I have started a version of this diary many times, many false starts and no easy path to conclusion. This morning, I woke up and discarded my complicated thesis-building and decided to start by asking the simple question: Why do so many Americans support Trump? Are there really that many racists and misogynists in the body politic?
In Secretary Clinton’s Reno speech last week, she promised to serve as President for all Americans. But the 40% (give or take) who support Trump inhabit a completely different universe from the one Hillary and I inhabit. How can she serve as President a cohort who see her victory itself as illegitimate?
Yesterday, I began writing a version that took Christopher Lasch’s “Culture of Narcissism” (1979) and instead posited that Lasch’s construct had morphed into a “Culture of Cruelty,” holding up Abu Ghraib and Trump’s mockery of the disabled reporter as prime examples.
It is depressing as hell and breaks my heart that so many Americans subscribe to this culture of cruelty, one that relishes cruelty for its own sake, that revels in the ritual humiliation of other Americans, that takes pleasure in hurting the weakest among us. This is a powerful tidal force that Hillary is battling.
So I think the first step to curing the pestilence that is Trump and Trumpism is to understand the reason(s) for its appeal. Why do so many Americans support Trump?