If at First You Can’t Explain; Try, Try Again

This recent article from the Washington Post about how much more bothered white Republicans are when they hear a foreign language in public was very in line with this piece I wrote last year.

In 2016, I thought there was no way voters wouldn’t reward the party that pulled us out of the Great Recession. I truly believed that the reminder-motto of the first Clinton campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid,” would apply just as much, perhaps even more, when times were booming. But instead voters punished the candidate who promised to continue the very policies of a very popular President in favor of a megalomaniacal and incoherent carnival-barker. They chose stupid, quite literally, over the economy. Why?

I’ve come up with a host of competing theories this past year to explain the Trumpectorate’s irrationality, and after the past few months, I’ve finally concluded the only explanation that eclipses all the others centers on immigration. It crops up more consistently than any other topic during those interviews in the heartland conducted by intrepid European reporters (particularly the French) trying to explain to mystified viewers back home how exactly les Etats-Unis went batshit fou. In my opinion, the claims from these voters that immigrants take jobs from Americans or terrorize our streets are straw men — narrative tropes to make the…