MAGA, Conservatives and Historical Materialism

This video is an analysis of the process by which Donald Trump became the president of the United States of America in 2016. I analyze the history of the USA using historical materialism. I explain the use of a historical lens, I explain the economic history of the USA since world war two, explain how it drove the American working class towards voting for trump and I explain why Trumps solutions ultimately failed as well as explaining how I would actually solve those problems.

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:01 History
3:34 How did he win?
7:04 Historical materialism
9:05 A Materialist History of the USA
13:28 What caused the problems?
16:51 My solution
20:20 Outro

Sources:
Economic growth after WW2: This was taken from Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the 21st century" of which I unfortunately couldn't find an online version

Transcript:
Hello everybody, in 2016 Donald Trump became the 45th president of the united states of America. A fact which I am sure you are familiar with. But how did he win the election? That’s what this video is about. We’ll go over what I think caused people to vote for trump, why trump didn’t live up to expectations in my view and how you could actually address those problems.
I know there will be some conservatives watching, greetings, maybe you found this video because it has MAGA in the title or maybe one of your friends or relatives sent it to you. I hope you’ll stick with us to the end. I will show you a new way of looking at history, I know Marxism sounds scary but it’s actually pretty tame once you have a look at it.
Personally I am far left and so is much of my audience, actually so far left that I think that democrats are pretty the same as republicans, so don’t worry, I won’t try to make you vote for Joe, I think he’s trash. I won’t dwell on the classical accusations of racism either. The focus is on hard economic facts and Marxism. That being said, let’s go.
In 2015 Donald J Trump announced his campaign to run for president of the united states of America. He wasn’t taken seriously by well anyone. After all he looked like an insane talk show host going for a publicity stunt. But he began holding speeches and gaining support. In my eyes Trump’s campaign was based around two main goals “Build a wall” and “Make America great again”.
Trump rose in the polls more and more, he produced many scandals which is why he was in the news a lot which got him more followers. This can be seen as a result of sensationalist news or smart campaign management depending on how you want to see it. Here is where I briefly explain the election process to my non-American viewers:
In the USA there are two real parties, democrats and republicans, we’ll focus on the republicans now because that’s the party trump is in. If you want to be elected for US president you need the support of one of those 2 parties. You can run independent but without a party to give you lots of money for ads nobody will vote for you.
And these parties need to figure out who their candidates will be. For this they hold pre-elections, usually there are many candidates from each party, they hold speeches, declare their positions and then the people vote on who it should be, sometimes these votes are only for party members, sometimes they are for everyone, it depends on the party and state.
This is more of an opinion poll than an election. The real official candidate of each party is then selected at the Party conventions. The Republican national convention or the Democratic national convention. At these conventions, the votes from earlier have influence but the party leadership has the final say.
And in 2016 there where multiple candidates running for the nomination as republican candidate. Trump was not very likely to receive it because he had started picking fights with pretty much everyone in the republican party. But in what I consider to be his smartest move, he said if he didn’t get the nomination he would run as an independent candidate.
About 20% of republicans wanted him as candidate at the time so having him and another republican running against a united democratic party would definitely split the vote and hand the win to the opposition. So, trump pretty much forced himself as the republican candidate.
Then the 2016 election came, and he was elected for president. Crucially with the support of low population states in the midwest, which have more power in the American election system. This will be important later.
So that’s the story. That’s how trump became president. But why? Why did he win? Why not Hillary? Okay I can think of many reasons for why not Hillary, but you know what I mean. Why did the people decide to vote for him?

[EmissaryofWind]

Americans: financially anxious
Viki: "can I offer you a nice communism in this trying time?"

[magnusorn]

what moved me from social democrat to being leftist was simply having the idea of workplace democracy explained to me without anyone mentioning any labels

[dediguise]

Preface, I’m an American who has read all three volumes of Das Kapital as well as the economic texts written by John Maynard Keynes, Hyman Minsky, Joseph Stieglitz, Paul krugman, Milton Friedman, Alfred Marshall and many others.

Your video is essentially correct. I would add that the disconnect for American citizens is a lack of understanding oh how wealth is accumulated compounded by an obsession with trickledown economics. The reason why trickledown(supplyside economics) is so dominant is because the stagflation under Nixon through Reagan stemmed from demand side Keynesian economics without an understanding of how printing money while at full employment could cause hyper inflation.

The lesson learned by the masses was printing money = bad. Politicians and neoliberals took this opportunity to increase profits and inequality through reduced corporate taxation and eliminating the Eisenhower 90 percent marginal tax rate for the highest income earners. This idea followed the principles of the Laffer Curve, a model created by Arthur Laffer which indicated that decreased nominal taxation would yield increased investment and therefore more sources of taxation. This was thought to increase aggregate tax revenue. Unfortunately this model did not take into account the fact that there were foreign investment opportunities that would yield a higher rate of return, vis a vis cheaper foreign labor markets. The end result was America became home to a global financier class, while every other citizen was forced to compete with global labor. Hence why the service sector(aka the sector providing luxury items and services for the wealthy) became the largest sector in the economy(to the order of something like 55%). That is 55% of the work being performed is a form of servitude for the whims and desires of the top decile of the income distribution. It should be noted that even with these luxury services(at highly exploited wage values) most of the money brought in by the wealthiest American does not directly enter consumption. Instead, the collective savings of the capitalist class is recirculated through the market as credit. It is for this reason that wages have been able to be suppressed for so long( real wages haven’t increased in 50 years). Basically, up until now, the average worker has only been able to maintain their standards of living by borrowing. Since wages have not increased, that borrowing has resulted in reduced real wages as the interest payments add up. This is the struggle most Americans have been feeling for generations.

[mm-rjvo]

Beep boop, algorithm gods, bless this vid.

[fishmoding]

I really like this video. One thing that bothered me with many leftist youtubers is using heavily communist/leftist terms that I feel may scare off some conservatives, hell they even scare me off and Im a marxist. For example I like how you used "workplace democracy" instead of, say, "workers collective" or something in that style. Really good work! Keep it up!

[christopherbolshevik]

Last time I was this early I was a conservative

[rauliglesias]

I didn't expect "your new waifu is a leftist austrian cat-girl" in my 2020 bingo, but here I am.

[Tgm_]

So what you’re saying is, Trump won through Nostalgia. Also I think that the “Build A Wall” also plays into you the Materialistic History as well too. I do think it was partly racist but it also feed into the idea of fighting against globalist and outsourcing to foreign countries and to foreign immigrants.

[hiruyabebaw]

The bourgeoisie helped that's how

[kapas]

I watch a lot of your videos, even though I disagree with you on many topics. You explain your views clearly, precisely and in a non-toxic way, and I just wanted to thank you for that. Have a good day

[peterbonucci]

I think that his comments about coal were really about nostalgia. It brought up the memory when there where workers doing physical work. With automation, a lot of those jobs don't exist any more.

[derekf]

We should try and make this video the first result for MAGA haha

[Kapsyloffer]

Conservative here. I am watching because I am a subscriber. Your channel is pretty neat, and you make good points.

[erina_lessthan]

Don't mind me, just increasing the amount of comments

[haroldflowers]

You have blessed us with another video 😍

[moofoogee]

I never, ever thought I would see the acronym MAGA on your channel. Should have known it would be used for people’s benefit. 😉

[tentrashy]

6 minutes ago but 100 views
viki is famous

[baddudecornpop]

As an American, I think you did a great job on this.

[jacksith]

18:26 ...on potentially price fixing in the global market...

*“...some libertarian just had an aneurysm.”*

😂 so true; as a former libertarian. Well done! ✊

[FlourishPorridge]

how to REALLY make america great again