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.
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.