Our political future is post-truth, and that is horrifying
Donald Trump – a convicted felon, rapist, pedophile, bankrupt businessman, and fascist – has won the US presidency again. There are two comments that I am seeing regarding this:
- "It's the economy, stupid."
- The average GOP voter isn't "stupid," they have good reason to believe that a Trump presidency will actually make their lives better.
I wan to talk about point 1 first, and then connect it to point 2.
If I'm to be charitable in the interpretation of what "the economy" means, people saying that feel as though they are struggling financially, and that the Democrats did not tap into this problem to win people over. But why is the electorate feeling this way? How is over half of the United States feeling this way?
The median purchasing power of American citizens is higher than it was in 2020. There has been no recession, and inflation is back to pre-pandemic numbers. By all means, most Americans are doing financially well. Again, if I am to be charitable and assume that this purchasing power increase is disproportional – that is, it is benefiting wealthier Americans more than poorer Americans – then I would expect some number lower than the median to actually feel as though they're struggling. Maybe a standard deviation below the median, for example.
I don't have the actual data in front of me, so I'm not able to do any sort of statistical analysis on it. My point is that it is unlikely that the data indicates that greater than 50% of the US population is actually financially struggling because their wages have not increased relative to inflation. Americans are doing well financially.
If that is the case, then why was "the economy" so important to people this election? Like many people, I believe the main reason is vibes. When asked if they are financially struggling, the majority of Americans would say that they personally are not, but they imagine that those around them are. And as we saw above, statistically, most Americans are doing fine.
These "vibes" were tapped into by the Trump campaign. Somehow, they were able to convince the average American that no, they're not better off than they have been in the past, and that somehow, a man who attempted to overthrow US democracy and has only lost money throughout his entire adult life is going to make it better (even though he will impose tariffs – something that will make inflation 10x worse).
The Trump campaign was not based in any sort of truth. It was all vibes, propaganda. It was all about making potential voters feel a specific way, regardless of it being true or not. A lack of fact-checking, a lack of push-back from journalists when anyone in his campaign would make a completely unfounded claim, and stoking unrealized fears in the electorate was the signature of the campaign. Four years ago, no GOP voters cared about illegal immigration if they did not live in a border state. But the Trump campaign was able to make it a wedge issue, even though it has almost zero effect on the average GOP voter. The Trump campaign managed to manufacture a problem, make people care about it, and claim that they have the solution to the problem with zero evidence.
What this election has shown is that this type of campaigning works, and the Democrats are going to have to do it in the future if they want to have any hope of winning.
We are entering a point in American politics where truth and policy doesn't matter and all campaigns need to do is simply stoke fears that Americans have – founded or not. This isn't going to be unique to Trumpism – this is how all campaigns are going to operate.
As someone who actually cares about and wants good, workable policy from political candidates, this horrifies me.
I'm writing this post from an emotionally vulnerable state, so forgive me if the prose is a bit jarring. I sincerely hope that I can look back on this post in several years and think to myself "how naive I was, everything is fine in the world." But right now, it's hard to imagine a future like that.