A good collection of data overall. There are a couple of things you left out that I think would have made for a better analysis.
One key data point not covered was fertility rate. The parties are increasingly sorting themselves into those who have children and those who don't. This is particularly true if you narrow it to married with children. This is pretty easy to find data on I think would have made your overall understanding of the "values" that are driving the voters a little more nuanced then the "white nationalism" parroted by some of your commentators (and which fails to account for gaining share of minority voters that is happening at the same time that the republicans lose white educated voters).
The second thing you left out is more subjective and comes from my own observations and that is the complete disrespect that the educated class treats the non-educated class and how they game the system against the uneducated in ways that are unnecessary and counter productive. Now I could tell you my own anecdotes as someone who worked is his way from a blue collar position into white collar managerial position but on a more purely data driven analyses I think it would be better looking for surveys showing how people feel about the class divided.
What looking at these things would have done for you is give you a better idea why the driving force separating the working class from the professional class transcends racial lines even though minority populations (or what used to be minority populations, soon that will be a factually incorrect way to refer to them) have countervailing forces that keep them from adopting the republican party as fully as white working class has.
Think about Gregory Mankiw or Ben Bernanke, conservative economic professors who were solidly republican and then felt the party abandoned them. The Democratic Party has become much more liberal (I place this revolution from the latter stage of Obama’s second term) and the GoP is trying to counter by being much more conservative. But that white nationalism doesn’t sell with the educated who just love capitalism and want lower taxes.
Interesting article. I believe this shift of college-educated professionals from the Right to the Left is one of the most consequential developments of the last 60 years.
But I think your article does more to describe how college-educated voters shift to the Democrats. I am not sure that it really describes why they did so. I would also point out that this change goes back to the late 1960s with the coming of age of the Baby Boom generation. I am not claiming that I have a fully developed counter-theory, but the change goes back much further than the last few decades.
I agree that this shift is super consequential and that I didnt necessarily explain why college voters shifted left.
Like I dont think the push(christian evangelicals), pull(clinton was a moderate cool guy), and shock factors (1990-1991 recession) does enough to explain why these 90s college kids and young professionals shifted left. These were the best ideas I could come with with but none of them bulls eye it for me either.
I have been struggling to answer this question for decades, and I still do not feel like I have a solid answer. Today we take for granted that college-educated professionals are to the Left, that we do not realize how unusual it is compared to previous eras. I can’t come up with an explanation that does not resemble a laundry list of causes. I do not think that there was just one cause, but I cannot figure out how all the partial causes fit together in a cohesive theory.
Professor James Lindsay offers a thoroughly researched theory. You might read several of his articles on the subject, or listen to his earlier pod casts entitled New Discourses.
He reviews the scholarship supporting far-left movements and their published guidelines to capture institutions, such as academia and the media. Although his current interest is the 'woke-right,' and the danger of extremism from the right, his expertise is the study of Marxism, its offspring, and the development of woke ideology.
That is an explanation of HOW it happened, but that theory does not explain WHY professional-class voters shifted from the Right to the Left over the last 60 years.
The theory only works if you assume that professional-class voters shifted from the Right to the Left. It does not explain why they did so.
The how is relatively well-known at this point, but the why is very unclear.
‘But Nixon made a virtue of his resentments, tapping them to fathom and reach out to the millions of what he called “the silent majority”—those socially conservative, God-fearing, hard-working, child-rearing families of middle-America. He was nothing if not a square. So were they. They shared his grievances and his antipathy toward the trendy, 1960s values of the Eastern elite.
Nixon may actually have won the presidency three times. The results were close enough—and reports of Democratic thievery in Illinois, Texas and other states credible enough—to suspect that he actually beat Kennedy in 1960. He rebounded to win the equally tight and totemic election in 1968—then crushed McGovern on route to a record-setting landslide and a sweep of 49 states in 1972, losing only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.’
The Education Divide was the part I found most poignant. No surprise that Academia is overwhelmingly left/progressive. It has been thus for decades, which perhaps explains the plethora of policy failures emanating from those august institutions.
But the REAL education divide is that between liberal coastal (mostly white) elites and the forgotten millions of students from poor neighborhoods who have to contend with fights, dealers, pimps, drugs and subpar teachers. It is the civil rights issue of our era here in the USA. I think most Democrats would like to improve this situation as much as Republicans, but they are hostage to the teachers unions that fund Democrat campaigns. Grownups needed.
Big Banks: Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley
Elon’s Companies: SpaceX, Tesla
Big Tech: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon
Big Pharma: Pfizer, Merck, J&J
I laughed when I saw this because, not fully but it describes much of my frustration - Reagan did much well - anti trust was not it. Corporate consolidation and casino gambling with the world's reserve currency is not Republican at all. Or Conservative. It's a centerpieces towards oligarchic feudalism or crony socialism. Thank you for this fun read.
Honestly, it is getting so tiresome to read liberals attempting to explain a conservative Republican's motivations. Here I read:
" a midwestern truck driver is voting republican because:
A) He aspires to be rich one day. These are people who think they are “temporarily inconvenienced millionaires” so he wouldn’t want to pay more taxes eventually.
B) At the time being, he doesn’t like things like declaring pronouns which appears nonsensical to him since names are usually gendered, opposes gun control, or doesn’t see the efficacy of government policies
C) He doesn’t believe in providing welfare for illegal migrants who crossed the border.
You're right that cultural issues outweigh economic interest; but you miss the mark entirely on what you say drives half the country's self-identification. Conservatives simply demand dignity. Not from others, but from within. So they see themselves as independent. They tend not to look outward for confirmation. They are not collectivists, but flawed individuals; and they know it. And the truck driver can do basic math. He's not so foolish to expect to get rich. But his kid might. Or his niece. He senses what Economics101 use to teach: wealth is locational and he chooses not to play the game, since money and prestige is not his bell-weathers of success. He recognizes that hierarchy is natural in human society--as with the society of almost all animals -- and that's OK with him. Still, he prefers his space (preferably in the country), his family, and his concept of the divine. Please try to understand that traditional thinkers know that they don't know much outside their trade but they also know that all the study in the world won't guarantee one will discover truth or find unblemished standards of morality. He cherishes his rights because he's proud to be a citizen and not a subject. And he is jealous of these rights, especially unfettered speech and the 2nd Amendment because without free speech he is rendered a vassal of the state, and without his gun, he will be unable to secure his rights against the state. He knows this in his bones, and from what he has learned of history: that power is unquenchable and so someday he'll need that rifle. In his lifetime, he's seen that larger government comes with a hitch . . . . more collectivism, more grievances, more regulation, more frustration and less
independence. He shivers at the thought of where it will end. So he rebels. He won't be told which pronoun to use anymore than he will be told to recite the Koran, or Bible for that matter. Forced speech (if forced only by cultural pressure), is the opposite of free speech. And by the way, Jordan Peterson explained to him why his intuition was correct about that. But, but . . . . you are right about they way he feels about illegal immigration or paying welfare illegal immigrants. Our friendly truck driver may not know that only four percent of the world's population lives within our borders, but he has been on a boat and knows there is a weight limit. He also feels strongly that you can't force yourself into his house and help yourself to what's in the refrigerator. Is that really hard to see? And why wouldn't the same concept be applied on a national scale?
So, my dear scholar, your truck drivers and tradesmen are not as ignorant as liberals would like to believe (it's one way 'progressive' thinkers acquire their self-esteem). Of course, this conversation could go on ad nauseam. Do your reader a favor. Next time, ask a thoughtful conservator what he thinks before blind attribution to people who liberals clearly can't understand.
Tim, I appreciate you taking the time to write a long comment. That said, I think you’re making some assumptions about me and my article that aren’t accurate.
1. I never said truck drivers or tradesmen are ignorant — in fact, my point was the opposite: they don’t simply ‘vote against their own interests,’ as MSNBC/NYT-style pundits would often say. I am saying their interests are more broad than some coastal Washington D.C. liberal thinks.
2. You assume I’m a liberal, but I never stated my politics. I have voted Obama and Hilary i the past, but you have no idea what I believe now, what media I digest , and who I voted for (or if I vote at all). People like Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad, people who are hated by the left, have saved my life and made me a better man than I am today, and they are hated by the left. I am very critical of the left, and I am deeply saddened by Charlie Kirk's death.
3. The purpose of my article wasn’t to write a full treatise on conservative dignity, hierarchy, or natural rights. It was to explain to my largely secular, liberal audience why the ‘vote against their own self-interest’ framing that think all the time is misleading. I chose examples (aspiration, pronouns, immigration) that they would immediately recognize, so I could get them to reconsider their own blind spots. I have received many DMs from my audience that goes along something like "wow I've never thought about what you said before! I didn't realize that values matter to conservatives. I thought they were just racist/sexist/homophobic".
4. Much of what you raise — dignity, hierarchy, independence, free speech — I actually agree are important. But just because I didn’t include those doesn’t mean I “missed the mark.” It means I was speaking to a different audience with a specific objective.
5. As for conservatives aspiring to wealth: that isn’t me saying they’re naïve. It’s me observing a mindset I’ve seen personally among conservative friends — mechanics, car dealers, corporate lawyers, landlords, bankers — many of whom are already wealthy or want to be. That perspective is part of the story too.
So, I don’t think our points are contradictory. You’re describing one dimension of conservatism; I was explaining another, in a way my readers could digest and appreciate without them being turned off. If you had framed your comment as “here’s another angle you might include next time,” it would’ve been constructive. Instead, you went straight to dismissing me as a liberal who doesn’t understand conservatives, which just isn’t the case.
I apologize for what could easily be read as a snarky comment. Your admonition was deserved. The focus and depth of your article was informative and valuable, and not about my obsession with pundits' misunderstanding of what goes on in the heads of the 'uneducated' working class. Admittedly, it's a trigger point for me. If I made any contribution to the discussion it would be a minor one: be careful when mind reading. I didn't intend to detract from one of your major points: today's cultural issues drive political opinion even when against one's self interest. Thank you for responding and your patience.
This is so powerful and enlightening. While the analysis seems sound, it doesn’t explain why Trump is leaning authoritarian and determined to disrupt the system. It’s not clear to some of us what Trump’s political ideology is, that is if he has one. Whose interest is he really serving? Definitely not the working class in rural America or the working poor…because he couldn’t possibly identify with what it means to be poor. And the people who voted for him to deport immigrants are self sabotaging. Who is going to do the work that most immigrants do. The low paying jobs that Americans both black and white don’t want… such as hospitality, healthcare, food production, retail, farming, day laborers etc. We’ll see if the outcome of the 2024 election will auto-correct in 2028, once everyone realizes this is not what they signed up for. Or maybe not. We are definitely living in a new era catapulted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the Sudan, the media in the West, especially America has refused to report the war in-depth. In echoed that it’s criminal not to show the world the depth of the years of carnage in the Sudan. With regular coverage on Gaza, nothing has changed. The world’s collective powers should be ashamed for their cowardice and lack of courage to put an end to the war in Gaza. All we get are endless discussions that turned out to be merely lip service while innocent children are dying of hunger and are being murdered every day.
What happens to “The Responsibility to Protect?” The old world order has failed Sudan and Gaza. The emerging new world order will further divide the world and create more demarcation.
As for Sudan, I agree more needs to be done. But I must say foreign journalists are largely barred from Sudan; Khartoum and Darfur are incredibly dangerous to report from, so fewer correspondents are on the ground.
The RSF has killed and raided Western journalists for trying to report on the war. Al-Burhan has arrested journalists for calling them spies of UAE.
There is some reporting on Sudan in Western outlets, but I agree more should be done.
There was the famous report by Anne Applabaum who made a silly title calling Sudan the most "Nihilistic Conflict on Earth":
2. The ship has sailed on responsibility to protect. The last time they were invoked were Libya and Central African Republic and they were both shit shows.
NATO helped the rebels remove Gaddafi and now Libya is in a gridlock between the "UN backed government" in Tripoli which is backed by Turkey and Qatar while Benghazi & Tobruk is run by Khalifa Haftar which is backed by UAE and Russia. No one has any stomach for further intervention besides these middling powers.
Central African Republic is still in a civil war and the UN mission was a failure.
You have
1) President Faustin-Archange Touadéra who is protected by Russian mercenaries and basically only controls the capital.
2) The Muslim Séléka coalition which splintered after 2014 into multiple factions (FPRC, UPC, MPC, etc.) controlling swaths of the north and east.
3) The Christian/animist anti-balaka militias in the west and center of the country.
With two horrific failures, no one has the will to invoke R2P anymore, otherwise it would have been invoked in Syria(2011-2025), South Sudan(2013-2020), Burma(2021-Present), Sudan(2023-Present), and more.
Hi Bukola good questions. Here's my honest answers.
1) My analysis doesn't explain why Trump is leaning authoritarian because frankly that's just for another article.
But just briefly, as I said he is serving the interests of coalition of people who are voting on values & culture not economics. Let me give you some examples:
A) Populist nationalists - white, working-class non-college voters who really detest "cultural elites" in universities, government bureaucrats, and left wing prestige media. He is cracking down on illegal immigration and removing migrants on protected status (like Haitains and Venezuelans). They do not want european descent people to be less than 50% of the country.
B) Reactionary Culture warriors - I don't know how much American media you digest but people like Michael Knowles and Tim Pool like Trump because he is actively fighting back against perceived liberal accesses like gender pronouns, gender affirming care for minors and sex reassignment surgery, requirements to teach "oppressor/oppressed lens" to high school students when they think about race, and rolling back affirmative action.
C) The "Post-Liberal New Right Movement" - People like Curtis Yarvin. These people basically want Trump to be a right wing FDR. FDR was a president who was more or less autocratic but did a lot of "good things" liberals like (beating Hitler, New deal programs, social security, etc.). They want Trump to be the right wing version of that. This is what DOGE was really about. It was about purging civil servants who are ideologically against Trump. In Trump's first term, civil servants didn't really listen to Trump's executive orders many of the times and leaked too many things to the press. Thanks to DOGE, he has a more loyal civil service that is executing his vision.
All of these people feel like they have been playing "Mr. Nice Guy" for too long, and that liberals have stacked the deck against them. They will say things like:
1. They hate that liberal prestige media pretends to be objective when it isn't (NPR, NYT, WAPO)
2. They hate that liberals appoint justices who just make up new rights since they can't get their laws passed through congress (For example Roe V. Wade which gave abortion access was decided by the supreme court in 1974, as opposed to the right to an abortion being legislated through Congress).
3. They hate out agencies are weaponized against them and more.
Very little of this has to do with economics and almost all of this is just culture and values.
If you are a person who votes on economics and material conditions, you would find all of this to be nonsensical.
Which industry do you think needs the most breaking up?
If you had to pick oil &gas or big pharma or big tech, which one would you choose?
Pharma. 59% of Americans worry a great deal about the "Availability and affordability of healthcare". https://news.gallup.com/poll/658910/worry-economy-healthcare-social-security-surges.aspx
This is significantly higher than any other issue related to just one industry.
A good collection of data overall. There are a couple of things you left out that I think would have made for a better analysis.
One key data point not covered was fertility rate. The parties are increasingly sorting themselves into those who have children and those who don't. This is particularly true if you narrow it to married with children. This is pretty easy to find data on I think would have made your overall understanding of the "values" that are driving the voters a little more nuanced then the "white nationalism" parroted by some of your commentators (and which fails to account for gaining share of minority voters that is happening at the same time that the republicans lose white educated voters).
The second thing you left out is more subjective and comes from my own observations and that is the complete disrespect that the educated class treats the non-educated class and how they game the system against the uneducated in ways that are unnecessary and counter productive. Now I could tell you my own anecdotes as someone who worked is his way from a blue collar position into white collar managerial position but on a more purely data driven analyses I think it would be better looking for surveys showing how people feel about the class divided.
What looking at these things would have done for you is give you a better idea why the driving force separating the working class from the professional class transcends racial lines even though minority populations (or what used to be minority populations, soon that will be a factually incorrect way to refer to them) have countervailing forces that keep them from adopting the republican party as fully as white working class has.
Think about Gregory Mankiw or Ben Bernanke, conservative economic professors who were solidly republican and then felt the party abandoned them. The Democratic Party has become much more liberal (I place this revolution from the latter stage of Obama’s second term) and the GoP is trying to counter by being much more conservative. But that white nationalism doesn’t sell with the educated who just love capitalism and want lower taxes.
Interesting article. I believe this shift of college-educated professionals from the Right to the Left is one of the most consequential developments of the last 60 years.
But I think your article does more to describe how college-educated voters shift to the Democrats. I am not sure that it really describes why they did so. I would also point out that this change goes back to the late 1960s with the coming of age of the Baby Boom generation. I am not claiming that I have a fully developed counter-theory, but the change goes back much further than the last few decades.
Haha, I was waiting for you to comment!
I agree that this shift is super consequential and that I didnt necessarily explain why college voters shifted left.
Like I dont think the push(christian evangelicals), pull(clinton was a moderate cool guy), and shock factors (1990-1991 recession) does enough to explain why these 90s college kids and young professionals shifted left. These were the best ideas I could come with with but none of them bulls eye it for me either.
I like your humility!
I have been struggling to answer this question for decades, and I still do not feel like I have a solid answer. Today we take for granted that college-educated professionals are to the Left, that we do not realize how unusual it is compared to previous eras. I can’t come up with an explanation that does not resemble a laundry list of causes. I do not think that there was just one cause, but I cannot figure out how all the partial causes fit together in a cohesive theory.
Professor James Lindsay offers a thoroughly researched theory. You might read several of his articles on the subject, or listen to his earlier pod casts entitled New Discourses.
So what does he say?
He reviews the scholarship supporting far-left movements and their published guidelines to capture institutions, such as academia and the media. Although his current interest is the 'woke-right,' and the danger of extremism from the right, his expertise is the study of Marxism, its offspring, and the development of woke ideology.
That is an explanation of HOW it happened, but that theory does not explain WHY professional-class voters shifted from the Right to the Left over the last 60 years.
The theory only works if you assume that professional-class voters shifted from the Right to the Left. It does not explain why they did so.
The how is relatively well-known at this point, but the why is very unclear.
SubhanAllah. I have never before seen an analysis of the last few decades of US politics that comes close to this level of objectivity or originality.
‘But Nixon made a virtue of his resentments, tapping them to fathom and reach out to the millions of what he called “the silent majority”—those socially conservative, God-fearing, hard-working, child-rearing families of middle-America. He was nothing if not a square. So were they. They shared his grievances and his antipathy toward the trendy, 1960s values of the Eastern elite.
Nixon may actually have won the presidency three times. The results were close enough—and reports of Democratic thievery in Illinois, Texas and other states credible enough—to suspect that he actually beat Kennedy in 1960. He rebounded to win the equally tight and totemic election in 1968—then crushed McGovern on route to a record-setting landslide and a sweep of 49 states in 1972, losing only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.’
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/summer-of-nixon-109378/
Wow thank you!
Simply fascinating! Thanks for such good work!
It is incredible how Democrats and Republicans have essentially swapped demographics (as measured by income and education) in the past 30 years https://x.com/patrickjfl/status/1854645395856482568
The Education Divide was the part I found most poignant. No surprise that Academia is overwhelmingly left/progressive. It has been thus for decades, which perhaps explains the plethora of policy failures emanating from those august institutions.
But the REAL education divide is that between liberal coastal (mostly white) elites and the forgotten millions of students from poor neighborhoods who have to contend with fights, dealers, pimps, drugs and subpar teachers. It is the civil rights issue of our era here in the USA. I think most Democrats would like to improve this situation as much as Republicans, but they are hostage to the teachers unions that fund Democrat campaigns. Grownups needed.
I enjoyed the Dragon Ball reference. My kid is a fan.
Venture Capital: Sequoia
Oil & Gas: Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries
Hedge Funds: Renaissance Technologies, Citadel, Susquehanna
Private Equity: KKR
Big Banks: Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley
Elon’s Companies: SpaceX, Tesla
Big Tech: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon
Big Pharma: Pfizer, Merck, J&J
I laughed when I saw this because, not fully but it describes much of my frustration - Reagan did much well - anti trust was not it. Corporate consolidation and casino gambling with the world's reserve currency is not Republican at all. Or Conservative. It's a centerpieces towards oligarchic feudalism or crony socialism. Thank you for this fun read.
Honestly, it is getting so tiresome to read liberals attempting to explain a conservative Republican's motivations. Here I read:
" a midwestern truck driver is voting republican because:
A) He aspires to be rich one day. These are people who think they are “temporarily inconvenienced millionaires” so he wouldn’t want to pay more taxes eventually.
B) At the time being, he doesn’t like things like declaring pronouns which appears nonsensical to him since names are usually gendered, opposes gun control, or doesn’t see the efficacy of government policies
C) He doesn’t believe in providing welfare for illegal migrants who crossed the border.
You're right that cultural issues outweigh economic interest; but you miss the mark entirely on what you say drives half the country's self-identification. Conservatives simply demand dignity. Not from others, but from within. So they see themselves as independent. They tend not to look outward for confirmation. They are not collectivists, but flawed individuals; and they know it. And the truck driver can do basic math. He's not so foolish to expect to get rich. But his kid might. Or his niece. He senses what Economics101 use to teach: wealth is locational and he chooses not to play the game, since money and prestige is not his bell-weathers of success. He recognizes that hierarchy is natural in human society--as with the society of almost all animals -- and that's OK with him. Still, he prefers his space (preferably in the country), his family, and his concept of the divine. Please try to understand that traditional thinkers know that they don't know much outside their trade but they also know that all the study in the world won't guarantee one will discover truth or find unblemished standards of morality. He cherishes his rights because he's proud to be a citizen and not a subject. And he is jealous of these rights, especially unfettered speech and the 2nd Amendment because without free speech he is rendered a vassal of the state, and without his gun, he will be unable to secure his rights against the state. He knows this in his bones, and from what he has learned of history: that power is unquenchable and so someday he'll need that rifle. In his lifetime, he's seen that larger government comes with a hitch . . . . more collectivism, more grievances, more regulation, more frustration and less
independence. He shivers at the thought of where it will end. So he rebels. He won't be told which pronoun to use anymore than he will be told to recite the Koran, or Bible for that matter. Forced speech (if forced only by cultural pressure), is the opposite of free speech. And by the way, Jordan Peterson explained to him why his intuition was correct about that. But, but . . . . you are right about they way he feels about illegal immigration or paying welfare illegal immigrants. Our friendly truck driver may not know that only four percent of the world's population lives within our borders, but he has been on a boat and knows there is a weight limit. He also feels strongly that you can't force yourself into his house and help yourself to what's in the refrigerator. Is that really hard to see? And why wouldn't the same concept be applied on a national scale?
So, my dear scholar, your truck drivers and tradesmen are not as ignorant as liberals would like to believe (it's one way 'progressive' thinkers acquire their self-esteem). Of course, this conversation could go on ad nauseam. Do your reader a favor. Next time, ask a thoughtful conservator what he thinks before blind attribution to people who liberals clearly can't understand.
Tim, I appreciate you taking the time to write a long comment. That said, I think you’re making some assumptions about me and my article that aren’t accurate.
1. I never said truck drivers or tradesmen are ignorant — in fact, my point was the opposite: they don’t simply ‘vote against their own interests,’ as MSNBC/NYT-style pundits would often say. I am saying their interests are more broad than some coastal Washington D.C. liberal thinks.
2. You assume I’m a liberal, but I never stated my politics. I have voted Obama and Hilary i the past, but you have no idea what I believe now, what media I digest , and who I voted for (or if I vote at all). People like Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad, people who are hated by the left, have saved my life and made me a better man than I am today, and they are hated by the left. I am very critical of the left, and I am deeply saddened by Charlie Kirk's death.
3. The purpose of my article wasn’t to write a full treatise on conservative dignity, hierarchy, or natural rights. It was to explain to my largely secular, liberal audience why the ‘vote against their own self-interest’ framing that think all the time is misleading. I chose examples (aspiration, pronouns, immigration) that they would immediately recognize, so I could get them to reconsider their own blind spots. I have received many DMs from my audience that goes along something like "wow I've never thought about what you said before! I didn't realize that values matter to conservatives. I thought they were just racist/sexist/homophobic".
4. Much of what you raise — dignity, hierarchy, independence, free speech — I actually agree are important. But just because I didn’t include those doesn’t mean I “missed the mark.” It means I was speaking to a different audience with a specific objective.
5. As for conservatives aspiring to wealth: that isn’t me saying they’re naïve. It’s me observing a mindset I’ve seen personally among conservative friends — mechanics, car dealers, corporate lawyers, landlords, bankers — many of whom are already wealthy or want to be. That perspective is part of the story too.
So, I don’t think our points are contradictory. You’re describing one dimension of conservatism; I was explaining another, in a way my readers could digest and appreciate without them being turned off. If you had framed your comment as “here’s another angle you might include next time,” it would’ve been constructive. Instead, you went straight to dismissing me as a liberal who doesn’t understand conservatives, which just isn’t the case.
I apologize for what could easily be read as a snarky comment. Your admonition was deserved. The focus and depth of your article was informative and valuable, and not about my obsession with pundits' misunderstanding of what goes on in the heads of the 'uneducated' working class. Admittedly, it's a trigger point for me. If I made any contribution to the discussion it would be a minor one: be careful when mind reading. I didn't intend to detract from one of your major points: today's cultural issues drive political opinion even when against one's self interest. Thank you for responding and your patience.
No problem. Apologies accepted. I will certainly do more diligence when assuming intent/aspirations next time. I appreciate the course correction.
This is so powerful and enlightening. While the analysis seems sound, it doesn’t explain why Trump is leaning authoritarian and determined to disrupt the system. It’s not clear to some of us what Trump’s political ideology is, that is if he has one. Whose interest is he really serving? Definitely not the working class in rural America or the working poor…because he couldn’t possibly identify with what it means to be poor. And the people who voted for him to deport immigrants are self sabotaging. Who is going to do the work that most immigrants do. The low paying jobs that Americans both black and white don’t want… such as hospitality, healthcare, food production, retail, farming, day laborers etc. We’ll see if the outcome of the 2024 election will auto-correct in 2028, once everyone realizes this is not what they signed up for. Or maybe not. We are definitely living in a new era catapulted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the Sudan, the media in the West, especially America has refused to report the war in-depth. In echoed that it’s criminal not to show the world the depth of the years of carnage in the Sudan. With regular coverage on Gaza, nothing has changed. The world’s collective powers should be ashamed for their cowardice and lack of courage to put an end to the war in Gaza. All we get are endless discussions that turned out to be merely lip service while innocent children are dying of hunger and are being murdered every day.
What happens to “The Responsibility to Protect?” The old world order has failed Sudan and Gaza. The emerging new world order will further divide the world and create more demarcation.
As for Sudan, I agree more needs to be done. But I must say foreign journalists are largely barred from Sudan; Khartoum and Darfur are incredibly dangerous to report from, so fewer correspondents are on the ground.
The RSF has killed and raided Western journalists for trying to report on the war. Al-Burhan has arrested journalists for calling them spies of UAE.
There is some reporting on Sudan in Western outlets, but I agree more should be done.
There was the famous report by Anne Applabaum who made a silly title calling Sudan the most "Nihilistic Conflict on Earth":
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/09/sudan-civil-war-humanitarian-crisis/683563
2. The ship has sailed on responsibility to protect. The last time they were invoked were Libya and Central African Republic and they were both shit shows.
NATO helped the rebels remove Gaddafi and now Libya is in a gridlock between the "UN backed government" in Tripoli which is backed by Turkey and Qatar while Benghazi & Tobruk is run by Khalifa Haftar which is backed by UAE and Russia. No one has any stomach for further intervention besides these middling powers.
Central African Republic is still in a civil war and the UN mission was a failure.
You have
1) President Faustin-Archange Touadéra who is protected by Russian mercenaries and basically only controls the capital.
2) The Muslim Séléka coalition which splintered after 2014 into multiple factions (FPRC, UPC, MPC, etc.) controlling swaths of the north and east.
3) The Christian/animist anti-balaka militias in the west and center of the country.
With two horrific failures, no one has the will to invoke R2P anymore, otherwise it would have been invoked in Syria(2011-2025), South Sudan(2013-2020), Burma(2021-Present), Sudan(2023-Present), and more.
Hi Bukola good questions. Here's my honest answers.
1) My analysis doesn't explain why Trump is leaning authoritarian because frankly that's just for another article.
But just briefly, as I said he is serving the interests of coalition of people who are voting on values & culture not economics. Let me give you some examples:
A) Populist nationalists - white, working-class non-college voters who really detest "cultural elites" in universities, government bureaucrats, and left wing prestige media. He is cracking down on illegal immigration and removing migrants on protected status (like Haitains and Venezuelans). They do not want european descent people to be less than 50% of the country.
B) Reactionary Culture warriors - I don't know how much American media you digest but people like Michael Knowles and Tim Pool like Trump because he is actively fighting back against perceived liberal accesses like gender pronouns, gender affirming care for minors and sex reassignment surgery, requirements to teach "oppressor/oppressed lens" to high school students when they think about race, and rolling back affirmative action.
C) The "Post-Liberal New Right Movement" - People like Curtis Yarvin. These people basically want Trump to be a right wing FDR. FDR was a president who was more or less autocratic but did a lot of "good things" liberals like (beating Hitler, New deal programs, social security, etc.). They want Trump to be the right wing version of that. This is what DOGE was really about. It was about purging civil servants who are ideologically against Trump. In Trump's first term, civil servants didn't really listen to Trump's executive orders many of the times and leaked too many things to the press. Thanks to DOGE, he has a more loyal civil service that is executing his vision.
All of these people feel like they have been playing "Mr. Nice Guy" for too long, and that liberals have stacked the deck against them. They will say things like:
1. They hate that liberal prestige media pretends to be objective when it isn't (NPR, NYT, WAPO)
2. They hate that liberals appoint justices who just make up new rights since they can't get their laws passed through congress (For example Roe V. Wade which gave abortion access was decided by the supreme court in 1974, as opposed to the right to an abortion being legislated through Congress).
3. They hate out agencies are weaponized against them and more.
Very little of this has to do with economics and almost all of this is just culture and values.
If you are a person who votes on economics and material conditions, you would find all of this to be nonsensical.