The American identity is mind-bogglingly various.
In true demagogic fashion, Trump bypassed the head and spoke directly to the gut, to the biles and bubbling acids of raw emotion.
My first visit to Haiti was in May 1991, four months into the initial term of Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. At the time, it seemed that Haiti was on the cusp of a new era.
In the arsenal of the phony, the politics of God is one of the deadliest punches to the sweet spot of the American mind.
Democracy's premise rests on the notion that the collective wisdom of the majority will prove right more often than it's wrong; that given sufficient opportunity in the pursuit of happiness, your population will develop its talents, its intellect, its better judgment; that over time its capacity for discernment and self-correction will be enlarged.
From the start, Trump's rallies had the air of the tent revival, that same hot thrum of militant exorcism and ecstasy.
The Gilded Age robber barons - the Goulds, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans and Rockefellers - did quite well under laissez-faire. Most of the rest of Americans were still stuck in the ditch, with little to no economic security, life expectancy of roughly 45 years, and horrific infant mortality rates that claimed 300 babies per 1,000 in the cities.
Upward mobility across classes peaked in the U.S. in the late 19th century. Most of the gains of the 20th century were achieved en masse; it wasn't so much a phenomenon of great numbers of people rising from one class to the next as it was standards of living rising sharply for all classes. You didn't have to be exceptional to rise.
If you want to see a bunch of happy Americans, go out to opening day at any baseball stadium in the land.
Political rights notwithstanding, 'freedom' rings awfully hollow when you're getting nickel-and-dimed to death in your everyday life.
