The latest spout of Trump Crazy tweets — the ones that leave me shaking my head — leave a third of us delighted.  They see Trump as a fighter.  “Look at him hit back against those snobby elites!” they tell each other, as if Trump ever actually won a fair fight.

Here’s a quote from Washington Post opinion piece by Hugh Hewitt:

The rest of the country doesn’t mind the jousting between the president and the media — again, most of the time. They understand exactly with whom Trump is battling, and it isn’t them.  …And here may be the genius of the president’s bare-knuckle match with the media: He provides the central attraction, an all-consuming show, while the hard work of fixes gets done without much organized opposition, as the left seems incapable of organizing anything except marches against the president.

I don’t agree with Hewitt’s views on most things, but his description — that loyalists are happy to see Trump dominating the media and the elites — rings true.  Hewitt said:

And therein is the secret sauce: The country isn’t the Beltway and Manhattan, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. Self-reinforcing opinion elites get most of their cues from the collective consciousness of these vitally important but relatively small and isolated reserves of great power, wealth and fame.

The standard ‘liberal elites’ meme, a synonym for urban, and a dogwhistle for anyone not a white man.  And Hewitt’s language choices are the telling: “bare-knuckle fights” that Trump is clearly “winning”, while his appointees “…Pursue and defend their missions.”

Winning is everything.  Winning is the only thing that matters.  Russia was Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire”, but all Trump has to do is say they’re nice.  Republicans spent decades defining themselves by their opposition to Russia, there’s clear evidence and testimony that Russians screwed with us at a basic level during the last election, they’re screwing with our allies, and they’re still screwing with us.  And despite all that, Trump’s base shifts from hating Russia to best buds in, what, four months?

Human rights?  Free trade?

Listing each Republican Party hypocrisy is so easy its boring, but why are Republican voters shifting their opinions on their supposed core issues so dramatically?  Because Trump won.  The base clearly didn’t care about all that other stuff.  It was just tribal noise; something for the crowds to shout for that endorphin rush.  Trump won, and that’s everything.

And while we’re all distracted, Trump is giving away our wealth, our dignity, and our standing in the world.