Alan Zendell, November 8, 2024

Every time Donald Trump referred to America as a failed nation, many of us cringed and yelled, “We are not!” When he coined his signature phrase, “Make America Great Again,” we screamed, “Again? We’re already a great nation!” It infuriated us, but a broader historical perspective suggests that in a way, Trump was right in both cases.

The fact that his presentation was entirely a collection of lies, exaggerations, and fantasies blinded us to an underlying truth. We hoped Trump would lose and fade away, but we made an essential error. Trump isn’t the cause of the problems America faces – he’s a symptom.

Roger Ailes, who created what is now Fox News, recognized the truth long before Trump came down the escalator. He understood the implications of generations of income and wealth disparity, of racial attitudes and the stark regional contrasts in family, education, and religious priorities, and the sharp differences in cultural norms regarding gender roles. Moreover, he understood that the broadcast and streaming media, which largely reflect the cultures of the northeast and the west coast, almost completely ignored that vast middle of our country.

Part of Ailes’ genius was recognizing that the country was ripe for a demagogue who could identify all the things that divide Americans and exacerbate them. Such a person would have to be completely amoral and value power and wealth above everything else. It was essential that they also be almost psychotically narcissistic, because only someone like that is capable of believing their own lies. The one thing cult leaders and ultra-nationalists can never do is waver. They must be true believers in their own bullshit, never back down, and never compromise their message.

The other essential part of Ailes’ genius was recognizing that Donald Trump fit the bill perfectly. Trump didn’t start his movement. He was the unifying, darkly charismatic glue that united elements that were already festering. Ailes recognized that several seemingly very different groups of Americans had one important thing in common. Whether they were greedy billionaires, hard-working people struggling to make ends meet, religious extremists, racists, misogynists, white supremacists, or just people who felt left out or ignored, they were all angry and needing someone to blame for their unhappiness.

The rest of us, the millions of highly educated middle class “progressive thinkers,” had no idea that literally half of all Americans were angry enough to burn it all down, but Roger Ailes knew, and he molded Trump into a revolutionary instrument of change, a Hegelian Hero in every sense of the term. Every great nation has gone through this. They grew and prospered and fooled themselves into thinking they were somehow different from all the ones that preceded them, every one of which peaked and immediately began a slide into decadence and decline.

That’s what America is today. Donald Trump is the inevitable outcome of what we have become. It’s entirely possible that in four years he could dismantle the building blocks of our democracy and replace it with – God only knows what. Fascism? Autocracy? Most likely an extended period of discord and internal struggle that will diminish our standing in the world and reshape our economy in a way that enriches the kleptocracy of hangers on and sycophants while seriously hurting millions of vulnerable Americans. But as any revolutionary will tell you, you have to expect some collateral damage when you tear down a society that’s been around for a few centuries. If you self-righteously believe you’ve been ordained with the power and right to determine how everyone else should live, that damage is a cheap price to pay.

That’s the road America is about to embark on. We’re in this place because we misread the tea leaves and believed the propaganda that America was the greatest nation in the history of the world, and possessed the inherent right to spread its philosophy to the rest of the planet. Except that we hadn’t put our invention to the test of time, and now that it’s here, we can either fight through Trump’s second term to preserve that dream or watch it erode out from under us.

The American dream wasn’t wrong. It was just a lot harder and more complicated than we realized. When we elected Barack Obama and the country fell in love with Michelle, we were so proud of how far we’d evolved. When Trump beat Hilary Clinton, we wrote it off as James Comey’s October surprise. But Trump defeated Kamala Harris mostly because white American women refused to elect a woman of color. The percentages of white men and white women who voted for Trump imply that the polls were wrong about the gender gap.

If we expect to survive this, America needs to have a clearer understanding of who we are.