Trump

Of course it's going to be about Trump. You know all about him. But try looking at new perspectives. Too many of us have gone wrong by staying inside our comfort zones. These are interesting thinkers - probably wrong, but we have all been wrong - and a diverse mixture.

1. Peter Hitchens on what is going wrong. "Those old stories about wicked necromancers raising demons, and then not being able to send them back where they came from, seem to me to be metaphors for modern-day political alchemists who raise huge hopes which they know they cannot satisfy, so summoning into being crowds which can all too easily become mobs, and will not go home when asked. What then?" and "Someone has cut the ropes, and we are adrift on a strange, sinister, powerful current towards an unknown destination which it might be better never to reach at all."

2. Maybe it's more simple than that. Glenn Greenwald: "“both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for 30 years.” ... From the invasion of Iraq to the 2008 financial crisis to the all-consuming framework of prisons and endless wars, societal benefits have been directed almost exclusively to the very elite institutions most responsible for failure at the expense of everyone else."

3. Or perhaps Trump even has some right answers. Martin Kettle: "In his own deeply egotistical and socially illiberal way, Trump stands for something true."

4. Or perhaps Trump is supported by something false - identity politics: "Notice, though, that Miss Anderson does not fault these white women for voting according to identity politics. She only faults them for choosing the “wrong” identity: their race, not their sex." Or perhaps it doesn't matter that much. (Both Rod Dreher.)

5. As a final PS, here is Jonathan Pie explaining everything. (Video, with both rude words and wisdom.)