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Reading the Brooks quotations is like seeing an alternate universe where he actually is what the media present him as: a respected conservative authority. In fact, he is none of these things, and it is a continuing source of amazement to me that he is still placed in that niche by people who really ought to know better because it's their business to know better.

Trump is riding resentments Obama has stoked by ruling as an autocrat.

Yes, that, but far more than that. Trump is riding resentments stoked by the entire rotten, arrogant, self-satisfied conglomerate of media celebrities, fame seekers, power junkies, and incompetents that populate the high reaches of American political culture at the moment, and I swear if in some glorious afterlife I ever get to meet the likes of Washington and Madison I shall weep bitter tears of humiliation. Yes, guys, it has come to that. You gave me a gold coin and now I'm holding a dog turd. And it was probably my fault for not just shooting the bastards.

Well, it's too late - or maybe too early - for that remedy, and so we are stuck with what we see and read before us. The author is close: Brooks, et al, didn't create Trump, what they did was stink up the room so badly that even a small hint of fresh air seems like a hurricane of relief. That isn't anyone's fault but their own.