Abstract
When Donald Trump became American president, the global intelligentsia recoiled in disbelief. It wasn’t just Trump himself that they found dismaying, but also the fact that millions of Americans had voted for a tycoon from a gilded penthouse to head their state. How could they elect someone so utterly unlike themselves – socially, culturally, economically – as their political representative? And why did so many women prefer a lascivious male bully to Hillary Clinton, contra the presumptive laws of female solidarity? Most of the answers offered by left-liberal intellectuals were derogatory: racism, populism, bigotry, cultural anxiety, economic ignorance, political naïveté. But surely the voices of Trump’s supporters were sufficiently clear. What they wanted was someone precisely not like themselves, but rather superior to them: a richer, more powerful man, better positioned and able than they could ever be to improve their lives. A woman who voted for Trump in Michigan put it this way: ‘Obama is more like your best friend who has parties and has Beyoncé over, and then Trump is like your dad. He’s going to come whoop your ass because you didn’t do what you were supposed to do and get it done’.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-5 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Anthropology of This Century |
| Issue number | 21 |
| Publication status | Published - 17 Jan 2018 |