Readers React: Does slugging cheap beer provide insight on the rise of Donald Trump?

To the editor: Meghan Daum, taking her cue from a quiz developed by the widely discredited Charles Murray, makes the huge logical leap that those “shocked” by Donald Trump’s rise have only their cultural habits to blame: They’re don’t eat at Applebee’s, drive pickup trucks or watch certain television. (“If you’re shocked by Donald Trump, it’s probably time to take the bubble quiz,” Opinion, April 14)

Through consumption of these and through other behavior, she says, they might have learned how most Americans think and feel.

Her analysis strains to make sense: Daum admits that the worldview of the “real America” is parochial, yet says those who reject such narrowness are the ones doomed to lack insights into the “bigger” world. Access to this bigger world, Daum suggests, might be gained through specific TV habits.

But devotion to commercial TV, which is largely the product of those despised elites in their coastal enclaves, is the surest way to remain inside a cultural and intellectual bubble.

No one even slightly aware of U.S. racism and GOP dysfunction could be surprised by Trump’s appeal to the far-right base, but such awareness isn’t guaranteed by buying domestic beer; it comes through reading.

Brad Bonhall, Rancho Santa Margarita

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To the editor: Daum rightly chastises hip coastal progressives who distance themselves from the residents of flyover states. With these great unwashed right-leaning masses out of sight, progressives tend to put them out of mind. Meanwhile, the GOP cultivates heartland support for its candidates.

As Daum warns, continued disregard for provincials’ concerns will imperil Democrats’ chances come November. Surely they haven’t forgotten a prophecy by H. L. Mencken in 1920, which progressives reprised to disparage George W. Bush:

“As democracy is perfected, the [presidency] represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.... On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Mencken’s pejoratives may not perfectly fit any current candidate. Still, his prescience rings ever more true.

Nancy Stone, Santa Monica

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