There is an deep, affective dimension to Trump's candidacy that appeals to a mostly-white, racist, xenophobic demographic who feel impotent, but who also hold deep resentment against outsiders and those who seem to embody the destruction of a mythic homogeneous community in which they can feel at ease. They long for security and certainty, and feel their world slipping away, lost from within through traitors ("liberals", "cultural Marxists", teachers, etc.), and under attack from without by China, and Mexican murder-rapist-druglords who simultaneously want to steal American jobs and do nothing but make "anchor babies" and collect welfare. He represents a big middle-finger to highly choreographed traditional politicians and the electoral theater (something that also elevated the appeal of early 20th century fascists), but also to empathy, thinking critically about social complexity, about consequences of one's actions, and about privilege and inequality. He embodies the renewal of a kind of leveling simplicity of the world: certainty about right and wrong, friends and enemies, the recovery of a "lost" (white) golden age, and theatrically exaggerated "common sense" policies that legitimize this demographic's varied resentments, fears, and frustrations. We may question Trump's authenticity, but if the politics he is cultivating to ground his support base is a functional equivalent of fascism, resting on the same mobilizing passions, then this line of concern seems immaterial.