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The rise of Donald Trump in the 2016 primaries\u2014and his eventual win in the general\u2014defied expectations and confounded explanations. Nearly every national poll was wrong, and political observers have spent the last four years trying to understand what happened (and how so many of the experts missed it).\nIn his book Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse, Timothy Carney makes the compelling case that the most common explanations for Trump\u2019s ascendance\u2014the economy, for example\u2014don\u2019t get to the root of things. He demonstrates that the people who resonated with Trump\u2019s message that \u201cthe American dream is dead\u201d are those whose communities lacked the social cohesion that binds neighbor to neighbor. While voters cast ballots mostly along party lines in the general election, in the early primaries, Candidate Trump actually struggled in places where the institutions that are \u201cthe key to the good life\u201d\u2014 faith communities, vibrant civic organizations, etc.\u2014already gave people a strong sense of purpose and belonging. Maybe you\u2019re starting to see why Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn named Alienated America one of the best books he read in 2019, saying \u201cI highly recommend it to anyone trying to understand the cultural ramifications of fragile places.\u201d\nTim Carney is Chuck\u2019s guest on this week\u2019s episode of the Strong Towns podcast. Together, they discuss how populism\u2014on both the right and the left, and in 2016 as well as today\u2014is springing from alienation (we need to belong to something). They talk about community\u2019s physical dimension (proximity, walkability, etc.), why people are healthiest when they belong to \u201ca lot of little platoons,\u201d and why idleness isn\u2019t so much a vice as an affliction. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in how frayed social bonds effect not just our national politics but our local life as well.\nShow Notes:\n\nTimothy Carney on Twitter\n\n\nTimothy Carney at the Washington Examiner\n\n\nAmerican Enterprise Institute\n\n\nAlienated America (out in paperback this week)\n\n\nChuck Marohn\u2019s Best Books of 2019\n\n\n\u201cDignity in an Alienated America\u201d: A Conversation between Tim Carney and Chris Arnade