Photo by Michael Candelori | CC BY 2.0
As the articles rain down from liberals explaining how Trump won his astonishing, appalling plurality, we can at least give thanks that we’re spared the canard that all of his supporters are racists, xenophobes, and misogynists. Neo-Blackshirts, of course, make up a frighteningly large share (sixty percent? seventy? eighty?) of his supporters, but thanks to months of Brexit analysis and now days of exit interviews here at home, it’s clear that a great many Trump voters aren’t monsters. They merely voted with the monsters because they saw no other way to give the establishment a proud, powerful middle finger.
The non-monstrous supporters of Trump mystify liberals. How could people who are not depraved, people who have a measure of decency, choose to align themselves with America’s Mussolini and his hordes, no matter how deep and well-placed their grievances against neoliberalism, greed, and corruption, which is to say grievances against Clintonism?
This liberal bewilderment bewilders me. One dear friend in particular comes to mind—a brilliant fortysomething progressive of uncommonly sound judgment who voted for Ms. Bombalot. My friend was not among the liberal dupes who saw in Clinton a pantsuit paladin. She knew, for instance, that Hillary was the supreme embodiment of the American killing machine, a cowboy Crusader who, in the words of rightwing blowhard “Morning Joe” Scarborough, was “the neocon’s neocon. . . ….