Autocracy or Meritocracy?

(Credit to Mike Luckovitch)

During a fascinating podcast with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, colleague Rachel Maddow made an interesting point, supported by multiple historic references.  She observed that autocrats or fascists like Mussolini and Hitler didn’t sway the masses because of their charisma or potent rhetoric.  Rather, she posited, the masses had the predisposition toward autocracy or fascism and the “leader” was opportunistically in the right place at the right time.

She used this historically-informed observation to suggest that Trumpism is a 21st century American version of that phenomenon.

I respectfully dissent.  I propose that Trump has indeed capitalized on predisposed masses, but the American masses are intoxicated by meritocracy, not autocracy.

Many pundits acknowledge the odd juxtaposition of freedom and autocracy among Americans on the political right.  Those who seem unfazed or dismissive of Trump’s casual use of “dictator,” his calls to suspend the Constitution, or his threats to invoke the Insurrection Act, don’t believe for a moment that their own freedoms would be at risk.  He may want to be a dictator, but he’d be “our”dictator, despite that this is not how dictatorships work.  

Among the many myths that punctuate the American experience, the myth of meritocracy has grown dominant.  In brief essence, many people fervently believe that you deserve what you get and get what you deserve.  

Welfare and other aspects of social support are seen with contempt.  “Why should I give my hard-earned dollars to some potato chip-eating Queen?”  

This belief is reflected in many aspects of traditional conservative ideology and practice.  The backlash to contemporary racial justice initiatives is one manifestation.  Sure, such believers concede, slavery was bad, but that was then and this is now.  And Oprah, Tiger Woods . . . 

Public sentiment and SCOTUS dispatched with affirmative action because it gave unfair advantage to Black kids at the expense of hardworking white kids.  Poor Black kids do worse in school, but it’s due to lousy parenting or laziness, not inequitable funding or tenacious effects of systemic racism.  Stop whining and . . . those bootstraps!

We Americans have an exceptional capacity for finding or placing groups beneath our own based on our perception of their intelligence, work ethic, religion or gender.  In my Army service in Thailand it was clear that Black soldiers (not exclusively) enjoyed looking down on Thais.  

The myth of meritocracy infects nearly all aspects of our society and economy.  Calls for the abolition of Social Security and Medicare are pervasive in conservative circles, driven in part by the sentiment that “‘they’ should have had an IRA like I did,” or that health care is a consumer commodity and if you can’t afford health care it’s because you didn’t earn it.

The myth of meritocracy should be challenged by the fact that the United States has one of the worst records of upward mobility in the developed world.  But no matter.  Even that is accepted because it is mostly “the other” that exists in entrenched poverty.  It is not so much about whether any particular person is better off.  It is that one is better off than them - and let’s keep it that way.

Many wonder why so many poor or working class white folks support Trump or Trumpism when neither he nor his play toy, the Republican Party, has done or will do anything for them.   It is because the Trumpers promise, and deliver with brutal efficiency, to press down hard on those who are deemed less deserving, like immigrants, low wage workers and gay folks/trans folks/Black folks and those women who can’t afford to fly somewhere for reproductive health care.

I am far from alone in observing the deep irony of people regularly voting against their own interests.  A great many Americans sincerely believe that the genius of America is that anyone can make it here, despite a few centuries of stubborn facts to the contrary. 

Trump supporters don’t want a dictator or an autocracy.  We don’t have the seeds of fascism planted in our culture.  They are just awaitin’ for their train to come in and want to make sure none of those other folks are on board.  After all, they really don’t deserve it.