I swear to you, I wasn't going to post another thing under that header for a while. I really am trying not to think a lot about the election and to instead focus on all this work I have to do. But it's beastly hard to go anywhere on the Internet without glimpsing a "How Trump Won" essay. I was afraid to play Wordle this morning because I was afraid there would be a couple of 'em on that page. And what I glimpsed meant I had to post the following…
Maybe someone has said this — like I said, I'm avoiding all these discussions — but it seems to me that there's an overriding reason why the people who love Trump love Trump: Because he won. They loved him before he won because he was the only person on their side who had a chance of winning and they thought he had a damn good chance. They love him after he won because he won and because he dragged an awful lot of the Republican Party along with him.
Yes, inflation had something to do with it as did immigration and abortion and The Economy and gay rights and every other issue you can name. But the way I see it, the overriding reason is that all these people wanted to be able to yell, "THIS IS OUR COUNTRY AND WE RUN IT!!!" And if you can yell that, you don't worry too much about the individual issues.
I shall now return to not wanting to think or write about this stuff for a while. If I were you, I wouldn't bet on me being able to do that.