Unwilling

Trumpism is not a creation. It is a consequence. It is a consequence of the fact that while a government of the people, by the people and for the people may be accountable to the people, the people, writ large, are not accountable to anyone. If the people perceive that a given member of the political class has made this or that error, that person can be voted out of office at the next election. It may even be possible to recall them from office or force them to resign.

But a large enough group of the public at large is more or less beyond all accountability in a representative government because it's impossible to shelter all of the rules that run the government from them. Or to enforce them in the face of enough opposition. This has been the story of the United States from its inception.

I pretty much tune out people who speak about "political will." It's a tired phrase that people bandy about as a criticism of people who failed (assuming they even attempted) to push the populace at large into something that said populace is completely uninterested in doing. Today, I happened to hear on the radio some or another activist holding forth about how "the United States needs political will." But the reason why the United States has no political will is simple. The United States is, effectively, an inanimate object.

Institutions, even nation-states, are not hive-minds. They have no will of their own. It's their citizens that have will, and who act upon it. Every lack of political will is really simply the lack of effective advocacy. And effective advocacy is difficult.

Donald Trump is a remarkably successful politician because, whatever else one might say about him, he is adept at finding people's anxieties and insecurities and offering those people solutions, even if otherwise ephemeral or unworkable, that align with their views of themselves.

No-one with any realistic view of the world believes that Donald Trump could return manufacturing to the United States. Because the people of the United States are, for the most part, too price-sensitive to buy manufactured goods at a price that would support the wages they're willing to work for, and too committed to affluence to work for wages that would allow for the prices they'd be willing to pay. And the vague hope that people have that someone else would eat the costs is simply never going to come to pass. Donald Trump simply spoke to, and speaks to, those issues better than pretty much anyone else.

Because no-one else has managed to find a way to advocate for their solutions in a way that people feel is advocacy for them. Donald Trump's border wall had little to do with the border itself, or the people coming over it. There are more effective ways to deter people from coming to the United States than attempting to wall off the southern border. But Donald Trump's advocacy for that specific solution felt, to people who'd come to understand that the political system ignored them, like he cared for them more than he cared for the people who sought to enter the country.

And that is where "political will" comes from; the idea that whatever policy is being enacted is being done specifically because it's good for people. People supported Donald Trump's vapid border wall idea because they felt that it was being done out of concern for them. And Mr. Trump's advantage is that he is a skilled enough communicator to convince people that he cares for them without first needing to prove it materially.

Donald Trump understands that he is accountable to his supporters, and that they, in turn, are accountable to no-one, because they are the body that legitimizes accountability. The Democrats may find someone who is capable of accomplishing the same feat. Although it strikes me as unlikely any time soon. Which is kind of too bad. Because if the Democrats, too, had someone who understood how to communicate with the public in a way that allowed masses of people to feel acknowledged and cared for, they could compete better. And the resulting engagement might be a good thing all around.