But the GOP caucus in Nevada last night was a real breaking point for me. I saw it coming in the months before, sure. But the recent results made me realize 100% just how utterly wrong I was, on many things. It made me realize just how little influence I and others have, and how little our efforts matter. It made me realize just how small a minority we really are.

It wasn’t the “moderates” or the “disaffected Democrats” who shocked me. It was the self-declared “conservatives,” “libertarians,” “classical liberals,” and “religious” people who in primary after primary overwhelmingly supported Trump. In tweets and on TV shows, in publications and in blogs, people from all stripes and backgrounds dropped all their supposed principles at the mere ring of the Pavlovian bell of nationalism, free stuff, and faux-masculinity.

Don’t get me wrong — they have every right to make their own decisions and face the consequences, as do I. I don’t believe anyone “owes” me their loyalty or that they “have to” agree with me on economics or foreign policy. But the easy betrayal of all principles for a transparent con-man who flashes money, gold, and women draped in a flag like the crassest of rap singers demonstrated just how shallow support for anything above the level of bread and circuses is in 2016. Maybe it was always like this.