I have a sinking feeling that Joe Biden might be the next president of the United States. In a brilliant essay published by the American Spectator in 2010, Angelo Codevilla of Boston University foresaw a popular revolt against ‘America’s ruling class’. What he calls ‘the Country party’ repudiates the co-option of the mainstream Republican party by the bureaucratic behemoth that is Washington, DC. You cannot understand the popularity of Donald Trump until you grasp the essential characteristics of this Country party. White, male, ageing Americans are sick of political correctness. They are sick of carefully calibrated talking points. They are sick of immigrants. They are sick of wars in faraway places of which they know nothing and care less. And they are sick of government programmes — even ones they collect money from. In all his crassness, Trump speaks for these people. The more he says the unsayable — ‘Build a wall [along the border with Mexico]!’, ‘Send back the Syrians!’ — the more the ruling class shudders.
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