There has been a great deal of political analysis of Trump’s reelection and what it means. While largely helpful, I think that analysis needs to go two steps deeper — from the political to the social/cultural and from the social/cultural to the human — if we are to understand his appeal, despite so many clear drawbacks.
To begin, President Trump is too astute a manipulator of the public unconscious for it to be a coincidence that in virtually every photo where he is not smirking, he is scowling. This is a clear departure, at least on one level, from an otherwise mentor, Ronald Reagan. Still, Reagan, was also a master of anger and humiliation, as when he scolded faculty at my university for allowing student protests.
Much more concerning, however, is Trump’s copping of Hitler’s style and playbook. As one right-wing violent advocate recently boasted, “No lives matter.” This is the essence of fascism. Recall Orwell’s characterization of totalitarianism: “a boot stamped on a human face forever.”
This prediction has been there all along. Remember Trump’s rallying cry in 2016 was “Drain the swamp.” Do you know where he got that image? I didn’t, until Timothy Ryback in The Atlantic recently noted that Hitler had once “campaigned on the promise of draining the ‘parliamentarian swamp’ — den parlamentarischen Sumpf.”
You might also recall the more direct reference from Trump’s earlier campaign, when he reportedly said: “I need the kind of generals Hitler had.” The point is not that he resembles Hitler, but that he would boast about it. That is scary, and it works: Some voters, despite making the comparison between Trump and Hitler, voted for him anyway.
Not to be outdone, Vice President J.D. Vance, while speaking at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month, scolded the German delegation for censoring Alternativ für Deutschland, the far-right party accused of neo-Nazi ties.
For full disclosure, while I am ethnically Jewish and grew up as the Holocaust was ravaging Europe, I lived a relatively safe existence, unaware until years afterwards how many of my distant relatives had perished. Then, as now, I was not so much frightened — an emotional state — as at risk, which is an objective condition. Now that condition is more real for me in America than it was then; indeed, how can anyone be safe from this regime’s violence?
One way to explain how Kamala Harris lost the election is that she appealed to reason, while Trump appealed to emotion — namely fear. This played to our widespread insecurity, which is partly based on very real dangers like climate and conflict. At the same time, reason has been usurped by (raw) emotion as the determinant of voting choices.
A recent article in The Atlantic summed up what I’m calling the social/cultural dimension very well, reflecting on the loss of community brought on, among other things, by social media: “All of this time alone, at home, on the phone, is not just affecting us as individuals. It’s making society weaker, meaner, and more delusional…practicing politics alone, on the internet, rather than in community isn’t only making us more likely to demonize and alienate our opponents, though that would be bad enough. It may also be encouraging deep nihilism.” This takes us right back to “No lives matter.” Clearly, the road back to democracy begins with a recovery of what it means to be a human being.
With that in mind, it’s not necessarily bad news that Trump won by appealing not so much to reason (where he would not have much to go on) but emotion. It doesn’t speak well of our political maturity as a society — which may have been obvious — but it does define the grounds on which we can meet and overcome this challenge: not by reason, though we can build up to that, but emotion.
It’s clear that Trump has an enormous advantage: an entire culture of nihilism at his back. This is worth more than Musk’s billions and the media’s betrayal of our democracy. Despite appearances, though, this overriding cultural meme is on shaky ground. Lives matter. We know that; science knows that. The degradation of our human image is based on ignorance, and ignorance can be cured by knowledge. We don’t have the media, and we don’t have the billions, but we have truth. We have one truth in particular, and it’s the one that can blow away the fog of nihilism: who we are.
We are body, mind and spirit — pure consciousness, on which no limit can be set, no value. Education as we practice it does not tell us this; the almost limitless power of the mass media implicitly contradicts this, and the powerful evangelical movement implicitly denies it. But somehow, brave people who want to do good to the world are aware of it. See how it informed the vision of Martin Luther King, when he said that many Black people “lack sustenance for their bodies, education for their minds and meaning for their spirit.”
If this simple model — this profound but simple truth — were to become common knowledge the crabby politics of the new regime would not take hold. Even those who now espouse it might move on. Miracles have happened. They just take a lot of work; and that again is not entirely bad news. We can both act “as if people mattered” and infiltrate the culture with the explanation of why we’re in favor of democracy and why it works. There’s an innate appeal to this message, strong enough to out-influence the media and the billions. We have Gandhi’s Truth on our side. Let’s use it.
We provide educational resources on the safe and effective use of nonviolence, with the recognition that it’s not about putting the right person in power but awakening the right kind of power in people. We advance a higher image of humankind while empowering people to explore the question: How does nonviolence work, and how can I actively contribute to a happier, more peaceful society?
Waging Nonviolence partners with other organizations and publishes their work.
I’m interested to see how this “humanistic” approach could be used in a small rural upstate NY community where I live.
Putting disparate people together in communication to realize common beliefs and the potential impact on the political environment we are living in.