If you do something bad, never, ever blame yourself.
— Donald Trump
The president's all about blame.
But who's to blame for him?
The left.
The late American philosopher Richard Rorty made that clear in his 1998 book Achieving Our Country.
In the first six decades of the 20th century, according to Rorty, the left tackled big issues like income redistribution and civil rights (think of the New Deal and the Great Society).
But in the latter decades—disillusioned by the Vietnam War—the left got sidetracked. It was led to champion only niggling issues like reparations and cross-dressers' rights (think of Anti-Columbus Day and the Transgender Legal Defense Fund).
Rorty predicted that tragic digression would lead to Trump's election.
American workers would see that government doesn't give a hoot about jobs and wages, Rorty wrote, and "decide that the system has failed and start looking for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots."
And there you have it: America has elected a demagogue to distract itself from its misery.
We have only ourselves to blame.
NOTE: To learn more about Richard Rorty, listen to this podcast.
