In this episode, I’m going get down and into the dirt of political communication, particularly election communication, which is an entity unto itself. I want to explore the crushing defeat of the Democrats in the US election on November 5th this year and consider why they were not able to convince the majority of Americans that fascism is a bad thing.
So let’s get into it.
How do you feel about me saying this?
Donald Trump is a low-IQ individual. He’s vermin. He’s scum. He’s a puppet that sells his name to anyone for money. He a snake-oil salesman. But what’s he selling? Nothing and everything. It doesn’t matter. Whatever people might buy with his name on it. But it’s not really his name. It’s his dad’s fortune, his dad’s name that he sells to anybody willing to pay.
Look, he’s just an overweight Boomer, a trust fund baby, a nepo-baby. And he’s a liar who isn’t even smart enough to know he’s lying. He doesn’t know what he’s saying: he’s just repeating whatever headline he saw on Twitter or Facebook or on the television with the sound muted. He’s an old man. He’s confused. He’s tired, he’s slow. Low-IQ individual. Fat. Horse-faced. And his only skill is being the loudest person in the room, like some nut job Monopoly Man in his MAGA hat waiting for someone else to roll the dice and tell him what to do.
How do you feel about what I said? How do you feel about me saying these vulgar, bullying things about the next president of the United States? If you’re on the left, you probably felt a kind of delicious anger but also a kind of shame at that feeling.
This unease with dirty communication is what I want to talk about. As someone who thinks about words a lot, it has always made me wonder why no one ever challenged Trump on his own word turf? For years now—over a decade—I’ve wondered why the American media doesn’t use the word “lies” or “tricks” or “cons.” They say “untruths,” “misleading,” “disinformation,” “alternative facts” or in the last presidency the Wall Street Journal gave his lies the fanciful and fun name, “Pinocchios.” Why? It was like the media felt that Trump’s language, his communication, needed to be reported on, but it was beneath them, and they didn’t want to be associated with it, they didn’t want to get dirty.
Getting Dirty with Words
The decision to not engage with Trump on his own level by getting dirty with words has been a curious one, from Clinton to Biden to Harris. They’ve all followed Michelle Obama’s call to action: “When they go low, we go high.” But doesn’t this just solidify divisions with a refusal to engage? Doesn’t it have the implication that one group of people are low and therefore looked down upon by the high people? I get the idea behind it, that they want to bring the conversation into a polite sphere. I get that they want to turn the other cheek, but in doing so haven’t they fundamentally misunderstood the people who listen to Trump? Haven’t they failed to communicate with them?
Republicans don’t get stuck on the high and low. They’ve said it over and over again: it’s not about what Trump says. Don’t get stuck on the words. But the media always gets stuck on the words. The late-night comedy shows always get stuck on the words in a complete refusal to believe that individual words don’t mean anything to Trump or his followers. They refuse to believe that two worlds coexist: a world where words mean something and a Trumpian world where words mean almost nothing.
The True Danger is in the Music
But what does have meaning in Trump’s world? Well, words, but not a word or the word. Trump’s power has nothing to do with the individual words he’s using but the whole of them together. His words are movie music, the music that you aren’t meant to hear but only feel. Trump’s words are there to create and decorate and validate feelings of outrage; they are there to crescendo that outrage into feelings of power and strength. A word here or a word there may stand out, but only as a chant for outrage—“lock her up”—or power—“forty-seven.” But if you’re looking at the dictionary, eager to correct individual word choices, you’re looking in the wrong place to find communication. It’s not in the pronunciation, the spelling, the etymology, but in the whole of the spread of word after word that plays like music to create feelings. That is the true danger of Trump’s words, and it is that danger that Democrats refused to engage with.
The Fascist’s Musical Message
There is a reason that when you think of Hitler or Mussolini, you don’t envision them behind a desk. You think of them standing, gesticulating, saying something you can’t really hear in an overcrowded stadium. You are there to feel something and bask in the shadow of the person conducting your feelings. Trump follows this playbook. He’s always just below the line of social decency and basic literacy. His words are simple; his taunts are childish. Because of this, he reaches the majority of Americans, the 54% of Americans who lack English proficiency. The majority of Americans fear words, words that are confusing and make you feel bad about yourself. Trump doesn’t make anyone feel bad about their lack of education because he isn’t speaking to try to teach you anything or make you understand anything. He’s outside of education, outside of literacy, digging in deeper and deeper and tapping into something we all have equally: feelings, and, specifically, our strongest feeling, our dark feelings. So when he speaks, his audience is not listening for words, they’re not there to be educated, and Trump isn’t there to teach them anything. His followers are listening to his music, and the soaring aria he sings of anger, outrage, pride, superiority, power. It’s music we all understand and have felt at some point in our lives, and the words are not important in themselves. They’re important only as notes that come together to create feelings.
This is the divide. Democrats want to talk about the words, pick them apart, think deeply, show their education and their superiority: educate each other. The Republicans just want to start a rave.
The Music of Indignation
The music that has captured Trump voters is the music of indignation. And Trump is a prodigy in that genre. He connects to his followers because he’s indignant. And they are indignant. As much as Democrats try to convince Trump’s followers that Trump isn’t one of them, they can’t, because he is one of them. He, like them, has been made to feel stupid, lower, lesser, outside, owed more than they got, and he, like them, is indignant. It is as powerful as it is toxic: the individual exceptionalism of America meets its undereducated masses. So you can point out that Trump’s rich and they aren’t, that he lies to them, that he has a gold toilet, that he doesn’t really care about them. It never lands because it doesn’t matter. Because he shares their feelings. They sway along to the music he’s making, music that validates their feelings of being unique and exceptional but also being screwed around and looked down upon.
If you read about Trump voters, they’re proud that he’s shameless, that he uses words poorly. Fuck the Department of Education telling me what my kids should learn. Fuck the feeling I get when I don’t understand something and some bureaucrat or teacher or politician gives me the side-eye. Fuck the Democrats with all their pages of policies and data and numbers and expert opinions, and their “Let me explain it to you because you seem to be having trouble finding the right answer.”
Trump is Howard Beale from the 1976 film Network where an old television anchor is about to be fired but then goes on a rant on live television screaming “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” and people across the country start screaming that from their windows, like a musical chorus, and the network executives see how they can tap into that anger and indignation to make money and get the people to do what they want them to do.
Trump gives his voters what they need: a song to sing and an outlet for their indignation and outrage. He stokes these feelings and then validates them. Like Beale in Network, he knows what it’s like to be the victim, he tells them, and anyone watching can see Trump as the victim of a powerful elite that is always trying to bring him down. But he won’t be brought down. He’s the hero they can’t bring down. He’s Cool Hand Luke, he’s Hans Solo, he’s John Wick. And he’s your man.
What Trump’s campaign focuses on is this music and the images that go with it. The media laughed at the digital cards he was selling—of course they did—with the images of him as a space cowboy or NASCAR driver, but their derision only made them sell out faster. Because it’s not individual words, and it’s not about individual images; it’s about the feelings that the speeches and the pictures give you. It’s about art. Trump makes you feel like you’re getting the alpha male, take no prisons, doesn’t care about your womanly feelings. He says whatever he likes, tells it like it is, says the things out loud that you wish you could say out loud and not lose your job. He is an individualist—no one like him—but he’s also just like you: a worthy, inspired individual who someone somewhere is trying to bring down. But he won’t be brought down. He’s the indignant American outsider who rises to the highest office of the land to shit on someone’s desk.
His power comes from being willing to get down in the dirt with you, embrace you as deplorables and garbage. And by doing that he makes the Democrats with all their womanly concerns for community and world and people other than themselves seem all the more elitist because they aren’t there with you. They don’t know you.
I Sing the American Rebel
Trump’s outsider status comes from being rejected by elite society—New York City, his hometown, hates him—and his advisors are rejects and oddballs who also fly the flag of rejection. But the more odd they are, the more weird, the more Democrats belittle them, the stronger they make them because they’re relatable to half of America. They’re relatable to the half of America who feels that they are also outsiders and judged for what they think and feel. They have also suffered under the elites, having to make nice with the teachers, the bosses, the bureaucrats who look down their noses at them, having to look at some inner circle that doesn’t invite them to their parties and then laughs at them behind their backs.
And so it makes sense that Elon Musk has joined this side. Like Trump, Musk presents himself as an outsider to polite society and a hero because of it. The two of them are American success stories—rebels without a cause who were underestimated by everyone until they made millions of dollars and returned as the winners, they always knew they were.
This outsider stance is such a strong American trope: true Americans may be victimized but they are never victims—they’re no snowflakes—they’re outcasts and rebels—they’re strong, Hell’s Angels strong, gangster strong, gangster rap strong. Strong even if it’s objectively just a story, just a lie, just a song. All it has to be is a feeling. The more you hate them and the more you tell them that they don’t know what’s good for them, the more power you give them.
Democrats: Get Off My Lawn
Democrats are like the old man screaming “You rotten kids, get off my lawn.” And the Republicans are the delinquent kids coming at night to egg his house. Think about it. Who is the hero in this American story? It’s always the kids.
Democrats refused to see the part they were playing. They refused to communicate with Republicans where they were. Instead, they stood on their porch yelling at them to be better citizens, and all they got were rotten eggs thrown at their windows. They’d stand at the top of the stairs and shake their fingers at them. Mock them. And communication? Well, Republicans would have to climb the stairs. Democrats weren’t coming down. Trump voters would have to denounce Trump, admit they were wrong, and then they’d have to rise to Democrats’ lofty good citizenship using proper words in the proper way. And that was never going to happen.
The Lost Moment of Connection
The closest the Democrats came to engaging with the other 50% of America was when Tim Walz called Trump and Vance weird. People talk about the energy that Harris created in taking on the nomination, but I think a lot of that energy came from people thinking that the “weird” comment meant a face-to-face fight was finally going to happen. That there’d be some grappling on the ground. That the Democrats would come down to the Republican level and fight them there. And that fight would not be focused on changing the minds of Trump voters. No. It would be focused on wrestling power away from Trump to take his place. But that “weird” moment came and went. Just as it went for Rubio and Haley—they were never fully committed to getting dirty, getting loud, getting musical.
In the same way, the Democratic message solidified, even for Walz, to “Trump is bad” and that their party was the party of light and hope. But that message was only ever speaking to their own people. The Trump people heard someone yelling at them from the safety of their front steps: Jimmy, why can’t you be better, can’t you see the gang you’re hanging with is bad for you?
To the Trump voters, the feeling coming from the Democrats was weakness, “hope” was a weak word, and, well, telling them that “Trump is bad” just made them stronger. The greatest Americans are bad boys. John Wick killed hundreds of people to avenge his dog’s death. And there were three more films after that with the same message: strong, white, American man takes no prisoners and gets his revenge. America’s greatest superheroes are called “The Avengers.” Trump voters had t-shirts made of Trump’s mug shot. Being arrested by the people trying to bring you down is a badge of honour. It means you’re doing something right. His followers don’t see themselves as bad guys. That’s fake news. They are the rebel alliance.
So that energy when Harris stepped up and when they used the word “weird”? It didn’t last. Sure, the 50% already voting for Harris heard the message and liked it, but the possibility that someone on the Democratic ticket would finally tell it like it is, and get down, wrestle in the dirt, and rip the alpha status out of the hands of the pretender and take it for themselves? That hope didn’t last.
The American Dream is for Me Not Country
Trying to understand the huge wave that pushed Trump to a second term in the White House, a wave that came from everywhere, but especially from rural America, from men, from immigrants, from Latinos and Arab Americans, has left the media in disbelief. They can’t understand why these people voted against their own interests. But could the media even name their interests? I don’t mean policies. I mean interests. You need to hear the secret whispers of the heart slithering on the ground, you need to get in the dirt of the American Dream to hear what they really want.
America is a land of individualism. It is every person for themselves. Pull yourself up by your own damn bootstraps. Being community minded is for people with extra income—the same snotty people who’ll tell you buy organic at twice the price or else you’re a bad person and destroying the planet. The same people who have so much extra time to care for strangers, which is, in a way, weak and womanly—looking after babies, something the wife does. The inner monologue of a Trump supporter is individual and self-prioritizing, entitled, even narcissistic. It’s, I feel my own struggle, my own pain, I’m trying to live my own American Dream where I get to be the billionaire. If you’ve got problems, that’s not my issue. You should just go get a job, like I had to. I had to and I had to suffer to get where I am, so I’m not interested in people who just want it handed to them. Queen said it: I am the champion, no time for losers.
It reminds me of a story I read about a hospital where newly graduated nurses were hazed by older nurses and treated horribly, but the hospital was having trouble breaking the cycle because once the younger nurses had made it through the hazing, they were perfectly happy to see the next generation suffer, in fact, they looked forward to it. Just like how people who’ve paid off their student loans are against Biden’s idea of forgiving loans for other people. If I suffered, so should you. That is American individualism at its finest.
As a side note, I have to address the fact that—yes—America is one of the richest countries in the world, but suffering is subjective. Someone making a six-figure income may feel that they have suffered because they’ve had to work 50-hour weeks to get where they are, and someone working in a factory who is drowning in debt can have the exact same feelings. And people like Trump or Musk who were born in the penthouses of the world can believe that they have suffered, and people will believe it because anyone can see that, publicly, people are always trying to get them.
Rubbing it in their Faces
What I’m saying is that Trump is objectively a loser. He’s the kind of creepy guy that you avoid at a party. But he’s also a winner. A golden ticket holder. He is the America success story, the outsider who hog tied the American Dream and now sleeps with porn stars, grabs them by the pussy, is surrounded by toadies and trophy wives and daughters who let him do whatever the hell he wants if they see a pay cheque at the end of it.
What the left sees is the ugly American stereotype that the rest of the world sees: a fat, junk-food eating, racist, misogynist, bigoted, uneducated, xenophobic and entitled white man. The elites are embarrassed by this stereotype and want to fight against it. They tell Trump over and over again that he needs to be better. His own wife ran a campaign to “Be Best” even as her husband was running the campaign “Don’t Tell Me What to Do.”
There’s nothing in the American Dream about being a good guy who uses nice words. The American Dream begins and ends with money and with the power that brings. You can grab them by the pussy if you’ve got money. If you have money, they can’t make you feel bad about who you are or what you think.
Let me put it in simple terms. If you don’t feel indignant, then you can’t communicate with Trump’s followers. They don’t want your understanding or your sympathy or your correction. They don’t want to be told to be better or even “Be Best.” They want to meet you as an equal in their outrage and follow your promise of being able to rub someone’s nose in it one day.
BIRGing your way to POTUS
There is a psychological term: BIRGing or Basking in Reflected Glory, which means that when someone you identify with succeeds, you also feel that success. We do this with sports teams. When our team wins, it feels like we’ve won something. Parents do this with their children: When a child becomes a doctor, the parent feels their own sense of accomplishment. When Trump is angry and indignant—just like you are angry and indignant—you identify with him through those feelings, and when he wins, you will get to feel along with him that sweet, sweet revenge of rubbing your success in the faces of those who tried to keep you down.
Take Elon Musk as our example. He’s led an elite life. His dad owned an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa. Musk is a rich white man who, through his rich kid connections, fell into more and more money. Suffering, however, is a personal feeling. Musk is a misfit, another creepy guy you’d avoid at a party. He is objectively unpleasant to his children and the world at large. When he bought Twitter, the media teased him that it was just a way to make friends. His indignance comes from his understanding of his suffering. The very idea that people think they can still tease him when he has all the money? He is above them. Can’t they see it? Read his Twitter feed to see how desperately he wants to be seen as the winner and rub people’s faces in his success. And when buying Twitter or being the face of his companies still didn’t get people to see him as the winner, he BIRGed his way to president of the United States. I’m not surprised that immediately after the election, Musk insinuated himself onto a call President-elect Trump made to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. Musk BIRGed his way in. He is president as well and wants people to know it.
To give you another example, I saw an interview with an Arab American leader in which he said that he believed Trump’s promises. I felt sorry for someone so blind to what Trump has never hidden: he doesn’t like Arabs unless they have oil money to give him. And he certainly doesn’t like Muslims. But here is a grown man, a leader in his community, believing that Trump is just like him. But, like Musk, he’s BIRGing and truly believes that when Trump succeeds, he will succeed. But Trump doesn’t know this guy or care about him anymore than Beyonce when you call out her name from a crowd and she smiles and waves in your general direction. Trump doesn’t know this guy or care about him anymore than any Democratic candidate does. But Trump has made a connection through a feeling to this Arab American leader. They have both suffered as outcasts and pulled themselves up into an American Dream state of success. They speak the same language, and it doesn’t matter if Trump uses vulgar, bullying words, they are hearing the same music. They are connected. BIRGed. And now that Trump has won, this leader feels he’s also won.
And Now What?
The media and the Democrats have always been stuck in their disbelief: How is it possible that people believe this charlatan? Can’t you hear what he’s saying? Can’t you hear his policies? He’s going to be bad for you and the country.
But none of that matters. Listen to his music: it taps into the primal feeling of being misunderstood, an outsider, the American trope of a lone wolf who suffers but then rises above to fantastical success and then gets the revenge of rubbing the enemy’s face in that success. And if you can’t do that yourself, you can BIRG with Trump as he does it. The feeling will be almost as sweet: just ask Elon Musk.
Trump has tapped into something more powerful than rational thought and political policies and promises. What he communicates to his followers is permission. He gives them permission to feel everything, even their darkest feelings; he lets them lap up that delicious loss of control when you defy societal expectations. He gives permission to expose the seething underneath of your life where you still feel that adolescent angst that life is not fair and that no one understands you. The words don’t need to be words, they’re music, they’re the primal scream of feeling like you’re owed something by someone—that you’ve got a boot on your neck. That feeling of personal suffering is then combined with the American story that you are a unique individual whose failures and oddities are what makes you a rebel and exceptional and what makes it certain that you will reach that American Dream and crush your enemies.
The one approach that the Democrats didn’t use was to meet Trump on the ground where he was. In the debate, Harris had clear policies, but she also held her chin and smirked like a schoolteacher, shaking her head. It gave me a feeling similar to one I felt when Clinton was speaking during their debate and she chose to say nothing when Trump stalked her around the stage like a lumbering felon looking for the opportunity to date rape her cocktail. To Democrats, when their leaders didn’t engage it seemed dignified and strong. To Republicans the lack of engagement was weak and status quo.
I can’t rewrite history, but I wonder what it would have looked like to have gone low when they went low. To have gotten just as dirty and wrestled Trump with the goal not to change feelings but to unseat Trump and take his place as the straightshooter, the hero who doesn’t give a rat’s ass what society says you should do. To be seen as the one who understands them—is them—and is willing to speak to them how they want to be spoken to—through music.
The question I put forward is how to fight fascism before it’s democratically elected. And the answer I pose is to become the DJ and control the music.
In this election, the Democrats put forward who they were as strongly as they could. They did a great job and had great policies, and they were wholeheartedly rejected not because they weren’t a good choice, but because they couldn’t communicate to the dirty, primal feelings that the Republicans had tapped into, elevated, and locked in.
The Democrats were and still are in disbelief that while a country must be run on policies, elections are run on feelings.
Democrats heard the anger and the fear and said, “Don’t feel that way. We can fix it. We can fix you. Why can’t we all just get along?” But the Republicans said, “Let your fear and anger run wild. I’ll be right there with you.”
You can’t get people to stop feeling their feelings, you can only get them to let you become the leader of those feelings. The conductor of the music they want to listen to. It’s a messy, ugly, dirty business unseating a fascist before they get democratically elected. It was dirty playbook that Trump won on and the only playbook the Democrats didn’t open.
P.S.: What’s Old is New Again
In this episode, I wanted to look at the different ways that Democrats and Republicans communicated through this election. And the conclusion I’ve come to is that a chasm existed between communication that was logical, clear, and, often, a bit boring and communication that was nothing but gut feelings.
In the year 19 BC, Horace wrote that poetry should either instruct or delight. That is certainly what we saw in this election – one OR the other — but this is actually a misreading of Horace’s intentions. He knew that there would be a group that would be be all about the instruction and hard facts, and then there would be a group that would be all about the delight. As he saw this group wishing for delight were
“[as] pliable as wax to the bent of vice, rough to advisers, a slow provider of useful things, prodigal of [their] money, high-spirited, and amorous, and hasty in deserting the objects of [their] passion.”
Horace knew that you would never get through to this group with hard and dry words—as helpful and as necessary as they might be. Instead, the focus would need to be on entertainment. With a heavy weighting of it—speaking to them in a way that they would accept you—or, as Horace wrote, joining
“the instructive with the agreeable…carries off every vote.”