You go away on a journey of the imagination, to a land where
National Review is liberal,
Ted Cruz is Mr. Establishment, where John Boehner and Paul Ryan are
de facto allies of Barack Obama. It is a land whose inhabits flip-flop from trumpeting the
best Republican showing in congress since the 1920s to apocalyptically alerting their fellows about an imminent and permanent Democrat majorities. A land where the veto power of the President is brushed off as an excuse, where many say that a typical Republican is worse for the rightwing than a Democrat. A land where heroes of the moment are hoisted up in a balloon of adulation only to crash down after their balloon is shot by gunmen who yell "Traitor!" and "Sellout!" Every hero except one. He is the scion of a very successful family whose success dwarfed that of his father. A very loyal son of a father that was a lifelong Queens Democrat.
This is here, this is now. All around, you see unrest and rebellion. It's fitting that you do, for you have entered...
Although he never coined the term, Alexis de Tocqueville is credited as being the first modern historical to discover the "revolution of rising expectations." One of the chapters of his work
The Old Regime And The [French] Revolution was entitled "
How Attempts To Relieve The People Provoked Rebellion".
That, in tl;dr form, described the mechanism of a Revolution of Rising Expectations. It's happening now, in the land of right-wing 'Merica. It's happening right in front of your eyes. It's here, it's now, it's real.
And here's the most interesting part of it: from the "global" view, it looks like a bunch of folks have angrily taken leave of their sanity.
But if you're detail-oriented like the late Count de Tocqueville, it begins to makes a lot of sense. Just ask the rightwingers who have rallied around Trump to the point where they seem to think he can do no wrong. You'll hear that he's a winner: he's the right man for the job. You'll hear that he's brave enough to be candid and thus buck the age of political correctness. You'll hear that his "liberal" moments are forgiven because he's right on the core issues: protectionism for the sake of American jobs and cracking down on illegal immigration. You'll hear that his
lack of political experience is proof positive that he's the best man for the job. And you'll soon hear a lot of anger and frustration over a Republican party that seems to have done little for them except solicit their votes and donations.
Beneath the anger, you'll see a lot of frustration from solid citizens who have - in very real ways - been treated like second-class citizens. That's the real backstory behind the
seemingly unstoppable rise of Donald Trump:
I can't think of any better tl;dr for the Donald Trump phenomenon than this meme:
