How we got Donald Trump, in 1 chart

The death of institutions

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To truly understand Donald Trump’s role — and influence — in our politics and culture, you have to grasp that he is an effect, not a cause.

Trump didn’t create our current moment, he simply typified and took advantage of it.

A new poll from the Wall Street Journal gets at how our culture produced Trump — and why he continues, seemingly against all odds, to prosper.

This chart, in particular, tells the story:

Every so-called “traditional” value that once served as a sort of societal infrastructure has faded in importance to the general public — in just the last 25 years.

Patriotism is down by almost half. Ditto the importance of having children. Being involved in your community is down as an important value by more than half. Religion is off 23 points.

Only money has seen an increase in importance to the public over the last two and a half decades. (MUCH more on that below.)

These poll results are consistent with a broader decline in trust for institutions over the last several decades.

Since 1993, Gallup has conducted a poll that gauges just that. Its findings? Trust has been in a slow-motion collapse for a while now.

Here are latest numbers — from 2022:

There were significant year over year declines in 11 of the 16 institutions that Gallup tested between 2021 and 2022. And NO institution had an increase in trust over that year.

The conclusion?

Gallup summarizes Americans' overall confidence in institutions by taking an average of the ratings of the 14 institutions it measures consistently each year -- all but small business and large technology companies. This year's 27% average of U.S. adults expressing “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in those 14 institutions is three points below the prior low from 2014.

Here’s that finding in chart form:

This declining trust in our major institutions makes sense — especially when you consider the events of the last 25 years. To wit:

• A massive sexual abuse scandal — and coverup — in the Catholic church worldwide

• The banking crisis of 2007/2008

• A series of high-profile officer-involved shootings of black men across the United States

• The increasing politicization of the Supreme Court on major issues like same sex marriage, campaign finance reform and abortion

• A contentious debate about what our public schools should be teaching — and to whom

• A fundamental reexamination of the role the U.S. military does — and should — play in conflicts around the world

• The rise of purely partisan media outlets + the shrinking of local news

• Tech companies slow reactions to invasions of privacy and other ethical questions created by their innovations

Time and time again, people have seen the institutions they believed in — and their parents believed in and their parents believed in — falter. Institutions have been exposed as hugely human, far-from-infallible entities that screw up. A lot.

Which has, again, not surprisingly, led to people losing faith in those institutions. Totally understandable. If something you thought was a bedrock of goodness and rightness in the world suddenly was exposed as something short of that, you’d naturally pull back from believing so strongly in it.

The problem? Nothing has moved in to replace our traditional values in things like religion, community, family and patriotism. We’ve had the societal safety net pulled away — or, rather, exposed as torn, old and dirty — and nothing has come in to provide us with some sense of safety or solace in its place.

Which leads to a sort of existential crisis. What is there that we CAN depend on? Who or what can form the spine of our society and lead us back to a place of comfort and satisfaction?

Those questions lead to an inevitable searching for NEW things that can fill our void, that can shine a light or show us the way to a better future.

Enter Donald Trump.

Trump was something entirely new in the American political landscape — an unapologetic rich guy who promised that if you voted for him, you, too, could lead a life of luxury.

“I’m really rich,” Trump told the crowd when he announced his presidential campaign in 2015. “And by the way, I’m not even saying that in a braggadocios…that’s the kind of thinking you need for this country.”

That same sentiment was on display repeatedly during his time in the White House. One riff, in particular, on the campaign trail in 2018 stands out. Here’s Trump:

I hate it, I meet these people, they call it the elite. We got more money, we got more brains, we got better houses and apartments, we got nicer boats, we’re smarter than they are and they say they’re the elite. You’re the elite, we’re the elite…Let’s call ourselves, from now on, the super elite.

The message was simple: Being rich was a sign of success. It was should be an aspirational goal for every American. Maybe THE aspirational goal. And Trump had it. He knew how to make everyone rich. All you had to do was to listen to him — and him only.

“Stick with us,” Trump told a group of veterans in 2018. “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news…What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

Now, remember back to the poll numbers at the top of this post. The ONLY value that more people said mattered more to them in 2023 vs 1998 was money! Three in 10 said money was “very” important to them in 1998 vs 43% who said the same now.

It’s not a stretch then to conclude that, for some decent chunk of the American public, money — and the pursuit of money — has filled the void created by their declining faith in institutions.

And Trump is the face of that new value system. He is the ur-example of what it means to win in American society for these folks. He stands above old and worn-out ideas like religion and community and even family. He is rich and being rich allows him to do whatever he wants. And that is what lots and lots of Americans now value.

Trump’s staying power — amid creeping indictments and increasingly inflammatory public comments — is best understood through that lens. Support for him is aspirational, a desire to live a life beyond judgment and rules — to do whatever you want whenever you want.

In a world in which our traditional values are collapsing (or have collapsed), it’s that new way of looking at the world that many people have signed onto.