It has never been about Donald Trump. It has always been about the people who finally have their twisted feelings about others validated by him.
Trump has given "those people" permission to disparage and hate their fellow human beings.
Trump is only symptomatic of a much larger issue of a collective toxicity.
If there is a single sentence that characterizes Trump it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That may be what is so terrifying.
Who knew that so many tens of millions of Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans?
Who knew that tens of millions of white men felt so emasculated by women and challenged by minorities?
Who knew that after years of seeming progress on race and gender, tens of millions of white Americans lived in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to arrive who would legitimize their worst selves and channel them into political power?
Perhaps we had been living in a fool’s paradise. Now we are not.
