Baloney!

I seem to have a kind of muscle-memory of America’s fundamental decency (which at the highest levels of government probably means “veiling the necessary indecency”).

Kevin D. Williamson thinks I should get over it.

“This isn’t what Americans voted for.”

Everybody says this when Donald Trump does something stupid or awful. My friend Jonah Goldberg says it from time to time. John Bolton said it on a recent edition of the Dispatch Podcast.

With all due respect to my friends and colleagues and for their desire to take a charitable view of their fellow citizens, and with equally due contempt for Rolling Stone et al.:

Baloney.

Americans are not stupid: Americans know damned good and well that whom we’re voting for is what we’re voting for. We do not have the excuse of ignorance or stupidity.

…

Trump was elected to hurt people.

The creed of cruelty is nearly universal among Trump loyalists. Of course, they don’t put it that way, but ask them and they will tell you the truth in spite of themselves: Trump was elected by people who resent this or that group for its status, its wealth, its influence, its political power, its class condescension, etc., and electing Trump—again—was a way to get back at “them,” “the media,” “elites,” etc. Nobody voted for Trump for policy reasons, because he has no policies, only tantrums. Nobody voted for Trump for philosophical reasons, because he has no philosophy beyond, “I am your retribution.” The excitable ladies and gentlemen over at The Daily Wire sell “Leftist Tears” mugs, and there’s a reason for that. The tears—of our fellow Americans, wrongheaded though they may be in their politics—are what this is all about. Forget policy—those tears are the deliverable, the only one that really matters.

It is time—well past time—to stop making excuses for Americans: for Americans’ cruelty, for Americans’ selfishness, for Americans’ childish insistence on being led by their resentment and by their lowest instincts.

If the shoe fits, wear it (until it drives you to repentance). I haven’t given up on you yet.