Something I thank Donald Trump for.

I always used to think I hadn't understood the American right properly. In spite of their many reprehensible policies I took it that there were genuine values they held that I simply failed to understand. Granted, I could see that people who attacked those who wanted an abortion were fuelled by hatred of people, not love of embryos but I thought that other anti-abortionists may have had honest, if misguided, reasons for their position. Similarly, those conservatives who attacked the poor may have been guided by a genuine fear of fiscal irresponsibility. I sought to understand their behaviour on the assumption that they were, at heart, mostly decent people.
The Trump phenomenon has released me from this delusion however. With fundamentalist Christians voting en masse for a non-religious adulterer and petty crook I was finally able to recognise as a fact something I had long suspected but put down to my own limitations - that these people (the religious and the right) were actually hypocritical through and through and rotten to the core. Political life is much simpler now that I have taken this unpalatable truth on board. Thank you, Donald Trump.