Bi-coastal scaredy-cats use that made-up word with contempt. “Trumpism” sounds like a disease because it’s been branded that way by the same experts in misdirection who fund the Lincoln Project and agonize about whether to concede that America started in 1619 rather than 1776. Pundits throw “Trumpism” around like nunchucks in a kung fu movie because they’re sure you have to abandon decency and sense before you can approve anything Trump does.

What the same pundits don’t mention is that cults of personality that degenerate into “-isms” appeal mostly to leftists. Remember high school history? “Stalinism” and “Hitlerism” were actual phenomena, but Churchill never had a comparable following. Zombie Che Guevara still sells t-shirts, yet Margaret Thatcher never will.

Donald Trump doesn’t seem to have a political philosophy he can actually articulate, but he’s an unashamed patriot who leads as a disruptive conservative, and so the majority of his supporters lean right rather than left. Having cut their teeth on the concepts of limited government and separation of powers, conservatives are less susceptible to cults of personality than newsroom producers who’ve been trying to change the world ever since they graduated from journalism school.