"Donald J. Trump is a political genius, a once-in-a-century talent combining an instinct for showmanship with the ability to read the frustrations and longings of potential supporters" writes Mead. The two following paragraphs summarize his view of the current situation in our great land.
One way to read Trump’s second victory in three elections is that the movement for a post-American America with a successor ideology and post-Judeo Christian cultural and ethical foundation aimed at fundamentally changing American society has reached its sell-by date. Its social base, in a deeply dysfunctional upper-middle class, is too weak, too faddish, and too narcissistic for the hard work of remaking society. Too many of its concrete proposals are too unpopular or too unrealistic to bear fruit.
Minority identity politics sooner or later lead to majority identity politics. The specter of a radically transformed America that hates Christianity, sees no difference between women and men, actively discriminates against whites and especially white men in the name of equity, and seeks to regulate every economic and social interaction with a puritanical fervor not seen since Oliver Cromwell has angered and frightened enough Americans to create a mass movement of resistance centered on the person of our new president-elect.
