Origins of The Trumpocene: Something in the Air?

I have a theory about our predicament.

How did we get here? With a madman as president, a cabinet of incompetants and sycophants, a supine legislature barely able to keep the lights on, and a dominant block of voters that see nothing wrong with it? This president has, for no discernable reason, decided to wage a trade war against basically the entire world, with special emphasis on our closest friend, Canada. This president launched an idiotic war against Iran that has destroyed our military and diplomatic status, and isn't doing much for our economy either. This president has launched vendettas against anyone with brains, such as colleges, medical researchers, military, diplomatic and intelligence professionals. And this president has made past corruption scandals look like penny ante with shameless shakedowns, pump-and-dumps, and quid-pro-quos reaching into the billions.

It's not good, and stands at the end of a political tradition with far higher accomplishments. We used to expect complete sentences, coherent thoughts, and reasoned policies. All that is now out the window. The civil war era and the revolutionary era were both characterized by excellent, sometimes great writing, lengthy and reasoned debates, and careful argument. Just think of the Federalist papers, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and other works of Abraham Lincoln. Even into the end of the 20th century, we accomplished great things, and had elevated goals, such as fostering a world-leading research enterprise, and addressing poverty. 

Today, politics revolves around zingers and memes, and we can hardly hold things together while our madman in chief burns down one institution after another. But therein lies a clue- what is in the air? What is making us crazy? As we pass the September 11 anniversary, we recall, inter alia, the devastating effects of pollution around ground zero. Among its many health effects are cognitive impairment and dementia. There is a large literature on the cognitive impairments caused by particulate pollution, particularly in the young. That is a clue.

Long ago, someone had the bright idea to add lead to gasoline. Lead was already known as a neurological poison, but cars were king, and already exquisitely dangerous, so it hardly seemed significant to add an entirely different kind of risk to the fuel mix. Lead was never added to diesel fuel, as diesel is supposed to auto-combust from engine compression. But gasoline is supposed to, instead, be ignited by the spark plug, not compression. An "octane" rating was even devised to make higher-lead gasoline more attractive at the pump. 

Leaded gasoline proceeded to pollute our landscapes, increasingly as car use rose during the 20th century. Urban areas were particularly hard-hit, though agricultural areas can also be highly polluted. There is a well-supported theory connecting this pollution with rises in crime in the US, and later declines as lead was removed from gasoline and gradually the environment. The phaseout of lead was gradual, so if we take its peak in the mid-70's to 80's, then the generation exposed to the most lead in childhood would have been at prime criminal age in the mid-90's. That is one reason why crime has been dropping since that time. But prime criminal age is only one stage of life. Our political system is run by older adults, and the prime voting age is more like fifties and sixties. Thus a peak of criminality in the mid 90's due to the cognitive ravages of lead would correspond to a peak of political influence right about now. 

This is not to say that our president is suffering from lead poisoning. He has other, and far more serious issues with psychopathy and Hitler/Putin worship. (Though he is remarkably touchy about not being very bright.) But the political generation that elected him and forms his base- our political generation- may well be afflicted, explaining to some degree why our political environment is so degraded right now. We are not entirely up to scratch. 

But it isn't just about lead. Particulate pollution is pervasive, from all sorts of fossil fuel burning. We used to think nothing of cooking with natural gas, but it is a major source of indoor pollution. Coal burning spewed vast amounts of mercury, another neurotoxin, among many other pollutants. The bottom line is that the clean energy transition can not come soon enough, if not for our planet, then for our political sanity. 

• Alternative ruminations on origins.
• To Russia, with love.
• Truly bottom of the barrel.
• The Supreme Court may be afflicted as well.
• Our real strength.