Matthew Dickinson finally made it to a Trump rally:

As I was leaving the event, a reporter for a local New Hampshire television station pulled me aside for an on-camera interview in which he asked me the secret of Trump’s appeal. Put on the spot, I answered, “I think this is part of his appeal, is he doesn’t say things — he doesn’t shy away from saying things that people might think but most politicians aren’t comfortable saying.”

Actually, I think this gets it exactly backward. Sure, Trump uses blunt language that most politicians don’t, but for the most part he’s not really saying anything new or different. Every Republican candidate wants to fight ISIS, close the borders, lower taxes, scrap the Iran deal, repeal Obamacare, etc. Policywise, Trump is a pretty typical modern Republican.¹

The biggest part of his appeal, ironically, is what he doesn’t say: for all his endless talk, Trump never provides any detail. He never feels pinned down by reality. Other candidates feel obligated to explain their positions when they’re pushed, but Trump just shrugs and says not to worry; it’s all going to happen exactly like he says. Likewise, when he’s on stage he plows his way through a set-piece laundry list of all the stuff he wants to do, and the crowd goes wild. It’s pure affinity politics and the audience loves it. I doubt that most of them really think he can do all the stuff he promises, but it’s a satisfying dream, and they like the dream.

This is what people keep getting wrong about Trump. He’s not really channeling anger so much as he’s channeling dreams and aspirations. He’s selling a delightful movie version of the presidency—or maybe a one-man Broadway show version—and at least for the few minutes Trump has them in his spell, his fans love it.

¹His only real heterodox stand is that he doesn’t want to touch Medicare or Social Security. His foreign policy is a little hard to get a handle on, but it’s basically pretty Cruz-esque: loud and blustery, but not really much committed to foreign interventions.

I keep coming back to this story in the Washington Post today:

William Merideth had just finished grilling dinner for his family when he saw a drone hovering over his land. So he did what he said any Kentuckian might do — he grabbed his Benelli M1 Super 90 shotgun, took aim and unleashed three rounds of birdshot. “The only people I’ve heard anything negative from are liberals that don’t want us having guns and people who own drones,” said the truck company owner, now a self-described “drone slayer.” Downing the quadcopter, which had a camera, was a way to assert his right to privacy and property, he said.

My initial reaction: hooray for Merideth! A nice dinner of buckshot seems about right for a drone hanging around my backyard.

On further thought, this may seem excessive. Dangerous, too, especially if you live in a suburb or a city. The owner of the drone in question says it was 200 feet up, and really, who cares if someone is watching you from 200 feet up? But this is what gives me pause:

“There is gray area in terms of how far your property rights extend,” said Jeramie Scott, national security counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center….According to the Federal Aviation Administration, every inch above the tip of your grass blades is the government’s jurisdiction. “The FAA is responsible for the safety and management of U.S. airspace from the ground up,” said an agency spokesman, echoing rules laid out on its website.

If this is really true, then a drone could fly right into my backyard and hover around looking for anything it wants. Thieves could keep a close eye out to see when houses are empty. Peeping Toms could be staring through our second-story windows. Busybodies could film you at night while you were disposing of bodies in your backyard.

I don’t know what the answer to this whole drone revolution is. All I can say is that I’m not on board with the laissez faire idea of just letting ’em rip and then deciding later what we want to do. There are too many dangers that are already obvious, and will plainly become even more pressing as the drone population grows from the millions to the billions. Especially in the case of hobbyist drones, there’s really no compelling interest for non-regulation except that they’re having fun and don’t want anyone to spoil their party. I don’t find that especially persuasive. I’d really like to see some tightening of the rules for using drones sooner rather than later, especially in populated areas. We can ease up later if it seems wise.

This is apropos of nothing in particular. I was just noodling around on something else and happened to run across this data, so here it is. The economic recovery of the Bush years might have been pretty anemic for most of us, but it was sure a great time for the corporate world: Between 2001 and 2006, pretax profits went up 3x and after-tax profits went up even more. These profits dipped during the Great Recession, of course, but they’ve fully recovered since then. All in all, since the start of the 21st century the income of ordinary folks has declined about 5 percent, but after-tax profits in the nonfinancial sector have gone up nearly 4x. Nice work, business titans!

My Twitter feed has been alight with mockery of the latest from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley: “We’ve never, in the history of this country, passed any laws or done anything based on race or religion,” she said at a press conference today. What an idiot!

But, you know, always click the link. Here’s the full quote:

When you’ve got immigrants who are coming here legally, we’ve never in the history of this country passed any laws or done anything based on race or religion. Let’s not start that now.

This still isn’t quite correct: After World War I a series of immigration restrictions were passed that explicitly favored northern European whites; limited immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans; and banned Asian immigrants almost entirely. Still, Haley can be forgiven for not knowing about this or other examples of restrictive immigration laws. It’s not especially common knowledge these days. In any case, she obviously wasn’t pretending that Jim Crow and its ilk never existed.

So let’s dial down the faux outrage. Haley was doing the Lord’s work here, criticizing Donald Trump’s call to bar Muslims from entering the country. In fact, given the context, she might have meant to refer not to immigrants at all, but merely to people visiting the country on ordinary visas—in which case she didn’t really say anything wrong at all. Either way, though, she did nothing worse than betray an incomplete knowledge of American history while talking off the cuff. It’s hardly a big deal.

Perhaps you remember the case of Larycia Hawkins. She’s the professor at Wheaton College who declared on her Facebook page that Muslims and Christians worship the same god. Wheaton College follows the “evangelical Protestant tradition,” which apparently has different thoughts on this matter, and as a result Hawkins is in the process of being fired.

Over at National Review, David French says that this ought to be entirely uncontroversial:

But this is Christian higher education, and the Left is taking direct aim at Christian academic freedom and institutional liberty. In 2014, it launched an ill-fated attack on Gordon College’s accreditation, and last month the LGBT Left issued a report loudly condemning Christian colleges for having the audacity to exercise their statutory and constitutional right to opt out of Title IX. So it should come as no surprise that the Left is rallying around professor Hawkins, trying to pressure Wheaton into yielding on its statement of faith.

I read this over lunch, and with nothing more pressing on my mind than eating a slice of pizza, I decided to click those four links to find out just what kind of pressure the Left was bringing to bear. I urge you to click yourself to check my work. The first three go to a trio of little-read diaries at the Huffington Post. Here are the most impassioned statements I could find in each of the three:

Letter endorsed by Su’ad Abdul Khabeer and 26 others: In our view, the measures taken by Wheaton administrators…dampen the spirit of free inquiry so crucial to the academic environment; ultimately depriving the student body of the benefit of a deeply dedicated educator….[We] call upon her employers to renew their own commitment to the principles of tolerance and academic freedom.

Ken Wilson: There’s a way out of this morass. But it requires a commitment to the apostolic counsel of Romans 14-15. In a nutshell it boils down to this: we’re going to disagree over highly contentious issues….In the meantime, we can feast ourselves on the rich fare of mere Christianity. In a community shaped by Romans 14-15, there would be plenty of room for Julie Rodgers and Dr. Larycia Hawkins at the table.

Pamela A. Lewis: Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? To the extent that Christians and Muslims come from the same Abrahamic tradition, yes they do….However, when it is a question about what these faiths call God and how they worship God, there are significant differences with respect to rituals and patterns of devotion….Whether or not Professor Hawkins has violated Wheaton College’s Statement of Faith will be decided by Wheaton College. But I am with those who believe that she was moved by her understanding of Christ’s commandment to love and stand with the vulnerable and the stranger, whoever they may be at the moment.

That’s…not…really very fiery stuff. I imagine the administrators at Wheaton College can still sleep nights. The fourth link goes to a pretty straightforward CNN story in which Hawkins herself is critical of Wheaton’s actions, which is hardly surprising since she’s the one being fired.

So where do these milquetoast statements leave us? French acknowledges that so far, “the Left has merely used its powers of persuasion to try to move Wheaton from its statement of faith.” But what about tomorrow? “Schools that don’t conform to leftist orthodoxy may soon consequences far worse than a barrage of negative news coverage.”

Maybe so. But it’s always worth clicking the links. If this is the best that the big, bad Left can do—and I assume French would have linked to worse if it existed—I think Christian colleges are probably not in any imminent danger. It’s pretty stunning sometimes just how little criticism it takes to bring out the victim in us all.

This is…interesting:

Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, has been encouraging party leaders to develop better policies to address wage stagnation. For instance, he supports raising the federal minimum wage, a departure from Republican orthodoxy.

“As a party we speak a lot about deregulation and tax policy, and you know what? People have been hearing that for 25 years and they’re getting tired of that message,” Romney said in a recent interview. He added, “I think we’re nuts not to raise the minimum wage. I think as a party, to say we’re trying to help the middle class of America and the poor and not raise the minimum wage sends exactly the wrong signal.”

It’s always easier to say something like this when you’re not running for president anymore, isn’t it? Still, he’s got a point. With the average working-class Republican family paying roughly zero percent in federal income taxes and probably never coming into personal contact with a federal regulation in their lives, this message may indeed be getting a little long in the tooth.

Jim Tankersley reminds me that it’s been a month since I took a look a how television was covering the GOP campaign. It’s a sad story. After briefly finding solace in a few other candidates, TV is back to mooning over Donald Trump, desperately hoping he’ll return their adoring gaze. His daily mentions, once down to a mere 30 percent of all coverage in November, went back up to 50 percent in December, and then shot up to 80 percent when he made up a lie about Muslims dancing in the streets after 9/11. That was all it took. TV news remembered exactly what it is they love so much about Trump: the fact that he treats them like whores who care about nothing but ratings. Ooh baby, it hurts so good. Ever since, he’s been back to 60 percent of all mentions, with everyone else duking it out for whatever crumbs are left over.

What does Donald Trump think about dictators and autocrats? Well, they’re bad guys, he admits. But that’s not all. Let’s roll the tape:

North Korea: You’ve got to give [Kim Jong-un] credit: how many young guys, he was like 26 or 25 when his father died….he goes in, he takes over, he’s the boss. It’s incredible. He wiped out the uncle, he wiped out this one, that one. This guy doesn’t play games and we can’t play games with him.

Russia: I’ll tell you what, if Putin likes me….If he says something positive, that’s a good thing, that’s not a bad thing. And: It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond. And: You’re saying he killed people, I haven’t seen that. I don’t know that he has. Have you been able to prove that? And: He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader. I think our country does plenty of killing also.

Iraq: Look at Iraq….[Saddam Hussein] would kill the terrorists immediately…. I’m not saying he was a nice guy, he was a horrible guy, but it was a lot better than it is right now.

China: When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.

Egypt: Egypt is turning into a hot bed of radical Islam. The current protest is another coup attempt. We should never have abandoned Mubarak.

Syria and Libya: Assad is a bad man. Gadhafi was a bad man. Mubarak had a terrible human rights record. But they were assisting us — at least Gadhafi and Mubarak — in fighting radical Islamic terrorists.

Trump sure does seem to admire anyone who can make the trains run on time, doesn’t he?

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-90749594/stock-photo-baby-crying-two-month.html">Gustavo Miguel Fernandes/Shutterstock</a>

Last night President Obama noted the unremarkable truth that the United States can’t try to rebuild every country that falls into crisis. “It’s the lesson of Iraq,” he said. Over at National Review, Bing West was not amused:

That is insulting to all who fought. What does Mr. Obama say to the families who lost a loved one: they died in a quagmire that weakened us? The lesson of Iraq is that after American troops achieved stability, Mr. Obama quit, leading to a larger war and more American deaths.

Jesus, this pisses me off. Are conservatives ever willing to take responsibility for anything? They destroy the economy and then spend eight years bitching and whining because it’s taking Obama so long to dig out of the hole they dug. They sit around spouting tough talk about their “Axis of Evil” but do nothing to stop North Korea and Iran from developing nuclear programs—and then go ballistic when Obama finally does something about it. And after merrily dragging us into the stupidest and most disastrous war in recent memory, they’ve spent every year since then desperately trying to pin blame for the aftermath on Obama.

They’re like small children, ruining everything they touch because the world is a big playground that they govern with their guts instead of their brains. Then they throw temper tantrums when the adults come along and try to clean up the messes they’ve made.

Calling Iraq by its true name is no insult to anyone. The insult is that people like Bing West were willing to throw American troops into a killing field because they had to take out their post-9/11 rage on someone, and Iraq was handy. It’s time to grow up, Bing. You can’t remain a child forever, blaming your mistakes on everyone but yourself.

Paul Krugman posted an interesting chart today, which I’ve simplified on the right to show only household income. It comes from Sentier Research, which tracks income in a more timely manner than the Census Bureau (though they use Census data). I noted the other day that if you looked at total worker compensation (including things like health insurance), then we’d finally seen a fairly healthy upward trend in 2015. But according to Sentier, even if you look only at ordinary cash income, we’ve pretty much recovered from the Great Recession. Household income has grown at the rate of 3-4 percent annually for the past two years. It took a long time to get there, but the recovery really does seem to finally be showing up in higher earnings.

This helps explain the sharp upward tick in Gallup’s poll about personal satisfaction that I wrote about yesterday: it’s because the economy really did start performing better for a lot of people in 2015. Now it’s time to try to persuade everyone that the country really isn’t going to hell in a handbasket even if Fox News and MSNBC spend every primetime evening telling us otherwise.