General Discussion

His aesthetic sensibility is supremely tacky, which is the signal failing of his life that drives all other ambitions. He will convince us that his idea of beauty is universal. There's something in it.

It's also likely how he connects with the MAGAs, who are almost uniformly marked by their lowbrow, or, for the professionals among them, middlebrow aesthetics, which they then resentfully seek to transform into a virtue. (I mean, it happens here, too - witness the old Olive Garden kerfuffle). The Cracker Barrel controversy among conservatives was quite real, but it wasn't about race or heritage or tradition. It was about rejecting contemporary aesthetics above all. We should all re-read Adorno, but of course his books will be banned as "Frankfurt School Marxism" if any of the MAGAs ever do figure out what the Frankfurt School was beyond the ravings of Mark Levin.