My problem with Trump is the problem I have with right wing populists in general: they always lose, both now and historically. This is because of what European blogger Kynosargas believed in 2019 was insufficient analysis. He castigated the short-sightedness of right wing populism, which he believes has
six major deficiencies:
1. Right-wing populists have no awareness of the depth of the [societal] problem and the necessity of a massive social transformation.
2. Right-wing populists consider metapolitics irrelevant. They view our plight as strictly a matter of state policy, therefore solvable by the legislative and executive branches (which is understandable given point 1).
3. Right-wing populists do not command parliamentary majorities or sole governments – neither in the past nor in the present, nor likely in the future. They are always in opposition or dependent on coalition partners who are not right-wing populists.
4. The institutional corset of late liberalism narrows the factual scope for political action to such a degree that profound changes are impossible.
5. Right-wing populists offer no grand designs for solutions because they lack a positive alternative framework beyond “liberalism without foreigners” (which is closely linked to points 1 and 2).
6. Right-wing populists are objectively too slow even where they bring about changes. A critical comparison between the development of right-wing populism and demographics during recent decades clearly shows that this approach is impossible solely due to lack of time (ignoring points 1–5)…
Because of these issues, according to Kynosarges,
"[Right wing populists] have no concept of how to actively solve the problems of late modernity or liberalism. They offer no counter-culture that goes beyond reactionary ideas. They become almost apolitical when they merely retreat into their nation-state bunkers (typical for Poland or Slovakia). They lack a dynamic counter-ideal, and they are not at all equipped to propagate such an ideal to the furthest corners of the West (and beyond), as the chief enemy is (still) capable of doing.
The equation of our identity with the liberal state (e.g. the Federal Republic of Germany as the land of the Germans) inevitably leads to disappointments and at best to the realization that this state neither defends nor recognizes our identity, sometimes even destroys it. No Western constitution has a decidedly identitarian foundation, nor is there any trend in that direction.
Anyway such a foundation would be incompatible with the self-concept of liberalism (universalism, egalitarianism, individualism) – the left is correct on that point! But right-wing populists believe that liberalism would only need a “right-wing” orientation to solve the problem, thanks to insufficient analysis….
Modernity can only be overcome with the experiences of modernity, not by an utterly impossible return to an earlier or pre-modern era. The profound change that is now necessary is not genuinely political but belongs to the cultural, metapolitical sphere. Such a counter-enlightenment or counter-culture requires – in contrast to the liberalist eclecticism of right-wing populists – a spiritual preparation for a new European myth that binds us to our oldest past and reconciles us with our future. Nothing less than such an attempt at European rebirth is our task and the most promising exit from political modernity."
