It confirms an impression I've been getting from other places as well, which is that, basically, there's a lot of Americans out there whose first political priority, their primary voting criterium ahead of almost literally everything else, is freedom from political correctness. A politician who speaks his mind bluntly even on controversial topics and takes the side of the people who do the same against the side of the oppressive PC media and liberal elite.

Now, to be clear, it's not that I don't see the attraction or the appeal of that element. I do. On occasion, in certain particular controversies or debates, I find myself more or less agreeing with this side - most of the time I don't, but still I can see the reasons for their annoyance with political correctness.

What I just really, really don't get, though, is the part where this takes priority over everything else. The part where Trump voters admit, to themselves if not out loud, that in most other regards the man isn't getting much done, and he's really remarkably egocentric and amoral by any standard - but all is forgiven because he fights the good fight against PC. The part where Trump voters take his side over the Republicans in Congress who are actually trying to implement conservative policies - and then somehow try to pretend that it's because Trump is conservative and the people in Congress are not (at least, they tried to pretend that until the last couple of weeks - just now this may have become just a tad implausible even by their standards). The part where they somehow manage to persuade themselves that a billionaire egocentric real estate magnate who doesn't even dare to release his tax returns is going to shift the balance of money and power back from the 1 percent to the average American - all because Trump doesn't sound elitist and likes to say non-PC things.

I mean, it's one thing to be a fan of Milo Yiannopoulis, or Ann Coulter, or other commentators who like to intentionally provoke the PC crowd. They are writers or speakers who build a career on this, and good for them and for their fans - I would even say good for the public debate, sometimes. But in a president? Does the job description really entail that little? Even for conservatives who perhaps see government inaction and gridlock not so much as a bug as as a feature, it can't be a good thing in the end to have a president who just randomly lashes out and needlessly antagonizes people both inside and outside the country on a literally daily basis, while achieving little of note beyond the anti-PC fight.