In what has been an entirely bizarre and surreal decade of Trumpworld U.S.A, the most bizarre moment yet might have been the meeting last month between President Trump and incoming New York mayor Zoran Mamdani. Hyped to be a showdown akin to what we’ll see on the White House Lawn come next June (with Lincoln Memorial weigh-in!), the meeting was far from that, closer to what might be called a lovefest.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be so strange that personal attraction and chemistry overshadow political ideology. Just look at James Carville and Mary Matalin. Mamdani and Trump might not be far off from that comparison. More surreal than the Trump and Mamdani bromance itself, though, is that there might be some overlap in the Trump and Mamdani coalitions, with exit polling showing that overlap to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 9%. Policy and the tug-of-war between the priorities of Mamdani’s New York and Trump’s federal government will likely trip up the bromance once the superficial chemistry has dissipated.
Only then might it become clear that there is no political coherence to this coalition whatsoever, and that’s kind of the point in what is becoming an increasingly fractured 21st century of political communication. Now, each side goes to their social media bubble and “chooses their fighter” based on how they’re fighting, and maybe what they’re fighting against, but not necessarily what they are fighting for.
Mamdani and Trump claim to be linked together as “affordability” problem solvers, but “affordability” is just the latest buzzword and synecdoche to represent that the continued layers of modern society and the American Dream are not working for people like they once did. The quiet quitting of the early 2020s has expanded into marriage and, in the workplace, has turned into “revenge quitting.” Everywhere, there are signs that people believe that what was initially sold and promised to them does not work for them anymore, even in the limited ways the system is said to work for anyone. No one can quite agree on the best metric for true unemployment. Meanwhile, debt continues to skyrocket and the top 10% of earners are accounting for 50% of all spending, an all-time high since that statistic was measured.
Disbelief in institutions is only fueling the nihilism that has been at the root of American life for at least the last decade. Did it start with Trump’s win? Or maybe it started with Obama’s, with the promise of the hopey changey thing, when we were told that we were the ones we had been waiting for. Did we ever actually arrive? When Trump asked, “What have you got to lose?” that question resonated, no matter his coarseness, his ability to insult groups or people based on political exploitability or personal grudge, or the mainstream media’s desire to shame him for such. It wasn’t until it was time for governance in 2017, or re-governance in 2025, that those who felt they had already lost everything found out they could lose a little bit more. Meanwhile, as we were distracted by the cult of personality carny act, which swallowed half the country and triggered the other half into a state of loud but passive and inert resistance, “American Greatness” remained as elusive as ever. It’s no wonder that right track/wrong track polling hasn’t cracked more than 50% in the 21st century (unless you trust Rasmussen’s polls under Trump). The longstanding worry is that someday soon a national Depression might catch up to us, but the real problem lies with the national depression. We are living with the tribute The Simpsons once made to Jimmy Carter: Malaise Forever.
For leaders to emerge and win in this environment, they have to address an economy and society where so many are opting out, with the worst case looking like Luigi Mangione or Nick Reiner, the nihilism raining on the poor and rich alike, creating dysfunction and bad outcomes for everybody else as well, also rich and poor. Leaders have to not just ask us if we are better off now than we were four years ago, but if we are better off than we were 20 years ago and 40 years ago. That was the true meaning of “Make America Great Again” for Trump’s economic-based supporters, as much as his opponents would like to call attention to the aspects that were a racist dog whistle and the ways in which life was not so great for many 20 years and 40 years ago. Whether you are cheering on Trump petulantly dunking on his enemies, or you yourself are dunking on Trump, he has been a bogeyman of distractive hate that has created a passivity epidemic, numbed resistance, online trolling, or all of the above.
But the kayfabe will continue on both sides until morale improves, with leaders working on promo skills instead of real solutions. There was something to Gavin Newsom becoming the 2028 frontrunner for his party’s nomination after aping Trump’s language online. No matter who wins or loses over the next few cycles, they will undoubtedly draw the wrong lessons from Trump, and also likely benefit from it. And then who will we be able to blame?
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