Late-Modernity, Globalization, and Donald J. Trump

I have been told by many people to come to terms with “It,” to think about the silver linings, and to adapt following the timeless logic of a Darwinian beast. Unfortunately, “as an American” (a phrase I do not toss around frequently or lightly), I violently disagree: this is the time to be angry, to stay angry, and absolutely every analysis why “This” happened is incredibly relevant to recovering our capacity for critical discourse.

This election weighs so heavily on the American identity, our values, our future—but not only our future: global governance has lost its leadership and thus its trajectory is painfully unclear. At a global moment during which the fate of our planet hangs in the balance, the president-elect will appoint a climate change denier as head of the Environmental Protection Agency; instead of solidarity, we will get a wall along our border and a Muslims registration center; instead of empowering women, they will be grabbed by their pussies and not become president. Most people think there is nothing left to say, that every piece of writing on the rise and victory of Donald J. Trump is irrelevant now that the people have spoken—that we just have to wait and see what happens next. While the reality of a Trump presidency will not be fully understood until his time in office actually begins, the sentiments of the voting public can and should be analyzed in order to advance our politics out of its contemporary chaotic state.

The election of Trump further indicates that the Western world is facing a political crisis. The work of German scholar Hartmut Rosa articulates the political and psychological effects of “late-modern, high-speed” society in such a way that contextualizes the current moment in global politics. He grounds this argument in terms of the three-fold acceleration of our world: (1) the rate of innovation in technology is increasing, (2) society is rapidly evolving/devolving, (3) the pace of our daily lives is hastening. The sacred profit-motive of the Western world demands that we (and our technology) continuously work harder, better, faster, stronger—the 2001 Daft Punk hit anticipated the mood of 21st-century capitalism. In meeting those demands, our political and democratic architecture is coming under immense stress.

Most relevantly, proactive politics have largely turned reactionary; while politics used to determine the arc of policy based on visions of and for the future, we are now faced with a future that seems increasingly out of our control. Consequently, we find ourselves responding to crises with short-term solutions, trying to mitigate damage instead of advance progress along a given ideological vision. As Rosa himself articulates, “Politics no longer pace-maker, shaping our world, but it is something like the fire-engine, trying to treat the crisis, but it is always already too slow.” To my mind, Americans are fed up with reactionary politics that fail to shape our world according to their interests (as politicians have done for most of the 20th century.) Status quo, establishment, elite politicians have failed to translate globalization into benefits for everyone; inequality has skyrocketed. Rural, blue-collar workers have been the hardest hit and the most unforgiving—they have been losing jobs and their sense of self-worth: they are angry. And they voted.

Trump’s tyrannical tendencies and “strong man” spirit have given people disaffected by globalization a champion (similar to how outsider candidate Barack Obama revitalized the American Left in 2008.) He is a populist demagogue who demonizes elites despite being one himself, who equates political experience with corruption, who sees The Other in its various iterations as the enemy, who promises (in all its vagueness, all its nostalgic nebulousness, all its buzzword blur) to “Make America Great Again.”

Plato, abnormally prescient as always, predicts that democracy transitions into tyranny in times of chaos. Globalization has given us societal chaos; Trump is now fulfilling the Platonic prophecy. Significantly, Trump is a product of slackened controls on democracy that the Founding Fathers interred in the Constitution. Our democracy has done away with sorting mechanisms based on elite interests and allowed The People to decide with increasing freedom. Unfortunately, the masses are angry and unequivocally wrong—opting for a pseudo-fascist, fear-mongering, racist, misogynistic reality television host and incredibly promising tyrant.

To explain Trump’s victory further, one must also consider the American cultural divide, not only in terms of geography (urban-rural), which parallels partisanship (Democrat-Republican), but also in terms of media consumption. Increasing polarization and media democratization (discourse is no longer controlled by elites) have resulted in the production of ideological echo chambers that prohibit any true dialogues. Even if one does manage to start a dialogue between opposing political opinions, Americans have largely repudiated reason for feeling, rationality for emotion, and mental stagnancy for intellectual flexibility. Discussions devolve into a clash between emotion-based opinions, prohibiting critical engagement, informed discourse, or consideration of new ideas. In this context, especially, compromise is seen as immoral. As the globalized world becomes increasingly complex and incomprehensible, one must hold close to their world-views for comfort—any rational inquiry feels like an attack with the potential of uprooting their values, invalidating their whole life.

Globalization has produced reactionary politics, mistrust in institutional elites, and a widening cultural divide in the United States, but these consequences are also felt across the Western world. The right has been ascending: Brexit and Trump anticipate what could potentially be equally radical elections in France and Germany. The West is coming to grips with globalization and it is messy. It increasingly seems that our democracy will self-destruct, not with a whimper but with a tremendous bang.

While I could try to end this optimistically, this is a time for serious reflection, not artificial journalistic tactics. Please consider reading Hartmut Rosa’s insights into late-modernity and Andrew Sullivan’s incredible piece for New York Magazine entitled “America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny” next.