To call Donald Trump a populist was almost to understate his effect, which is still being internalized by our political class. It didn’t even matter that the campaign promises turned out to be false. “Build the Wall” was an act of vandalism against political orthodoxy that held that the government existed only to facilitate the greater movement of goods, capital, and people over borders. It was the unspoken governing charter of our elite that we would pursue by capitalist means the Marxist promise of a world without the irrational loyalties of family, nation, and faith.
The American people were content to let this idiotic consensus flourish among the governing class when the government still seemed to be delivering the goods we wanted: economic growth, lowered crime rates, and wars decisively won. And then, our miserable 21st century began. A fumbled response to 9/11. Wages that seemed to stagnate. A financial crisis and real-estate crisis. Surging opioid addictions and deaths of despair, declining life spans. More recently, inflation. And then the final act of elite failure: the Covid-19 pandemic. From every perspective, the response was botched and yet high-handed.
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