None of this comes as a surprise to the #NeverTrump voices in the GOP who back in the spring warned that a candidate so obviously misogynistic and racist, running on an incoherent agenda of made-up facts and xenophobia, would be about the only candidate who couldn’t beat Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s bombastic style of politics based on demonization of “the other” and white, male grievances makes him anathema to minority voters and college-educated voters, who acutely feel a lack of respect.

AD

AD

First Lady Michelle Obama caught the essence of offensiveness:

It reminds us of stories we heard from our mothers and grandmothers about how, back in their day, the boss could say and do whatever he pleased to the women in the office, and even though they worked so hard, jumped over every hurdle to prove themselves, it was never enough. We thought all of that was ancient history, didn’t we? And so many have worked for so many years to end this kind of violence and abuse and disrespect, but here we are in 2016 and we’re hearing these exact same things every day on the campaign trail.

Hearing him disdain, insult and objectify people in poverty and war zones, call Mexican immigrants “rapists” and say a judge cannot do his job because he is “Mexican” (Trump denies a judge born in Indiana the status of “American”) millions of non-whites feel like he’s turned the clock back to the pre-Civil Rights era. Everything about Trump — from his views on women to his notion that “globalism” (i.e., modernity) is the enemy — is reactionary.

Reactionaries, as political theorists explain, suffer from false memory and the need to shut out current reality:

“[The reactionary’s] story begins with a happy, well-ordered state where people who know their place live in harmony and submit to tradition and their God. Then alien ideas promoted by intellectuals—writers, journalists, professors—challenge this harmony and the will to maintain order weakens at the top. (The betrayal of elites is the linchpin of every reactionary story.) A false consciousness soon descends on the society as a whole as it willingly, even joyfully, heads for destruction. Only those who have preserved memories of the old ways see what is happening. Whether the society reverses direction or rushes to its doom depends entirely on their resistance.

For Trump “a happy, well-ordered state” means women are docile, minorities do not compete for white males’ jobs and the United States stands apart from the world. This infatuation of the past is characteristic of the alt-right (who’d like to reverse 60 years, at least, of racial progress). It likewise reflects the vibe of white Christian evangelicals who resent no longer dominating the culture (hence the obsession with getting everyone to say “Merry Christmas”) and who have adjusted poorly to the rapid influx of non-whites. He perfectly encapsulates the sentiments of the anti-immigrant exclusionists who fear newcomers will deform America (i.e., move it away from its white, religious, Christian origins). The people who adore Trump are those who have lost status for the past few decades; his most ardent foes (professional women, minorities) those who have gained the most. Ironically, Trump keeps asking: What do you have to lose? The last 50 years, answer women and minorities.

This is where the GOP is heading — backward. You see it in the party’s refusal to accept gay marriage, in its idolization of the smokestack industry of the 1950’s and in its condescension toward women. If they seem uninterested in finding concrete solutions to real problems it is because they do not wish to accept where we are; they engage in magical thinking to imagine going back. “Make America Great Again” is a reactionary plea for the present to become like the past.

AD

AD

If the center-right is to maintain a viable political movement it will have to banish the reactionaries, flee from their party or stage an intervention. If there is to be a conservative renaissance it will need to come from the groups whom Trump has most alienated and who have the most to lose from his vision — millennials, women, minorities, the college-educated.