Trump Doesn’t Win by Bread Alone

By
Chris Maisano

Donald Trump offers a bleak vision of the good life, founded on hierarchy and self-indulgence. The Left needs to put forward a politics that can counter the affective pleasures of Trumpism, rooted in solidarity rather than cruelty and exclusion.

US president Donald Trump speaks on June 6, 2024, in Phoenix, Arizona. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

On the eve of his second inauguration, Donald Trump launched his own meme coin, the perfectly named $TRUMP. Let’s leave aside the fact that many of Trump’s most committed and gullible followers are about to lose huge sums of money, if they haven’t already. Look instead at Trump’s announcement of the coin on social media, which is something of a skeleton key to Trumpian ideology and its sources of appeal.

Here we see three of Trumpism’s main offers, neatly summarized in a single Trump post. First is “WINNING!,” with the requisite capitalization and punctuation, reminiscent of tiger blood–era Charlie Sheen. Second is membership in a “very special Trump Community.” Third is the paternal injunction to “Have Fun!”

There are two aspects to the Trumpian conception of “winning.” There’s the general sense that being born in America (to the right kind of parents, of course) entitles you to always come out on top in everything you do and to do whatever you want without any negative consequences. That birthright, in turn, has to be protected from anyone who threatens to take it away.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s white nationalist deputy chief of staff, took the stage at the president’s preinauguration victory rally to make who that is abundantly clear: “It’s going to mean an executive order ending the border invasion, sending the illegals home and taking America back. . . . It’s going to mean the eradication of the criminal cartels and the foreign gangs who are preying on our people. And it’s going to mean justice for every American citizen who has lost a loved one to illegal aliens.”

It’s also going to mean an attack on transgender people. Miller: “There are men, and there are women. And it’s not up to you whether you’re a man or a woman. That’s a decision that’s made by God and it can’t be changed.”

In short, it means victory over anyone “poisoning the blood of our country,” as Trump chillingly put it — immigrants and transgender people above all, but also anyone who would dare to defend them.

The second offer is membership in a “very special Trump Community,” the promise of fellowship with fellow believers under the benevolent leader’s protective umbrella. This takes a number of different forms: wearable gear like the iconic MAGA hat; the Trump flags his supporters fly from their homes, boats, and RVs; and Trump’s mass rallies, which have become a signature aspect of his movement’s culture. They help Trump supporters recognize one another, declare their allegiances proudly, and strengthen their identification with the leading figure at the head of it all. Even if, as is all but certain with $TRUMP, that means blowing your money to make that figurehead even more wealthy and powerful.

Finally, and most revealingly, we have the injunction to “Have Fun!” It’s Trump playing the indulgent father, dispensing toys and sweets to the tykes clamoring at his feet, a fulfillment of the “daddy’s home” memes his supporters have been circulating since November 5. With daddy back in charge, it’s time to have fun again.

It’s not just any kind of fun, though. For many, it means the self-indulgent kicks of the adolescent male. For Mark Zuckerberg, it means putting an end to “culturally neutered” companies groaning under the woke tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion czars and “having a culture that celebrates the aggression” of properly masculine men. “I feel liberated,” said a banker in a recent Financial Times report. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled. . . . It’s a new dawn.”

From the moment he entered the political arena, Trump’s appeal has been grounded in the ways he encourages people to act like he does: with zero sense of responsibility or accountability. And for millions of people, that sounds like a blast.

Many Trump voters no doubt backed him out of economic and political frustration. But I am increasingly skeptical of the idea that Trump’s core supporters can be “won back” through “class politics” pitched at the level of rational, economic self-interest. As a sixty-year-old Missourian who attended Trump’s pre-inaugural rally put it, the experience of Trumpism “is so emotional, so much fun. And all the people that we get to see, who we’ve seen on TV, are right there in front of us.” So much of the appeal is grounded in deeply felt parasocial relationships with Fox News pundits, YouTubers, podcasters, streamers, and the big man himself, the guy who will fight against anyone who’d get between you and your fun.

I write this on a visit to Florida, the spiritual home of Trumpism, where so many of his followers have moved precisely to “Have Fun!” It’s a grim conception of the good life, completely devoid of collective responsibility or civic virtue, heedlessly devoted to living it up before the bill comes due. Karl Marx wrote that it’s through collective struggles that people “succeed in ridding [themselves] of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.” Trump tells people that they don’t need to rid themselves of the muck, that they should cover themselves with it, identify with it, have fun with it.

It’s a very seductive proposition, one that can’t be fully combated by campaign messaging or policy proposals. The muck has to be thrown off, our capacity for self-government restored. We need to develop a compelling conception of what politics is for and of what life in America is, or should be, about. That will entail many things, but it must include building new organizations, with new cultures and forms of solidarity, that teach people how to make decisions, govern themselves — and, in a different and constructive way, have fun together.