How is it that others, but not you, know Trump perfectly inhabits the form of leadership that naturally emerged from our cultural moment? Even deeper and broader than the issue of the GOP base becoming completely disenchanted in the established party leadership is the problem that so many Americans (who are not senior citizens) just have zero respect for old-style politicians.

Even a young guy who’s auditioning for the part of tomorrow’s old-style politician — Marco Rubio — just doesn’t pass the derisive laugh test among the most culturally consequential Americans, whatever their class. Trying to reduce this situation to class makes as much sense as trying to decide whether “Deadpool” is highbrow, lowbrow, or middlebrow.

There was a moment when expectations shifted about what it was to be a real human being in politics, too, and the only major figure to apparently intentionally catch that wave was Trump. He is the Deadpool of national politics. You can agonize over this fact or you can deal with it.

While a privileged few have no difficulty doing this — whatever their partisan view — others, many others, are throwing themselves into the same kind of epistemological or ontological crisis over the Trump phenomenon as people have imposed on themselves in the wake of 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination. Do we have the luxury of another 15 years of soul-searching, agonizing reappraisal, and self-abuse?