Dana Blankenhorn

The Legitimate Complaints of Trumpistan

For two generations, from the end of World War II to the end of the 20^th century, white Americans knew what was what and where they stood.

The suburbanization of America, within which the baby boom grew to adulthood, was both a protective cocoon and a welcoming society. Technology was an unalloyed good, adding to incomes without demanding too much of the recipients. Much of that income was funneled, through government, into “entitlements” – benefits to which people felt entitled. If you got drafted your health care would be taken care of. The suburbs had good public schools, even good public universities.

There was abundant market friction into which ex-jocks and cheerleaders could slide into golf course lives as insurance salesmen, real estate developers and travel agents. There was abundant land, and state government developed it with free roads and sewer hook-ups, so the boomers could “drive until they qualified.” Some stayed in the suburbs to run things like my dad’s TV repair shop, and later his lock shop. Some became educators like the people in my wife’s family, or my own brother. Others married lucky, like me.

Trump is Bizarro Carter

I have written before that Barack Obama is like a Bizarro version of Richard Nixon. 

By that reckoning, knowing that we are now playing the 1976 game, 8 years removed from a crisis election, then Donald Trump must be the Bizarro version of Jimmy Carter.

Before you reject what I have to say because you can’t stand people you like compared to those you hate (regardless of your politics) hear me out.

I know, Trump is a truly despicable human being, while Jimmy Carter is probably the nicest, most decent human being ever to live in the White House, evidenced by all the things he has done since leaving it. But that’s the point of someone being “bizarro” something – they are the opposite. That’s why the analogy fits.

But there are other ways in which a comparison between Trump and Carter makes sense. For one thing, there is the way they won their nominations.

Donald Trump Dies for Your Sins

Over the last decade I have learned that America has four different types of elections:

• Crisis elections, where the assumptions of a generation are proven to be past their sell-by date and are overthrown.
• Validation elections, in which the new assumptions are overwhelmingly ratified.
• Anti-Thesis elections, in which a new coalition arises to challenge the assumptions and eventually breaks through.
• Excess elections, in which the anti-thesis is defeated, narrowly, by the knees jerking on the old assumptions.

America works on a generational cycle, tied to economic trends, so there are some elections that wind up fitting midway between these assumptions. Sometimes events do overturn the apple cart, like Watergate, which delivered Jimmy Carter (narrowly). These are the exceptions that keep people guessing, although I really do think Watergate itself drew extensive press coverage.

The point is that 2016 is a Validation Election. It has a lot in common with 1980, or 1948, or 1908, or 1868. In all those cases, the leader who led the nation through the crisis is off the stage, and the political movement they birthed – its assumptions or ideology, its media, its industry – must find a way forward without him.

TechLand vs. Bureaucracy

Technology has transformed most industries beyond recognition, especially since the Web was spun.

It has done this by eliminating friction in how things are bought and sold. The store is now open 24-7. You no longer go to a travel agent. You may not have an insurance agent. Banking is an app. The process has accelerated this decade, with the rise of cloud-based apps. 

But some industries have remained stubbornly resistant to change. The law, health care, and education are all protected, ringed really, by powerful bureaucracies that prevent reform in the name of the law.

Government can produce bureaucracy, but private bureaucracies can be fiercer and more intractable. Once you have people whose jobs are being defined as internal to the organization, you have bureaucracy. Even a one-man band like me has bureaucracy. My accountant is part of my bureaucracy. If I had a personal assistant – if I could afford one – I would have a bigger bureaucracy.