For the Disaffected and Dismissed, the Establishment Has Awakened

Part I of III:

In 2016, the world was shocked by the election of a brash New York City billionaire to the highest office in the land, the unofficial leader of the free world, President of the United States (US).[1]  The ‘world,’ however, had grown increasingly insulated to the world outside the urban, intellectual and media bubbles in which it lived and repeatedly recirculated the same reinforcing messages,[2] largely ignoring the anger and angst of the general population in the less represented, more reserved, parts of the country,[3] areas more distrusting of a media that casually dismissed their concerns in favor of if own urban priorities.[4]

This was not unique to the US.  It was recognized in the preceding, equally shocking, results across the pond in the United Kingdom’s (UK) Brexit vote,[5] a referendum on European Union (EU) membership in which the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, led the Remain campaign, joined by a majority of Liberals. [6]  The resulting map showed urban centers like London were dominated by support for Remain while, with notable exception of Scotland, the balance of the UK, whose interests were sometimes ignored by London, was dominated by Leave.[7]

2016 United Kingdom Brexit Referendum

Source: Wikipedia

Americans should have taken notice of their political cousins.  Instead, over the coming months, the media and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign echoed the same errors of the Remain campaign by assuming the choice was clear, by disregarding the cries from Middle America, even to the extent that they neglected the Midwest, more notably the traditional Democratic Blue Wall, and most specifically the Rustbelt.[8]

2016 United States Presidential Election

Source: Wikipedia

The Clinton campaign and its surrogates, like the Leave campaign, took things for granted, as if they could simply smile and gently wave at the public while walking backwards into a predetermined future.[9]  They were arrogant and assuming.  They watched the Blue Wall fall.  Ordinary people proved them wrong.

In both the UK and the US, the establishment was rejected by the common man.[10]^,[11]  Voters in the Anglo-American world, where the rights of individuals date back to the Magna Carta (1215), and include the Glorious Revolution (1688) and the Declaration of Right (1689) in England, and the Declaration of Independence (1776) and Bill of Rights (1791) in America, rejected the urban centers’ globalist approach and the increasing centralization of power at the expense of the forgotten, opting, instead, to hold onto their country’s independence and their individual rights.  But the establishment awakened.  It took notice, and in the US, it has been working against the forgotten man’s presidential choice ever since.

But what is the establishment, and what could it do?  It is, essentially, all the fame and levels of influence that have risen to power under the established system of social norms, politics, economics and governance.  It does not always see political parties.  But it always sees power, and clearly that power was threatened when Americans rejected Washington’s beltway politics by electing a disruptive outsider.

Who are the powerful?  Power can be found in all segments of society but consider the more influential ones – the government, military, media and business.

Ever since the announcement of his presidential campaign in 2015, leaders have fought Donald Trump and his Make American Great Again (MAGA) principles, commonly mischaracterizing him, his positions and the people around him.[12]  His candidacy was disregarded as a side show unworthy of the political pages.[13]^,[14]  Members of the media and political parties, including Republican leaders, dismissed his popular appeal and chances to win.[15]

With his election, we witnessed the emergence of the Resistance, [16] a movement quickly developed to thwart his ability to affect policies the voters supported.  Washington insiders circulated a story that undermined his legitimacy – the dubious Russia collusion conspiracy – placing the spotlight on the resulting Mueller investigation,[17] an investigation that would consume the first two years of his presidency yet eventually clear him,[18] ending with insufficient evidence to support the Resistance’s accusations.  Congressional Democrats refused to attend his inauguration[19] and encouraged the harassment of his administration’s officials.[20]  Blue state Democrats talked about secession[21] and filed a litany of lawsuits against his administration.[22]  Administrative officials defied the president’s orders at various levels of government through bureaucratic inertia.[23]  Intelligence directors and military generals would publicly contradict and oppose their Commander in Chief.[24]^,[25],[26]

The media, after a brief moment of self-reflection, proceeded with complicity, denying it could have been mistaken about the issues Trump identified in his run to the White House, quickly resuming its relentlessly negative coverage of the president,[27] perpetuating narratives of racism and corruption and submitting anti-Trump stories with increasingly frequent use of “anonymous sources” that remain unaccountable when their information is proven inaccurate. [28]  Technology companies like Facebook would acknowledge their failure to properly restrict its influence on the election,[29] and then proceed to restrict conservative voices, blaming alleged ‘shadow banning’ on unintended results of its algorithms.[30]

For four years, we have witnessed the continued barrage of claims that Trump represents an ‘existential threat to democracy’[31] – hyperbolic cries that ring hollow when asked for facts, facts having fallen out of favor in the Trump era.[32]

And for all these cries coming from the very people who have largely abandoned efforts to govern and compromise through the mechanisms of the Constitution, for all the accusations, the most egregious offense the Resistance could find was a phone call to a newly elected Ukrainian leader, for which they proceeded with a partisan impeachment that ultimately failed in its long-sought effort – to undo a President Trump.[33]

Meanwhile, the president unbound the US from international pacts that were never approved by Congress and held Americans more accountable than its other signatories,[34] drew down the nation’s involvement in overseas conflicts[35] while bringing historic peace to the middle east[36] and overseeing the collapse of the Islamic State (ISIS),[37] strengthened security along the southern border,[38] lifted numerous regulations[39] and reduced taxes.[40]  Irrespective of policy preferences, these are all actions that in any other time, might simply be viewed as expressions of American independence, liberty and the rights of the individual – foundations of a functioning democratic republic.  Instead, the left labeled him an authoritarian, likening him to Hitler[41] and Mussolini.[42]

Why?  At its core, the president’s policies do not suit the establishment, which benefitted from the pre-existing system of concentrated power in which they held the reins for decades.  Decentralization and redistributing power to ordinary people does not serve that arrangement.  Rather, this undermines the establishment.  And whomever reduces its relevance will inevitably prove its enemy.  Trump has – though perhaps only temporarily – through his policies and direct messaging, made the establishment irrelevant in a way previously unexperienced.  For the time being, it is no longer the sole source and administration of policy or the gatekeeper of information, the filter through which the world is shared with Americans.

But that can easily change again.

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(See Part II: Disturbance in Democracy)

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[1] Anthony J. Gaughan, Explaining Donald Trump’s Shock Election Win, (Scientific American, 2016)

[2] Nate Silver, There Really Was a Liberal Media Bubble, (FiveThirtyEight, 2017)

[3]SE Cupp, Why conservatives lost faith in mainstream media, (CNN, 2017)

[4] Alex Thompson, Journalists and Trump voters live in separate online bubbles, MIT analysis shows, (Vice, 2016)

[5] Anthony Lane, E.U. Later, (The New Yorker, 2016)

[6] John Cassidy, Why The Remain Campaign Lost the Brexit Vote, (The New Yorker, 2016)

[7] EU referendum: The result in maps and charts, (BBC, 2016)

[8] Ronald Brownstein, How the Rustbelt Paved Trump’s Road to Victory, (The Atlantic, 2016)

[9] Marc A. Thiessen, Hillary, this is the real reason you lost, (Chicago Tribune, 2017)

[10] Jeremy Shapiro, Brexit was a rejection of Britain’s governing elite.  Too bad the elites were right, (Vox, 2016)

[11] Matt Flegenheimer and Michael Barbaro, Donald Trump Is Elected President In Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment, (The New York Times, 2016)

[12] Sharyl Attkisson, Media Mistakes in the Trump Era: The Definitive List, (Sharyl Attkisson, 2020)

[13] Chris Cillizza, The Huffington Post is moving its Donald Trump coverage to the ‘entertainment’ section.  That’s a bad idea, (Washington Post, 2015)

[14] Emily Crane, CNN boss Jeff Zucker dismissed Trump as a ‘sideshow’ in 2015, (DailyMail, 2020)

[15] Tom McCarthy, Here’s why Donald Trump won’t win the Republican presidential nomination, (The Guardian, 2015)

[16] The Trump resistance movement builds, (BBC, 2016)

[17] John Solomon, FBI’s Russian collusion case fell apart in first month of Trump presidency, memos show, (Just the News, 2020)

[18] Mueller report: Trump cleared of conspiring with Russia, (BBC News, 2019)

[19] Katie Reilly and Tessa Berenson, Here Are the Democrats Boycotting Donald Trump’s Inauguration, (Time, 2017)

[20] Jamie Ehrlich, Maxine Waters encourages supporters to harass Trump administration officials, (CNN, 2018)

[21] Tim Walker, #Calexit: Californians call for secession after Donald Trump’s election victor, (Independent, 2016)

[22] Multistate lawsuits against the federal government, 2017 – 2020, (BallotPedia, 2020)

[23] Anonymous, I am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration, (New York Times, 2018)

[24] Eileen Sullivan, Trump Calls Intelligence Officials ‘Naïve’ After They Contradict Him, (The New York Times, 2020)

[25] Julian Borger, Pentagon chief opposes Trump threat to deploy military at protests, (The Guardian, 2020)

[26] Ryan Browne, Top US general pushes back at national security adviser’s troop withdrawal announcement, (CNN, 2020)

[27] Danielle Kurtzleben, Study: News Coverage Of Trump More Negative Than Other Presidents, (NPR, 2017)

[28] Sam Husseini, Should the Media Expose Dubious Anonymous Sources? (Truthdig, 2020)

[29] Karen Mizoguchi, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Admits Failure to Protect Users’ Data or Stop Russians, Fake News, (People, 2018)

[30] Adam Kelsey, Twitter denies conservative ‘shadow banning’ claims, but alters search function, (ABC News, 2018)

[31] Zach Beauchamp, A major democracy watchdog just published a scathing report on Trump, (Vox, 2019)

[32] Ronald Bailey, Facts Still Matter, but They Don’t Change Many Voters’ Minds, (Reason, 2020)

[33] Christina Wilkie and Kevin Breuninger, Trump acquitted of both charges in Senate impeachment trial, (CNBC, 2020)

[34] Robert Watson, James J. McCarthy, Pablo Canziani and Nebojsa Nakicenovic, The Truth Behind the Climate Pledges, (2019)

[35] Peter Martin, Jennifer Jacobs and Roxana Tiron, Trump Draws Down Iraq Troops in Vow to Exit ‘Endless Wars,’ (Bloomberg, 2020)

[36] Deb Riechmann, Matthew Lee and Jonathan Lemire, Israel signs pacts with 2 Arab states: A ‘new’ Mideast? (AP News, 2020)

[37] Timeline: the Rise, Spread and Fall of the Islamic State, (Wilson Center, 2019)

[38] Ted Hesson, Trump’s plan to stem border crossings gets results, (Politico, 2019)

[39] Tracking deregulation in the Trump era, (Brookings, 2020)

[40] Jane C. Timm, Trump signs tax cut bill, first big legislative win, (NBC News, 2017)

[41] Joe Concha, MSNBC’s Deutsh compares Trump to Hitler, says president’s Jewish supporters ‘walking like a lemming of a cliff,’ (The Hill, 2020)

[42] Kunal Dey, Trump’s ‘Mussolini moment’ slammed after White House salute, MSNBC’s Joy Reid remarks POTUS ‘has makeup on,’ (Meaww, 2020)