3. Nationalistic

Trump has made it impossible to continue to ignore the power of racism on the right, but we also shouldn’t overstate its influence. South Carolina is the state that launched Trump into orbit, and it’s also the state whose Indian-American governor removed the Confederate flag from the Capitol and enjoys Soviet-like approval ratings. The agony of Trump voters has many sources, including socioeconomic and cultural ones. Trump voters, to sum it up, suffer a loss of status. Economic loss of status because of globalization and technological change, and cultural loss of status for a bunch of reasons, some but not all of them racial.

How do you address this legitimate feeling of loss without appealing to race and while being inclusive? There’s one word for it: nationalism. Nationalism is the form of identity politics that’s not racist. It’s the one that can appeal to the feeling of loss of status by downwadly mobile white Americans, Hispanic Americans, and African-Americans. Benjamin Disraeli, one of the greatest statesmen on the right, called it “one-nation conservatism.” It’s time to stop simply saying America is exceptional and to talk about why and how it’s exceptional. Oh, progressives are going to hate it, and they’re going to give us zero points for doing this as a way to ease racial tensions. That’s just one of the many reasons to do it.