“That’s how you got Trump!” This phrase seemed at first to be a playful quip, uttered here and there as the Left’s shock and horror over the election of President Donald J. Trump manifested itself in memorably bizarre ways such as grieving centers on university campuses where tender twenty-somethings and the tenured radicals who instruct them were invited to stroke “therapy dogs,” scribble in coloring books, stack Legos, and do their brave best to cope. At Cornell, they even staged a “cry-in,” with the Ivy League university’s staff providing tissues and hot chocolate, gratis—or as gratis as it gets after mom and dad have ponied up the $65,494 in annual tuition and fees. Alas, it is not a quip anymore. “That’s how you got Trump!” has become a constant refrain.
Shock among self-proclaimed “progressives” has devolved into anger. Rage has fueled a full- time tantrum: a competition among distraught student bodies, Hollywood heavyweights, community organizers, pop stars, sanctuary-city pols, froth-flecked pundits, smoldering social media addicts, and rabble-rousers from Black Lives Matter to Antifa (a fascist projection outfit). All vie to be the most outraged, the most rabidly anti-Trump.
As we’ve transitioned from the populist candidacy of “The Donald” to nearly a year of populism in power, there are two things worth observing about the President and his opposition. The first involves the conventional wisdom that the United States is a deeply divided country. This misstates the case. What we are is an intensely divided country. To
