On the Appeal of Trump
Why are so many young men excited about the presidency of Donald Trump? What is responsible for the “vibe shift” so many have noticed in Trump’s second term? I’m sure there are many answers to such questions, but one of the most insightful I’ve seen was written last week by Mana Afsari for The Point Magazine. In this article, entitled “The Lost Boys at the Beginning of History,” Afsari recounts her time spent at two very different conferences in 2024: on the right, the National Conservativism conference, and on the left, a conference called Liberalism for the 21st Century.
The whole article is worth reading. Afsari understands better than most what is driving young men (and women for that matter) to enthusiastically support Donald Trump: the return of ambition, both individual and national. For many decades Americans have been barraged with a assault on their history and heritage. Our politicians, our universities, and our culture have insisted that America is not only evil, but uniquely so. We’re evil because we’re “racist,” because we stole all of our land from indigenous peoples, because we trash the environment, because we oppress women and “sexual minorities,” etc. The list of horrors is virtually endless. Some of us are evil, anyway. Certain protected classes, apparently, are exempted.
Many young people today have never known an America where what Roger Scruton called a “culture of repudiation” wasn’t the reigning cultural narrative, a narrative that “dismisses ‘every aspect of our cultural capital’ with the language of brutal invective: accusing every defender of human nature and sound tradition of ‘racism,’ ‘xenophobia,’ ‘homophobia,’ and ‘sexism.’” And then Donald Trump came on the scene and said, in effect, “You don’t have to live like that anymore. You don’t have to hate yourself and hate your country. We can be great again. You can be great again.” Despite the MAGA slogan having been there from the beginning of Trump’s political career, his team really seemed to discover how to fire people up with ambition for greatness near the end of his third campaign. MAGA came into its own and Americans were no longer embarrassed by the thought: why wouldn’t we want to make America great again, having seen the effects of decades of cultural repudiation?
There is an inherent desire to build something great in the heart of every little boy. Only a sustained campaign of repudiation can kill that flame. That is indeed what we’ve seen in our country for many years. But that time has come to an end.
As Afsari put it, commenting on the difference she noticed between the listless and despairing attenders of the Liberalism for the 21st Century conference and the vitality exhibited by those at the National Conservative conference, the “NatCons addressed questions of the heart, recognizing that the young need ideals and aspirations—and most of all, a vocation.” Later in her piece she interviews a young man (under the pseudonym of Lucas), who explains to her why he was drawn to Trump and movements like National Conservatism. Commenting on our societies’ woke scolds, Lucas tells Afasari that
I think their whole ideology is based off of oppressing those with ambition, who actually have the gumption to go out and do something and build something on their own. . . . The people who make humanity great, the innovators, the builders, the winners in society, they look at the winners and tell them, ‘You’re evil, and the only reason you’re at the position that you’re at is because you exploited other people.’ It’s antithetical to the way that a lot of young men work.
And young men like Lucas have had enough. Despite repeated attempts to smear them as such, they aren’t filled with resentment; they simply want to get to work building, innovating, and making their nation great again. This seems to be the reason why innovators like Elon Musk have gotten behind Trump so enthusiastically, and even why men like Mark Zuckerberg, while not completely admitting the role they played in illegitimately suppressing true information, and propping up lies, about Trump, are themselves excited about what the future holds in store under Trump’s second term. At the very least the Zuckerberg’s of the world seem to desire to get in on the excitement of building greatness, rather than continuing to further the culture of repudiation.
Afsari’s own biography is fascinating in this regard. “Raised just outside of the District by immigrants in liberal counties,” as she describes herself,
and coming of age at the end of Obama’s liberal renaissance, I spent my college years—and Trump’s first term—on a progressive campus in California. Since graduating in 2020, I had worked at large government agencies and mainstream think tanks. But like many young people all over the country, I have been searching for thinking and meaning beyond the technocratic liberal consensus.
She is part of a wave of young people who are finding that vitality increasingly on the Right.
While, Afsari continues, “more and more of my female friends at the time were embracing polyamory as a way to grandfather in situationships or infidelities” they were “told in special seminars that monogamy was a colonial construct and should be discarded anyway.” Afsari, however, as “a child of divorce, as a young woman,” realized that
my primary concern was having models for healthy relationships—not resisting colonialism in my dating life. I had no interest in subverting things—monogamy, moral norms, courtship, the nuclear family, faith, a classical education—that I’d never had or known in the first place. I wanted a serious boyfriend.
There is a great hunger for greatness today; ambition is back on the menu. Christians, more than anyone, should know where true greatness is to be found: in serving God with excellence, according to his creational design for all realms of life.
And yet Christians often struggle with the idea of ambition. The Bible condemns selfish ambition, but not the ambition to do great things. Selfish ambition seeks to advantage oneself to the disadvantage of others. It is the desire to advance in some way, whether materially, socially, or otherwise, no matter what it takes to do so (lying, stealing, cheating, harming other people, etc.). This is clearly wrong. But the ambition to do great things is built into the very fabric of our being. It was placed there by God, and it is right and good. The Apostle Paul had a an ambition to preach the gospel where none had preached before him (Rom 15:20). Israel was called to be “strong and courageous” as they prepared to enter the land of promise (Deut 31:6). To be strong and courageous, to take courage in order to overcome mighty obstacles is a common exhortation in the Bible. “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Col 3:23–24). Even recognizing the specific issue of whether one can eat meat sacrificed in pagan temples, Paul’s words in 1 Cor 10:31 are relevant as well: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” In whatever you do, do it with excellence, with godly ambition; do it for God’s glory. We were created to serve our families, churches, nations, and God with godly ambition, and our lives will be hollow and purposeless unless we do so. The only alternative is a listless, stultifying, destructive apathy.
Ambition will not disappear because of the efforts of the warriors of cultural repudiation, whether of political and cultural leftists, or of the evangelicals who ape them in their denunciations of the glories of America’s past and of Western civilization. It will simply be redirected toward resentful evil. Instead of condemning the ambition of young people on the right today, we should seek to do whatever we can to help ensure it continues to be directed toward that which is truly excellent.
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