In these early days of the Trump epoch — particularly in response to the new president's inaugural address — nothing has distressed elite commentators more than the angry pessimism of Trump's vision of America.
The inaugural displayed "a dark and gloomy view that cast the world's richest nation as a victim," lamented E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post. His conservative colleague, George F. Will, decried the speech as "dystopian" when it "should have been a civic liturgy serving national unity and confidence."
The Star Tribune Editorial Board agreed that Trump's land of "carnage" seems a "stark" and unfamiliar place.
And so poured forth a mainstream cataract of consternation.
There's no denying (and, by now, no real surprise in) the essential rudeness and stylistic crudeness of Trump. His portrait of desolate middle-class Americans wandering a graveyard of rusting factories is at best grimly exaggerated.
And yet, if we are to avoid a national nervous breakdown — and, more importantly, if we hope to retain the clarity to distinguish the daily displeasures likely to accompany having this boor in the White House from genuinely threatening excesses that can't be tolerated — we need just a little perspective.
Should Trump prove as dangerous as some fear, the whole people, his current admirers included, will need to be rallied to oppose him.
But if every oafish remark and ill-mannered antic is treated as a crisis, folks may grow numb and unprepared for real trouble if it comes.
