now, has taught everyone some lessons about that.
