Why?
In 2017, the topic of many conversations among reasonable people often includes wanting to know why.
Why Trump, why mass shootings, why massive student debt, why deny science, why any of this nonsense? And why does Republican Party policy enable and encourage the worst of humanity's traits and facilitate today’s catastrophes?
While there are no Oracles nor prophets to consult, we must discern for ourselves the shape of the society we inhabit.

Here are a few observations I've made.
Political analysts, you may recall, described Sarah Palin support as a deviation from the Republican Party’s attitudes rather than an accurate reflection of them. Traditional conservatives they claimed, valued small government, a balanced budget, and restrained conduct in public.
Yet Palin was impulsive, incoherent, and completely reactionary.
I disagree with that, I would say that Palin was no aberration at all. But a typical bellowing bloviator within the history of conservative beliefs. Palin, brought to the national spotlight opened the door for a Trump presidency though.
Conservative thought through history principally reacts against egalitarian demands; it is committed entirely to conserving a social order marked out by hierarchy. History shows that for instance, conservatives opposed the labor movement, the women's rights movement, the civil rights movement, and rights for LGBT citizens. Why? because each has threatened existing hierarchy—and conservatives’ grasp on the power to control society.
Palin and Trump's appeal demands some sort of unifying theory. How can it be that the party of Senator Ben Sasse—who enjoys a (mostly-unearned) reputation as a moderate—is also the party of Trump? The answer is less difficult to discern than it was back in 2011.
We reasonable people seem befuddled by Trump, unable to describe his actions as anything beyond “this is not normal.”

I suggest Trump makes sense as a truly quintessential conservative figure (as did Palin). His peculiarities do not place him outside the movement that propelled each of them to prominence. His populism is as about as substantive as his business acumen; his rhetoric is empty as intergalactic space. . He is an elitist, and he understands what it means to thoroughly embrace "the free market". Despite being a chronic liar, in many respects, he’s the most honest conservative in power, with no pretensions of concern for anyone or anything but himself.

Consider Burke’s conviction that the market, and the “monied men” who control it, should determine value. Burke scorned both the Levellers and the French Revolution, mostly for the same reason: They wanted to overthrow an order that he wanted to preserve. His theories of value were central to defining and defending that order. Burke argued both that value is “subjective,” and that there is an objective “hierarchy of value that divides and distinguishes rich from poor, capital from labor.”
Similarly, Nietzsche later feared that the demands of workers presented serious threats to his sense of order, writing that they would tear “down the walls of culture.” In this aspect, he articulates the ideals of the Austrian school in economics and contemporary conservatives, who frequently speak of the dignity of work and the glories of free enterprise as if both comprise an intrinsic cultural facet of American national identity. You hear them praise “liberty,” and laud America’s role in defending it. But what do they mean?

Conservatives may praise the worker when it is time to win Wisconsin’s electoral votes, but when they are in power we see who they really admire, and that is the CEO. If workers were able to determine their own value, they would not choose to occupy a low position. They would not choose to be subjugated nor have their wages compete in a race to the bottom.
At the core of the conservative tradition is the defense of the stratification of society into upper and lower classes. Conservatives do not all justify this stratification in the same way, or communicate it in the same terms. Some, like Palin, or the so called Christian Right conceive of it as a religious order. Others, like Paul Ryan prefer the purity of Ayn Randian narcissism. But they share a belief in hierarchy, the rights of a few to dominate the many... and an opposition to equality & egalitarianism.
This right to be a vested interest, this opposition to altruism, this vindictive justification of greed ironically is what they are calling liberty, and a few probably believe that they are telling the truth. Beneath this, "populism" is a marketing gimmick. It’s meant to lull you, to sell you something that in reality you don't need nor want.
And so we have Trump, the salesman-in-chief, a carnival barker, and a con man. He has “revised” the conservative script, but his most virulent qualities do not subvert it at all.
In his book, "The Reactionary Mind"; Political Science professor Corey Robin says:
“The racism of the Trumpist right is nastier than its most recent predecessors, but the weaponization of racism and nativism under Trump is an intensification of a well-established tradition on the right, as studies of American conservatism from the 1920s through the Tea Party have shown.”
Strom Thurmond and Lee Atwater might be dead, but their party certainly hasn’t turned away from white supremacy. The war on drugs, hardline immigration policies, the privatization of public schools, the weakening of organized labor...Republican policies continue to disproportionately target people of color and reinforce the injustices previously bestowed on them by slavery, Jim Crow, and violent, organized groups.
Trump’s racism is only a more open expression of older beliefs. As is the oafish manner in which he politicizes his own wealth.

Trump is not versed in the history of conservative ideas. His ascent shows that one need not be conversant with the conservative tradition in order to take an important place in it. His grotesque celebration of greed and wealth are not out of step with conservative norms.
Perhaps a bit more banal and gaudy...but greed has always been the guiding force behind conservatism.
As we witness some of the right's spokesmen & rhetors complaining about Trump, we observe it is because he puts forward competing visions of the market. In Trump's book "The Art of the Deal", he mounts a persistent question of the value of capitalism insisting “A lot of attention alone creates value.” Trump celebrates the market, and the position he has created for himself within it. It is a world, and he is its strongman Fuhrer.
This is a telling admission in the book... “The market is a moment of truth — and an eternity of lies. It reveals; it hides. It is everything; it is nothing. It shall be all; it is naught.”
Trump believes in the market. He believes in himself as an economic “warrior prince.”
He grasps the utter futility of it all. According to Trump, there is no truth. "It’s a show about nothing.” Trump takes literally the conservative slogan that government should be run like a business...his business.
Trump’s literalism may serve as a useful indicator of the conservative movement’s general health. For Republicans. Trump’s agenda, which is a Republican agenda, has stalled. His popularity is plummeting; recent polls suggest that most American voters currently want the Democratic party to recapture Congress. Trump hasn’t been able to channel resentment into governance, and his failures leave the conservative movement vulnerable.

So what do we need to do?
How do we counter religious fervor, and the mythology of the market’s liberatory potential? How do we counter Trump’s grotesque materialism without a competing, egalitarian economic vision?
If equality and fairness is to have a turn in the seat of power, We must take on the economic forces that keep it out of reach!
While Democrats have done a reasonable job of taking on racism, sexism, and homophobia. What is needed now is a competing economic plan that benefits all, instead of the few already doing well. Yes, seems like a no brainer...but where is this plan? It needs to be developed and must be capable of being explained in a sentence or two.
(This is where we fail to connect with "average voters" by and large...we have had good policies but have been unsuccessful in selling them largely because nuanced policy isn't easy to package into a short marketing slogan. I am not the guy for this obviously...I salute you for your attention span if you've read this far!
But folks like you and I, who maintain interest this long, are not the norm anymore. The left fails to understand the huge role marketing techniques play. We debunk some nonsense once and move on thinking the issue was resolved while conservative rhetors simply keep pounding away with their debunked assertion.
And the technique sadly works.

Economic Fairness.
In this effort, we will find no allies in the conservative movement. Moderate conservatives may be useful as a vote against the worst of Trump’s legislative agenda. But thinking if we moderate our agenda to court them is a pathological view.
It will condemn any and all resistance efforts to failure.
Conservatives will never work for you, not unless you are already truly filthy rich, pious in designated fashions, unduly Caucasian, old...(but not old enough for social security, which you don't care about, because it's chump change for you), and excessively male.
The problem is not particularly egregious conservative politicians like Trump or Palin, but conservative politics itself. Ours must be better. We can only respond to a show about nothing with something; with substance, and with political force.
This my friends is the reality.

Oedipus In The 21st Century-- The Primrose Path To Democracy's End

By Without Shoes Correspondent Ben New

You know, to say democracy is struggling in America is almost a cliché today and we are tempted to shrug and move on about our personal business when we see evidence of this or hear someone speak up about it. I suggest however we have unwittingly already lost this age old conflict. There is no denying that in nearly every society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy by imposing an internalized psychological condition of deference that crushes people's minds often employing the destruction of reason and logic, replacing it with a marginally tangential skewed version of reality and deference. Democracy, despite any faults one may find in it was the only solution to emerge to prevent the domination of society by the few sociopaths who believe they have 'divine' theochristic rights to rule over the rest of us.

 The alternative to democracy, unless and until something 'better' is imagined, is always some form of totalitarianism, an aristocracy, or an oligarchy of some kind. Alternatives to democracy have always led directly to tyranny.
I'm sorry to report that our nation (and many of our political allies in the world are following suit, walking down the same path to the proverbial slaughterhouse) simply isn't a democracy at all any longer. In an unknowing Oedipus-like scenario, you and I have been inadvertently duped into inglorious ignominy. It is we, our generations {the ones alive during the last 35 years or so}; that will receive the blame and shame in history for this contemptible disgrace because it's happened on our watch.

We now live in a completely faked managed democracy.
A deception where the illusion is maintained on the surface, while a sort of inverted totalitarianism conjoins economic and state powers.
We have become a society of politically uninterested and submissive pawns, with self proclaimed elites eager to keep us that way and the tools to accomplish this.
 In this "managed democracy"  the public is shepherded, It is not sovereign. Corporate power no longer answers to any type of state controls.  Although today's America may not be morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states in the past like Nazi Germany,  but clearly unchecked economic powers combined with state powers has its own unnerving pathologies that do in fact align with the goals of fascism. (Fascism was defined by Mussolini, who coined the term as a bundling of state and and corporate [economic] powers). It's always a minefield to bring up fascism as it becomes a tired banality and is so often misused, but it would be a mistake of the highest order to ignore the similar dynamics at work in this scenario.
We simply can't intellectually or realistically avoid it.

 Myth makers alone dominate today's politics as the quest for an insufferable, impossibly self-defeating, ever-expanding economy combines with the deplorably perverse attraction to endless indefinable war on obliquely indefinable "terror".
This is the diagnosis of the condition.
 What is the solution?
This is a brave new world...though in a sense it's the same old struggle.
The difference is the self proclaimed Pharaohs of today have finally found the method that keeps them hidden from plain view while dismantling democracy on a staggering scale quite effectively.
None of this relates to the past. The "left -right" political dynamics of the past are completely irrelevant, and have been for some time. It's just a prop on the stage.
It's bait to get the people who do get involved away from the real mechanisms and further divorce the rest of the population from the process.
Sure, the product on the left or right will throw their supporters a bone once in while.
So voting does matter to a degree...in order to get a bone or scrap that the real powers don't care about. But in the big picture, on serious matters of policy that truly have impact in YOUR world, you and I will have no say whatsoever.
That's a fact.
The solution may not be a political one at all actually.
In a machine that is powered by wealth and mythology alone, unless you have endless supplies of cash to pay the piper, you will hear no music.
However you CAN teach people how to deconstruct the myths.
Teach logic

Actual democracy requires that a good majority of citizens be capable of logical thought.
Starting with the Greeks, logic has been taught in a fairly narrow way. Logic of course, does include syllogisms, but it also includes a great deal of savoir faire about what actually constitutes a good argument and conversely a good counterargument... as well as a good counterargument to that. In a sense, it's like visualizing a 3 dimensional map of the arguments.
Our existing curriculum regarding "critical thinking" is generally weak. And I propose this is not incidental.
(It's well known that people with reasoning skills are much harder to manipulate.)

It's become another banal cliche to lambaste public education, the truth is there are far more triumphs than failures and the quality of one's educational experience is very localized, as each district has it's own set of socio-economic problems to contend with...in other words there is no blanket solution, no magic political bullet to solve the issues that need improvement in general education. However one ingredient in the curriculum that is missing in action and needs to be addressed across the board is teaching logic. And the first thing to address in teaching logic SHOULD be close analysis of irrationality.

 Understand that I'm not suggesting that the purpose of reason is to petition authorities more effectively, rather it's to disarm their obfuscations and myths, to help others cut through the darkness of deception. Education about logic is critical to this.
Reason is not merely the property of the elite. That is part of the myth, part of the deception. This notion is sold as part of the package that deprives the common people of the capacity to engage in democracy. Reason, itself; is the tool that dismantles this hybrid tyranny we face.

You may argue that politics based on reason tilts the playing field in favor of the elite. This may be historically true, however as I said earlier this is a brave new world and the dynamics of the past are irrelevant. In the past only those who could afford to purchase advanced education would have access to the knowledge and history of logic. This MUST not be the case anymore, as there is nothing esoteric or terribly difficult about critical thinking and it can be taught to everyone, in fact it would likely improve the overall ability to perform better in all areas of academics, including testing. I would also respond that politics based on money has tipped the field far more drastically and dangerously. The reality is that democracy needs the citizenry to be educated, and the skills of reasoning are the most basic foundation of democratic education. Democracy simply can not function in any other way. Aristocratic rule is not reinforced by the use of reason. The reality is quite the reverse: in order to dominate society, the would-be Pharaoh must simulate reason, and pretend that their deception is itself reasonable when it in fact is not. How many pundits, George Will and Thomas Sowell come to mind; make their living by saying illogical things in a reasonable tone of voice? We will be subjugated and dominated unless the great majority of citizens can identify just how this trick works. Maybe you can't afford to buy your own senator, lobbying firm, or political party...but you can teach others about logic. Especially the young. Because it will take time to thwart the last 35-40 years of dismantling democracy, and the torch is passed to the young. Their role is critical and the consequences couldn't be more momentous for the survival of civilization.