Bloomberg Businessweek (December 2024)

Год выпуска: December, 2024

Автор: Bloomberg Businessweek

Жанр: Бизнес

Издательство: «Bloomberg Businessweek»

Формат: PDF (журнал на английском языке)

Качество: OCR

Количество страниц: 128

Oh, the Irony

There was a sense after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the wars and recession that followed, that irony was dead—that the use of cynicism and sardonic distance from current events in literature and commentary was no longer suitable for such sobering times. That consensus (ironically!) collapsed quickly. Now, two decades later, surveying the seismic triumph of Donald Trump and the GOP in the US presidential election, we can finally conclude the opposite was true all along: We are living in an age of irony.

Irony, in the classical sense, is a state of affairs that’s deliberately contrary to expectations. For a lot of Americans and other fans of liberal democracy around the world, that no doubt nicely describes the surprise outcome of Nov. 5. But it turns out, once you start looking for them, ironies can be found everywhere in the outcome of the recent election, and appreciating them just might give us a useful guidepost for the next four years. “What meanings we make of the various ironies that color this past election and will color Trump’s new term will shape the ongoing reconfiguration of American politics for the foreseeable future,” says Raymond Malewitz, an associate professor of English at Oregon State University.

Consider Trump himself. A widely acknowledged irony is that the standard-bearer for Christian evangelicals has been divorced twice and fathered five children from three wives. He was convicted in New York state of 34 felonies for falsifying business records related to covering up an affair with an adult film star and has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault and found liable for sexual abuse.

But he’s not just a manifestation of irony, he’s also a master of creating it—characterizing himself as a “very stable genius,” framing fair elections as grand conspiracies and accusing his enemies of doing things that he himself is doing or contemplating—that is, crusading against the lawlessness that he claims infused the administration of Joe Biden, even as prosecutors investigated alleged crimes related to his conduct after losing the 2020 election. Some might call this unintentional irony.

From the start, the campaign between Trump and Biden/Harris was infused with situational irony, where the outcome of an event is the opposite of an anticipated result. Biden tried to steer the US away from Trumpism and ended up delivering the country into its embrace. He struggled as a communicator, couldn’t adequately explain the tectonic forces behind a global increase in energy and food prices, and passed significant legislation but was never able to make American voters feel its impact. Then he stuck around too long, underestimating Trump’s political strength, and handed a floundering campaign to his vice president. Kamala Harris got a late start, and though her candidacy was historic and she ran on a message of racial and sexual toler-ance—the carefully coded subtext in an “opportunity economy for all”—she lost ground with crucial blocs of Black and Latino voters.

These events reached a level of dramatic irony approaching the Greek tragedy of Oedipus, who kills a stranger on the road known to the audience to be his father but not to him. The Democrats thought it was an election about bodily autonomy, the survival of democracy and Trump’s unlikability. To a majority of voters, all along it was more about the price of eggs.

Harris also spent crucial days on the campaign trail with former Senator Liz Cheney to reach persuadable voters from yesterday’s more moderate GOP, which it turned out may no longer exist in any significant way. Meanwhile, Trump, an avowed climate denier who’s pledged to end tax credits for electric cars, found his biggest supporter in Elon Musk, who made his considerable fortune with EVs and batteries that store renewable energy. And Trump’s team made detailed plans to contest an election they thought they might lose, but instead won decisively, “leaving them with a set of unused conspiracy theories they’ll have to unload quietly,” Malewitz says.

All these ironies were either awfully bitter or sweetly satisfying, depending on your political leanings. Trump sowed distrust in traditional news sources, then capitalized on the fraying of objective truths by endearing himself to conspiracy-minded podcasters and influencers, who are thriving amid the decline of old media gatekeepers. Harris avoided traditional media at first, then hewed to conventional news sources such as CBS’s 60 Minutes, only to learn that many Americans are comfortably ensconced in an alternative media universe. It might not have mattered anyway: Trump’s superpower (to be studied for generations, I suspect) is to so thoroughly dominate the news cycle that he drowns out rival messages. As in 2016, he subjected voters to a dizzying succession of scandals, from inviting avowed antisemites to Mar-a-Lago to the frenzy of racism and hate at Madison Square Garden a few days before the election. “He’s like the guy with a laser pointer, and we’re all the cat,” says Sarah Longwell, publisher of the conservative news site the Bulwark.

The path ahead for the second Trump administration—the subject of this special collection of articles in Bloomberg Businessweek—is littered with other potential ironies. His party preaches fiscal discipline, but economists uniformly predict that Trump’s proposed tax and spending plans will increase the deficit without deep budget cuts. He’s promised to lower grocery store prices and energy costs to pre-pandemic levels, but economic orthodoxy suggests his tariffs will increase them. Since he first entered politics in 2015, Trump has crusaded against the perceived flaws of Obamacare, yet the only “concepts of a plan” coming into focus for health care are to give vaccine skeptic and alleged serial adulterer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. broad leeway over that agenda. (“Go have a good time, Bobby,” Trump said in his victory speech, which might turn out to rank as one of the most ironic statements in political history.)

Trump will have to navigate another irony that’s more personal. He’s been perpetually motivated by grievances against his political enemies, but now, with all major rivals bested, he has no prominent adversaries to target. The question of whether Trump can find a new source of motivation and tame his own chaos demons will loom large over the US and the rest of the planet for at least the next four years.

It’s almost as if a higher theological power is testing him while having a bit of fun with the rest of us, which of course has a different name altogether: cosmic irony.

Trump’s Return

• The many ironies of this second-chance presidency
• Populist coalitions are hard to hold together
• Mass deportations would mean fewer workers
• The world’s richest man gives government a try
• Federal courts are poised to grow more conservative
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: America doubles down on a lie
• Big business will be wiser this time around
• “Everything becomes harder” for organized labor
• Climate change policy is about to make an about-face
• The new politics of abortion stoke confusion
• Swing-state ad spending didn’t help Harris
• Wall Street is optimistic—and hoping for tax cuts
• Israel’s far right thinks it has a friend in the White House
• Europe can’t keep its head in the sand
• Peter Turchin: Trump leads the way for counter-elites

From NBA Finals MVP to would-be mogul

• Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics wants to reimagine how athletes and sneaker giants work together

FedEx’s CEO needs to deliver

• Raj Subramaniam works to reorganize the company in the shadow of its founder, Fred Smith—and his son

Abbott hunts for the next big virus

• With public-health organizations underfunded and overworked, companies are trying to fill the gap on pandemic preparedness

How to make flying a better experience

• Here are 32 rules to get you from ticket purchase to takeoff with ease. (But don’t be too relaxed: Keep those shoes on!)

Pursuits

• Our annual gift guide, with classics that still sparkle
• What CEOs are reading to navigate chaotic times
• We can’t stop gushing about our favorite things

Exit Strategy

• A puzzle that seeks common ground

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