“One thing I think major outlets got right about “what did 2016 mean” and “how did Trump get votes” was that a lot of people (yes, even if we don’t want to address it or we think they shouldn’t be how they are) are/were on the losing side of popular culture wars like abortion, gay rights, minority rights, changing demographics reducing their real or believed power or prominence, and very real economic futures (coal country, for example; industrial workers, etc.). These people aren’t homogenous, but they have a lot of folks who have spent the last decade or two feeling shit on by a liberal America. Not by “liberal America”, like just a group IN America on the left, but by the very real America we have today that is–by and large–very liberal–and the popular culture we have that praises that. Our movies, TV shows, music, celebrity (both in entertainment AND in conventional academic or enterprising ways) all snub the idea of being uneducated, racist, bigoted, homophobic, anti-choice, Dominionist Christian, living in fly-over country, etc. They don’t care about policy. They care about someone slapping back against those things/forces/institutions/people that have made them feel like they’re culturally marginalized. They see Political Correctness and all that as more ways of slighting them. They see America as a zero sum game where raising anyone else up means taking from them. They’re tribal, sensitive, and feel under-represented. […] These people don’t care about policy. They don’t know anything about policy. They don’t “get” the social contract and how artificial all and any government is–that its not ordained, there is no governing Bible, there is no magical perfect society… that public policy is the intersection between what the people (at that moment in time) want and need AND what rules can be made to deliver them. Wants and needs and Rules change all the time. They’ll change in the future. They’ve not the same as they were even 20 years ago. And because of that, the best plan is to have the best experts advise on what to do and how and hear from as many people as possible from all walks of life. They don’t care about that. Policy is boring. Messy. You can’t put it on a coffee cup or hat. It makes them feel stupid and small and weak. They don’t know anything about fixing economies, they know tag lines. They don’t know anything about ultra-modern science and risk analysis, they know the weak-milky-coffee version of “I’m smart, tho” that is rampant, ignorant skepticism.”
—
There’s going to be a bloody Civil War in America because of Donald Trump and the people he has empowered to be racist, misogynist, revanchist, hateful, and disdainful of civil rights and progress.