American democracy and society have been sick for a long time. Donald Trump’s election to the White House in 2016 was a symptom and not the cause of these deep problems. There is extreme income inequality and the gangster capitalist regime that profits from it, racism and white supremacy, a growing lack of faith in democracy and other governing institutions such as the news media and the elites more broadly, widespread social atomization and loneliness, collective exhaustion and lack of sleep, anti-intellectualism, mass death and trauma from the COVID pandemic, a broken educational system, a media culture of spectacle and distraction and an overall sense that “a return to normal” is not that great and “playing by the rules” and “working hard” to achieve the “American Dream” was a cruel joke and has been for a very long time.
Too many political observers — especially the institutionalists and centrists — incorrectly convinced themselves that Trump’s first victory was an acute aberration, in what was fundamentally a sound democracy that had widespread support and legitimacy among the American people. These supposed experts willfully repeated that same error years later, because to admit they were catastrophically wrong would be a narcissistic injury both to them personally but also to the larger political class that has given them much of their identity and social capital.
