The Nature of Trump Nation

How, as a political entrepreneur, Donald Trump showed his followers how to be political

“…what history teaches us, if it teaches anything, is that “human nature” is remarkably plastic, immensely influenced by the social contexts in which it is articulated, and–so far as politics is concerned—powerfully shaped by the alternatives given to it by entrepreneurial individuals and institutions.”  WD Burnham, 1982.

As in so much of Burnham’s writing, expansive vocabulary and dense meanings often obscure specific applications.  We often need to await the arrival of circumstances that are especially well aligned with his generalizations before we fully understand their importance. 

Now is such a time.  I think we have overlooked the extent to which Trump has been an entrepreneur of political meanings.  That is to say, he has sold to the general public a set of political “clothes.”  He has offered his followers a way to become “political.” He has shown many who had been largely absent or alienated from the political arena how one should act on a political stage. 

Put simply, our “human nature” is, in its political dimension, plastic (moldable) and Trump shaped it, for many, into a form that reflected his own persona. 

This is a more radical statement than is seems.  In the mob of January 6th, to the newly mobilized voters of 2020, to the true believers in a “stolen election,” we see the emergence of a new political man and woman.

Traditional ways of characterizing this phenomenon have been overbroad and partly misleading. Partisans tend to see an opposition as “defective,” especially when their behaviors don’t conform to expectations.  They use an off-the-shelf set of derogatory descriptions: cultists, ignorant, racists, authoritarian personalities. These, and all the other descriptions that Democrats are using, tend to judge and disparage “the Trump Nation, i.e. cast them out, so to speak, see them as a fringe, as the other, and less than legitimate democratic political actors. 

I suggest we think of Donald Trump as an entrepreneur who offered his follows, especially those new to the political arena, his way to be political. Not an aberration but an alternative, even though it is a persona that many find distasteful. He has shown, by his own example, how to act in the public square, how one fulfills the responsibility of citizenship.

And the style: belittling one’s opponents, rejecting conflicting information, being all-in and a warrior.  That is the nature of being partisan-political that Trump has taught his followers. 

And it is a lesson, once learned, that may prove hard to change.