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Trumpian policy as cultural policy - Marginal REVOLUTION
Trumpian policy as cultural policy - Marginal REVOLUTION

Trumpian Policy as Cultural Policy Analysis: Trump's administrative actions and policy decisions are primarily driven by a strategy to reshape American culture rather than achieve specific policy outcomes, using controversial decisions to dominate public discourse and shift cultural narratives.

  • The article analyzes Trump's policy approach as primarily a cultural strategy rather than traditional policy-making

  • Key aspects of this cultural policy approach:

    • Focuses on highly visible, controversial decisions that generate widespread discussion
    • Prioritizes cultural messaging over policy effectiveness or implementation
    • Aims to control ideological agenda through rapid, multiple policy announcements
    • Doesn't require policies to be legal, practical, or even implemented to achieve cultural impact

  • Specific examples:

    • Executive orders against DEI and affirmative action as first actions
    • Proposed renaming of Dulles Airport
    • Bill to add Trump to Mount Rushmore
    • Tariff threats against Canada and Mexico
    • Changes to federal employment structure
    • Elimination of Black History Month at Department of Defense
    • Targeting of US AID
    • Nomination of RFK Jr.

  • Strategic elements:

    • Uses polarization to guarantee at least one-third public support
    • Deliberately chooses well-known targets (like Canada/Mexico) for maximum cultural impact
    • Creates debates that delegitimize existing institutions
    • "Floods the zone" with multiple controversies to maintain constant cultural dialogue

  • Author's analysis:

    • Strategy doesn't require coordinated planning
    • Works through spontaneous order of competing interests
    • Relies on three factors:
      1. Conflicting interest groups
      2. Competition for Trump's attention
      3. Trump's belief in cultural issues' importance

  • Effectiveness factors:

    • Leverages internet-intensive, attention-based media environment
    • Creates disorganization among opponents
    • Uses negative contagion to reinforce cultural shifts
    • Prioritizes cultural impact over policy success
#people/Trump#culture#partisanship#politics#govt/policy
·marginalrevolution.com·
Trumpian policy as cultural policy - Marginal REVOLUTION
Column: Donald Trump is president again. Did you feel the vibe shift?
Column: Donald Trump is president again. Did you feel the vibe shift?
Pre-Trump American conservatism was dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: limited government, cultural traditionalism, antiabortion politics, fiscal rectitude and free market economics. Now, I’m the first to concede the right often fell short of its ideals, but showing rhetorical fealty to the ideals was the binding firmament of conservatism. Those commitments still get some lip-service, but there’s no denying that on all of these fronts, loyalty to Trump is the more pressing litmus test. This has freed up Trump to move leftward on abortion, entitlements and economic policy generally.
Trump didn’t merely shatter the consensus on the right, he shattered the political consensus generally. Or maybe social media and those other trends were the battering rams and Trump merely benefited from the new landscape.
the bedrock assumptions about how politics “works” and the rules for what a politician can or can’t do, no longer seem operative. We’re all familiar with how his behavior has demonstrated that, but it’s also illuminated that the electorate itself is just different today. The FDR coalition is gone, the white working class is now operationally conservative, and the Latino and Black working classes are now seen as gettable by Republicans. The assumption that they are “natural Democrats” was obliterated in this election. Republicans have figured out how to talk to those constituencies.
#opinion#politics#culture#people/Trump#partisanship#trends
·latimes.com·
Column: Donald Trump is president again. Did you feel the vibe shift?
Judith Butler with a Pretty Damn Good Indictment of Identity Politics!
Judith Butler with a Pretty Damn Good Indictment of Identity Politics!
Almost every credible analysis of this past election points to several dominant issues: dissatisfaction with the economy generally and anger over inflation particularly, immigration, and the vague but profoundly powerful anti-incumbent sentiment that’s swept the entire democratic world.
“Woke” certainly didn’t cost Democrats the election, but the discursive and emotional conditions of the woke world are an albatross around the neck of liberal elites who heavily influence public perception.
you can’t build a political coalition through emphasizing difference, you can’t staple together certain minority identities while rejecting majority identities and win elections.
#culture#identities#elections/2024#partisanship#dems#opinion#politics
·freddiedeboer.substack.com·
Judith Butler with a Pretty Damn Good Indictment of Identity Politics!
Three Telltale Signs of Online Post-Literacy
Three Telltale Signs of Online Post-Literacy
The swarms of online surveillers typically only know how to detect clearly stated opinions, and the less linguistic jouissance the writer of these opinions displays in writing them, the easier job the surveillers will have of it. Another way of saying this is that those who read in order to find new targets of denunciation are so far along now in their convergent evolution with AI, that the best way to protect yourself from them is to conceal your writing under a shroud of irreducibly human style
Such camouflage was harder to wear within the 280-word limit on Twitter, which of course meant that the most fitting and obvious way to avoid the Maoists was to retreat into insincere shitposting — arguably the first truly new genre of artistic or literary endeavor in the 21st century, which perhaps will turn out to have been as explosive and revolutionary as, say, jazz was in the 20th.
Our master shitposter has perfectly mirrored the breakdown of sense that characterizes our era — dril’s body of work looks like our moment no less than, say, an Otto Dix painting looks like World War I
#culture#memes#genres/shitposting#politics#writing#partisanship#internet
·the-hinternet.com·
Three Telltale Signs of Online Post-Literacy
‘Woke’ and other bogus political terms, decoded
‘Woke’ and other bogus political terms, decoded
See also "On Bullshit"
“The media” (or “mainstream media”): a meaningless phrase because there are countless very different media, which don’t act in concert.
“Gets it”: a social media phrase that is used to mean “agrees with me”.
Usually, though, people who claim to have been “cancelled” mean “criticised”, “convicted of sexual assault”, “replaced by somebody who isn’t an overt bigot” or simply “ignored”.
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” wrote George Orwell in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” (the complete guide on how to write in just 13 pages). He lists other “worn-out and useless” words and phrases that were disappearing in his day: jackboot, Achilles heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno. The same fate later befell words overused in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks: “heroes” (a euphemism for victims) and “greatest country on earth” (meaning largest military and GDP).
#language#rhetoric#politics#culture#partisanship#gop#dems#misinfo#foxnews#americanism#bullshit
·ft.com·
‘Woke’ and other bogus political terms, decoded