AT AMAZON, fresh Lightning Deals, updated every hour.

Plus, up to 50% off on select Crosman products.

PEGGY NOONAN: Donald Trump and the Rise of the Unprotected:

There are the protected and the unprotected. The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully.

The protected are the accomplished, the secure, the successful—those who have power or access to it. They are protected from much of the roughness of the world. More to the point, they are protected from the world they have created. Again, they make public policy and have for some time.

I want to call them the elite to load the rhetorical dice, but let’s stick with the protected.

They are figures in government, politics and media. They live in nice neighborhoods, safe ones. Their families function, their kids go to good schools, they’ve got some money. All of these things tend to isolate them, or provide buffers. Some of them—in Washington it is important officials in the executive branch or on the Hill; in Brussels, significant figures in the European Union—literally have their own security details.

Because they are protected they feel they can do pretty much anything, impose any reality. They’re insulated from many of the effects of their own decisions.

One issue obviously roiling the U.S. and Western Europe is immigration. It is the issue of the moment, a real and concrete one but also a symbolic one: It stands for all the distance between governments and their citizens.

It is of course the issue that made Donald Trump.

Britain will probably leave the European Union over it. In truth immigration is one front in that battle, but it is the most salient because of the European refugee crisis and the failure of the protected class to address it realistically and in a way that offers safety to the unprotected.

If you are an unprotected American—one with limited resources and negligible access to power—you have absorbed some lessons from the past 20 years’ experience of illegal immigration. You know the Democrats won’t protect you and the Republicans won’t help you. Both parties refused to control the border. The Republicans were afraid of being called illiberal, racist, of losing a demographic for a generation. The Democrats wanted to keep the issue alive to use it as a wedge against the Republicans and to establish themselves as owners of the Hispanic vote.

Many Americans suffered from illegal immigration—its impact on labor markets, financial costs, crime, the sense that the rule of law was collapsing. But the protected did fine—more workers at lower wages. No effect of illegal immigration was likely to hurt them personally.

It was good for the protected. But the unprotected watched and saw. They realized the protected were not looking out for them, and they inferred that they were not looking out for the country, either.

The unprotected came to think they owed the establishment—another word for the protected—nothing, no particular loyalty, no old allegiance.

Mr. Trump came from that. . . . You see the dynamic in many spheres. In Hollywood, as we still call it, where they make our rough culture, they are careful to protect their own children from its ill effects. In places with failing schools, they choose not to help them through the school liberation movement—charter schools, choice, etc.—because they fear to go up against the most reactionary professional group in America, the teachers unions. They let the public schools flounder. But their children go to the best private schools.

This is a terrible feature of our age—that we are governed by protected people who don’t seem to care that much about their unprotected fellow citizens.

As I keep saying, we have the worst political class in American history. And people have noticed. There’s no particular reason why the outcome must be good. Bismarck said that God looks after fools, drunkards, and the United States of America, but as Jerry Pournelle noted: “Of course we were a much more devout nation” when Bismarck made that observation.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: China’s High Speed Sexual Revolution:

Over the last 20 years, Chinese attitudes to sex have undergone a revolution – a process carefully observed, and sometimes encouraged, by the country’s first female sexologist, Li Yinhe.

“In the survey I made in 1989, 15.5% of people had sex before marriage,” says Li Yinhe. “But in the survey I did two years ago, the figure went up to 71%.”

It’s one of many rapid changes she has recorded in her career. She uses the word “revolution” herself and it’s easy to see why. Until 1997, sex before marriage was actually illegal and could be prosecuted as “hooliganism”.

It’s a similar story with pornography, prostitution and swingers’ parties.

Well, they’ve got the whiskey and sexy part, but they’re fighting the whole “democracy” thing pretty hard. I guess the Party hopes that citizens will figure two out of three ain’t bad.

CHANGE: University of Texas dean to quit over gun law. Civil rights progress always has its enemies. I’m sure that there were administrators who stepped down rather than implement desegregation, too.

MUCH BETTER THAN J.J. ABRAMS: CBS has signed the great Nicholas Meyer as a writer and producer on its new Star Trek series. I’ve been a fan since The Seven-Percent Solution.

I discuss the glamour of Star Trek in The Power of Glamour, as this review explains, but the reboot has betrayed that appeal. Meyer’s Star Trek should be much better.

[jwplayer mediaid=”227791″]

LAST WEEK I PREDICTED A Trump preference cascade among GOP elites.

So far this weekend we’ve seen Trump endorsements from Chris Christie, Paul LePage, Jan Brewer and — okay, I don’t think this counts as “GOP establishment,” but it’s funny — Aaron Carter. Are we there yet? Not quite, but close, and it’s not clear that the big anti-Trump pushback is doing the job. Too late?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why You Shouldn’t Feel Guilty About Having Casual Sex.

AT AMAZON, up to 50% off Carhartt winter clothing for men, women, and kids.

And check out the Levi’s Spring Sale.

WHEN DONALD TRUMP GOT BEATEN BY “THE SIGN LADY”: Don’t mess with Tama Starr. Just don’t.

The sane Republicans need to enlist her brain power, or at least tell her story. Check out her non-Trump Reason contributions here.

THAT WOULD EXPLAIN HIS TRUMP-FRIENDLY TWEETS: Rumors that Newt Gingrich is talking to Trump about becoming his White House chief of staff.

PEAK VANITY REACHED: “Seriously, I know the Baby Boomers and the Gen Xer’s were vain, but we NEVER named a f***king magazine after our generations.”

Related: “Yelp was right to fire entitled millennial who whined about salary online.”

In her now-infamous cri de coeur, 25 year old Talia Jane wrote “I left college, having majored in English literature, with a dream to work in media.” Have we got a publication for you.

FORMER ARIZONA GOV. JAN BREWER ENDORSES TRUMP.

Meanwhile, President Clinton’s Labor Secretary Endorses…Bernie Sanders.

Robert Reich, you old socialist (and fabulist) scamp you.

YOU CAN ALWAYS USE ANOTHER BRILLIANT BLUE: Oregon State University researchers have discovered a new pigment. As is often the case, it happened by accident.

From the press release:

OSU chemist Mas Subramanian and his team were experimenting with new materials that could be used in electronics applications and they mixed manganese oxide – which is black in color – with other chemicals and heated them in a furnace to nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. One of their samples turned out to be a vivid blue. Oregon State graduate student Andrew Smith initially made these samples to study their electrical properties.

“It was serendipity, actually; a happy, accidental discovery,” Subramanian said.

The new pigment is formed by a unique crystal structure that allows the manganese ions to absorb red and green wavelengths of light, while only reflecting blue. The vibrant blue is so durable, and its compounds are so stable – even in oil and water – that the color does not fade.

“This new blue pigment is a sign that there are new pigments to be discovered in the inorganic pigments family,” said Geoffrey T. Peake, research and development manager for The Shepherd Color Company.

During the Renaissance, vivid blue ultramarine pigments, often used for painting the Virgin Mary’s cloak, were worth five times their weight in gold. In 1704, another accidental chemical discovery, of what became known as Prussian blue, made less expensive synthetic true blues available. For a video on how that changed painting, go here.

Progress in chemistry is seriously underreported, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t going on all the time. (The OSU press release is from May, but if it’s new to you…)

MINIMUM WAGES TAKE JOBS: “The beauty of state- or city-imposed minimum wages is that they turn local communities into political laboratories,” Bookworm writes.”People can watch in real time how forcing high wages on employers will destroy a local economy, as has been happening in Seattle.  I’d like to think that Seattle’s experiment will stop the cry for a federal minimum wage, but lately the crazy never stops.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Greed: College presidents earn more –- a lot more –- than CEOs. “High pay for CEOs attracts annual attention and recitations about the immorality of capitalism, but when the focus is on average CEO pay, they make less than half the annual earnings of college presidents, according to CBS News. The average CEO earns $176,840 annually, an amount that would make a university president into a pauper. In academia, college presidents earn $377,261 annually.”

To be fair, that’s because university boards have no duties to shareholders.

JOURNALISTS USED TO PUBLISH IN SPITE OF THREATS FROM (ACTUAL) BROWNSHIRTS. Now they quail in fear at mean tweets.

DISPATCHES FROM AIRSTRIP ONE: “Hampshire school calls police after pupil looks at UKIP website,” the BBC reports.

1984, a warning for the rest of us, a user’s guide for the left.

NANNY ZUCKERBERG DELIVERS A LECTURE: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scolding employees for what he calls “several recent instances” of people crossing out “black lives matter” on signature walls at the company’s headquarters and writing “all lives matter” instead.

I’m glad to see that a fight-the-power spirit persists even within Facebook.

NEWS YOUR DM CAN USE: What’s the Single Most Disruptive Technology in Role-Playing Games?

READER BOOK PLUG: From Reader Karen Myers, The Chained Adept.

21st CENTURY QUESTIONS: Could Your Baby Benefit from Weekly Spa Visits?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Chicago State University Sends Layoff Notices To All Employees. “Earlier this week, the university canceled spring break, and moved up the end of the spring semester from May 15 to April 30, so the school could save money and remain fully operational through the end of the semester.”

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Believe Me When I Tell You Your Kid’s an A**hole.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1024.