I don't buy into the "Americans are angry" bullshit.

[Hortensis]

53. There's that liberal positivism! :)

You're so right that good leadership could make a tremendous difference, but any leader who told conservatives they could be hopeful and optimistic without also promising to vanquish various commonly perceived threats they know are there wouldn't be leading these people.

They're just naturally more anxious and fearful than liberals and have a relatively darker view of human nature. This is huge politically. Some worry about changes that occur with time, some worry about people who are different, some worry about economic issues, but they all share a basic anxiety that things will go bad if they don't protect what they have from ever-present threats.

Btw, I absolutely believe their fear and distrust of government have been insidiously and extremely expensively cultivated over the past 40 years by "dark money" interests. Fear makes everyone more conservative. Trump's both a major symptom of what this occult plotting has brought our nation to and a wholly unintended result of backlash against very effective but amateurish manipulation of our mass psyche.

And, no, I certainly don't buy into their America's angry bullshit. That's just their alteration of the usual anti-government/anti-liberalism theme to try to regain control of their base.