Critics will say Donald Trump won because he successfully capitalized on blue collar workers' anxieties about immigration and globalization. A more level-headed group will claim he won because America rejected a deeply unpopular alternative. Still others will say the country is simply racist to its core.
But there's another major piece of the puzzle, and it would be a profound mistake to overlook it. Overlooking it was largely the problem, in the first place.
Trump won because of a cultural issue that flies under the radar and remains stubbornly difficult to define, but is nevertheless hugely important to a great number of Americans: political correctness.
More specifically, Trump won because he convinced a great number of Americans that he would destroy political correctness.
For years college campuses were the fulcrum of political correctness, where the far-left has gained institutional power and used it to punish people for saying or thinking the wrong thing. And ever since Donald Trump became a serious threat to win the GOP presidential primaries, more and more people became furious about political-correctness-run-amok—so furious that they would give power to any man who stood in opposition to it.
It has played any times in campus after campus. More well-rounded and open student groups invite Milo Yiannopoulos to speak — not because they particularly agree with his views, but because he denounces censorship and undermines political correctness. They cheer his theatrics, his insulting behavior, and his narcissism solely because the enforcers of campus goodthink are outraged by it. It's not about his ideas, or policies. It's not even about him. It's about vengeance for social oppression.
Trump has done to America what Yiannopoulos did to campus. This is a view Yiannopoulos shares. When one campus writer spoke with him about Trump's success months ago, he told him, "Nobody votes for Trump or likes Trump on the basis of policy positions. That's a misunderstanding of what the Trump phenomenon is."
He described Trump as "an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness."
What is political correctness? It's notoriously hard to define. CNN's Sally Kohn described political correctness as being polite and having good manners. That's fine — it can mean different things to different people. But there is a darker side to it.
The segment of the electorate who flocked to Trump because he positioned himself as "an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness" think it means this: smug, entitled, elitist, privileged leftists jumping down the throats of ordinary folks who aren't up-to-date on the latest requirements of progressive society.
Example: A lot of people think there are only two genders—boy and girl. Maybe they're wrong. Maybe they should change that view. Maybe it's insensitive to the trans community. Maybe it even flies in the face of modern social psychology. But people think it. Political correctness is the social force that holds them in contempt for that, or punishes them outright.
For a leftist reading this, they probably think that's stupid. They don't want to understand the other side. All they want to hear is what they see in front and not what the rear view mirror is showing them. They probably can't understand why someone would get so bent out of shape about being told their words are hurtful. They probably think it's not a big deal and these people need to get over themselves. Who's the delicate snowflake now, huh? they are probably thinking. Well, the failure of the left to acknowledge this miscalculation and adjust their approach has delivered the country to Trump.
There's a related problem: the boy-who-cried-wolf situation. It was refreshing to see a few liberals, like Bill Maher, owning up to it. Maher admitted during a recent show that he was wrong to treat George Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain like they were apocalyptic threats to the nation: it robbed him of the ability to treat Trump more seriously. The left said McCain was a racist supported by racists, it said Romney was a racist supported by racists, but when an actually racist Republican came along — and racists cheered him — it had lost its ability to credibly make that accusation.
This is akin to the political-correctness-run-amok problem: both are examples of the left's horrible over-reach during the Obama years. The leftist drive to enforce a progressive social vision was relentless, and it happened too fast.
There is a cost to depriving people of the freedom (in both the legal and social senses) to speak their mind. The presidency just went to the guy whose main qualification, according to his supporters, is that he isn't afraid to speak his.
But there's another major piece of the puzzle, and it would be a profound mistake to overlook it. Overlooking it was largely the problem, in the first place.
Trump won because of a cultural issue that flies under the radar and remains stubbornly difficult to define, but is nevertheless hugely important to a great number of Americans: political correctness.
More specifically, Trump won because he convinced a great number of Americans that he would destroy political correctness.
For years college campuses were the fulcrum of political correctness, where the far-left has gained institutional power and used it to punish people for saying or thinking the wrong thing. And ever since Donald Trump became a serious threat to win the GOP presidential primaries, more and more people became furious about political-correctness-run-amok—so furious that they would give power to any man who stood in opposition to it.
It has played any times in campus after campus. More well-rounded and open student groups invite Milo Yiannopoulos to speak — not because they particularly agree with his views, but because he denounces censorship and undermines political correctness. They cheer his theatrics, his insulting behavior, and his narcissism solely because the enforcers of campus goodthink are outraged by it. It's not about his ideas, or policies. It's not even about him. It's about vengeance for social oppression.
Trump has done to America what Yiannopoulos did to campus. This is a view Yiannopoulos shares. When one campus writer spoke with him about Trump's success months ago, he told him, "Nobody votes for Trump or likes Trump on the basis of policy positions. That's a misunderstanding of what the Trump phenomenon is."
He described Trump as "an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness."
What is political correctness? It's notoriously hard to define. CNN's Sally Kohn described political correctness as being polite and having good manners. That's fine — it can mean different things to different people. But there is a darker side to it.
The segment of the electorate who flocked to Trump because he positioned himself as "an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness" think it means this: smug, entitled, elitist, privileged leftists jumping down the throats of ordinary folks who aren't up-to-date on the latest requirements of progressive society.
Example: A lot of people think there are only two genders—boy and girl. Maybe they're wrong. Maybe they should change that view. Maybe it's insensitive to the trans community. Maybe it even flies in the face of modern social psychology. But people think it. Political correctness is the social force that holds them in contempt for that, or punishes them outright.
For a leftist reading this, they probably think that's stupid. They don't want to understand the other side. All they want to hear is what they see in front and not what the rear view mirror is showing them. They probably can't understand why someone would get so bent out of shape about being told their words are hurtful. They probably think it's not a big deal and these people need to get over themselves. Who's the delicate snowflake now, huh? they are probably thinking. Well, the failure of the left to acknowledge this miscalculation and adjust their approach has delivered the country to Trump.
There's a related problem: the boy-who-cried-wolf situation. It was refreshing to see a few liberals, like Bill Maher, owning up to it. Maher admitted during a recent show that he was wrong to treat George Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain like they were apocalyptic threats to the nation: it robbed him of the ability to treat Trump more seriously. The left said McCain was a racist supported by racists, it said Romney was a racist supported by racists, but when an actually racist Republican came along — and racists cheered him — it had lost its ability to credibly make that accusation.
This is akin to the political-correctness-run-amok problem: both are examples of the left's horrible over-reach during the Obama years. The leftist drive to enforce a progressive social vision was relentless, and it happened too fast.
There is a cost to depriving people of the freedom (in both the legal and social senses) to speak their mind. The presidency just went to the guy whose main qualification, according to his supporters, is that he isn't afraid to speak his.