and opportunity, have become accelerants of division, misinformation, and surveillance capitalism. And the cost of this systemic theft is no longer just economic—it is emo- tional and existential. What many now call “populism” is, in reality, the po- litical expression of long-festering distrust. When government is perceived as a tool of elites, when voters believe the deck is permanently stacked, when daily life is filled with small humiliations—from Kafkaesque bureaucracy to algorithmic unfairness—the ground is fertile for demagogues. The success of Donald Trump, and the broader red-state surge, is not primarily about charisma or ideology. It is about resonance. Trump and his political imita- tors may not articulate coherent policy visions, but they tap into a collective intuition: something is broken, and no one in power seems to care. This is not just anger—it is recognition. What I tried to explain in Theft at the Public Till is that this brokenness is not a glitch. It is the logical consequence of a system that lost its moral center. Without a guiding vision—like improving quality of life for all, or investing in intergenerational well-being—public policy becomes an arena of compet- ing transactions, shaped by those who can afford access and defended by those who mistake complexity for virtue. Even programs nominally aimed at helping the vulnerable become entangled in rent-seeking, inefficiency, and patronage. Bureaucracy metastasizes, public goods become privatized, and accountability disappears. The 1990s offered us a window to course-correct. We missed it. And now we’re living in the backlash. The great irony, of course, is that many of the same people most harmed by this system—rural voters abandoned by economic globalization, working-class families squeezed by housing and healthcare costs, young people drowning in debt—are now its most vocal defenders, provided it speaks their language of resentment. This is the paradox of contemporary American politics: the theft continues, but the narrative has shifted. No longer is the enemy “the system” in the abstract. Now, it is “them”—liberals, immigrants, academics, journalists, and anyone who seems to benefit from the new knowledge economy without earning it “the hard way.”
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