Much of Donald Trump’s popular appeal can be explained by the context in which he has ascended.
For decades, the rules of the road in American politics have been set by a monolithic progressive establishment that has boasted something akin to a monopoly in political media, academia, Hollywood and the federal bureaucracy.
This single-note chorus has not only produced a laundry list of myths, but threatened those who challenge it with professional and social ruin.
“How dare you say that, bigot?”
“How could you think that, rube?”
Yet the supposed bigots and rubes always outnumbered the pedantic establishment, which enforced its orthodoxy through brute force.
Enter Trump.
In all of American history, there has never been a leader quite like him.
While some rely on soaring rhetoric and others on message discipline, Trump’s greatest assets are his unique way of communicating (both the form and the content), as well as his penchant for thinking and acting outside of the box.
His style has proven an effective, if imperfect, antidote to the left’s stranglehold on the zeitgeist — and he’s reaping the rewards, as his approval rating surges.
For all his many faults, there is no one with a better track record of myth-busting.
Take — as a recent and near-perfect example — his declaration that he foresees “a long-term ownership position” in the Gaza Strip for the United States.
At the outset of a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump revealed, unprompted, that he planned to work with the Arab world to build “various domains” for Gazans to move to, thus ending “the death, and destruction, and frankly bad luck” they’ve long endured.
And as for Gaza itself, he explained, the United States would “take over,” and “create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing.”
“Do a real job, do something different,” he mused.
The reaction from the naysayers was apoplectic.
“What about the two–state solution?” they cried.
That’s just it, though.
The career diplomats and analysts who have failed for the last 75 years mistake the two-state solution for an end to be pursued at any cost, rather than a means to maintaining the peace.
In that aim, the concept has failed miserably.
Despite being given chance after chance to put away barbarism and join civilization, Palestinian leaders have chosen to submit their own people to squalor and the Israelis to terrorism.
What Trump has proposed may not even be feasible, much less preferable.
But at least it’s shattering those tired fantasies about a Palestinian state that can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t come to pass — and taking us beyond them, opening new possibilities.
There are similar stories to be told about a range of issues.
Consider Trump’s 2020 order to take out Iranian terrorist-general Qassem Soleimani.
While Democrats predicted his bold decision to bring Soleimani to justice would lead to a deadly regional war, they grudgingly had to admit the man Trump had sent to hell had the blood of so many — including Americans — on his hands.
This from the party that had spent years insisting a rapprochement with Iran was the wise man’s path forward for the United States.
And then no war came; the mullahs had been cowed.
For those counting at home, that’s two myths busted for the price of one.
There was also Trump’s stunning yet accurate translation of Hillary Clinton’s position on abortion back in 2016.
“If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby,” he declared.
“Now, you can say that that’s OK, and Hillary can say that that’s OK, but it’s not OK with me.”
In just a few plain if inelegant clauses he flipped the left’s framing of Republicans as the radicals in the abortion debate on its head.
Other examples abound.
Myth: The United States can’t produce safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines in the space of a few months; lockdowns and masks are our only way out of the pandemic.
Reality check: Operation Warp Speed turned out to be a spectacular success that saved countless lives.
Myth: “Mass” deportations are the harbinger of a bigoted, authoritarian government.
Reality check: They’re the logical, legal remedy to years of open border madness.
Myth: Men can become women and vice-versa.
Reality check: This is an outright lie responsible for no shortage of suffering, and an overwhelming 80% of Americans agree.
Say what you will about the president — and there is doubtless quite a lot to say — no one has proven more capable of puncturing progressive myths.
He is, to borrow a cliché, a bull in a china shop.
So many of the pieces he’s destroyed, though, were not heirlooms, but eyesores.
Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite.