One of the first moments of real shock for me came in the summer of 2015, when Trump, then an implausible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said of Senator John McCain, “He’s not a war hero ... I like people who weren’t captured, okay?”Really?
I did not understand how so many ostensibly patriotic voters could subsequently embrace Trump, but mainly I couldn’t understand his soul sickness: How does a person come to such a rotten, depraved thought?
Like Goldberg, I was surprised that this remark didn't hurt Trump, although in retrospect it's clear that many people on the right hated McCain's support for immigration reform and were grateful to Trump for validating their anger. But Trump's "soul sickness" -- that's what baffled Goldberg?
Is Goldberg so innocent and naive that the existence of "rotten, depraved" people surprises him? Or does he just believe that depraved people couldn't possibly exist and thrive in the world of elite-level politics he writes about? And how many other high-level journalists and pundits feel the way Goldberg does?
Maybe this explains why the elite media has never fully understood the "soul sickness" that's afflicted the entire Republican Party in recent decades. The press played down the viciousness of George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign against Michael Dukakis because Bush was seen as a decent man deep down who was only doing what he had to do to win, out of an admirably preppy sense of competitiveness. Mainstream journalists ignored or minimized the importance of hatemongering radio talkers like Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh, even after a moment in 2012 when a seemingly deranged Limbaugh attacked activist Sandra Fluke 46 times over the course of three days for advocating mandated insurance coverage of contraceptives, repeatedly saying that she must be a "slut" and a "prostitute" who's "having so much sex she can't afford the contraception."
Mainstream journalists treated the rise of Newt Gingrich in the 1990s as a purely political story, expressing little or no concern about his targeted demonization of Democrats and liberals. And, of course, the mainstream media regarded Fox News in its first two decades as a news organization that was perfectly respectable, if a tad right-leaning, even as Bill O'Reilly was pinning a target on the back of an abortion doctor who was eventually murdered, and as Glenn Beck was asserting without evidence that the Black president of the United States had "a deep-seated hatred for white people."
Journalists and pundits couldn't believe that any of these people had "soul sickness," or couldn't imagine that their soul sickness had a significant impact on American society (none of their friends would respond to this kind of talk), so they also couldn't imagine that the souls of millions of rank-and-file right-wingers were being poisoned by this hateful rhetoric.
Which is how we got to the point where Donald Trump could thrill millions of voters with his rottenness and depravity. A significant portion of the electorate had been coarsened, but the media paid no attention.
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