SALON

“Donald Trump has done a number of terrible and remarkable things to this country in a startlingly brief amount of time. Could it be he has created a new kind of American, or even a new kind of human being?

Of course the question is facetious: Evolution doesn’t work like that, not even in the more subjective realms of politics and culture. It would be more true to say that Trump took advantage of a new subspecies of stultified, deadened, bewildered American — an American still half-convinced of his own greatness, his special destiny, but also halfway aware of his cultural isolation and near-total powerlessness. (In this context, I think the sexist pronoun is forgivable.)”  MORE