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Isolationism as a stream of thought was hibernating. It was rarely articulated, but passionately held, waiting for someone like Trump to lead it. Isolationists were called the “silent majority” in Richard Nixon’s days — even though Nixon was an internationalist, who built a strong relationship with China.

Trump knew how to exploit the silent majority’s mix of racism, grievances and xenophobia. He appealed to the vast national community of chronic blamers, anxious to locate the cause of American problems in China, thereby executing a double play of racism and xenophobia.

For a still more expansive explanation of Trump’s intense demagoguery, we need to go back to Alexis de Tocqueville, a writer so shrewd that in the 1830s, he delivered a remarkable prophecy: he said that in the 20th century, two nations would compete for world supremacy, the U.S. and Russia.

Then Donald Trump came before them and sneered at government leadership, in a style that had nothing to do with talent or intelligence

He ardently supported liberty, but in his great book, Democracy in America, he noted that “one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level.”

He believed that most Americans refused to defer to those of superior talent and intelligence. In truth, modern life requires many people of talent and intelligence to run big institutions, including governments. Others resent their quality wherever they find it. They see it as oppressive.

Then Donald Trump came before them and sneered at government leadership, in a style that had nothing to do with talent or intelligence. “You don’t need all those people,” he said, in effect. “Do away with them.” To accomplish this, his followers needed only to mark a ballot. Soon he looked like the man they always needed. In the future, this strategy may well be called Trumpism. For now, American journalists call it populism.

National Post

robert.fulford@utoronto.ca