Romans Trying to Understand Barbarians

The inherent flaw with Campbell's analysis in his work “American Discontents,” is that it is an intellectual endeavor to understand an anti-intellectual phenomenon. The idea that ideas drove the election of Donald Trump, and that plans or policy had anything to do with his victory, is a deeply flawed position. Equally flawed is the idea that his election was simply about economic self-interest alone. Research has shown that elections are decided by primal, atavistic variables such as a candidate's looks, gender, power dynamics, cultural capital, and a voter's state of mind at the time of voting.

Elections are emotional, not rational.

This is also why polling always fails to truly grasp the causes of voter outcomes. A person will say that they are rational and upright, even when this is not the case in the voting booth. This emotional element of politics is displayed by the way Republican policy warped to the personality of Donald Trump. If Republicans actually cared about policy, their primaries would go quite differently. But traditionally, since the days of Lee Atwater, Republican politics has been dominated by ad hominem displays of patriarchal aggression. Even though Trump's forebears were much more modest and "rational" in these processes, they still undertook these same methods.

Think: Dukakis, soft on crime.

This is a perfect example of the emasculation that Republicans have traditionally engaged in against their opponents. Even the Democratic poster-child Obama, in the debate with Romney, made his opponent look small, quietly and confidently engaging in this kind of schoolyard emasculation. Another excellent example would be JFK and Nixon, where cool and calculated Kennedy made Nixon look like a weak, out-of-touch geek.

In the same way that the Protestant Ethic still dominates politics today, the Germanic ethic of "Might is Right," specifically the kind of ethic that developed in a society where the victor in a duel or conflict was deemed righteous in ideology, has just as strong an effect on the actions undertaken by people in the West when in competition with one another. For thousands of years, from before the Rise and Fall of Rome to the early decades of the United States, Eurasian people in positions of power regularly engaged in personal one-on-one armed conflict to settle disputes and establish legitimacy.

There is nothing reasonable about conflict.

Ideas, costumes, and totems of status are merely after-thoughts to the violent human competition for status and power. People believe ideas and narratives that benefit them, not always just materially but also socially and psychologically. A communist does not say that all people are equal because it is true, but because it is in the interest of his psyche to believe so, in the same way it is in the interest of the wealthy and powerful to assume some inalienable difference between themselves and others. When people believe ideas that don't align with their class-interests, it is most often due to psychological and social factors.

Think Friedrich Engels, or "My-daddy-is-the-mean-factory-owner-syndrome.”

Climate deniers disbelieve in climate change because it is too destructive to their self-narratives and values, as well as their material interests, because it empowers the idea that they are the evil force in the world, and not the force of good and progress that they have been led to believe.

Fossil fuels are the source of Western greatness and power.

Therefore, to challenge the ideas around fossil fuels is to challenge the hegemony and prosperity of these states. Donald Trump was victorious because Hillary Clinton was weak, and he was a master emasculator. Despite all the words paid in the West to "Reason," the true idea (if we can even call it that) that has always governed the West is "Might." White Christian Civilization is not right because it is wise, but because it has conquered. This is a concept that every proponent of so-called "Civilization" will eventually fall back on when confronted: Modern Capitalist Society is right because it "works," and we are right because we were "more successful." The proponents of "Progress" will usually to try to leave out the sheer barbarity by which so-called Civilized Rome was built.

Also the weak and powerless, people who feel spat upon by society, gravitate towards powerful social movements led by powerful individuals of charismatic authority, because it gives them agency.

In the same way that disparate tribes would follow Attila or Chinggis Khan in the hopes of finally seeing the great wonders of Rome or China, many of the traditionally "bad" elements of our society, as well as many from its far-flung corners and backwaters, cling to someone like Donald Trump in the hopes that by following him they can transcend their mundane lives and achieve greatness by taking it from an elite who see them as subhuman. This concept is perfectly demonstrated by the events of January 6, where these "barbarian" hordes broke through the gates of civilization. For people of such low order, to touch the monuments of great ones, to walk where great ones walk, to strike fear into the hearts of great ones, if only for a time, must have felt cosmic and divine.