ROGER KIMBALL: Taking Trump Seriously. “The point is not that Barone agrees with Trump. About many things, I suspect, he does not. The point is rather that one of our most thoughtful commentators understands that Trump’s perspective is not necessarily jejune, crazy, or counterproductive. . . . Barone’s calm, dispassionate description of alternatives suggests two things. One, that the dreaded ‘normalization’ of Donald Trump is proceeding apace, just as it did with Ronald Reagan, who also had been dismissed as an evil, warmongering moron before he was declared a statesman of rare genius. Two, that the vaunted policy establishment in Washington and the media, to say nothing of its support groups in academia and the world of celebrity, are just about to suffer a disestablishment that will rival in vividness, if not in carnage, what Henry VIII visited upon the monasteries of Tudor England.”

As I’ve said before, a major characteristic of the Trump presidency is the renegotiation of all sorts of post-World War II institutional arrangements. That is, unsurprisingly, viewed as illegitimate by those who are doing quite well under said arrangements, regardless of whether the country as a whole benefits.