The Permission Slip Problem

The Permission Slip Problem

From an Australia vantage point, watching Donald Trump is a bit like watching a reality show you didn’t subscribe to… except the plot keeps leaking into your living room.

I can declare I’ve enjoyed the US but have never been an American sycophant. However I am someone with long ties to the United States, I’ve studied there, worked there, my three children were born there and hold citizenship it’s not a “haha look at America” hobby for me. It’s personal. It’s a country I’ve loved, argued with, learned from, and (like many) once treated as a kind of cultural weather system: whatever happens there eventually rolls across the rest of the West.

I’ll share something else too, because context matters. Until this year I was also doing work in regional America. Not just conference hotels and airport lounges. Regional rooms. Small towns. Long drives. Real conversations. Work I’ve stepped back for now, not out of superiority, but because the cultural temperature has changed in a way that doesn’t sit comfortably in my nervous system. Sometimes the most honest thing you can do is say: this isn’t safe or healthy for me right now, I’ll return when it feels more human again.

So, let’s talk about the thing people often get wrong when they say “Trumpism.” They talk about it like it’s a man. I don’t think it is. I think it’s a permission slip.

The permission to be your worst self and call it strength

For years I genuinely tried to understand the 2016 shock. I did the earnest, rational-person thing. I looked at economics. Media ecosystems. “Left behind” voters. Polarisation. The sense of being ignored. All of it.

And yes, those forces mattered. But here’s the uncomfortable layer that sits beneath the spreadsheets: For some people, Trump wasn’t a candidate despite his cruelty. He was a candidate because of it. Not because everyone who voted for him is cruel. That’s lazy thinking and it’s not what I believe. But because he gave a certain kind of person, along with a certain kind of impulse, public permission.

Permission to say the quiet thing out loud.

Permission to mock decency as “weak.”

Permission to treat empathy like an insult.

Permission to replace self-reflection with self-righteousness.

Permission to call harm “just being honest.”

And once you normalise that… you don’t just change politics. You change the social rules. You teach people that their ugliest instinct isn’t something to wrestle with but rather it’s something to celebrate.

That’s what I mean by permission slip politics.

Why it spread beyond the US

The reason this glow travelled after 2016 wasn’t because every country suddenly wanted American policies. It travelled because the style was contagious.

The posture.

The contempt.

The “I’m allowed to say it” energy.

When a powerful figure is rewarded for cruelty, a whole bunch of everyday people feel emboldened to outsource their personal growth. They don’t have to learn how to manage discomfort, complexity, difference, compromise, disappointment… because now they can call it all “wokeness” or “political correctness” or “the elites.”

It’s a neat psychological trick: If my anger is truth, then I never have to ask what it’s protecting me from. And if my cruelty is courage, then I never have to feel guilty.

The “new kid” moment: when the vibe outruns the substance

Here’s the part I’m finding heartening and I say this as someone who spends time across the Asia Pacific as well as in rural and regional Australia, not just inner-city bubbles.

I’m noticing a shift. Not everyone, not everywhere, not all at once, but a shift.

A few years ago, some conversations felt like they started with slogans: “drain the swamp,” “blow it all up,” “cut the waste,” “finally someone tells it like it is.” In Australia it sometimes showed up dressed as admiration for “strong leadership” or for the clean, sharp certainty of conservative talking points imported from overseas.

But slogans are easy to cheer for when you don’t yet have to live with the consequences. That’s why I like the “new kid” metaphor but let me earn it properly.

We all know them. You know that kid at school who arrives mid-year with huge confidence and a loud story about how everything is about to change? Everyone leans in at first. They assume confidence equals competence. They confuse volume for value. They think: finally, someone exciting.

Then sport rolls around. Or group work. Or the first moment where you need actual skill, actual reliability, actual care for the team. And suddenly you realise: he didn’t bring a basketball. He brought a megaphone.

He can narrate the game.

He can insult the ref.

He can hype the crowd.

But he can’t pass, defend, or do the hard, boring thing that wins over time.

That’s the stage we’re entering now. People are watching the outcomes and going… oh.

They’re watching aggressive enforcement and heavy-handed state power creating fear and instability, not safety. They’re watching policy frameworks that claim to help “ordinary people” repeatedly reward those already winning. They’re watching “simple fixes” become complex harm.

Take the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” even budget analysts have pointed out its projected to add trillions to US deficits over the next decade. While the machinery of enforcement expands as everyday costs still bite. The vibe was “this will fix things.” The outcome looks like “this entrenches things.”

And when enough people see that pattern, the charm wears off. Not because the megaphone stops blaring, but because more people have noticed there’s no ball.

The lessons for other democracies (including ours)

Here’s the bit I think matters most for countries watching from the outside: Trumpism is a stress test for every democracy, because it reveals how fragile the social fabric becomes when we confuse rights with permission.

Three lessons stand out for me.

1) Don’t outsource your civic brain to the loudest voice.

Democracy isn’t just voting. It’s attention. If we let algorithms and outrage decide what we believe, we end up living inside someone else’s business model.

2) Watch what happens to “truth” in a permission slip culture.

When facts become optional, every conversation becomes a dominance contest. People stop trying to understand and start trying to win. And once that happens, cruelty has a structural advantage.

3) The real warning sign isn’t disagreement - it’s dehumanisation.

A democracy can survive fierce debate. It cannot survive a cultural drift where whole groups are treated as less worthy, less legitimate, less human. That’s where history starts repeating itself, just with better lighting and worse empathy.

Freedom isn’t a mood

This is where I want to gently but firmly push us: Are we defending freedom… or are we defending a vibe?

Freedom isn’t “I can say whatever I want” or “I can do whatever I want.” Freedom is meant to be the thing that increases the dignity and safety of human beings.

So, if your version of freedom relies on humiliating minorities, scapegoating migrants, mocking women, erasing queer people, ignoring Indigenous realities, or treating the vulnerable as collateral damage, you’ve got it wrong - that’s not freedom. That’s dominance in a freedom costume.

And dominance always needs an enemy. Because if you don’t have someone “below” you, you might have to ask the frightening question: Who am I without my superiority?

What I think Trump really did

I don’t think Trump invented cruelty. I think he licensed it. He made it socially easier to avoid becoming a better person. He turned the hard inner work; the work of empathy, humility, accountability, and repair into something you could sneer at. And when enough people take that deal, a society doesn’t fracture in one dramatic bang.

It bends.

It adjusts.

It normalises.

It tells itself stories.

Then one day you wake up and the air feels different. Heavier. Meaner. More suspicious. Less kind.

A softer landing (because rage is easy and rebuilding is harder)

If you’ve made it this far, here’s what I want to leave you with: If you feel unsettled, you’re not broken. You’re awake. And staying awake in times like these is not a vibe. It’s a practice.

It’s noticing when “strength” is just unprocessed fear.

It’s asking whether a policy helps the already-powerful more than the struggling majority.

It’s refusing to treat cruelty as entertainment.

It’s raising children who can handle complexity without needing an enemy.

And it’s remembering this: You don’t get to call yourself “free” if your freedom requires someone else to shrink.

So yes, I’m watching Trump’s America, and I’m watching what it stirred in the rest of the West. But I’m also watching something else:

People learning.

People recalibrating.

People quietly returning to the harder, better work of being human.

And honestly? That’s where real patriotism lives. Not in flags or slogans but in the daily choice to become someone who doesn’t need cruelty to feel powerful.

My Rambles with Shane Warren, sometimes a critique, sometimes a confession, always an invitation to think differently. If we are brave enough to strip away the gold-plated gospel and return to the radical root, perhaps we’ll find that the real miracle was never in the mansions or the jets, but in neighbours who refuse to abandon one another. That, to me, is where faith and resilience actually lives.

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