Over the last nine years I've linked to a lot of Peggy Noonan columns in The Wall Street Journal, here we go again. Her topic today is the 2016 political epiphany, or as she calls it, "That moment when 2016 hits you." Some choice lines:
The Moment is that sliver of time in which you fully realize something epochal is happening in politics, that there has never been a presidential year like 2016, and suddenly you are aware of it in a new, true and personal way. It tends to involve a poignant sense of dislocation, a knowledge that our politics have changed and won’t be going back.Noonan had been a leading voice mostly in sympathy with the GOP establishment. It's no wonder she feels dislocated, discombobulated by 2016.
Lately conservative thinkers and journalists had taken to making clear their disdain for the white working class. I had actually not known they looked down on them. I deeply resented it and it pained me.
My country is in trouble. Because I felt anguish at all the estrangements. Because some things that shouldn’t have changed have changed. Because too much is being lost. Because the great choice in a nation of 320 million may come down to Crazy Man versus Criminal.
