Distinguishing the symptom from the problem

Amid all of the thoroughly disturbing headlines about Donald Trump, it's easy to overlook the really frightening thing about him: he's not the problem, but only a symptom of the problem. Roy Moore's selection in the Alabama primary, against a candidate endorsed by Trump, was evidence enough of that. Or consider the selection of Doug Ford as Ontario PC leader.

Just as the extended period of growth in North America between the end of the Second World War and the early 1970's led to a comparatively high degree of stability in government - the Ontario Conservative reign being an extreme example - increasing inequality in income and instability in jobs (driven in part by technological changes and in part by the impact of small government conservatism) has created a significant part of the population, both in the US and across the developed world, which is simply tired of politics as usual because they find the world increasingly less matched to their ways of life.

Furthermore, the practical constraints imposed by the modern global systems of trade, communications, and technology limit in some critical ways the scope of what governments can do to affect this. (That's not to say that some constraints aren't purely political. The tendency of governments to run deficits during periods of growth (i.e. not in a counter-cyclical Keynesian manner), including both "right-wing" governments (U.S. Republicans) and those further left (Ontario Liberals) limits what they can do before the bond markets come calling. This tendency is grounded in a much higher degree of grassroots opposition to raising taxes than used to apply. Looking at this from a few steps back, this is polities straightjacketing themselves: there's no fundamental reason more countries couldn't be like Finland.)

The pool of populist support reflects different demographics in different places. In Trumplandia, there's a heavy weighting with older white workers who see their status and relative prosperity slipping. In the UK, the Brexiteers are similarly white - more narrowly, identify as English - and older. But Ford Nation in Toronto has a significant block of non-white, poor voters who are much further down the status and income ladder. (Part of this reflects the fact that across a nation the rural discontent will tend to be older and more nativist: there's less diversity in rural areas, and the young leave for the cities when times are hard. But the Rob Ford phenomenon was, by definition, confined to Toronto. Canadian populism generally matches other countries' more closely if we look at instances like the choice of Scheer as CPC leader.)

All of the specific-to-the-US causes of Trump's success - the recent past of the Republican Party, the Electoral College, Clinton's unpopularity, the specifically American set of race relations problems - are swamped by an international wave of right-wing - "conservative" would be a misnomer - populism. (Even then, all of the factors together were barely enough to drag Trump over the finish line first. This is not an overwhelming tide.)

Oddly enough, though the Left has shown signs of growth of populism in Corbyn and Saunders, at present (at least) we're seeing centrist-left-establishment blocs versus right-populist blocs with comparatively little major impact from left-populist or radical left movements. Where is Occupy these days?

It is just possible that, five years from now, we could be looking at a Corbyn government in the UK, Saunders as president in the US, and Canada with an as yet unknown radical NDP leader with significant electoral support: stranger things have happened (but it won't be Jagmeet Singh, who looks likely to repeat the Layton / Mulcair approach of producing only mildly progressive policies in a bid to expand support). However, that's not currently the way to bet.

What I take away from this perspective is that, barring the (real) possibility of massive collapse under a Trump or Trump-like administration (multi-power war, global financial meltdown with weak government response, pandemic with weak public health response) the voters driving populism will reach the end of the term (or achieve Brexit, or some equivalent milestone) to find that their lot has actually worsened - the current crop of right / populist policies don't even try to address the real sources of malaise, and will tend to increase what is already a high Gini index. They will be even angrier (although probably not with their preferred candidate: more likely with the establishment, the elites, "the swamp", the "deep state", or conspiracies they will see as having frustrated their heroes). The cycle will begin again, with the populist block primed for even more extreme rhetoric.

Similarly, a Ford Conservative government, if one is elected (and isn't a minority, which has its own constraints) is guaranteed to fail in finding "efficiencies" allowing it to cut taxes while avoiding deep cuts to programs. (Not to mention that some of Ford's promises are themselves expensive.) The most likely prediction would be four years of ineffective stasis with mounting headlines of low-level services with crises from lack of funds (schools, universities, hospitals, public housing, transit: like now, only worse).

Since the populist base is actually only a minority, it's also likely that the rest of the electorate, responding to incompetent government[1], would vote in the alternative, most likely a representative of Stross's "beige dictatorship", setting up an even more divided political landscape, with the possibility of civil unrest (especially in the US, given its love affair with guns). Lather, rinse, repeat.

Trump magnifies what was already a set of negative trends for the US. The Republicans didn't become populist because of Trump; they were unable to block him because they had already slid into the de facto grassroots control of the Tea Party. Trump's flailing around on trade and on diplomatic matters just accelerates, but does not cause, an ongoing shift towards a multipolar world. Likewise, Brexit has generated nothing new: the sentiments that drive it go back at least as far as the reign if Elizabeth I. And Doug Ford reflects, not Trumpian concerns, but a style of conservatism which was visible among the desk-thumping Tory backbenchers of the mid-20th Century.

No, the real problem is that this sort of broad backlash hampers any serious attempt to deal with major issues like anthropogenic climate change, major economic disruptions which will follow increasing automation and the deflation, if not collapse, of the carbon bubble, and cascading social change driven by an internetworked world.

[1]It's theoretically possible to have a competent populist (in the sense of "has policies which would genuinely be of benefit"), but (1) there don't seem to be any visible ones right now, (2) they would be unlikely to hew to the current shibboleths of right-wing populism (given the lack of contact of those shibboleths with the real world), and (3) that's when we start to have very different worries about the overturn of the established order.