Trump is the surprise the Left's been asking for

Donald Trump. Photo Reuters

The premise of a recent forum at the university on the US presidential election was that we were all surprised Donald Trump won.

I wasn't particularly, because I remembered H.L. Mencken's observation: ''No-one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.''

We can quibble about whether Mr Trump really won, because more Americans actually voted for Hillary Clinton. But the fact remains that a complex, time-honoured, democratic electoral system gave him victory, when in a better world he would never have got to first base.

Mr Trump looks less plausible from this side of the Pacific because until recently he's not been part of politics, but of entertainment.

Until he announced his candidacy in June 2015, I hardly knew his name; he seemed of no more relevance to politics than Kim Kardashian, and less a threat to world polity than Elmer Fudd.

As a kid I always suspected only circumstances protected nations from being governed not by the wise and prudent, but by pop stars, TV show hosts, sporting celebrities: people who are all surface.

When Mr Trump appeared, I had no trouble imagining he could pull off the presidency. With his values and career, his wealth and hypocrisy, his rudeness and many marriages, his ignorance and bravado, and to cap it off, being coloured orange like Ernie from the Muppets, he seemed like the best person at being worst that I could imagine.

So, I'm surprised anyone should be surprised. In fact, the way for Mr Trump has been paved by the people who are the most indignant.

Since the 1980s, it has suited the academic Left to say there are no texts, only acts of interpretation. Whilst it is a slogan that makes a point, it has been applied almost competitively in every direction, and to ever more extreme lengths.

I don't think Mr Trump's supporters really believe he'll build the wall; I don't believe he does himself. But every time he defied Mrs Clinton and her fact-checkers, he resonated with the unemployed and alienated in the Midwestern rustbelt states, whose lived experience contradicted the mantra that free trade is good for everyone, and who had learnt during the past few decades that their lived experience simply didn't matter to the policy-makers.

Not caring whether Mr Trump is telling lies, and voting for him anyway, is just a more confronting way of saying that there are no texts, only interpretation. The Left has been asking for Mr Trump.

At the forum I mentioned, Dr Robert Patman gave a local example of ''post-truth''.

John Key was asked what he thought about a panel of experts saying a tax on sugary drinks would have health benefits, and he said: ''Well, I don't believe it.''

But there are people on the Left, too - in humanities faculties - who say obesity is a ''construct'': thus are the Left and the Right complicit?

If obesity is a construct, then so perhaps is health, and wealth - or poverty. If gender is a construct, why isn't homelessness? If disability is being differently abled, perhaps stupidity is being differently intelligent. If hooking-up is a part of a ''culture'', then why isn't xenophobia? If the Left can insist nationhood is a construct, why can't the Right suggest social justice is, too?

If we can validate any lifestyle or belief system, no matter how warped, as a ''non-traditional'', as a ''choice'' to which someone may be entitled, why might not someone else be entitled to be an ignorant bigot?

If in education, knowledge can be replaced by self-expression, why can't political discourse become fact-free sound-bites? If everyone is ''entitled'' to go university, why can't Donald Trump be president?

In fact, if you don't have the inherent qualities to do something, you can claim you've been ''marginalised'' by the system - another construct - and everyone has to bend over backwards to give you equal opportunity.

The ascension of Donald Trump represents ''equal opportunity'' time for the appallingly unqualified.

Where choice and autonomy are valourised, you get groovy things like diversity, but you also get unbridled consumerism. The Left have stepped unwittingly into Margaret Thatcher territory, who famously said: ''There's no such thing as society.''

When you establish a global free market, you make it free for the richer to get richer. You've no business - in a finite world - being surprised if the poor get poorer.

People who say reality is a construct can't criticise others for lying. If we define our own reality, why shouldn't lots of people who have been left outside tell the rest of us we may as well make a cartoon character president?

I console myself by considering all we know for sure about fashions - including intellectual fashions - is that they change. Donald Trump may be a wake-up call.

-Dr Paul Tankard is senior lecturer in English at the University of Otago.