Donald Trump and the impossible destination of Globalism (revisited)

Back in 2016 a month before Donald Trump was elected for the first time, I wrote a piece that I’m revisiting here. So much of what I said then still applies that I encourage you to read that piece. My thinking was heavily informed by a lecture by the now late French philosopher Bruno Latour entitled “Why Gaia is not the Globe.”

Latour made the case that Trump’s perplexing popularity could be traced to his ability to give voice to the anger and fear generated by the effects of Globalism. In fact, Latour noticed that the anger and fear were actually widespread and reflected in Great Britain’s exit from European Union and the many right-wing movements in European countries that now are all too familiar eight years later.

I am capitalizing Globalism because it really is an ideology and not the “inevitable” reality that so many of us think it is. In fact, as Latour explains, it is an impossible destination. First, let me lay out a definition of Globalism by quoting from my 2016 piece:

With the discovery and then exploitation of fossil fuels on an ever growing scale, societies everywhere were faced with figuring out how to govern a world with ever increasing energy surpluses. Those surpluses made so many new things possible and in doing so led to rapid social and technological change.

We tried laissez-faire capitalism, communism, fascism, democratic socialism and finally globalism which I’ll define as the management of worldwide economic activity and growth by large multi-national corporations which have no particular allegiance to any one country or people. Our belief has been that this arrangement is the most rational and efficient. Therefore, trade deals which bring down barriers both to international trade and to the movement of capital and technology across borders are believed to encourage global economic growth. That growth supposedly will ultimately lift the world’s poor into the middle class and enrich everyone else while doing it.

Latour explains the binary trap we have laid for ourselves as a global society. We believe we can move forward toward a future of global economic growth and integration OR we can go backwards to a past of antiquated morals and technological stagnation.

But we already know that climate change, resource depletion, toxic pollution and species loss will prevent us from arriving at the endpoint implied by Globalism. As Latour puts it, the ever-expanding globe of our imagination will not actually fit into the thin layer of life where we live called the biosphere. In short, Globalism cannot be scaled up forever and, in fact, has already exceeded the limits of the biosphere. To continue our journey there is ecological suicide.

What we need to find then is another destination that neither situates us in an unrecoverable past nor forces us into an impossible-to-survive future. The binary trap keeps us locked into a framework with no good answers. As Latour says, we are like people on an airplane whose destination has disappeared and whose city of origin no longer exists. We must first realize this is our predicament, and then find a place to set down. But, to date, “we are extremely poor in inventing futures,” he says. It would help, however, if we all starting looking for that third place.

Latour explains the anxiety of those not prospering under the continued movement toward Globalism. They seek protection in the form of work that supports them and their families, a stable community, and a stable identity as parent, spouse, provider and/or nurturer that anchors them in their community. But, the land of the “globe” in Globalism has stripped away their protection by sending jobs abroad, damaging their small and rural communities through a loss of people and key institutions (closed schools and hospitals), and a loss of identity—under pressure of jobs losses and retrenchment at significantly lower wages and newfangled notions of gender roles and power—that can be painful, humiliating, confusing and stressful not just to men but also to some women.

The third destination that we are seeking will have to address these needs in order to be satisfying to these disaffected people.

There is also an epistemological disturbance in Globalism that is extremely disorienting. In the past, the lived experience was also largely regarded as reality. In the modernist world of Globalism, our lived experience is discounted and real is determined by “objective” science. In short, if our lived experience runs counter to the ideology of Globalism (often conflated with “objective” reality), we are told that we are ignorant, backward and unscientific, and need to get with the modernist program (even if we think that program is a corruption of our values).

The third destination needs to heal the rift between notions of reality and lived experience.

Latour does not offer a description of this third destination, but rather invites us to think about it and create it. He does not think the backlash against Globalism is actually doing the hard work of creating that alternate destination. But the backlash should not be dismissed as a mere desire to go back to the past. This backlash is actually an incipient recognition that Globalism as a destination is no longer either desirable or possible. What comes next is the political struggle of our age. To respond to that struggle with a reaffirmation of a destination that is impossible is of no use to human society and a failure of imagination.