Member-only story
The Trump Myth Has Been Busted
He was a savior for a past America
The way his supporters cheered, you would have thought he was some great hero from the past. The heart of the Trump myth was that he was some political warrior who would rescue the country from a corrupt establishment and the evil liberals who wanted to destroy it. It was a battle for the soul of the country. Civic virtues like kindness, grace, and dignity would only be obstacles to defending American life from invading progressive hordes. What they wanted was someone unforgiving, someone who would win at all costs, someone who would fight nasty if necessary.
What they didn’t count on was the backlash. That if you tear down the guardrails, you open yourself up to counterattack. One side showed itself willing to take to the streets, to destroy property, to confront law enforcement. The other side did not. They meekly stood aside, stayed in their homes, and vicariously let out their anger through the mouths of cable news hosts. The other side did not contemplate the consequences of their actions, only that they were mad as hell and something had to be done. But by someone else.
He barely won. They tended to forget this fact. If Trump’s 2016 opponent had made a few trips to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, she would have maintained the “Blue Wall”. Even so, she lost by razor thin margins in all three…
