Well, thirty years of political consensus have been put to the torch.

The flame was lit far before Nov. 8, but its embers created a fire big enough to burn the last several decades of political construction to the ground.

Hang with me, because things are going to get a little politically wonky.

Let me set the stage: 1989, President Ronald Reagan giving his last speech as chief executive of the United States government. In this speech, he echoed the sentiments of English Puritan John Winthrop who envisioned the new American colonies as a “city on the hill,” an example to all the nations.

“But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace,” Reagan said. “And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”

Until 2010, we as a country believed in that vision.

Both Republicans and Democrats committed themselves to a globally-held neo-liberal consensus — an international recognition that diversity; openness of trade and borders; rules-based approaches to justice and diplomacy; and a general globalization of democratic virtues, values and institutions were the future.

In this world, the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the European Union flowered, the United Nations successfully fought to reduce global poverty, brands and the Internet became worldwide phenomena.

Washington in particular advanced LGBTQ rights ahead of the nation, welcomed refugee populations with open arms, and enjoyed the burgeoning success of local brands like Microsoft and Amazon.

Then the cracks began to show.

In 2008, the housing bubble had burst, the Big Three automakers bailed out, and billions in bank debts underwritten with federal dollars.

In 2009, the European sovereign debt crisis hit.

In 2010, the Tea Party Congress swept into power and began a renewed cycle of cynical, obstructionist politics.

Here we are now in late 2016. Donald Trump is now president-elect of the United States.

A zero-sum game vision of politics, of resources, of opportunities resonated with the American electorate, and for the first time since 2006 we have, as Paul Ryan likes to say, “a united Republican government.”

This form of politics, the same politics that buoyed Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the same politics that had Cougs passionately manning both the Sanders and Trump tables when no Clinton or Cruz table was to be seen, might well be our new political normal.

Whereas we enjoyed for most of our formative years the “neo-liberal consensus,” we now have the “populist consensus.”

We know what this form of politics looks like. It is angry. It is the politics of rallies and counter-rallies, it is the politics of Facebook trolling, it is the politics of social media echo-chambers where our own viewpoints are reinforced to the point of being fanatical.

In a New York Times opinion column, University of North Carolina professor Zeynep Tufekci noted Facebook’s role in creating echo-chambers.

Even though most of Tufekci’s friends list leaned Democratic, there were a few that voted for Trump.

“I had to go hunting for their posts because Facebook’s algorithm almost never showed them to me,” Tufekci wrote. “For whatever reason the algorithm wrongly assumed that I wasn’t interested in their views.”

We are living in a post-truth political world, a world fed on memes, unchecked sources and pandering to our emotions and insecurities.

Hence we have a new age of populism: politics which play directly to the demands of an irate electorate.

Perhaps we deserve to be angry and insecure: globalization — economically, anyway — has been as much fruitful as poisonous.

Dr. Cornell Clayton, director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute at WSU, said these populist ideas born out of globalization and income inequality are going away before playing out in our national politics.

The division in politics has traditionally been between the Left and the Right, but supporters of Sanders and Trump, born out of the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements, have upset that axis.

“It will overlay the old division and will be more interesting to watch over the next four years. There will be opportunities for bipartisan movement on some issues, such as infrastructure spending,” Clayton said. “But you will also see interesting arguments over trade — many on the Left would like to see Donald Trump tear up NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), but those in the Republican Party establishment would howl.”

Indeed, we shall watch with interest and caution.

As hurt as many of us were by this electoral cycle, it will give us an opportunity to critically examine the future we want as a people for the United States.

Tyler Laferriere is a graduate student pursuing his master’s in economics from Phoenix, Arizona. He can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of The Office of Student Media.