. . . a righteous explanation.
Brandon O'Neill, "The sneering response to Trump's victory reveals exactly why he won," spectator.co.uk, November 10, 2016.
IF YOU WANT to know why Trump won, just look at . . .
. . . the response to his winning. The lofty contempt for 'low information' Americans. The barely concealed disgust for the rednecks and cretins of 'flyover' America who are apparently racist and misogynistic and homophobic. The haughty sneering at the vulgar, moneyed American political system and how it has allowed a wealthy candidate to poison the little people's mushy, malleable minds. The suggestion that American women, more than 40 per cent of whom are thought to have voted for Trump, suffer internalized misogyny: that is, that they don't know their own minds, the poor dears. The hysterical, borderline apocalyptic claims that the world is now infernally screwed because 'our candidate', the good, pure person, didn't get in.
This response to Trump's victory reveals why Trump was victorious. Because those who do politics these days -- the political establishment, the media, the academy, the celeb set -- are so contemptuous of ordinary people, so hateful of the herd, so convinced that the mass of society cannot be trusted to make political decisions, and now those ordinary people have given their response to such top-down sneering and prejudice.
. . . .
The respectable set's allergy to Trump is fundamentally an allergy to the idea of democracy itself. To them, Trump's rise confirms the folly of asking the ignorant, the everyday, the non-subscribers to the New York Times, to decide on important political matters. . . . The little folks only feel and wail, you see, and it's down to the grown-ups in the system to think coolly on their behalf.
. . . .
. . . . I know this is strong, but I'm sure it's correct -- it is democracy itself that they hate. . . . It is the engagement of the throng in political life they fear. It is the people -- ordinary, working, non-PhD-holding people -- whom they dread and disdain. It is what got Trump to the White House -- the right of all adults, even the dumb ones, to decide about politics -- that gives them sleepless nights.
This nasty, reactionary turn against democracy by so many of the well-educated both explains the victory of Trump, which neatly doubles up as a slap in the face of the establishment, and confirms why democracy is more important today than it has ever been. Because it would be folly, madness in fact, to let an elite that so little understands ordinary people, and in fact loathes them, to run society unilaterally. Now that would be dangerous, more dangerous than Trump.
This Brit understands the midset of the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle better than the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle understands itself.
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