No it is not pseudo-science; however, it has been used to form a conclusion which is common although dishonest.
Trump won for a plethora of reasons. Thirty years of financial policy and politics that left a great swath of the population unrepresented and forgotten. The Rust Belt, it is very much a financial position that gave Trump ears and votes. (Regardless if he can actually do anything about it.)
Putnam would call it the decline of Social Capital, I prefer the term Demographic Rust. The problems that started with neoliberalism, how our Western World through thirty plus years of broken economic policy has delivered inequality, financial crisis and an erosion of institutional trust.
Inequality is where the rust starts then it spreads like a cancer; it begins eating away at our community structures. Crime, substance abuse, marriage breakdown, marrying later, racism and bigotry, these are just a few of adverse outcomes from inequality, lack of financial stability, an outlook to a not so bright future.
Let the market decide, the catchphrase of many neoliberal capitalists has resulted in financial market crashes, gross inequality, and the rise of right-wing populism.
A recent study by Funke et al., a statistical analysis from 1870 to 2014 of how we respond to financial crisis found that political parties of the far-right increased their vote base by 30%. When we start to look at thirty plus years of economic policy, as introduced by Thatcher in the UK, Regan in the US and Hawke in Australia, we begin to draw a picture of compounding problems. By analysing historical data can provide us with a much better methodology for understanding how to avoid the worst parts of history. We know inequality is a breeding ground of social disease. By looking at the data, we see a rise in inequality and financial strain increases crime, substance abuse; it eats away at our communities interconnecting fibres.
An old term for right-wing populism was reactionaries, and that is what we are seeing a reaction to how our masters have inflicted ideas & policies onto people which in many cases has been to the detriment of said people.
