"The mystery of Donald Trump is what impels him to overturn the usual rules. Is it a dark sort of cunning or simple defects of character?"

"Because the president’s critics tend to be educated and educated people tend to think that the only kind of smarts worth having is the kind they possess — superior powers of articulation combined with deep stores of knowledge — those critics generally assume the latter. He’s a bigot. He’s a con artist. His followers are dumb. They got lucky last time. They won’t be so lucky again. Maybe this is even right. But as Trump’s presidency moves forward, it’s no longer smart to think it’s right. There’s more than one type of intelligence. Trump’s is feral. It strikes fast. It knows where to sink the fang into the vein.... The truth is that there is no easy fix to the challenge of the caravan, which is why Trump was so clever to make the issue his own and Democrats have been so remiss in letting him have it. The secret of Trump’s politics is to mix fear and confidence — the threat of disaster and the promise of protection — like salt and sugar, simultaneously stimulating and satisfying an insatiable appetite."

From "Why Aren’t Democrats Walking Away With the Midterms?/Democrats miss Trump’s political gifts and the real threat he represents" by Bret Stephens (NYT).

I tried to read the comments, but what I saw was, as I expected, a lot of no, no, no, Trump is evil and his followers are idiots.

By they way, are we allowed to speak of human beings as non-human animals or not? "Trump’s is feral. It strikes fast. It knows where to sink the fang into the vein" — portrays Trump as a snake.

ADDED: It's funny — isn't it? — that people who pride themselves on their own intelligence and sneer at others for lacking intelligence, cannot understand what the hell is going on. I think it's that emotion reigns in the human mind, and they cannot settle down and coolly analyze the situation, and they are afraid of having any ideas that would inspire the contempt of people whose love and respect they feel they need. What is there to do then but hate Trump and think half the country belongs in the basket of deplorables?