It is not easy to find a coherent, positive message in the chaos Donald Trump is sowing, but let me try….

There is a perspective, a frame of reference, almost wholly missing from the debate about US President Donald Trump and politics more broadly. It can be expressed in two questions: Is the political status quo failing to meet the challenges facing us? And has Trump shattered the political status quo? The answer to both questions is surely “yes”. To accept this view opens up new possibilities in US and global politics.

I wrote in Pearls and Irritations last November that we needed to look beyond conventional politics and policy to understand Trump and his impacts. This article develops that argument. It is based on a longer essay published recently in Common Dreams, a prominent American far-left/alternative publication.

Almost everyone I know loathes Trump, seeing him as a threat to the US and the world. I see him as an intensification — perhaps inevitable, perhaps necessary — of a decline in American society that deserves much greater attention. This decline represents the “deep politics” behind Trump’s success. And it is this politics I want to discuss: not the man, or his policies, but the deeper story behind his emergence and domination of US politics.

I want to transcend the ferocious debate about Trump. I am not denying the dangers and risks his presidency creates – and which are already clearly apparent. But I want to examine something else: the chance he provides to re-assess the capacity of the US political system to respond effectively to the foundational challenges it confronts.

Destroying the status quo does not mean Trump himself will provide the answers America needs. More likely, his contribution will be to create the opportunity for others to do this. But Trump has done what needed doing.  At least, that is my hope.

In contrast, the Democrats offered more of the same, and in Joe Biden an ailing, old man. What’s worse they tried to deceive the voters by hiding his cognitive decline, and then replaced him too late with the vice-president, Kamala Harris, who was tied to Biden’s policies. If Harris had won the election, America would have maintained the status quo, its business-as-usual politics.

No wonder there are reports of “a civil war” within the party. The many thousands who have attended the “Fighting oligarchy” political rallies of Bernie Sanders, an independent senator aligned with the Democrats, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is on the more radical wing of the Democrats, suggest the party is being stirred into more effective action.

The world — and the West in particular — is mired in crises, the gravity of which it refuses to acknowledge, at least at the political level. I see this because my work concerns human progress, well-being and the future. To me, mainstream politics and news media are locked in mutually reinforcing cultures that maintain the status quo, largely ignoring — or at least underestimating — our predicament. Politics may claim to be addressing the crises, but it is not. It took Trump to expose the charade.

Existential risks

Several reports published in the past two years have highlighted this situation. An international team of scientists has provided a detailed outline of planetary resilience by mapping out all nine boundary processes that define a safe operating space for humanity. Human activity affects the Earth’s climate and ecosystems more than ever which risks the stability of the entire planet. For the first time, all nine planetary boundaries have been assessed, six have now been crossed. These include climate, biosphere integrity, land systems, freshwater and biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus).

“This update on planetary boundaries clearly depicts a patient that is unwell, as pressure on the planet increases and vital boundaries are being breached. We don’t know how long we can keep transgressing these key boundaries before combined pressures lead to irreversible change and harm,” says co-author Johan Rockström, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden.

UN member nations adopted in 2015 a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals, to be met by 2030. The goals aimed to end poverty, improve health and education, and reduce inequality – while tackling climate change and preserving our oceans and forests. An assessment in 2023, the halfway point, found that the world was not on track to achieve any of the 17 goals.

A major review, “Earth at risk”, published in 2024, says human development has ushered in an era of converging crises: climate change, ecological destruction, disease, pollution, and socioeconomic inequality. The review synthesises the breadth of these interwoven emergencies and underscores the urgent need for comprehensive, integrated action. “The imperative is clear: to navigate away from this precipice, we must collectively harness political will, economic resources, and societal values to steer toward a future where human progress does not come at the cost of ecological integrity and social equity,” it states.

This scientific understanding helps to explain survey findings of public attitudes. For example, a survey of 28 countries across the globe by market research and consulting firm Ipsos, conducted in late 2023 and published early in 2024, is especially revealing. It explains better than all the political polling the mood behind Trump’s success, a mood not confined to the US (I include the Australian figures for comparison).

The survey found across the 28 countries, 58% (59% in the US, 48% in Australia) believed their country was “in decline”, 57% (US 65%, Australia 50%) that society was “broken”, and 67% (US 66%, Australia 65%) that “the economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful”. Two-thirds (67%, US 60%, Australia 61%) believed the main divide in their society was between “‘ordinary citizens and the political and economic elite”. A similar number (63%, US 66%, Australia 67%) said their country needed “a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful”.

The survey reveals starkly the political mood Trump tapped into, and the Democrats ignored. It highlights the appeal to populism as a response. But it is wrong — or at least incomplete — to focus, as liberal commentary has, on populism as an illegitimate or bogus political stance. We also need to explore, as I do here, the validity of people’s perceptions about their countries.

I wrote in a 2024 essay (with a short version in Pearls and Irritations) about the powerful influence of neoliberalism, a variation of capitalism that has captured government in the interests of those with money and power. Many of the problems we face began or escalated with the neoliberal ascendancy that began in the West in the 1980s.

Given the scale and urgency of our situation, I said, we needed to use every (non-violent) means — legislation, legal action, protest, civil disobedience, public humiliation — to reduce, even eliminate, the political power of corporations, especially the huge global corporations, which held so much sway over democracy, government and our lives, and so often acted against the common interests. This must become the focus of political debate and action.

Transcending today’s turmoil

In crushing the political status quo, Trump has broken the centre-left and centre-right’s hold on power. He has championed the far-right; in doing that, he has also created opportunities for the left. Specifically, progressive politics must offer a vision of America that is as bold as Trump’s, but radically different, a vision that is a sort of Newtonian “equal and opposite reaction”.  Or to quote the poet William Butler Yeats: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”.

Progressives should avoid the temptation to try to offer a “safe harbour” at the centre. The Democrats tried that with Biden. The elite liberal media bought it; the people did not. The centre only holds when it serves the people, not vested interests.

Political debate in the US has become unanchored, untethered, from a shared story, a common cultural understanding of reality. The defining narratives of Western progress and supremacy are increasingly contested and American exceptionalism rejected, while the American Dream fades. The current debate reaches far beyond legitimacy. It is so awful — acrimonious, carping, sneering, often trivial — that it has become further evidence of a country in decline, a society that is broken.

It may already be too late to change this situation, but America must keep trying. Other liberal democracies, including Australia, should take note. (A common comment about the re-election of the Labor Government has been that it must be bolder and more visionary in its second term.)

Out of the chaos of the times, something better might yet emerge.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.