A society is a wickedly difficult thing to explain — just go ahead, if you don’t mind, and think about it for a minute or two. If someone asked you what a society is, how would you respond? Even explaining why it’s tough to explain is tough: there are just too many moving parts to grasp the whole; it is a massively complex enterprise, both noun and verb, process and the sum of that process. And basically, socioeconomic issues derive directly from misinterpretations or malfunctions of society, malfunctions that are inevitable because, as we’ve said, society is massive, an ocean of interlocking gears performing a near-infinity of functions — society, American society in particular, is really, really big, is the point.

Okay, fine, I can see that you’re saying, but come on, what’s this esoteric mumbo-jumbo have to do with Donald J. Trump’s campaign for the presidency?

Well so, the point is, it’s this complexity that’s at the core of what Trump is suggesting: his plan to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN is to make America understandable again (whether it ever actually was is, of course, probably not even debatable: it wasn’t). Societal complexity is framed as an issue that needs resolution, and Trump’s suggestion to resolve the complexity-of-society-and-its-resulting-malfunctions is, in a neat tautological trick, to just make it simple again, duh!

There’s a little more to it than that, actually. By “simple” and by “understandable,” what I really mean is that Trump’s goal is to sell us something (“everybody’s gonna be very, very happy,” and “you’re gonna love it,” he keeps insisting, in that super-eerie won’t-take-no-for-an-answer tone of voice, like a used car salesman’s attempt at flirtation). A simple America is America-as-product — at the heart of his message, in other words, is the businessman’s belief in the voter-as-consumer. That massively complex enterprise we term society is reduced to an item on a shelf. The deeper implication is that we know consumerism: we understand it and we’re comfortable with it — e.g., the way everybody just sort of intuitively knows their way around Target, or like how Thanksgiving’s really just become the prelude, the Christmas Eve, to Black Friday. Framing his message this way artfully slides around the basic fact of our existence: that it’s complicated, and often unpredictable, and scary for precisely that reason. Managing this complexity is what a government is supposed to help its citizens do. And I’m struggling to explain this, but I think there’s a distinction that needs to be made between managing complexity and ignoring it (or neatly substituting some bullshit origin myth of America as populist-paradise), as Donald J. Trump appears to be proposing.

A simple America is America-as-product — at the heart of his message is the businessman’s belief in the voter-as-consumer.

Possibly this line of thinking doesn’t strike you as particularly profound or new. You could make the argument that ALL politicians are attempting to sell something: that this is just the way our election process works. Of course you’d be right on, but I’ll submit this: What’s frightening about Donald J. Trump is how very open he is about the election as a transaction between seller and buyer. The fear is that, if this ultimately works as a strategy, then every election going forward will be framed in these terms: we’ll have a new default worldview, in other words — one that’s based on laziness, and selfishness, and the complete inversion of JFK’s famous ask-not-what-your-country-etc. formulation. Words and phrases like service, like community, like the common good, already greatly diminished in meaning, already probably going the way of the dodo for an enormous share of the voting public, will basically, finally, drop off the cliff, replaced with rhetoric that is undeniably empty, with a campaign process that makes for really good and compelling reality television: imagine the Republican primary debate of the future, in which ten Donald Trumps take the stage, each fervently defending the size of his dick and threatening to “open up” libel laws. **

But guys, this is already happening.