Trumpmentum appears to be a thing. And no one understands why.

I don’t blame them. On paper, Donald Trump’s candidacy looks like it should be a laughingstock in any Republican primary, let alone one in a party where ideological purity still means a great deal.

The anti-Trump case is comprehensive, so let’s review it. Trump identified as a Democrat until recently. He supports trade protections more draconian than even some unions propose. He speaks about his religion without a trace of fluency. He openly opines about whether he’d be dating his own daughter if they weren’t related. And he supported a “one-time” wealth tax. This reads like someone who’d only run for the GOP nomination as an extended exercise in concern trolling.

Yet until Thursday’s debate Trump was surging in the GOP field, where his former liberalism is apparently both forgiven and forgotten. His relentless love affair with gaffes that would end any other politician’s career have instead gotten him branded as a truth-teller in some circles. His undisciplined speech-making apparently comes off as authentic. Far from turning off voters and making him unrelatable, his Shelleyite “look on my works, ye mighty, and despair” brashness is apparently now considered endearing.

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A Reaction Against Speech Totalitarianism

Consider this: Since the Republican implosion in the 2012 election, much of American political discourse has centered not so much on whether particular ideas are wrong as on whether they can be expressed at all. Sometimes this approach has helped to root out genuine ideological cranks, but it’s also a style that has clearly favored the Left more than the Right. Witness the constant barrage of arguments that people who dissent from leftist causes are on the “wrong side of history,” as if history is something that can be predicted in advance like the weather.

America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, appears to be in danger of becoming the land of the fragile and the home of the breakable.
To be sure, the impulse not to live long enough to see yourself become a villain or a footnote is a valid one from a pragmatic point of view. However, like all appeals to authority, this “don’t stand athwart history” argument only has a shelf life for as long as it appeals to a reasonable authority and condemns transgressors who seem genuinely bad. The idea that egalitarian principles require us to legally sanction gay marriage might be persuasive, but the idea the same principles should allow gay-rights proponents to trample religious freedom is a much harder sell. Therefore, prudence requires not overextending that argument for it to maintain its effectiveness

But the Left, high on their own success, has not just overextended this argument: it has strapped it to the rack and dislocated its limbs. The idea that certain sentiments can’t be expressed without branding you as an artifact of a dark and unenlightened past has entered the realm of self-parody. It’s all well and good when your unenlightened feminist bogeyman is Todd Akin using cocktail napkin math to pretend rape babies don’t exist; it’s another thing entirely when it’s Laura Kipnis questioning whether grad students dating professors is really such a monstrous imbalance of power. Yet, especially in its natural habitat—the faculty lounge—the Left just bulls right on, trying to write anything and everything to the right of Karl Marx and bell hooks out of existence, until even Bernie Sanders is getting booed for “whitesplaining.”

The avalanche of stories and think pieces about trigger warnings, mattress-carrying bluestockings, and freakouts over “misgendering” someone who as of only a month ago was still a man have painted a very unflattering picture of our national culture. America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, appears to be in danger of becoming the land of the fragile and the home of the breakable. Everyone, both Left and Right, is getting fed up with treating their fellow citizens like overpriced glassware.

Into this great American China shop steps Donald Trump, aka the bull.

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http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/10/dona...was-inevitable/