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To those unaffected by the decline of America, that decline was invisible; to those who were affected by it, it is a challenge and a constant fear for their own welfare and national pride. The Democrats have had no policy for some years except to denigrate their opponents, and try to bribe and anesthetize a comatose lumpenproletariat addicted to state benefit. Their nomination of Hillary Clinton showed that they did not realize how many Americans rejected this vision of America.

The great majority of anti-Trump activity in the first year of his administration was devoted to the propagation of falsehoods, which were then justified by the selective and intentional misinterpretation of Trump’s careless and ambiguous statements. Distaste for Trump’s straight-shooting and sometimes vulgar style caused otherwise intelligent people to withhold any benefit of the doubt, and pathologically to interpret anything he said or did in the worst possible light. He is not, in fact, a racist, sexist, warmonger, hothead, promoter of violence, or a foreign or domestic economic warrior. No opposition can continue on this name-calling basis alone for much longer than this one has.

He is not, in fact, a racist, sexist, warmonger, hothead, promoter of violence, or a foreign or domestic economic warrior

Every two weeks in the first year of his term a new alarm was raised, and all quickly fell silent. In a calmer atmosphere, the faddish frenzies will become rarer and shorter. For two weeks in August, Confederate statues were being taken down all over the South, but now such iconoclasm happens only intermittently; the abrupt termination of famous careers for alleged sexual liberties that once happened on a daily basis has become much less frequent. Trump’s opponents are tenacious but unimaginative and they have yet to seem to prepare for the possibility, now more of a likelihood, that he might be a durable and effective president.