Trump has largely won in the battle of ideas, and will continue to do so as long as no one is able to confront him on this level. Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party and progressive intellectuals have not. I will summarize my thesis. Right now, both the right and the left agree on one thing: attacking the Enlightenment and its achievements. And Trump was smarter, he took this speech and left the others without saying anything. Perhaps the reader will have the impression that I am allowing myself to be carried away by a philosophical distortion and that there are economic, visceral and racist causes for Trump’s victory. Sure, but underneath lies an ideological infrastructure that has weakened our society’s immune system.
The fundamental ideas of the Enlightenment were trust in reason and science, the universality of truths, rights and moral standards, the need to subject all ideas and institutions to critical thinking and the rejection of arguments based on authority. Humanity had come of age. The anti-Enlightenment movement promoted by conservatives and progressives has produced a discrediting of the notion of truth, a praise of non-rational beliefs, an emergence of tribal thinking and an infantilization of political discourse. And of course, an abolition of critical thinking, as the theory and practice of undoing in American universities has demonstrated. These phenomena inevitably lead to extreme polarization and open the door to authoritarian power. Trump understood today’s world better than anyone and took advantage of it. I’ll explain it to you.
