Few citizens are sufficiently objective to see that the United States is in steady decline. Even when they see explicit evidence of it, they’re psychologically unable to acknowledge it. 

Trumpeters in particular are in serious denial.

Which is why Frank Bruni’s insight in, “Let Us All Now Weep for Donald Trump”, is so perceptive.  

Of Trump, Bruni writes:

“He has turned himself into a symbol of Americans’ victimization, telling frustrated voters who crave easy answers that they’re being pushed around by foreigners and duped by the condescending custodians of a dysfunctional system.

He’s their proxy, suffering on their behalf, and in that way he collapses the distance between a billionaire with multiple golf resorts and displaced factory workers struggling to hold on to their one and only homes.”

That’s the most convincing description of Trump’s appeal to his base that I’ve read.