But what farmers discuss at breakfast, in small cafes, at church: this to, is culture. This is the invisible culture, as seen from the big cities. The big cities forget and denigrate these people, the little people. But they are who put Trump in office.
In large measure the shock of his victory came not just from intentionally distorted polls, but from a false vision of what “American Culture”. The elites want to conflate it with their regressive, violent visions. They want license to hate those who are different, and the charge of bigotry gives them that. But by and large this charge is a lie, and while it rallies the dancing munchkins around the communal bonfire, it alienated and polarized the very people whose opposition kept them out of power.
I will comment, too, that it seems a reasonably robust empirical sociological finding that most people are happier and more relaxed living with people whose culture, whose thoughts and behavior are consistent and shared. Jews living with Jews. Blacks living with blacks. Polish immigrants living with Polish immigrants.
If you think about it, shame is our main signaling emotion. If we are doing everything right, and are u traumatized, then we feel little shame. We are happy, by default.
But in uncertain waters, where the “right” thing to do is unclear, then low grade shame becomes a constant companion and breeds, I think, a passion for conformity. This is the power of political correctness, in that it proves a template, not really to avoid shame, but to channel it as anger, and as a part of a group. This is a psychic balm whose cost is emotional independence, and a more or less formal renunciation of any chance of ever feeling completely calm or complete as a person.