Why Do People (Still) Like Trump?

There was a guy in my family, married to a cousin of mine, who was once convicted of some crime having to do with the way he ran his business. He still came around to family parties, but nobody talked to him for years.

Given what I just said, how do you explain the fact that Donald Trump has been convicted of fraud and sexual assault and at least half the country not only doesn’t care, but wouldn’t at all mind if he served as President for another four years?

I’m going to try to answer this question, but since I’m as yellow as any yellow-dog Democrat can be, I may get it wrong. So, bear with me, okay?

Before I get into Trump however, let me try to put his situation into a proper historical perspective.

I have said many times that Hitler was able to turn Germany into an authoritarian national state because he took advantage of an economic and social situation which had created a virtual collapse of the German economy and made most Germans feel that their vey lives were at risk.

But a little bit of nuance needs to be added here, because as late as 1928, only five years before Hitler took power, the German economy had rebounded entirely from the post-War years, unemployment was way down, inflation had disappeared, France had pulled its troops out of the Ruhr, none of the victorious…