Political venues are nowhere to look for courage. Politics is a popularity contest and its winners lie, flatter, and pander. They don’t generally stand for anything grander than their own advancement. The venal pursuits of politicians and bureaucrats—power, money, sex, intoxication—don’t lend themselves to stirring moral defenses. Power ebbs and flows, but there’s a community of interest—perpetuation of a corrupt system. They’re all “part of the same hypocrisy,” and revelation of it serves no one’s interest.

Truth is the enemy of hypocritical regimes, which makes telling it, as George Orwell noted, a “revolutionary act,” bold and dangerous. President Trump spouts his share of nonsense, bombast, hyperbole, and lies, but it’s not those excesses that frightens and enrages the regime. Rather, he has shattered the veneer of respectability that cloaks its incompetence, corruption, and carnage. He challenges elite consensus on interventionism, immigration and trade, and the whole canon of political correctness.