THE IRONY AGE, ONE MORE TIME WITH FEELING…

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive. ~ Robert Heinlein

Welcome back to the Irony Age. Its very distant relative the Iron Age is thought to have first taken place in Anatolia (part of present-day Turkey) as early as 1200 BC. Although there is no precise dating of the Iron Age, archeologists believe it occurred in Europe between 800 BC and 500 AD.

In contemporary times our Irony Age is often a quadrennial period coincident with our ever-extending presidential election campaign cycle. We are now (again) living in the Irony Age circa 2015-16 and its close associate the Hypocrisy Age, with a new twist.

Along with irony, a growing number of US voters believe they’ve been experiencing life in a zero-sum game. In decision theory, a zero-sum game references a situation where one or more participants' gain (loss) equals the loss (gain) of other participants. Thus, a gain (loss) for one must result in a loss (gain) for one or more others. In more familiar terms, the American economic “pie” isn’t expanding so whatever someone else (say, the 1%ers) gain in our economy is lost by the rest of us. This feeling of loss produces plausible frustration, upset and even anger for working-class folks, who I’ll describe below. On cue, the media has been producing a wide swath of stories centering on this working-class “anger.”

Abundant evidence provides genuine foundation for such feelings: annual real GDP growth has averaged a dreary 1.1% between 2007 and 2014; real average hourly earnings increased a lackluster 0.6% per year between 2007 and 2014; and real median household income has decreased 6.5% during this 7-year period. The real median hourly wage for white men with no more than a high school diploma declined from $19.76 in 1979 to $17.50 in 2014. Zero-sum indeed. 
On the other hand, according to Harvard economist Lawrence Katz, about 13% of our GDP has been massively redistributed to the top 1%ers from everyone else. Using our current GDP of $18.15 trillion that redistribution totals $2.36T and has directly contributed to increased income and wealth inequality.  
The Irony Age was initially launched about the same time that language and politicians were created, so it's been thriving for millennia. Fredrick Douglass’ insightful 19th century statement, “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed,” equally applies today.

Several examples from recent Irony Ages include:  First, people who vocally profess to want the government to "get off my back" and "make it smaller," but still want to receive benefits of "big government," including entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, mortgage interest tax deductions and subsidies for their business. Moreover, surveys have confirmed that many Americans who deny they’ve ever benefited from a government social or economic program have received much more fiscal support than they admitted or realized.  

In my mind, the tea partyers and their brothers and sisters are notorious residents of this Irony Age. A second set of denizens of our current Irony Age includes conservatives wedded to the advantages of free-markets but at the same time strenuously oppose regulation that insures such markets actually provide benefit to consumers and our health. Conservative hypocrites oppose establishment of a carbon tax – a mechanism founded on the strength of market mechanisms – to allow fossil fuel prices to more properly reflect the considerable public (externality-based) costs associated with fossil fuel consumption. For that matter the concept of public goods, like public parks and public education, seems to be dismissed as unnecessary by all too many irony-laden Republicans.

As the aura of Donald Trump (or as John Oliver points out, Donald Drumpf) brightens and extends to fill the Republican heavens, he has not only created political gravity waves but also a tsunami of irony on the part of GOP grandees. Virtually every GOP notable has publically stated they will support Trump if he becomes the party’s nominee, despite repeatedly called him dangerous, a con man, not conservative and even worse, a former Democrat. What’s a bombaster to do? In a narrow sense, this Olympian-level irony (also with a full helping of hypocrisy) couldn’t happen to a more-deserving bunch of people. Because ever since Reagan, they have glorified political pretenders and swindlers like Sarah Palin, the gun lobby, Wall Street plutocrats and the Koch brothers in the charade of helping working-class Americans. That’s never happened and won’t now; especially if any of the Republican candidates’ tax plans were to somehow become law.

Other examples from the smorgasbord of Republican irony include: Chris Christie’s lightning-quick endorsement of Trump, where he managed to look like a 10-year old who’s been sent to the principal’s office. And Donald Trump’s straight-faced statement that his gilded Florida Mar-a-Lago club – with a membership fee of $100,000 – is “totally open to everybody,” adding that “There’s nobody that’s done so much for equality as I have.”

As Trump’s star continues to dominate the Republican firmament, the media’s coverage of our presidential primaries has offered wall-to-wall coverage of him. His competitors have complained about the disproportionate media coverage the Donald receives. The Economist estimates that Trump has “grabbed” more than 40 times as many minutes of coverage than either Senators Cruz or Rubio. With such a media tailwind, how could he help but not become high-flying? It’s hard to tell if this media focus on Trump is cause or effect. In contrast, Hillary has about 3 times the amount of media minutes as Bernie has. Donald Trump is no-one’s apprentice at gaining public attention.
Clearly, this is not a propitious time to be affiliated with the political “establishment.” This holds for Democrats as well as Republicans. 
A key irony on the Democrats’ side of the isle is that their up and coming “protest” candidate, Bernie Sanders, has won elections since 1981 (when he became Mayor of Burlington, VT) and has served in the US Congress for 26 years. How is that not establishment, even if he’s espoused strong left/socialist positions? Yet The Bern’s deft and virtually singular focus on berating Wall Street’s financial powers, together with promising “free” public college tuition and remedying income inequality has been very successful. So successful that at the last debate Hillary Clinton had to admit she wasn’t a “natural campaigner,” as if to ask forgiveness of voters in Florida and beyond for her stoic, detached approach to campaigning. Nice try, Hillary. But how come your political doctors haven’t required you to swallow 500mg empathy-enhancement pills every day you’re on the campaign trail, even if they’re not covered under your Medicare Part D plan?  If you’re afraid of Medicare’s “donut-hole” Bernie's single-payer plan will no doubt remedy it.

Back to working class folks who are a conspicuous segment of Donald Trump’s appeal. The definition of “working class” is neither precise nor fixed. Sociologists often say working class is akin to lower-middle class or to people who do not have a college degree. They’re “non-college.” As more and more people receive college degrees, they represent a diminishing slice of the broad middle class and of voters. About 30% to 35% of the US population is working class. The share of blue-collar, working-class jobs in the US economy declined from 28% in 1970 to 17% in 2010. In addition to its socio-economic decline, the working class signifies a diminishing share of voters; by 2020 they are expected to dip to just 30% of all voters. In 1980 they characterized 65% of all voters; in 1988, 54% of all voters.

Is the Irony Age lost on working-class voters? Probably. Irony be damned, many of these people are more focused on survival. These people, who feel neglected and overlooked by politicians of every persuasion, are enthralled with Trump through their gut-level instincts, not rationality. As Eric Idle said, “Nobody gets irony anymore; we are now living in the post-ironic age. Once George W. Bush gets a library, irony is dead.”