Trump and the Rise of a New Social Darwinism



In our increasingly complex world defined by the growing interdependence and cooperation between nations, President Trump is proving himself to be poorly adapted to this new environment. His blunt, old-school, winner take all approach to business and politics, lack of intellectual curiosity, and unpredictable temperament make him ill equipped to take the global leadership role to which he believes he is entitled as a wealthy and successful alpha male--particularly the autocratic brand of leadership that he is used to as a corporate CEO. The critical skills of collaboration, compromise, and win-win negotiation needed to thrive in a global economy and community are foreign to him. And at 70, he's not about to acquire the skills necessary to become a modern leader.

Instead, with his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and promise to tear up other international agreements, he is actively seeking to reengineer his environment--our nation and people--to favor his particular skills and biases. By isolating the US and vilifying all things deemed foreign such as multilateral agreements, free trade, alternative energy, universal healthcare, multiculturalism, and receptiveness to immigrants, he shrinks the US down to a manageable size and forces Americans to evolve to become more fearful, xenophobic and intellectually walled off from the world beyond our borders--attributes that would make us more receptive to the rise of a strongman leader, and ultimately less American. It will also only naturally push us to become more politically conservative and reactionary.

In this sense, Trump, Trumpism, and its acolytes have successfully resurrected the noxious and discredited ideology known as Social Darwinism, but not the way we have come to understand it. In its original form, Social Darwinism posited that people compete to thrive in their environment, and it is those who are most suited, either by physical prowess or intellectual superiority, who succeed.

But over the past 100 years, our environment has changed radically as globalism has broken down the socio-economic barriers between countries and people. Women, minorities and members of the LGBQ community have gained greater acceptance and a more powerful voice in society to the point that they are challenging the hegemony of alpha white males--that is, the world in which Trump thrives.

As humans, we only rarely change our beliefs when confronted with alternative viewpoints, no matter how logical and reasonable they may be, especially if they are incompatible with living in our social environment. However, as adaptable creatures, our worldviews can almost certainly be changed, even on a massive scale, when our social environment changes. It is this flexibility that Trump seeks to exploit.

With this understanding, Conservative reactionaries, led by Trump and architected by Bannon, have come to realise that by reengineering our environment, rather than evolving themselves, that they can change the beliefs and morality of America as a whole to better suit their political agenda. We shall see over the next four years how successful they are at bending us to their will.

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