And the thing is, it's not just that. I don't think that's part of it. Our entire life is about pretending that every part of our society isn't thoroughly and utterly broken. Life is a series of microagressions becaus there is no part of our society that works. Not our institutions, not our machine, not anything. And we have spent our entire lives taught that not only should we accept those microagressions as part of life bue that we are wrong to get angry about them. That we should just roll over.

I hate Donald Trump with every fiber of being. But I think a large part of his popularity has nothing to do with what he says. It's that he gets to stand on stage for hours and just vent and yell about how broken everything is. I think there's an argument that to many people, Donald Trump is the National Id. They don't believe that he alone can fix their problems because they don't believe the problems are fixable. Not easily, maybe not at all. They want to be Donald Trump. Not necessarily rich and powerful, but have the ability to stand around on a stage, scream at the top of your lungs and not have any consequences. I can't even complain about how the New York Subway system is a shitshow that keeps racing its fares arbitrarily even though they get worse with every year. And I'm a white cis male. Everyone in the world is told that we have to be polite as the world burns. Donald Trump isn't selling the right to be an asshole. WE ALL WANT TO BE ASSHOLES AT LEAST ONCE A DAY. Don't pretend you don't. Personally I've always felt civility is an overrated virtue. It's not like the world wasn't go to hell when we were all being polite about it to each other. We all blame Republicans for saying 'the quiet part out loud'. Tell me you haven't wanted to do that about some part of your life. Not your feelings about your neighbors but about at least one of the dozens of microaggressions we all bury at the end of the day.

Donald Trump gave everybody permission to be an asshole. And I don't just mean Republicans. The left has spent decades wanting to unleash their intolerance of what they think of anyone they disagree with. Trump gave them the same cover it did the Republicans. So much of our culture in the past decade has been about outrage and grievances. Don't put this all on Trump OR the right. I've read so much leftist shouting on this blog arguing that we're doomed that I know wouldn't have been written years ago. And that's without counting publications like the Atlantic saying we should consider Trump voters enemies of the state.

So you're right. Trump is not special at selling the right to be a complete asshole. What he did do very well was officially give cover for everybody to be one. The only difference is, the left can now use Trump as the reason we have to be assholes now.