Some on the left claim that Donald Trump is an ideological descendant of Ronald Reagan, never mind that Reagan was Mr. Conservative and Trump is Mr. Opportunist. Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado, makes a different Trump-as-heir-to-Reagan argument. In a Thursday Salon article, Campos opined that the Reagan revolution was less about right-wing views than “stupidity, celebrity, and plutocracy,” and that Trump is its “natural culmination.”
Campos sniped that “being famous for bei
ng famous is a sufficient basis for winning [the] presidential nomination [of] the party of Reagan, the know-nothing B-movie star” and stated that Trump’s electoral success “marks the triumph of plutocracy in its purest form. Ronald Reagan hated government, and loved business, to the point where he helped create our national infatuation with the idea of the heroic businessman…In a culture that worships both stupidity and celebrity, the self-serving lies of famous plutocrats are often swallowed whole.”
From Campos’s piece (bolding added):
Electing Donald Trump president would be as insane as electing Kim Kardashian president, and for the same reasons. He’s a reality TV star, and that is all he is. But in America in 2016, the cult of celebrity, like the cult of stupidity, is so all-encompassing that being famous for being famous is a sufficient basis for winning a major party’s presidential nomination, at least if that party is the party of Reagan, the know-nothing B-movie star…
…Trump’s ascendance marks the triumph of plutocracy in its purest form. Ronald Reagan hated government, and loved business, to the point where he helped create our national infatuation with the idea of the heroic businessman, who may have no idea what an administrative agency is or how to find Mexico on a map, but who knows how to Get Things Done.
And that is Trump in a nutshell. His other qualification for high office, besides being a total moron and having appeared in People magazine a lot, is that he’s a fabulously successful businessman. Of course Trump’s business success seems to be as phony as everything else about him (to the extent that he’s actually rich he appears to have made his money the old-fashioned way, that is, he inherited it), but in a culture that worships both stupidity and celebrity, the self-serving lies of famous plutocrats are often swallowed whole.
Forty years after Ronald Reagan came within an inch of taking the Republican nomination from President Ford, Donald Trump represents every horrible personality trait and political instinct that fueled the Reagan revolution. He is that revolution on steroids, and the very embodiment of our national cults of stupidity, celebrity, and plutocracy.
