At one point, Shapiro writes, “Trump is running a GFY campaign because he is incapable of running any other campaign. And his supporters are in a GFY mood.” (I presume you can figure out what GFY means. Think of an anatomically difficult position.)

We’ve all had those moods, but those moods aren’t particularly conducive to good decision-making. There was a time when relatively-cheerful conservatives scoffed at the Daily Kos crowd and their widespread descriptions of stopping speaking to family members over political disagreements. They seemed furiously angry, all the time, about everything. It made them insufferable and repellent. Today it’s impossible to contend that only one side of the ideological spectrum is gripped by anger. Peter Wood’s A Bee in the Mouth offered a good, detailed look at American’s changing attitude towards anger and public expressions of it; how something once seen as immature and hot-headed became seen as mainstream, even healthy.

Sure, we’ve got a lot of reasons to be angry. But the country is in a very Dark-Side-of-the-Force mood, convinced that anger is empowering, not blinding. At some point, a person enveloped in relentless, fiery anger and grievances stops making sense to anyone else. When a movement’s philosophy is so easily summarized by “GFY”, it’s hard to believe they’re being unfairly “bashed.”