Fox News' Tucker Carlson, last night, said "Progressives despise Donald Trump so much they have begun to dislike the country that elected him." Context suggests he found that attitude preposterous. I'm not sure he's correct.
When our nation elected Barack Obama the first time I didn't vote for him but his victory made some sense, it was "let's give a polished black guy with no heavy baggage a chance." After experiencing how bad a president he was for four years, reelecting him made no sense at all, but it happened.
When your country's voters do something inexplicable to you, it isn't much of a stretch to get turned off by your fellow citizens. I experienced some of this in 2012, so I can understand if Democrats experience some of this now.
The tides of social change had been flowing in Democrats' direction since the 1960s, now they may flow in the opposite direction for some while. If you've grown up thinking progress is linear and always in one direction, a sea change like this can leave you flummoxed.
It turns out Obama's cherished "arc of history" is probably illusory. Societies can and do become both more and less libertine, depending on the public mood. We survived the crazy '60s, we'll survive this too. We may even be the better for it, not that I expect to convince many Democrats of that possibility.
