Here is reason #1 why hinterland bubbas are squarely behind Donald Trump. Here are reason #2 and reason #3. They’re behind this megalomaniac because he’s leading the last-gasp charge in defense of a white heirarchy that ran the show as recently as 15 or 20 years ago. That era is over and the flannel-shirters who don’t have the right kind of skills for the 21st Century economy know it, but they’re nonetheless determined to go down swinging like Bill Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates at the end of The Wild Bunch.

On 5.20 The New Yorker‘s Adam Gopnik wrote that “the American Republic stands threatened by the first overtly anti-democratic leader of a large party in its modern history — an authoritarian with no grasp of history, no impulse control, and no apparent barriers on his will to power.” And he’s not wrong. And the bubbas don’t care. They feel they’ve been fucked so badly that all bets are off. They’re determined to shoot the place up before dying.

“If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump. Countries don’t really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right — not by Perons or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks. The nation may survive, but the wound to hope and order will never fully heal.

“Ask Argentinians or Chileans or Venezuelans or Russians or Italians — or Germans. The national psyche never gets over learning that its institutions are that fragile and their ability to resist a dictator that weak. If he can rout the Republican Party in a week by having effectively secured the nomination, ask yourself what Trump could do with the American government if he had a mandate.”