Hubris and humiliation: How the myth of meritocracy fueled the rise of Trump and right-wing populism

With Donald Trump and JD Vance cheering on as their armed thugs terrorize American cities, you might think this is not the optimal time for revisiting Hillary Clinton’s 2016 comment about consigning half of Donald Trump’s supporters to a “basket of deplorables.”

Yet according to Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel, the attitude that underlies Clinton’s statement has a lot to do with where we find ourselves today. Sandel argues that we are reaping the whirlwind of meritocracy. That ideology, closely associated with neoliberalism and free trade, shaped much of the post-World War II era, especially starting in the 1980s. It ended in the Trump-led populist revolt in the U.S., the Brexit vote in the U.K., and the rightward turn of other liberal democracies in Europe and elsewhere.

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Meritocracy, Sandel writes, has led to the mistaken belief among elites that they deserve the wealth and prestige that have been bestowed upon them, and that those left behind deserve their lot in life as well. Moreover, the left-behind believe it, too. In a more formally hierarchical society, like an aristocracy, everyone knows the game is rigged. Thus those at the top understand that their privileged position is an accident of birth, while those at the bottom are able to hang on to some semblance of self-esteem. By contrast, if they have been sorted out as meritocracy’s “losers,” they have been taught to believe they have no one to blame but themselves.

The result, Sandel writes, is “hubris” among the winners and “humiliation” among the losers, thus fueling the rise of right-wing populism.

I attended a talk Sandel gave recently in the form of an interview by Anthony Flint, senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and a former Boston Globe reporter. I was fascinated by Sandel’s ideas regarding meritocracy and what gave rise to the MAGA movement, so I checked out the audio version of his 2020 book “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?”

The problem with audiobooks is that you end up with nothing to quote directly. But I found an interview Sandel did in 2021 with Nils Gilman of Noema Magazine that does a good job of encapsulating much of what he argues in his book. Here is a key passage:

As meritocracy has tightened its hold on our public life, … what began as a principle that seemed to offer an alternative to inequality has become instead a justification for inequality. What’s more, meritocracy has become a kind of hereditary system, much as aristocracy was. Affluent, privileged parents have figured out how to pass their privilege on to their kids, not by bequeathing them land or estates, as in aristocratic societies, but instead by equipping them to compete successfully on standardized tests and to win admission to highly competitive universities.

The growing awareness of the problems with meritocracy in recent decades is a direct result of the deepening divide between winners and losers. The divide has poisoned our politics and set us apart. This has partly to do with widening income and wealth inequality. But it has also to do with changing attitudes toward success. In this way, a seemingly attractive principle — that if chances are equal, the winners deserve their winnings — by implication comes to mean that those who struggle and fall short must deserve their fate as well.

To get back to the “basket of deplorables” for a moment: In Sandel’s view, Clinton was seen as punching down at people who had already been told they were losers. They had been hectored over and over by people very much like Hillary Clinton that in order to overcome their lot in life they needed to give up the idea of working with their hands in favor of pursuing an elite education. And if they didn’t, well, too bad.

Trump may be a billionaire real-estate developer, but he’s done a remarkable job of defining himself as a champion of working-class white people. Thus when he attacks people of color, LGBTQ folks, university professors and the like, he is seen as punching up — or at least as punching on behalf of his adoring MAGA masses. Here’s Sandel again:

In recent decades, center-left parties — the Democratic Party in United States, the Labour Party in Britain, the social democratic parties of Europe, which had traditionally been parties of the working class and middle class — became more attuned to the values, interests and outlook of the well-educated, professional, credentialed classes than to the blue-collar voters who traditionally constituted their base.

Part of this shift is that center-left parties responded to growing inequality by telling workers to go get a college education. But this was an inadequate response to wage stagnation and job loss and the inequality brought about by globalization. Instead of arming people for meritocratic competition, we should shift toward renewing the dignity of work and increasing both the social esteem and financial rewards for those who do not have a professional degree or university credential.

Unlike Hillary Clinton or, for that matter, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, Sandel believes that Joe Biden was largely able to transcend that center-left elitism and generate some working-class appeal, which was a key to his victory in 2020. As president, his economic policies were more traditionally liberal and oriented toward non-college-educated voters than anything his fellow Democrats had offered in a long time.

Unfortunately for democracy, Biden was unable to make it to the finish line. And though I don’t know specifically what Sandel thinks of Kamala Harris, it strikes me that — despite all her considerable virtues — she was regarded by the white working class as the epitome of the meritocratic elitism that redounded to Trump’s benefit

As Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote in a review of Sandel’s book for The New York Times:

Donald Trump has reached out to this group with open arms — “I love the poorly educated.” He has harvested their demoralization, their grief and their shame, most certainly if they are white. But, Sandel notes, two-thirds of all American adults lack four-year degrees. And in the wake of automation, in real wages, the white man without a B.A. earns less now than he did in 1979. The dignity of his labor has steeply declined.

At a moment when Trump is rapidly advancing his authoritarian agenda by attacking Venezuela, threatening Greenland, asserting that Renee Good deserved to be executed by an ICE agent, and intimidating universities and media organizations with funding cuts and bogus lawsuits, those of us who are not part of MAGA may not want to hear that all of this is our fault.

But it is, at least in part. By dismissing Trump supporters merely as racists (though many are) and as ignorant (ditto), we are missing the larger reality that they see Trump as their only way to fight back. We need to reckon with the reality that though Trump is deeply unpopular (55% approve/42% disapprove in this morning’s Times polling averages), he retains enough of his support to wield power, especially with a supine Republican Congress and a deeply corrupt Supreme Court. A Nixonian approval rating in the 20s just isn’t going to happen.

Politicians from the center to the left need to move past meritocracy and re-embrace the dignity of work — not just rhetorically but by making it pay and by creating what we used to call blue-collar jobs. Unions need to be empowered. Journalism needs to shift its focus to how we can rebuild our country in a way that recognizes everyone’s dignity. Local news needs to be revitalized so that it can serve as a catalyst for civic life.

We have painted ourselves into a dangerous corner, and I’m not sure we can get out. Michael Sandel, at least, has helped us understand how we got here.