The non-political origins of things like Trump

Sam Smith - As a one time anthropology major, I like to think occasionally about non-political influences on our poltics. Something that keeps coming back is the thought that Donald Trump is not just a political disaster, he's the product of some major changes in our culture.  

One of these was television. We seldom talk about the influence that TV has on our life but this from Wikipedia gives a hint:

In 2011, 96.7% of households owned television sets.... Most households have more than one set... In 1948, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one television; in 1955, 75 percent did. 

As a whole, the television networks that broadcast in the United States are the largest and most distributed in the world, and programs produced specifically for American networks are the most widely syndicated internationally.

My thinking is that the growth of television is one of the changes in America culture that affected our politics as well as other thngs. We spent much more of our time watching TV and absorbing the values it projected. Less important became our community, our  neighbors and the values we had learned in school or at church. The winners in all this were less like friends and co-workers and more like the stars we saw on the screen, projecting themsleves as purported winners and not merely the folks down the street. One of those who entered our lives like this was Donald Trump, who actually had done hardly anything for us yet could easily  pretend otherwise on the screen. 

The Internet created new links between ourselves and those who wanted to enter and run our lives without having to ring our doorbell. Donald Trump is not just a political problem; he's a fearful example of a cultural issue.