For one thing, and despite what a number of people appear to believe, it’s not especially “brave.” Or at least no more so than any celebrity publicizing personal tribulations in order to make money. Is it courageous when an actress who has just emerged from rehab after nearly killing herself with drinking and drugs gives an exclusive interview to a TV news magazine in the hopes of generating buzz about an upcoming movie release? Nah, it’s just PR, ad copy in another form.

That’s exactly what Jenner is giving us — and she’s doing it masterfully, playing off America’s addiction to what Tocqueville called the “perpetual utterance of self-applause.” We love to feel good about ourselves. Conservatives satisfy the craving with gratuitous demonstrations of military prowess and unapologetic expressions of American exceptionalism. Liberals get it from grandiloquent displays of affirmation for the outsider — an affirmation that just so happens to demonstrate the affirming liberal’s own moral superiority.