There's a clear social division in the elite between those whose capital is rooted in extracting resources and rents and those whose is rooted in white collar intellectual activity and innovation. The Financial Services Industry is where those two meet.
But Trumpism and the dominance of the GOP in the American periphery is the triumph of a type of popular capitalism which holds local salvation is in the hands of big investors and indifferent towards any social or moral cost of attracting them.
We have this is in the Republic of Ireland too, although here the State plays a much bigger role (although frequently behind the scenes only).
Speaking of my own country, I maintain that Sean Gallagher's 2011 Presidential Campaign, despite being only a contest for a ceremonial role, was one of the first signs of Trumpism as a global phenomenon.
Gallagher was a major local businessman from a peripheral part of Ireland who became famous for being one of the hosts on a TV show quite like the Apprentice. He ran, despite completely unknown to the political elite, as an insurgent independent. His message was...
"I am a successful businessman, I'm an entrepreneur, unlike these politicians, I know business". This apparently was an appealing message and despite having no real backing, raced into the lead with a few weeks remaining.
His campaign eventually flamed out on revelations (whose truth is still disputed) on his suspect relationship to the previous discredited government and ended up losing to a man who was a caricature of academic left-liberalism. Later investigations exposed that the success...
of his businesses was based on nothing other than subsidy farming and rent seeking.
I should also add that Gallagher's support base was in the semi-rural periphery of Ireland and he utterly tanked electorally in Dublin. Those places had been hit massively by the recession and subsequent austerity and only reliable white collar work with the government
which was and is massively resented - and yet they are utterly dependent on it for economic survival of any kind.
