But that’s not what’s driving Trump’s ugliest supporters, the ones posting on Twitter and Facebook about how they’re finally going to get their way against everyone else. For most of them, things have gone their way more than they will ever acknowledge. These are not, after all, Appalachia’s children sending stupid memes about Muslims and Mexicans around the Internet all day. These are people tapping out on expensive laptops and smartphones angry messages about how deprived they feel.

They are tormented by seeing every day on their screens friends and neighbors whose lives seem better than theirs. Of course, celebrities—whom they feel they know as peers because of the false intimacy of the Internet—clearly live better than they do. Coached by liberalism and taunted by technology, otherwise sensible people embrace the angry rationalization that these electronically sanitized lifestyles are just out of their reach only because of some hidden unfairness.

This unreasonable, insecure resentment has never had a better champion than one of the most unreasonable and insecure human beings ever to pollute American public life: Donald J. Trump.

There are decent, hard-working people in America right now who are scared, and for good reason. The world’s changing fast. They want someone to reflect those fears and to acknowledge them. If they’d turn down Trump’s angry bellow, they might realize that there are other candidates who will speak for them.