American Rebellion: How a Nation Built on Distrust, Exclusion, and Economic Betrayal Gave Rise to Trumpism

By James B. Greenberg (original post on Substack)
April 10, 2025

Imagine a nation where the institutions meant to serve its people are met with hostility—not from the disenfranchised, but from those who see government itself as the enemy. Where expertise is mistrusted, collective responsibility rejected, and rebellion cast as patriotism. This is not a new story. It is the American story. And if democracy is to survive, we must first understand how this old rebellion gave rise to something new: Trumpism.

Contents

Beyond Simple Dismissal
Deep Historical Roots
Economic Betrayal
The Collapse of Institutional Trust
Democracy at Risk
The Path Forward
- Suggested Reading

Beyond Simple Dismissal

Too often, progressives dismiss Trump’s followers as ignorant, racist, or beyond redemption. They mock their conspiracy theories, scoff at their cultural grievances, and reduce their outrage to irrationality or hate. But this impulse to write off millions of people is not just morally lazy—it is strategically disastrous. It prevents us from seeing the deeper logic at work, the history behind the movement, and the legitimate wounds that have been cynically exploited.

Trumpism didn’t appear out of nowhere. It is the latest incarnation of long-standing American traditions: suspicion of central authority, resentment of imposed change, and rebellion cloaked in the language of liberty. Trump didn’t invent these dynamics—he understood and weaponized them. He fused old narratives of rugged individualism and white grievance with new resentments born of economic betrayal and institutional decay. The result was not a coherent ideology but a powerful cultural identity: a belief that the “real America” had been hijacked, and only Trump could take it back.

Deep Historical Roots

The story stretches back centuries. In 1794, the Whiskey Rebellion broke out when small frontier distillers resisted a federal tax. They saw the tax not just as a financial burden but as a symbol of eastern elitism and government overreach. Washington’s military suppression of the rebellion established federal authority—but it also planted a seed of mistrust that has never fully died. That same anti-federalist spirit has been redirected again and again: against civil rights, gun regulation, environmental policy, public health mandates. Today, the symbols have changed—muskets for MAGA hats—but the story endures: the common man, betrayed by the elite, standing defiant.

And rebellion in America has rarely been race-neutral. The country’s founding ideals were entangled with slavery. Throughout history, movements to resist federal “interference” often had one purpose: preserving racial hierarchy. The Confederacy seceded not simply for “states’ rights,” but to protect slavery. Jim Crow laws reasserted white control in the name of local autonomy. Trump’s appeals to border security, “law and order,” and nostalgia for a lost American greatness revived these themes, framing demographic change as a kind of invasion and diversity as a dilution of national identity.

Economic Betrayal

But race alone doesn’t explain Trumpism’s grip. Economic betrayal gave it teeth. For decades, neoliberal policies—free trade, deregulation, privatization—hollowed out working-class communities. Factories shuttered. Wages stagnated. Whole regions were written off as casualties of progress. The people affected were told to adapt, move, retrain—as though their lives and identities were disposable. This wasn’t just about economics. It was about humiliation, loss, and abandonment by the very institutions that promised opportunity and stability.

Trump didn’t offer them answers. He offered blame. Immigrants, elites, environmentalists, “globalists”—all became scapegoats. His vulgarity, his norm-breaking, his contempt for expertise—these were not liabilities. They were proof that he was not like the politicians who failed them. He performed their rage. He didn’t speak for the working class—he screamed for them.

The Collapse of Institutional Trust

In this climate of betrayal and disorientation, trust in institutions collapsed—and with it, trust in truth itself. Science, journalism, public health—all came under suspicion. In their place rose conspiracy. QAnon, anti-vax propaganda, “deep state” paranoia: these weren’t random delusions. They were stories that made emotional sense to people who had been told for decades to trust systems that no longer served them. Facts became tribal. Truth became partisan. If Trump said the election was stolen, then it was. To believe otherwise was to side with the enemy.

When institutions no longer function, when truth no longer binds, people look not for consensus but for a savior. Trump stepped into that void not as a reformer but as a wrecking ball. He didn’t promise to fix the system—he promised to destroy it and punish those who had betrayed his people. His cruelty wasn’t a flaw—it was the point. He wasn’t a president. He was a weapon.

Democracy at Risk

This is how democracies collapse—not only through violent overthrow, but through erosion from within. Through the corrosion of civic trust, the triumph of resentment, and the normalization of authoritarian instinct. Trumpism is not a break from American history. It is its dark continuation—rebellion turned inward, weaponized against democracy itself.

And now we stand at a crossroads. One path continues the cycle: deepening polarization, institutional decay, performative cruelty masquerading as strength. The other path is harder—but essential. It requires that we confront this history, not deny it. That we engage with those who have been seduced by the rebellion—not to excuse, but to understand. That we rebuild trust through accountability, not platitudes. That we offer not just policy, but purpose.

The Path Forward

This is not a fight that will be won on social media or by shaming millions into silence. It will be won through the harder work of listening, reckoning, and building something worthy of belief. We can’t save democracy by abandoning the people it has failed. We must offer them a version of America that lives up to its ideals—for everyone.

Because democracy doesn’t defend itself. We do. We have to make the case—for democracy, for fairness, for shared responsibility—as forcefully and consistently as Trump made the case for resentment. We need to show people that the government isn’t just something that taxes them or fails them. It can be something they own, shape, and hold accountable. But that won’t happen through slogans or fear. It will happen when we invest in trust the way others have invested in division—through rebuilding local institutions, defending truth without arrogance, and treating people not as enemies to be defeated but as citizens to be re-engaged. The rebellion won’t end with a fact-check. It ends when we give people something real to believe in again.