Of course, Kevin Williamson won’t read this. And if he does, his eyes will glaze over. And if his eyes don’t glaze over, he’ll shrug it off as the uninformed rantings of some anonymous internet troll, even as cognitive dissonance roils his brainstem. Who cares? I’ll address it to him anyway. Maybe it will make him feel better.

Disclosure: I have an emotional attachment to the name “Kevin” because it’s the name of the brilliant protagonist of one of my favorite movies of all time.

I want to explain, Kevin, why Donald J. Trump is going to be President for the next eight years, and why that doesn’t mean what you think it means.

I trust you’ll agree with this: people mostly don’t vote on “the issues”. People mostly vote their social identities. We look around and make our best guesses about who the cool kids are, and then we like and say and do and vote whatever the cool kids are liking and saying and doing and voting. If we consider “the issues”, it’s mostly an exercise in rationalizing the cool kids’ worldview. We seek out facts and arguments that confirm the preferences associated with our social identities, and give short shrift to facts and arguments that go against those preferences. It all comes so naturally, it actually feels like thinking! But it’s not. Nice as it might well be, to have a democracy of thoughtful voters who decide what to do based on rational, elegant persuasion coming from the finest minds, that’s not what happens. In won’t be, while we’re alive.

Full disclosure: my own social identity is Traditional American. The values I associate with that identity include: reverence for our Declaration and our Constitution; pride in our liberties, our legal institutions, and our jury trials; understanding of checks and balances; love for our Flag and our Anthem; a can-do attitude; fighting spirit; a high degree of neighborliness and trust; promotion for merit; leadership in technology; lawfulness in government; victory in war*.

We Americans tend to be vulgar. It’s fun. America really was a better place when you could make “Blazing Saddles” in it.

American values aren’t much appreciated by the Ruling Class. Our top politicians and commentators find the idea of American exceptionalism to be kind of embarrassing, if not an outright liability. To them, Norman Rockwell is mythology, and corny mythology at that. They don’t like guns. Racial humor sets them on edge. And they have a knack for outing, shaming, and punishing Americans who go too much against the delicate and nuanced sensibilities of the elite**.

The result is, you don’t hear much from Americans in the public sphere any more. Progressives are not shy about stating their opinions strongly, even when they’re not sure of the social and political alignment of their audience. I’ve heard it said with some emphasis, in casual conversation, that the Tea Party was “stupid”. It was just assumed that nobody would take issue with that. And of course nobody did, overtly. That’s how you can spot the Traditional American in any conversation about politics. He’s the guy who’s not participating. There’s no point. You can’t reason people out of what they were never reasoned into in the first place, and you risk various kinds of retaliation by speaking out.

So Americans have suffered in silence for over a quarter-century by now. But what is it we’ve suffered? You, Kevin, wrote an internet boogeyman article a while back. The idea was that Americans are bent, and the reason we’re bent is because we think the Mexicans stole all our jobs, made our communities crumble, and left us economically worse off. You then went on to demonstrate that Americans haven’t really suffered economically on average, so we’ve got no real reason to be bent. We’re just a bunch of selfish whiners and losers. QED.

Equating economics with happiness is a leftish mistake, by the way. But I’ll grant that Americans are bent. Why are Americans bent? Because shitty stuff is happening to our country, and the perpetrators are not only getting away with it, they’re living high because of it. Here’s the short list of what Americans see happening (the long list would suck the rest of this letter into a black hole):

• Fast and furious: ATF perpetrates a fraud to get people killed and pin the blame on Americans.
• Obamacare: obviously unconstitutional with its individual mandate, and wrecks the healthcare system
• Massive bailouts and spending initiatives from a drunken, insolvent government
• EPA out of control, DOE sadly in control
• The Feds going to some trouble and expense to make government shutdowns exceptionally painful for Americans
• Bungled, interminable wars
• The Benghazi debacle and coverup
• The Secretary of State conducting illegal business on an illegal email server, greatly to the benefit of a hostile foreign power
• The creeping normalization of NSA snooping on Americans not involved in any official investigation
• The OPM hack: A strategic defeat both devastating and historically unique. Agents of a hostile foreign power were put in charge of securing our most sensitive information, with predictable results.
• The VA scandal: veterans dying while bureaucrats falsify records and collect bonuses
• The transmutation of our institutions of learning into hotbeds of mental illness and hysteria
• A general “can’t do” attitude as regards securing our border with Mexico
• The President, in negotiation with Iran over nuclear weapons, actively and energetically represents Iranian interests, without trying to win even the most marginal concessions for America.

This kind of thing makes Americans feel sick with rage. And the perps prosper, instead of swinging on the end of a rope. It’s intolerable.

Enter Donald Trump. Now, nobody really knows what kind of President Trump will be. It’s pretty clear that he himself hasn’t worked out the details. Trump’s ideological integrity is an unknown, and he has a streak of violence and unpredictability.

But Trump’s social identity is clearly American: crass but competent, vulgar but victorious. And when you look at that list up there, it’s hard to picture Donald J. Trump being the perp in any of those cases. Can you imagine him getting as raw a deal as Obama did with the Iranians? (By the way, a touch of violence and unpredictability is a huge asset in those kinds of negotiations.) Do you suppose Trump would smile benignly on the incompetence and corruption that led to the VA scandal and the OPM hack? Would Trump be tempted by bribes from the enemies of America? Trump has already pledged, in writing, to secure the southern border and repeal the individual mandate. Are these bad things?

But then, what will happen to the Republican party? You lately wrote:

[T]hat is what the Trump movement is about: Murdering the Republican party as a vessel of classical liberalism of the Adam Smith variety and reanimating it, Frankenstein-style, as a vehicle of Anglo identity politics.

Well, I’ve pretty much redeveloped your point about identity politics. Trump is scoring because of his frankly American identity. But what about the “vessel of classical liberalism”?

Here’s what: it’s hogwash. Look again at that list up there. Most of the perps were Democrats. So Americans voted for Republicans, to punish the Democrats and get government in line. Again and again, we voted GOP. And again and again, the Party turned our rage into despair. Republicans talk a good game about limited, accountable government, some of the time. But deeds speak louder, and in deed what the Republican party has been, since Reagan, is an immovable object placed between government wrongdoers and the wrath of the voters. You call yourself a conservative, but what does your party conserve? The momentum of Leviathan and the impunity of traitors – nothing more.

We gave you majorities in the Legislature and on the Supreme Court. You were supposed to fight for us. But you always had higher priorities, and you didn’t want to make any dramatic gestures. John Roberts’s collapse on the constitutionality of the individual mandate is typical of the kind of opportunity followed by frustration which has become the GOP’s utterly predictable modus operandi. “Nothing happened to them,” you sneered about the angry voters who are upsetting your apple cart. Well, we voted for your boys and nothing happened, that’s for sure.

The anti-Trump movement is the vehicle of identity politics for “conservative” “elites”. And it turns out “conservative” “elites” identify more closely with Democrats than they do with Americans. How did this sorry state of affairs come to pass? Partly, probably, from trying to market the conservative brand. Democrats always are happy to portray Republicans as drooling, gap-toothed, illiterate racist gun nuts. So you took it upon yourselves to craft a less threatening, more intellectual-seeming conservative brand. And in the process you assumed every cultural and social assumption of the enemy; in trying to occupy enemy territory, you went native with a vengeance. When the country needed blood and thunder, you learned to speak in NPR voices. You wanted independents’ votes, and you assumed that independents leaned left, so you learned never to do or say anything that might upset a Democrat. You fired John Derbyshire, when he was the only remaining reason for a serious person to read your dumb magazine. You were so afraid of being marginalized and shamed that you effectively dropped all pretense of furthering American interests. I say, “effectively”, because there was plenty of pretense. But the pretense grew pellucidly transparent over time.

How many citizens’ interests were actually served by the GOP? I put the number at less than a thousand, maybe less than five hundred. And you were among them, Kevin. I recently had a conversation with a co-worker, and he said, “Trump understands how much it hurts to be an American right now.” I now realize that you don’t, and you never did. All that stuff on that list up there didn’t really get under your skin. You were so inside the whole “can’t do” DC process that massive abuses and screwups were taken for granted. From your point of view, political life was all about cocktails, cruises, and cunt, and there was nothing for anyone really to get worked up about.

And in the meantime, you talked quietly amongst yourselves about classical liberalism. But the real vessel of classical liberalism is the USA, not the GOP. And if we’re serious about classical liberalism, that means big dramatic things will have to happen, very soon. Classical liberalism is utterly incompatible with the bloated, incompetent, and fraudulent government which Republicans have so effectively shielded against reform.

Americans do not want a soft-spoken, beta-male, non-threatening, baby-steps executive. There are some people we definitely want to feel threatened, like our geopolitical enemies and the traitors and bed-featherers currently thriving in the Deep State.

What will President Trump do? I have my doubts. But any doubt is preferable to the certainties that come with, say, Jeb Bush. And the possibilities on the upside are YUGE. I’d find it especially satisfying if Trump managed to drag the social and cultural center in a more American direction. This could happen. A lot of people seem frightened by Donald Trump right now. What if their fears don’t materialize, and real benefits do? If Trump pulls off even half of what he’s pledged, we’ll really all be better off. And that may put a new shine on the American identity.

And what will you do, Kevin Williamson? Simple: register as a Democrat. It’s who you are. Maybe if you switch sides (though it’s not really a switch) with enough publicity, they’ll let you keep the cocktails, cruises, and cunt.

* And to think: I used to call myself a conservative!

** Identifying as an American does not make one a cool kid. Apparently, there is something Americans value more highly than mere social acceptance.