Two words nullify this argument: Why now? "American exceptionalism" is a concept going back to de Tocqueville. The American ideal has always been to be better, to strive, to improve, to be one's best self, to live one's best life. Sam Harris' message is that Trump is popular because those pesky liberals are telling the Right that they need to do that thing the First Lady is telling them to do therefore voting Trump is like undoing your belt after a Friday night at Claim Jumper. But why now? Why has this electorate never responded to nah go ahead and suck we'll all suck together before? Reagan sure as shit wasn't the "let yourself go" president. He was all about the "city on the Hill." "Make America WTFEver Again" that's the idea, right? Here's an alternative theory: Right now? Right now we've got adult children who will not make more than their parents. Odds are legit against it. Let's look at that another way. Boomer? Life is great - except your children are being cheated. Millennial? Life is a fuckbucket and it's probably your parents' fault. And yeah - on the one hand you've got "stop mining coal. Stop driving gas guzzlers. Eat your vegetables. Stop contributing to global warming. Stop harassing gays. Stop harassing jews. Stop harassing muslims." But fuckin' hell man until Lee Atwater BOTH SIDES SAID THAT SHIT. And while the Democrats have been pissing away the birthright lamentably, while regretting that unions are no longer economically viable, the Republicans have been burning down the middle class with a goddamn flamethrower. So yeah - there's only one side that actually wants to improve the country anymore while the other wants to ban muslims. But try and tell me that Trump couldn't say "real men do 30 pushups before breakfast and real women sew masks for America" and get a bunch of ripped dudes wearing homemade masks under their MAGA hats. Republicans have, until now, paid lip service to the idea that they were trying to make America better for everyone. Trump is the first person who is actively, obviously, decisively working to make things worse for half of it. On a relative scale he's a more successful leader than Republicans have seen since '88: neither Bush made any real attempt to inspire, fuckin' Sr. couldn't do better than "a thousand points of light" and "read my lips no new taxes j/k" while Jr. was at "your patriotic duty is to go shopping." At least Trump understands that if you can make the lives of the darkies worse, you are raising the relative standards of the crackers. Trump is the demagogue he is because his every statement is six microns this side of the n-word. The coded language stopped working for the people whose lives stopped working. So they went hard into hate. Shame? Naah fuck that. Shame is a motivator. Shame caused you introspection and allowed you to improve. That's the function of shame. Shame is disagreement between your perception of your behavior and your chosen society's perception of your behavior. It is a sociological mechanism of conformity. Nobody is voting Trump because he doesn't make people feel shame, they're voting for Trump because owning the libs is a viable strategy for people who consider life a zero-sum game.
