Mick Hartley

Paul Berman is back chewing over the Trump problem. How on earth did such a man get elected President? Was it – Theory No. 1 – all about industrial decline, and the material grievances of the white working class? Or was it - Theory No. 2 - a matter of cultural resentments and racist animosities toward the blacks and the latest immigrants, together with a surly hatred of the bicoastal snobs?

How a cultural collapse—of civility, civic education, and decorum—brought us the Mussolinian con man of our own moment:

I do not think the election was normal. I think it was the strangest election in American history in at least one major particular, which has to do with the qualifications and demeanor of the winning candidate. American presidents over the centuries have always cultivated, after all, a style, which has been pretty much the style of George Washington, sartorially updated. It has been the calm style of a qualified professional, self-assured, reasonable, courteous, and majestic, though somehow modest, too—the style of a civilized and experienced personage who could not possibly be a lout toward women, and would not be capable of whipping up a mob, and would never dream of jailing the leader of the opposition, and would never regard the White House as a marketing opportunity. Now, it is possible that, over the centuries, appearances and reality have, on occasion, parted ways, and one or another president, in the privacy of his personal quarters, or in whispered instructions to his henchmen, has been, in fact, a lout, a demagogue, a thug, and a stinking cesspool of corruption. And yet, until just now, nobody running for the presidency, none of the serious candidates, would have wanted to look like that, and this was for a simple reason. The American project requires a rigorously republican culture, without which a democratic society cannot exist—a culture of honesty, logic, science, and open-minded debate, which requires, in turn, tolerance and mutual respect. Democracy demands decorum. And since the president is supposed to be democracy’s leader, the candidates for the office have always done their best to, at least, put on a good act.   […]

I think we need a Theory No. 3, on top of Nos. 1 and 2. A Theory 3 ought to emphasize still another non-economic and non-industrial factor, apart from marriage, family structure, theology, bad doctors, evil pharmaceutical companies, and racist ideology. This is a broad cultural collapse. It is a collapse, at minimum, of civic knowledge—a collapse in the ability to identify political reality, a collapse in the ability to recall the nature of democracy and the American ideal. An intellectual collapse, ultimately. And the sign of this collapse is an inability to recognize that Donald Trump has the look of a foreign object within the American presidential tradition….