Over decades, we have witnessed a metamorphosis, where collective identities of political elites on both sides of the aisle began to coalesce to such an extent that their ideologies and political pursuits become nearly indistinguishable.
In a fit of collective action designed to counteract challengers, the ruling political class expanded its control and influence through development and support for rise to prominence of a special cast — the obsequious civil servant on retention by political elites — a massive segment within the society gradually metastasizing within key democratic institutes.
{mosads}In this process, we recognize the birth of the political establishment. Simultaneously, the ruling political elites used their low-cost access to state and local government resources and credit, to expand their influence into industrial conglomerates, global financials, pharmaceuticals, insurance, national media fostering favorable conditions for peers in key industries with whom political elites now have symbiotic relationship.
The product of this social-engineering — a class averse to political change with a vested interest in maintaining its standard of living and access to wealth. Irrespective of party affiliations this political elites evolve committed to each other but not to masses they have been sworn to represent.
One of the most potent barriers protecting the new establishment order from an effective challenge by the masses is the application of information instrument in erection of information asymmetry.
Here establishment media elites gradually replace journalistic narrative and analysis for biased coverage of events, intentional withholding of information, dissemination of disinformation and political propaganda intended to distort or damage the opposition. Americans reputed corruption of elites and demanded the thorough dislodgment of the political establishment system. It was an attempt on radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure aiming on re-emergence of the American exceptionalism.
But the establishment has shown to be vulnerable to the new information age. The Twitter revolution of the Arab Spring weaponized the Internet, freeing information and empowering organizing on an unprecedented scale. Social media, dedicated websites and blogs enable unimpeded expression of the opinion and sharing of both textual and visual content.
President-elect Donald Trump used Social Media networks in top-down streaming of message, video and content in direct dialogue with grassroots.Trump’s use of social networks — Twitter and Facebook in particular — allowed him to circumvent the establishment media networks, and it mobilized digital anti-establishment activists across the country.
Those networks of Trump supporters created digital convergence spaces whose occupiers enthusiastically rejected hypocrisy of political correctness and embraced free speech. Presidential campaign event management features offered by some social network sites (e.g. “Twitter Hashtag Campaigns,” “Trump rally,” “Facebook group events”) informed users about upcoming events, the prospective and actual turnout; those same features have been instrumental in mobilization of utilitarian and normative resources; strategic, targeted application of social cyber-networks vastly contributed to previously unseen levels of campaign optimization.
It can be inferred that Trumpian digital activism dramatically expanded support base by exposing unresolved grievances of the American working class. His digital intervention transformed unfulfilled ambitions and material expectations of the forgotten classes into anger, frustration and resentment toward Washington elites.
And as Trump began to work outside these systems, and more importantly attack the establishment, he whet the public appetite for deeper investigation of inner working of the elites, as exposed by Wikileaks.
The body of evidence to internal mechanics in fabrication of political elites depoliticized appearances of democratic process and deeply frustrated support base of establishment elites. Hence, the basket of digital revolutionaries succeeded in triggering information cascades that transcended genders, race, geographies acting as a conduit that contravened self-serving governments’ official narratives and defied information-asymmetries set forth by the establishment.
Donald Trump’s digital message exhibited the innate capacity to induce in vast audiences a vicarious distress that stems from struggles and suffering of the few. Via his tweets and his Facebook post, he has acted as a cognitive amplifier to reactive emotions that cause individuals to morph this presidential campaign into civil strife for dislodgment of the political establishment.
In this process Trump’s unique and creative use of the Facebook and Twitter became instrumental in permeating vast segments of the American society with a plane spoken message of hope that common sense conservatives will once again lit the light of American exceptionalism and American way of life. Through social media networks presidential candidate spoke over heads of the establishment mass media directly to American people in the language people understood and America embraced both the message and the messenger by electing Donald J. Trump their 45th president.
Vlad Remmer is a professor of International Studies. He researches and writes about political movements, economics, and energy security. Vlad Remmer holds advanced degrees in Chemical Engineering and Political Science. Follow him on Twitter @remVmer
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