By Alexander Perepechko
Published on April 30, 2017
The geography of risks. The votes for Donald Trump
Risks, identified, measured, and analyzed in parts 1 and 2 of this research, can be associated with a few maps from the 2016 presidential election.
A. The social risks defined by “group grievance” and “refugees and IDPs” are – at least to some degree – real in the United States. These risks are perceived as acute ontological insecurity by the majority of whites: most whites, even the majority of college graduated whites (49%), voted for Donald Trump (Figure 34). During his emotional – postmodernist! – campaign, the charismatic Trump raised the fear level, played up humiliation, and articulated a need for the great leader. Trump’s nativist (some incorrectly use the term “nationalist”) (see Leahy, 2015) perspective and rhetoric awakened dormant features of universal human nature in Middle America. Machiavellian intelligence (in a time of resource scarcity or crisis a “lion” can terrify the “wolves”) became a powerful factor in the electoral behavior of these voters.
Figure 34. White voters for Trump. (Source: Generated by the author based on Florida, 2016; US election, 2016.)
The managers and advisors of Trump’s electoral campaign hardly invented something new: nativist movements have ebbed and flowed for many decades in America. The American historian John Higham (1955) explored the origin and nature of nativism in terms of group conflict. Nativist groups arose between 1860 and 1925 during economic recessions when immigrants were viewed as a threat to native-born Americans. The largest of these nativist groups was the American Protective Association, with membership reaching half a million members. Higham objectively demonstrated that nativism, racism, national hysteria, and intellectual absurdity are the historic background of our present immigration legislation…
B. Men, especially older men, living in many peripheral or semi-peripheral counties voted for Trump (Figure 35). Why men? Is it because Trump behaves as a macho man and because his opponent was a woman? Or is it that “uneven development” and “poverty & economic decline” economic risks in remote rural areas and small and medium sized towns strongly impacted older men and older women? Trump’s proposal to increase military spending by 54 billion dollars (more than 9%) suggests the following explanation.
Figure 35. Older men voted for Trump. (Source: US election, 2016.)
People who were 45 and older at the 2016 presidential election comprised 55% of the electorate (How Donald Trump, 2016). These voters 1) remember austerity measures, 2) were raised in families with more children on average than in the younger generation, and 3) were socialized during the Cold War. Many American veterans live in areas populated predominantly by older people.
In his new book “Pussycats, Why the Rest Keeps Beating the West – and What Can Be Done About It,” Israeli strategist Martin van Creveld (2016) reflects on the vision of many older Trump supporters about ongoing cultural changes and the apparently negative impact of these changes on America’s power in general and on the American military in particular. According to this vision (van Creveld, 2016: 10-11, 214-229), the difference between the older generation and the younger generation of Americans reminds us of the difference between wildcats and pussycats. He posits why the U.S. loses so many military campaigns against irregulars (insurgents, guerillas, terrorists, etc.): 1) ill-prepared by state bureaucracy and schools, young people – especially boys from which society draws most of its future soldiers – are soulless and weak; these soldiers are not able or willing to fight and withstand hardships (mass PTSD is a sign of this); 2) political correctness and the nanny state promoted by the educated public defang, infantilize, humiliate, and rob of pride the professional military; micromanaged by politicians who think of nothing but the next election “the new American militarism” avoids casualties at almost any cost; 3) the way women and sexual minorities are being incorporated into the armed forces are devastating those very forces; 4) combat troops are discriminated against in favor of better educated personnel, especially women; and 5) rights predominate over duties, war itself is being delegitimized, and the young are increasingly unwilling to serve as conscripts… Attempts to substitute technology for fighting power do not work, according to the author.
C. The “uneven development” and “poverty & economic decline” economic risks are among the major concerns in the industrial powerhouse of American Rust Belt states. Figure 36 shows where Donald Trump improved on the share of the vote received by Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate who failed to beat President Barack Obama in 2012. Six formerly Democratic states swung Donald Trump’s way: Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Of these key states, all but Florida are in the Rust Belt.
Figure 36. Counties where Trump increased the Republican vote compared to 2012. (Source: US election, 2016.)
Trump received a lot of white votes in Iowa, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. His support among white people also was considerable in Michigan and Wisconsin. The strong support older men gave Trump helped him to win Florida. Trump’s support by older men in Michigan and Wisconsin was also strong. Many of the 249 counties in which most people are white and voted for Trump are in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (figures 34 and 36).
D. Among the political and military risks, “factionalized elites” is critical. The map below (figure 37) is a snapshot of the conflict between globalists and nativists. Clinton captured a greater share of the metro vote, 51%, compared to 44% for Trump (Florida, 2016). Metro areas accounted for 85% of Trump votes, 110 million of roughly 129 million total. Therefore Trump captured 48 million of 63 million votes (76%) in metro areas. Most of his voters are urban and live side by side with Clinton voters in metro areas. Some Bernie Sanders’ voters in metro areas may have sent their left votes over to right and voted for Donald Trump or just stayed home…
Economic differences between large-sized high-output economies in heavily metropolitan areas, carried by Hillary Clinton, and hundreds of thousands of tiny low-output locations that comprise the sparsely populated hinterland, along with some suburban and exurban metro counties, carried by Donald Trump, are huge (see Muro & Liu, 2016). Less than 500 counties that Clinton won generated 64% of America’s economic activity (GDP) in 2015. More than 2,600 counties carried by Trump generated only 36% of the country’s economic output. For comparison, in 2000 Al Gore carried 659 counties with 54% of GDP and George W. Bush won 2,397 counties with 45% of the national output. Indeed, Donald Trump promised to restore coal, manufacturing and other jobs that were lost in the past several decades (Tankersley, 2016). In terms of elitology, global cities are dominated by the financial sector and other high risk/return businesses and they overflow with short-term speculators and “foxes.” On the contrary, the American hinterland and many deprived and disadvantaged parts of metropolitan areas are places of low risk/return manufacturers and “lions.”
Figure 37. The 2016 presidential election. Global cosmopolitan neoliberal cities “sank” in Middle America (Source: Galka, 2016.)
Recall that the correlation between the “factionalized elites” and “security apparatus” indicators is positive and very strong (r=0.85) (part 2 of this paper). The correlation between the “group grievance” and “factionalized elites” indicators is also positive and very strong (r=0.83). Further, the correlation between the “group grievance” and “security apparatus” indicators is positive and extremely strong (r=0.99). Since these three indicators worsened almost monotonically during the period 2012-2016, we can assert that this decline is a sign of systemic risk; it is quite possible that events or processes in a few components of a system can trigger severe instability or collapse of the entire system.
The “human rights” indicator is the second most important among political and military risks. Globalists and nativists perceive “human rights” very differently. Suffice it to say that the Trump administration is considering quitting the UN Human Rights Council. This organization has been accused of bias against Israel and criticized for including abusive governments (Toosi & Johnson, 2017). Even the language pertaining to human rights is almost absent in the vocabulary of the Trump administration.
E. The risks identified, measured, and analyzed in this study corroborate findings of the Laboratory for Social Machines at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab (see part 1 of this research paper) and expand these findings. Particular social, economic, and political and military risks indicate the growing trend of political Balkanization in the United States.
These dangerous trends are aggravated by increasing uncertainty: there is more uncertainty at the time of a dramatic event, such as war, terrorism, sharp stock market decline, financial collapse, and certain political events such as elections. Ironically, uncertainty brought Trump to power because Middle America felt the ontological insecurity of the individual-liberal way of life. It is not surprising that political uncertainty around the world has more than doubled since the election of Donald Trump. Moreover, the unrestrained nature of Trump and the inexperience of his team (see Shevtsova, 2017) have became risks themselves and have increased uncertainty for the whole of American society and the rest of the world.
In the age of post-truth politics (Lynch, 2016) an individual often ignores information which is not in agreement with his or her beliefs. In 2015, 32% of Republicans trusted the mainstream media, compared to 14% in 2016 (Lapowsky, 2016). Social media allow an individual to circulate his or her own version of the truth, or to share false or misleading information. Since social media is second only to cable news as American’s primary political news source, information functions as ideological truth. Due to the “rescaling of reality,” people often lose the ability to adequately evaluate social, economic, and political and military risks and to make good decisions about these risks. Politicians can fall into this trap, too. For example, Hillary Clinton supporters still struggle to understand the worldviews of those who voted for Trump (Camosy, 2016; Halimi, 2016). The Minority Leader of the House of the Representatives Nancy Pelosi stated with delusional optimism: “Well, I don’t think that people want a new direction. Our values unify us” (Face the Nation, 2016).
The trouble with social media is not unique to the 2016 U.S. election. These days, France faces a similar problem ahead of the country’s presidential election (see Seetharaman & Schechner, 2017).
Conclusion: Thoughts about fur coats
Twenty-five years ago, the celebrated Italian Socialist Bettino Craxi famously stated: “Sooner or later all foxes end up as fur coats” (Clough, 1992). The presidential election of 2016 ended up disastrously for “foxes” in America. Can we learn from it? If we want to learn, we need to understand and tolerate each other’s viewpoints…
1. The lower middle class, lobbyism, and educational factors were not as crucial in the 2016 presidential election as some observers present. We have to be cautious when using these socio-economic and political variables. Many Americans rebelled against the political establishment at a time when the economy was not in bad shape.
Although Donald Trump constantly appealed to the lower middle class during his campaign, the economic situation of this group of American workers did not look desperate. Since 2011, about half a million manufacturing jobs have been regained (Mellnik, Alcantara, 2016). Of course, these new jobs are not the same jobs that left the country. But that is a different issue: structural changes require the retraining of labor and the development of new policies (Arbess, 2016).
This upheaval in Middle America was not about the lobbying efforts of Wall Street. The money for Hillary Clinton’s campaign had been raised from bankers as well as unemployed people and her campaign had cash left over (Daly, 2016).
Surprisingly, even the assertion that only Americans without a college education voted for Trump can be challenged. Why? We already noted that 49% of white college graduates voted for Donald Trump. But this is only part of the story. It has been asserted that students at hundreds of colleges and universities in America are systematically indoctrinated into the leftist, neoliberal, and postmodernist ideologies (see Fursov, 2016a). Many academics, especially in the social sciences, have become de facto ideologists of the political system. Arcane sects of politically correct academics often are not interested in scientific truth. Instead they frequently sell their professional authority to the highest bidder, “construct” ideologically biased knowledge, and even intentionally misrepresent results. These academics, at least their upper echelons, evolved into a corporation of professionals, a privileged fraction, which openly serves governing groups and elites.
The American strategic and international studies expert Tom Nichols (2017) reported results of a 2015 study at Ohio State University: both liberals and conservatives tend to discount scientific theories that contradict their worldview (an echo of the culture of “puritan fanaticism”?). This study also found that when exposed to scientific research that challenged their views both liberals and conservatives reacted by doubting the science rather than themselves. In other words, outside the academy, the world is different from social science theory. It is not by chance that 44% of college graduates in their twenties are stuck in low-wage, dead-end jobs, the highest rate in decades. The number of young people making less than $25,000 also spiked to the highest level since the 1990s (Stahl, 2015). I doubt whether these people with college diplomas necessarily supported Hillary Clinton…
2.The victory of Donald Trump is a reaction of Middle America to attacks on its values by an insulated political culture of globalized intellectual and academic communities (see Goldberg, 2016). This victory is a rejection of the globalist neoliberal norms and values for which Hillary Clinton has stood. This is a victory of nativists.
3. Middle America rebelled against “fox” politicians and liberal culture, which they perceive as having created more risk and uncertainty. Trump’s supporters voted against the foxes’ manipulative strategies for countering the risks. These risks activated a “leonine” pattern, associated with force, from its relative dormancy within human nature. This pattern found active expression within the psychology and culture (see Marshall, Ojiako, Chipulu, 2014) of those who revolted against the liberal-individualistic way of life.
Indeed, during recent decades, America turned into a society where the highest levels of political, economic, and intellectual life are “overpopulated” by Machiavelli’s and Pareto’s “foxes,” which run the country from a few global American cities. Trump voters see their own experience of uncertainty, pertaining to risks of Late Modernity, as mishandled by these “foxes.” These decision-making “foxes” are heavily influenced by particular beliefs, cognitive biases, and attitudes. Trump voters perceive the actions of these “foxes” as weak, narcissistic, and even psychopathic.
Middle America perceives that the number and severity of risks in society quickly increased because the “foxes” have the upper hand in social, economic, and political spheres. Central political authority erodes. In their view, government has become more responsive to the demands of a quickly growing number of diverse cultural groups – real, surrogate, and socially engineered – at the expense of the interests of the whole society. Co-optation emerges as a political control strategy. Low economic growth combined with government by co-optation is viewed as a form of corruption. Patronage, extended by the government, is perceived as encouraging hedonistic social attitudes…
4. Socio-economic changes over recent decades have created pressure for a change of culture and mind within the American political elite. Barack Obama warned that the country is threatened by a “poisonous political climate” and the problems became worse during his administration (Fabian, 2016). Unfortunately, he could not (or did not want to) address them. Politicians are settled into “sticking points,” created by special interests, and block, in fact, any reforms beneficial to the whole society. In terms of elitology, the American political elite has degenerated into resource consumptive quarrels. Political elites became maladapted and unable to negotiate uncertainty. Consequently, risks that threaten the existence of these elites have increased and become unbearable.
5. In response to real and perceived risks, caused by “foxes,” “leonine” attributes have intensified across elites, especially non-political elites. “Vulpine” patterns of decision-making have become predominant in higher echelons of the political elite but there have been plenty of “lions” outside the political establishment ready to reestablish balance in the circulation of elites.
6. The realist Henry Kissinger suggested that the victory of Donald Trump presents an opportunity to close (or at least narrow) the gap between the public’s and the elite’s perception of risks. Kissinger called the 2016 presidential election a “domestic revolution” (see Ferguson, 2016) even though he did not say a word about the nature of this “revolution” or the elites involved in it.
Perhaps the term “revolt of elites,” introduced by the American historian Christopher Lasch (1996), describes well this “revolution.” The Russian elitologist Andrei Fursov (2016b: 445-446) more specifically – and provocatively – calls it a free-market Christian fundamentalist reaction to the risks of globalization in a society where liberal-individualistic ways of life have intensified. It is an attempt to return to Modernity – “restoration” – and to defend the nation-state from transnational bankers. For their operations, these financiers need supranational organizations both open and clandestine. According to Fursov, these bankers see the nation-state as the principal obstacle to their international activities. On the contrary, anti-globalists want to stop the crisis of legitimacy of the state and to restore legitimacy to the state.
It seems that Trump has the backing of industrial corporations and banks that invest in this sector. According to observers such as Fursov (e.g. 2014, 2016a, 2016b: 494), Trump has on his side Charles and David Koch, the Rothschilds (The Central Bank of England in The City), the elite clubs “Cercle” and “Siècle,” the Windsors, descendents of Guelph families from south Germany and north Italy (who are sided with Vatican), and other powerful actors opposing financial globalization. It is not unlikely that at least some of these actors had a vested interest in the election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States…
7. It seems as though the cultural and psychological transformation of American business elites presents a risk to society. In recent years, America has been overpopulated by financial businesses shortsightedly preoccupied with the present and near future. Vilfredo Pareto called an entrepreneur who pays disproportionate attention to shorter term risks a speculator. This speculator and his or her borrower are risk-takers who live for the day. In contrast to short-term minded speculators, decision-makers in the manufacturing sector take the long-term view (see Marshall & Guidi, 2012: 100-101). Manufacturers (industrialists) tend to allocate capital to low risk/return investments. In America, the ratio of speculators to manufacturers has increased within the economic elite. A capital reallocation from low to high risk/return businesses has occurred dangerously fast. The rapid rise of derivative markets and “casino banking” led to the global 2008-2011 financial crisis: bad debts on American sub-prime loans escalated into crises of liquidity for transnational banks and then into sovereign debt and crises of public spending for states. The rise of short-term speculation resulted in the credit crisis – a sudden reduction in the availability of money from banks. Ultimately, this had grave consequences for the speculators (Wall Street financial elite) and “foxes”.
Short-term mundane (everyday) motives are tactical and not determined by higher values and ideals. In the real highly competitive liberal-individualistic environment of Washington D.C. a politician needs to think not about the American independence myth or great ideals like justice and equality but about career, opportunities, money, and the stock market. The real world and success in this world are first and foremost.
The absence of a long-term perspective is among the reasons why the Unites States has not had a grand strategy (the art of connecting yourself to as many other independent power centers as possible, while isolating your enemies from as many other power centers as possible (Boyd, 1987: 34, 58)) for decades. Power struggles, narcissistic conflicts, and striving toward financial gain make the operating environment competitive and even dangerous. Owners and managers within banks and politicians within party offices and legislatures operate under high uncertainty. They might see things for what they are and see these things well. However these owners, managers, and politicians are able to see well only in the short run. The decisions of speculators and “foxes” look wise today or tomorrow but often lead to disaster in the long run…
8. Top-level public servants in America perceive the passage of time as threatening and become more materialistic and acquisitive. They always fear that power can be taken by competitors. Not unlike Pareto’s foxes and speculators, those with power want more and act quickly. Like Pareto’s foxes and speculators, our public servants are preoccupied with short-term risks and risks to themselves (Marshall & Guidi, 2012). The ability to influence behavior embraces delusory beliefs of self-importance. The premises of politicians often are based upon false assumptions about human nature and social reality. For instance, many politicians are convinced that they must take urgent and decisive actions because their followers are less capable of making decisions. This delusion tends to increase a politician’s sense of entitlement and leads to a narcissistic behavior (see Piff, 2014). For example, top-level public servants are commonly preoccupied with prestige and status. This kind of behavior makes institutional checks and balances of politicians less efficient…
9. Professional political representatives have been absorbed by lobbying special and parochial interests at the expense of the larger society for too long. Endless quarrels, scandals, and intrigues have led to permanent confrontation between professional political representatives and to loss of legitimacy (see Genieys, 2006). Democrats blame Republicans and Republicans blame Democrats but not much is achieved: social, economic, and political and military risks have only worsened. And at the right moment the oligarch Donald Trump appeared on the political scene… As Trump fills his cabinet, his cadre of billionaire advisers continues to expand. Many of them are members of or closely connected to the industrial elite. The magazine Forbes publishes a running list of billionaire members of Trump’s inner circle. As of now, this list includes – from cabinet members to economic advisers and inaugural committee members – 20 oligarchs (Peterson-Withorn, 2016).
10. We know that the ultimate – although not directly declared – goal of Donald Trump is the reshuffling of elites in America. It is obvious that the President is distant from the professional political representatives in Congress. Right after the election Trump even expressed the desire to govern from New York! And the representatives in Washington D.C. (both Democrats and Republicans!) quickly demonstrated their power to Trump by defeating his health care bill. Due to checks and balances, at this point President Trump cannot do much about these representatives and senators.
However there are two things Trump can try to do. Firstly, he can try to undermine the role of the “political aristocracy” like the Bush and Clinton families that held significant political power in 1980-2016 and pushed America towards personalistic regimes. Secondly, Trump can try to get rid of the most ideologically biased members of programmatic elites. What are programmatic elites and why should their odious ideologists be removed?
According to the French elitologist William Genieys (see Genieys & Smyrl, 2008), a programmatic elite consists of policy professionals (for instance, senior representatives, experienced heads of executive and cabinet departments and of independent government agencies, and consultants) who generate ideas and translate them into concrete policy in a given policy sector. Programmatic ideas bring members of the programmatic elite together; party affiliation does not divide it. These policy professionals need to have ready access to the institutional levers of decision making for the policy in question. Why? Because the best ideas in the world will have little impact on policy if institutional power is not available to back them. The influence of the programmatic elite derives less from the positions held by its members than from the coherence and applicability of its state-centered policy model.
Since the American political system is going through a crisis, a shock to this system from the White House needs to have a positive impact: degenerated, corrupted, and inept politicians and officials have to be voted out or removed. After that, renewed and refreshed programmatic elites can prepare, offer, and defend a new definition of interests and legitimacy (see Genieys, 2008: 13).
Indeed many recent political scandals in Washington D.C. look like a fight for the renewal of programmatic elites. If true, we can suggest that President Trump and his team try to push – perhaps intuitively – the American political system toward regime change. A trajectory describing this change is well known in elitology (see Genieys, 2011: 267). The causal chain of such systemic change can be described as: Political crisis – -> Change of elite –> Change of regime.
11. As in some other countries, bureaucratic elites in the United States consider themselves “custodians of the state” (Daalder, 2015; Genieys, 2011: 313, 343). These “guardians” of the state often distrust and sometimes oppose the regime of representation, in which parties and politicians have strong power to control these guardians through nomination to key administrative positions. In practice, bureaucratic elites often prefer to curb democratic processes and procedures by forming “authoritarian alliances” with military and security elites. Does this apply to the current situation in the United States?
Professional military and security officers clearly understand that America is at best able to contain – more or less – terrorist movements and other non-state and state opponents. CSIS (Center for Strategic & International Studies) Director and CEO John Harme (2016) expresses the deep dissatisfaction of the military establishment with the performance of political elites: “To date, the parties have promoted only their solution to the structural financial problems the government faces. Durable policy outcomes depend on compromise. What makes this type of compromise so difficult today is that Congress has dramatically weakened itself by taking the substance out of governing. True power in Washington comes when we harness politics to governing. You govern effectively to win the next election. Today it is politics without governing. Votes are symbolic statements designed to shape the next election. If this continues, we will become little more than a paper tiger in the eyes of the world.”
These days, Trump’s White House is trying to transform defense, foreign relations, and national security policies. Eventually this transformation will result in a new grand strategy for the United States. This task requires consolidation of programmatic elites within the Pentagon, State Department, and the 17 intelligence agencies (see Agrawal, 2017). But the development of a loyal state-centered programmatic elite can involve disloyal attitudes and behaviors that work against democratic pluralism. This is an enormous problem. Can President Trump manage it?
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