Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic

by David Frum

One of Trump’s conservative critics during the campaign published a beguilingly candid message on election eve. “Donald Trump is a boorish buffoon with dangerously fascist instincts and on Tuesday I will vote for him, sadly, but without a qualm.”9 Why? Over the next few months, this writer—Andrew Klavan of PJ Media—would return again and again to the justification of his decision: A few dopey intellectuals and their absurd little notions can have outsized power: the power of the echo chamber, the power of fashionable acceptance, the power of creating the atmosphere within the Beltway Bubble. And while Republicans frequently strut and fret about their opposition to leftist malarkey, they just as frequently acquiesce to it in the event. . . . Trump [is] deaf to the echo chamber, indifferent to media acceptance, immune to the atmosphere. In fact, some of the very things that make Trump unappealing to gentle folk like me—his belligerence, his recklessness, his bullish and even bullying insistence on his own vision—are also what sometimes lift him above the Leftist Crazy.10 A lot of people in America felt bullied and humiliated. Not all of them were old white men either. Some were young white men.