Age of Trumponage
Trump, an insecure ham, was never cut out to be a real estate developer. Certainly, he never wanted to work in government. Most likely, he’s a near-illiterate.
True real estate developers work in the shadows. There are neighborhood groups in opposition to more development; also competing developers. Financing is a tricky business. There’s a reason you don’t know much about Trump’s Dad.
So how did Trump’s lust for attention succeed in what was, and remains, a business negotiated behind closed doors?
Trump succeeded because the business of marketing luxury buildings changed in the 1980s. He probably still can’t read a budget, but he can sell luxury units to the status-hungry. Trump created and defined a job that didn’t exist prior to the baby boomers coming of age.
Trump benefited from two factors. The first, of course, was his access to his father’s money. The second was that his desire for attention created a flow of buyers for his first real estate ventures.
After his first success with the Commodore (now Hilton) Hotel, Donald Trump’s business model was established.
When Trump tried to do too much — that is, actually negotiate anything — he went bankrupt. Trump’s obsession with “negotiation” stems from insecurities born of his lack of skill in the kind of real estate development his father respected. Perhaps it’s a reason why his father may have been a bit abusive of “The Donald”.
While struggling with bankruptcy, Trump found a new way to jump-start his business of attracting new buyers and investors.
TV producers are always looking for talent with name recognition. Trump is always looking for more exposure to increase the value of his name on buildings and golf-courses. And so “The Apprentice” was born. The unexpected success of his TV show was part of a trend in TV towards cost-savings through reality-TV.
The show is about people wanting to be around Trump and the price they must pay. His power to fire tells people that Trump’s time and attention are valuable. That he has never run a profitable business is not important to his audience because they’re not interested in business. They’re after status.
An additional attraction of reality-TV is that the viewer feels superior. Trump has always been a bit of a sad sack, despite all his palaver.
Trump keeps his fans’ attention with his fickleness. First he bestows attention on someone. If they return the favor, he tries to connect them to a business opportunity. If they return enough profit, Trump will treat them as a peer (and move on with his life). If they don’t deliver the amount of money or success Trump believes is worth his attention, he “fires” them. The fired person can either beg Trump for forgiveness, or they are replaced.
Because Trump’s reality-TV fame brings in steady customers for the business efforts of those who have curried his favor, Trump doesn’t worry about any specific venture because, like any investor, Trump diversifies his attention. The few Trump properties that succeed pay for all those that don’t.
Trump does not purposely try to rip people off.
Commentators have shown that many subcontractors are stiffed from payments while working on Trump ventures. What they don’t point out is that Trump isn’t personally involved. He has no real involvement with the construction end of business, never has. The people stiffed are stiffed by the people running those businesses. Trump is only the conduit for customers and investors.
One reason Trump hasn’t been impeached is that he is truly non-partisan. The press doesn’t put that narrative forward because it would make liars of most politicians — which of course they are!
For both Republican and Democrat financial backers, Trump delivers deal flow. The more china Trump breaks in the showroom the more profit others will make replacing it.
Trump has never shown the slightest interest in governance.
Why can’t institutions designed to protect the environment, promote education, dissuade drug use, etc., prevent a system of patronage, or Trumponage, from taking over? Why did the Democrats really lose the Presidential election? Why did they not do as well in the midterm elections as one would expect if Trump is as evil as many believe he is?
The answer is simple. People need favors or opportunities to improve their position. They don’t care if that opportunity is with a person or institution. What we all know is that it’s easier to get a deal from a person than an institution. Trump makes everyone feel they are just one meeting away from a business opportunity.
No matter how much one may believe in the ideals of institutions, if they don’t provide opportunity to everyone, then those who have no opportunity won’t see their value. Even worse, there is opportunity if those institutions are broken apart. Trump may have said, “drain the swamp”, but most correctly understood him to say “stir up the swamp”.
There has been no growth in government jobs. And people who already have good jobs aren’t quitting. Other, supposedly idealistic institutions, like Google and Apple, pay their janitors so little many live in garages.
Humans always have trouble biting the hand that feeds or validates them. The people working in tech aren’t going to ask their own companies to pay them less so the janitors can get more. The politicians at the top of government institutions aren’t going to cut their pay and benefits to bring in more staff.
You either live in a world where access to wealth is all that matters (Trump), or a world where institutions keep you fed and happy.
Understanding Trumponage makes sense of his latest behavior with North Korea and Iran. With Iran, Trump didn’t choose to attack because Iran has shown no interest in his attention. Attacking would only bring him into a war where nothing being fought over would give him positive attention.
North Korea wants Trump’s attention for domestic reasons and is therefore happy to give attention to Trump. Trump likes the attention. Again, he doesn’t care what happens at the business end of U.S. / North Korea military relations. That’s for others to deal with.
As has been shown countless times, Trump doesn’t care what happens in business, or public policy, as long as he gets attention.
So will Trump, or those like him, be around forever? History has one answer to this question. Eventually the hope of gaining wealth through patronage gives way to the mass realization that there will be no change in wealth. What began as a “trade” war, moves on to violent conflict.
Humans aren’t biologically built, over millions of years, to rationally fix large-scale wealth opportunity problems. They are built to hunt and gather in small groups.
Nationalism isn’t a biological imperative. Evolution needs more time for that. It is only the name for when groups band together because they need a large force to obtain more safety and power from another group. That is, if Alabama could invade Iran by itself and take all the oil, it would. But it can’t, so it must wait until it gets help from other states.
The wealthy elite, the bi-coastal elite assume that they are smart enough to avoid the messy end of opportunity-equalization through war. What they don’t consider is that once a shooting war begins, no one wants to negotiate from a losing position.
That’s where the smart people at Google come in. They’ll be the ones who will think it out. They’ll be the ones that conclude that we must fight to the end. They’re the one who could have prevented it, but didn’t, because they had a ice-sculpture, craft-beer party with VCs to attend.
And Trump? He’ll go down in history as the evil ruler. All he wanted was an A-List model and the love of his father. All he got was a Presidency he never really wanted and a wife who would no longer touch him.
