Transcending Trumpism: Breaking the Death Grip of Dualism

Abide not with dualism, Carefully avoid pursuing it; As soon as you have right and wrong, Confusion ensues, and Mind is lost.

Edward Conze

The only illusion is division.

Wald Wasserman

As 2023 winds down, the specter of a Trump-centric 2024 looms large. Despite the general suckiness of this past year, I haven’t met too many people eager to turn the calendar page, because they know that the orange tsunami lurks, gathering energy, waiting for election season. And while there are certainly plenty of legal proceedings that could potentially throw some spanners into the Trumpian works, chances are that they will not impede the NFTer-in-chief from conducting his campaign, especially considering his huge lead amongst Republicans, even though he didn’t bother with the JV squad debates.

It is popular amongst liberals nowadays to describe Trumpism as a ‘cult’ and his supporters as cultists. This is a tempting and somewhat reasonable characterization, because Trumpists now consistently say things like, “he’s the only one who tells the truth,”and “everyone else is lying to us.” That certainly sounds ‘culty,’ right? Don’t cult leaders have total control over their followers’ sense of reality and truth?

So superficially, the cult thing makes sense. But we should avoid using that language for a few reasons. First of all, it cuts off any possibility of dialogue with Trumpists. Calling someone a cult member is not exactly a good way to find constructive common ground. Similarly, it feeds into the polarized dualism that is at the root of many of our current problems (much more on that below). Also, sociological literature usually describes cults as small, isolated groups that cut themselves off from society in order to unquestionably follow a charismatic leader. Cults thus often struggle and dissolve when the original leader dies. Trumpism is not a small, isolated movement. In the 2020 election, 74 million people voted for Trump, and he will likely get similar support next time around. This is not a bloc that will fade away any time soon, even when Trump dies (or gets jailed).

So if Trumpism isn’t really a cult, then what exactly is going on? After all, were talking about tens of millions of people who believe things like this:

• The 2020 election was stolen, even though there is zero evidence of such, and all legal challenges attempting to prove the theft have failed.
• To prevent massive (non-existent) voter fraud, every effort should be made to make voting as difficult as possible, especially in Democratic areas. Anything that might make it easier to vote (automatic registration, extended voting periods, mail-in ballots) should be curtailed or eliminated altogether.
• Despite Trump’s obvious personal shortcomings (lying, malignant narcissism, blatant womanizing, cruel and nasty interpersonal behavior, overt racism and misogyny, etc.), he is venerated by most of supporters as a holy messenger of God.
• Liberals are evil and corrupt beyond repair, engaging in infant cannibalism, pedophilia, and other morally-corrupt behaviors of all kinds.
• While remaining suspicious of the ‘Deep State,’ the government really should be in the business of controlling women’s bodies, disseminating religious doctrine, and suppressing non-standard sexual practices.
• The collapse of the natural world, including the damaging effects of global heating, are not really a problem, and are in fact a series of hoaxes perpetrated by the corrupt scientific community, designed to destroy people’s economic freedom and political liberty.

That partial laundry list of Trumpist tenets seemingly smacks of cultism, but we really need a deeper and broader understanding of what this is all about.

Three Dualisms

A better explanation of Trumpism is to view it as the confluence of three kinds of dualism. We can think of dualism in general terms, as the opposition of one kind of thing against another kind of thing, as opposed to both monistic views (everything is One) and pluralistic views (there’s lots of different things). Dualism has a long history, with the philosophical version dating back (at least) to Plato and Aristotle, and the religious kind going back to Egypt and early Persian Zoroastrianism. In general, Western thought has more dualistic traits than Eastern (Chinese and Indian) traditions, a macro-trend that some trace to the different environmental-geographic conditions that characterize these regions.

For our discussion of Trumpism, the first kind of dualism to consider is the hard Christian (especially Protestant) separation of good vs. evil, the Elect vs. the Damned. As a country, we have never really dealt with the uncomfortable fusion of the overtly religious City on a Hill imagery with the establishment of a government that is supposed to enhance religious and irreligious freedoms. Protestant historical self-congratulation is the source of this tension, which is what makes Trumpists so resistant to the counter-narratives of indigenous-American genocide, the horrors of slavery, and a more-realistic explanation of American exceptionalism as the result of sheer good luck, in finding a huge, geographically-isolated continent teeming with natural resources ripe for exploitation.

This Protestant self-aggrandizement has evolved into a broader, more secular patriotism, a quasi-religious need to always believe in our national greatness. This is basically an adolescent fantasy that worships only strength, domination, and charisma, which is currently manifested in wealth, fame, and the real and symbolic domination of enemies. Most Americans have lost sight of just how damaging and rooted in religious smugness this patriotism can be, because it is so easily leveraged by the powerful to extend their own domination, and to kill any truthful and mature evaluations of history and plausible plans for a better future.

The second kind of dualism that buttresses Trumpism is the division between Elites and Regular People. In contemporary conservatism, this is expressed in anti-elitism of all kinds: disdain for professional media, dismissal of professional science, contempt for political and legal professionals, and a general poo-pooing of anything that smacks of ‘expertise.’ This Country Mouse/City Mouse tension is as old as time itself; there has always been a healthy and often good-natured rivalry between geographical areas. But deep down, city people know that they need the country, and vice versa. What Trumpism does is take these natural and basic differences between where people live, and blows them up into a cosmic conflict about how people live. This is usually glossed over and described as a “culture war,” but that is buying into the hyper-exagerration itself. It is better thought of as, simply, “I live in a different kind of place than you do” — full stop.

So much of the acrimony in this volk-vs.-elite dualism takes place in an artificial cultural space that has no relation to the actual institutions that people live and work in every day. In other words, the things that so offend so many would never actually affect the parties involved, in the vast majority of cases, because they don’t actually live where these things happen anyway. This is not to say that there aren’t some universal principles that occasionally come into conflict with institutional realities in some instances. We’re only saying that the pumping up of anti-elite dualism is far out of proportion to the material, day-to-day requirements of regular behavior in regular settings. But this acrimonious model is good for business, and the Polarization Industrial Complex exploits this commoner-vs.-blueblood trope, creating a huge artificial space where demonization of the Other can incubate and mature.

And that brings us to the third and final dualism that undergirds Trumpism: political polarization. I have described how this works in earlier posts, so please take a look at those for background. But in a nutshell, our electoral mechanics (winner-take-all, single-member Congressional districts, the Electoral College), combined with money’s unlimited access to the political system, have ensured that the US government is dominated by a two-party duopoly that almost exclusively serves the interests of the plutocracy, doing the bare minimum to keep the pitchforked-rabble out of the streets. As a servant of the wealthy and powerful, our government thus doesn’t do anything to honestly confront and combat the freight train of civilizational and ecological collapse that is already well underway. As a result, the everyday lives of most people are increasingly precarious, stressful, and out of their control.

The Polarization Industrial Complex has emerged as a cultural laundering system, shunting people’s rage and despair over a collapsing system away from those responsible, and instead into a polarized hatred of the Other, a demonization of our fellow citizens as our mortal enemies.

Critical Mass

These three dualisms (Elect-Damned, Volk-Elite, Conservative-Liberal) have now fused together on the American Right, totally washing over the original banks laid down by their originators. This modern synthesis traces back to the days of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, who created and then rode the anti-Clinton wave to power. Clinton was the perfect focusing foil for dualism: an amoral and shady womanizer, a smooth-talking fake Christian, and cowardly draft-dodger. Aided by the emergence of nationally-syndicated talk radio, the proliferation of cable news, and the advent of the internet, the anti-Clinton forces were able to craft a new conservative coalition, an uneasy amalgam of evangelical Christians, wealthy establishment types, libertarians, and anti-abortion Catholics. And the new mantra was total, scorched-earth destruction of the enemy.

Trumpism is the end result of this anti-Clinton project begun in the early 90s. The three-headed dualism has been humming along for three decades now, building steam, becoming more internally consistent and more steadily antagonistic to the forces of darkness. This is why Conservatives are so willing to overlook the most egregious and radical violations of existing rules and institutions. The power of these dualisms has made run-of-the-mill political, geographical, and cultural diversity into a Holy War, where Good-vs.-Evil is the script, and the soldiers of God are aligned against the agents of the Devil. One indication of this intensification is that the evangelical obsession with the ‘secular’ and ‘secular humanism’ has now spread across the conservatism continuum, becoming a mainstream GOP talking point. [As a liberal myself, with lots of liberal friends, I have never heard any everyday libs describe themselves as ‘secular,’ or a ‘secular humanist.’ Sure, you occasionally you hear ‘atheist’ or ‘agnostic.’ But the ‘secular’ monicker is a pure Christian dualistic concept, used to starkly differentiate the Saved from the Damned.]

Needless to say, this is not a situation that can approached easily, and the non-dualistic approach of most mainstream liberals is grossly inadequate. If your political opponents view things through the lens of a Holy War, then none of these tactics will work: meeting in the ‘commonsense’ middle; winning Trumpists over by getting back to kitchen-table, pocketbook issues; re-committing to unions and the ‘working class’; denouncing ‘wokeism’ to win hearts and minds; recommitting to economic liberalism while supporting cultural conservatism. All of these approaches assume that both the Left and the Right have become too extreme, and that we have to meet in the soft, nougat-filled center, which is (we’re told), much more liberal than it is conservative. This right-left-center metaphor is a faulty one, and cannot remotely explain the deeper evolution and fusion of dualisms that we have been looking at above. We have to have to shake off this political-cultural continuum model, as it is totally inadequate to finding a real answer and antidote to Trumpism.

Rupture

Our current situation, looming ecological and civilizational collapse, is going to require massive and rapid social change. We simply don’t have the time to fuck around. Epochal change is coming, one way or another, either on nature’s terms only, or hopefully with some conscious direction by humanity, if we can get our act together.

Paradoxically, in its move to a hyper-dualistic worldview, Trumpists and conservatives in general now seem more determined to affect, and more comfortable with, rapturous change. They view Trump as a modern-day Cyrus, the pagan king of Persia who set the Israelites free from their Babylonian captivity, facilitated their return to the Promised Land, and helped them rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. While not a believer himself, Cyrus is still viewed as a hero and savior to the Jewish people, much like the obviously-flawed Trump is viewed as an instrument for the redemption and triumph of Christian America. Trump is seen as a sledge-hammer of change, a rupturing agent commissioned to wreak vengeance on the unholy.

This radicalization of conservatism puts liberals and progressives in the unusual place of having to be the more sober, patient, and ‘conservative’ political force, standing stiff against the potent gales of Trumpism. But it won’t work. We’re beyond the point where gradualism can help us. As Gregory Claeys put it: “No plea to return to ‘normality’ or the ‘everyday’ is now worthwhile. Only the extraordinary can save us.” This is perhaps the most difficult thing for liberals to accept, because gradual improvement is baked into our political genome; the belief that the steady, activist-driven progress of the past several decades should and will continue. But ecological collapse has rendered the liberal-activist project moot, akin to upgrading the deck furniture on the Titanic.

The audacity of Trumpism emanates from the freedom that comes with embracing rupture, and from applying a clarifying, cosmic, dualistic lens to all reality. We’re not talking about just a cult. We’re talking about the fervor that comes from a Holy War, a Crusade.

Rupture Incarnate

Liberals need to embrace Rupture without the dualism, radical change without the religious and quasi-religious loathing of the enemy. How? By the direct creation of Bigger Home Bases, buttressed by Basic Income, and then economically nationalized via Modern Money Theory. Many earlier posts on this blog explain the proposed layout and purpose of this scheme, so I won’t rehash it here.

But what I will say here is that the dualistic rupture proposed by Trumpism has one giant achilles heel: it won’t work. Deporting millions of undocumented workers won’t magically make employers say, “Hey, now that all the illegals are gone, let’s give all the white guys huge raises and great benefits and six weeks of paid vacation! Woo hoo!” Suppressing Democratic votes will not turn the tide on long-term, major demographic changes, which will eventually swamp the declining white Christian advantage. Outlawing abortion in red states will not stave off the continuing depopulation of those states, and will almost certainly accelerate it, as young women leave in droves to live in places that value their liberty. Despite the huge push for a fantasized return to a Christian Nation, the overall Western trend of young people rejecting religion will continue. Cities and universities will continue to be dens of iniquity, albeit with the inconvenient truth of also creating most of the nation’s wealth.

In other words, the rupturous future on offer from Trumpism has almost no relation to plausible reality. Not that it can’t do a lot of damage to a lot of people. Of course it can. Which is why it is so important for liberals to actually embrace their own version of Rupture, one rooted in concrete models of a possible future social form: Bigger Home Bases.

Cover Image: “Sunset at Sea” (Thomas Moran, 1906)

Originally published at http://entropolitanblog.com on December 30, 2023.