America is staring into an abyss of unhindered populism: People are angry, frustrated, fearful, disconnected, resentful.

Some of their frustrations are completely legitimate; some exaggerated, whipped up by the rhetoric of Donald Trump.

And some are too dark to contemplate. But we must at least consider where all this goes after Election Day.

Populism isn’t ideology; it’s energy. It is entitled and noble, naive and skeptical, good-willed, dangerous and not going away anytime soon, all at the same time.

Both the Democrats and Republicans experienced it in the primaries. But Republicans actually nominated a populist candidate, in part because their party leadership was seen as insufficiently concerned about the kitchen-table and cultural issues driving a large segment of the party’s grass roots.

Yet, if folks think this current variant of populism is just based on economic resentment or racism, they’re vastly oversimplifying it. Instead, they should be spending the time to understand all the forces at work here.

Why are many people, particularly white working-class men, attracted to Trump?

Populism isn’t ideology; it’s energy.

Is it economics? Racism? Or something deeper?

There’s an important social and cultural element to this populism that’s often misidentified as simple racism. It is more what one might call “patriotic chauvinism,” reflected in Trump’s “America First” rhetoric.

It’s about how we define America in the early 21st century.

Since Barack Obama is our first African-American president, it’s easy to overlook other significant elements in his background and biography, according to Paul Sracic, political science professor at Youngstown (Ohio) State University.

“He spent his early years abroad and then graduated from elite universities,” Sracic said.

He worked as a “community organizer,” a job most Americans don’t recognize from the want ads. He also was the first president to begin his term by going to Europe and declaring himself to be a “proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world.”

All of this happened alongside China’s rise as a powerful economic adversary and as global supply chains challenged the idea that anything was still “Made in America” or that any company could legitimately claim to be American.

“All of this was quite disorienting in itself,” Sracic explained. “But added to that mix was technology, which enabled a globalized economy to shrink the demand, and therefore the wages, for ordinary workers.”

This new America can seem like a foreign country, particularly to those who feel they have been the victims of all these changes — changes about which they were never consulted.

Even the new economic elites seem foreign, earning their money and status by inventing apps rather than tangible products and shunning institutions like the military or organized religion that once provided a common, leveling experience for Americans.

Today’s populist backlash began in 2009 with the rise of the Tea Party movement, whose own attempt to “make America great again” focused on constitutional restoration. Much of the media sneered at that movement, using the sexual innuendo of “tea baggers” and dismissing critiques of Obama’s Affordable Care Act as naïve.

The Tea Party movement arose spontaneously, without any centralized structure, said Sracic: “Because of this, it seemed to be dissolving [on its own]. But the anger, and the sense that things weren’t right, simmered beneath the surface.”

Enter Trump. His connection to the Tea Party wasn’t obvious. After all, he seems barely aware of the text of the Constitution.

“Perhaps, however, the Constitution was more of a symbol of the America that had been lost than anything else,” said Sracic.

And Trump offered a confident message that all could be made right. He began with a promise to build a wall, to establish a solid border that would help to define “America.” He also promised to sever the ties that bind the global economy — free-trade agreements like NAFTA.

“Trump is unlikely to win this election, and is even less likely to be able to institute the changes he desires even if he were to win,” said Sracic.

What will this mean for Nov. 9, the day after the election?

A Trump defeat will be incredibly difficult for his supporters to accept. Not that all of them admire him as a person — but this has never really been about him.

Instead, it has been about what he represents: pushing back against what those supporters see as nothing less than the end of the United States as they know it.