This article was first published on The Big Smoke on November 17, 2016.
Now that the unexpected and the horrible has happened, it’s time to make the initial cut in the post-mortem of the cadaver called “liberal politics”.
The question that all liberals are asking is: How is it that a vindictive, sexist narcissist has become the leader of the free world under our watch?
How did we not see this coming?
The factors that have led to this outcome are complex, interconnected and multifaceted. Many of these are already being discussed robustly – globalisation, an over-emphasis on political correctness, the Clinton baggage, the role played by third-party candidates.
But I want to explore three less-discussed factors that I think the intellectual classes should have picked up on. They relate to the culture in which we live, and each have unwittingly done the groundwork for Donald Trump.
The cult of the nothing celebrity
I came across the Kardashian phenomenon eight years ago in London, when I encountered a long line of very young girls queuing up to meet Kim Kardashian, who was there to launch a line of perfumes. They were clearly excited to be meeting their role model.
Reality TV stars used to be second rate celebrities but Kardashian changed that. She is a phenomenon built brick-by-brick through one objectifying selfie after another. And at the foundations of this phenomenon lie a sex tape (possibly self-leaked) and a reality TV show.
What appalled me was the failure of our intellectual class to critique the phenomenon. Some merely saw her as an entertainer. Others saw her ability to control and use her own life and body as entertainment for people as pure genius. In the meantime, she amassed millions, proving to the world, and most dangerously to our children, that success lay in relentless, blithe and shameless self-promotion.
Read more on The Big Smoke.
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