On the premise that content societies do not produce politicians like Trump, is Trump therefore a manifestation of discontent? Since politicians like Trump have become more common across the world, this explanation points to broader discontent. While confidence in stability and progress towards greater prosperity and equality has seemed less certain since the late 19th Century, in the last few decades reasons for pessimism have grown. From the expiry of any residual post-Cold War optimism that an era of peace might ensue to the inequity of globalisation and huge disparities of wealth across the world and within nations, with the resulting increase in migration and destruction of traditional working-class communities. Add an increasing awareness of the environmental catastrophe which is unfolding before our eyes[7] and if you like, the consequences of late consumer capitalism and its necessity to maintain consumption through the production of discontent and distraction[8]. Many analysts have pointed to a crisis of capitalism, a crisis of liberal democracy[9] and an age of anxiety[10]. Recently climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, international instability, and the cost of living crisis are the backdrop to our lives and social media as well as and a constant news cycle means that we are constantly made aware of impending threats, both real and imagined. Certainly, the idea that liberal democracy was an inevitable consequence of economic development has become altogether less certain[11].

It is therefore unsurprising that this uncertainty should be reflect in politics. The last few years have certainly been a bad time for incumbents- or at least incumbents seeking high office. Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election was just the latest in a long line of losses for incumbent parties in 2024, with people in some 70 countries accounting for about half the world’s population going to the polls. “There’s an overall sense of frustration with political elites, viewing them as out of touch, that cuts across ideological lines,” said Richard Wike, director of global attitudes research at the Pew Research Centre. The Conservatives in the UK, the French National Assembly and the rapid decline of Macron’s party, in Germany  the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s coalition means that Germany will have no functioning government when Donald Trump assumes office in January. In Asia, a group of South Korean liberal opposition parties, led by the Democratic Party, defeated the ruling conservative People Power Party in April’s parliamentary elections.

India’s Narendra Modi, meanwhile, had been widely expected to easily sweep to a third straight term in June 2024 but instead voters turned away from his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in droves, costing it its majority in parliament, though it was able to remain in power with the help of allies. Likewise, Japanese voters in October punished the Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed the country nearly without interruption since 1955. Since the pandemic hit in 2020, incumbents have been removed from office in 40 of 54 elections in Western democracies, said Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University, revealing “a huge incumbent disadvantage.”[12]