During my recent driving holiday with the family, we were required to drive out to one of the nicer suburbs in the Northeast to spend a couple of days with my aunt’s family. Now, I actually rather like my aunt, and I think very highly indeed of my younger male cousin; he has turned into a really admirable young man and is working very hard to build out his own restaurant chain business.

And I’ll be the first to admit that my aunt’s house is a really nice place- it overlooks a sparkling, pristine bay with beautiful headlands and a natural harbour surrounded on all sides by the houses of the rich and famous.

The major downside of visiting their place is, of course, the fact that these relatives of mine are hard-core libprogs. That part of the world is practically overrun with such rabbits.

And it doesn’t help that I turned to the dark side years ago, and have since simply become more curmudgeonly and right-wing with every passing month.

Now, in spite of what you might think based on my writing, in public, I am usually a very mellow chap. I observe the cardinal rule of polite interaction in society: I don’t discuss religion, politics, or sexuality with anyone other than my closest friends and dearest family.

So there I was, sitting outside on a spectacularly beautiful late-June morning, enjoying the sunshine and the cool southern breeze, when my aunt all of a sudden decided to break that rule and got… political.

My aunt is highly intelligent, well-informed (for a liberal who only watches the Clinton News Network, anyway), and extremely well-read. (Her house is filthy with books, in a very literal sense.) But, being highly extroverted where I am highly introverted, she is NOT quiet.

She is also a first-generation immigrant, who has resisted the idea of becoming an American citizen for forty years until this year.

Why has she suddenly decided to change her mind? Because the Hilldebeast is running for POTUS, that’s why, and she wants to vote for Shillary, because vagina.

She is married to a man who came to this country, founded a pretty successful magnet manufacturing business, and then got into real estate and did very well for himself- while the good times lasted, at least.

The two are hardcore Democrats; they love voting for people who believe in higher taxes and ever more redistribution of wealth, even as they use every possible trick in the book to reduce their own tax burdens through all sorts of loopholes in the tax code. They believe in bringing in as many immigrants as possible, while hiring folks whose immigration status might be… open to debate, to say the least, to work for them in maintaining their property.

They belong to what Tom Kratman describes as the International Community Of The Ever So Caring And Sensitive (ICOTESCAS)- my aunt has been a card-carrying member since her college days in the 1960s, in fact. I on the other hand belong to that not-so-small segment of the Alt-Right which says, “bugger this for a bag of crisps, time to burn it ALL down!”.

Suffice to say that, while I actually do like my extended family, up to a point, we don’t exactly see eye-to-eye.

So of course my aunt decided at some point during the morning to ask what I thought of the current political landscape. Being a liberal, of course, and therefore being unaware that a questioner can hardly blame someone if she doesn’t like his answers, she asked me who I would vote for in the current Presidential election, if I could vote, with the express goal of tweaking my ear a little.

I turned my head away from the glorious sunshine, looked her straight in the eye, and responded, quite simply: “I would vote for Donald Trump”.

I could have placed an active stink-bomb on the patio table and caused less of an uproar than what followed.

The conversation that followed was fascinating- not because it revealed any great political insights or debate, because it didn’t, but because of what it revealed about the sheer willful blindness that the elites of this country have with respect to their less fortunate fellows.

When my aunt, uncle, and cousin recovered from their initial shell-shock at hearing what I had said, they immediately asked how the HELL a highly educated, extremely well-read non-resident alien, working for a bank, no less, could POSSIBLY be convinced that the crazy, uneducated, boorish, oafish, clownish, stupid, ridiculously coiffed orange-faced baboon that we know as Donald J. Trump could be President, whose overblown and absurd rhetoric only resonates with low-information voters who are even bigger dumbasses than he is. (I paraphrase only minutely.)

And so I proceeded to calmly point out that Donald Trump has clearly understood what they have not, and almost certainly never will. And despite their attempts to talk over and through me, despite their wanton failures to learn from anything I had to say, I think that perhaps my aunt, at least, realised afterwards that perhaps there is a bigger world out there than the one that she can see.

Mr. Trump has given voice to the inchoate rage and frustration of a huge (or should that be YUUUUGE) segment of the American population, which consists of the losers of globalisation. His platform of America-first nationalism has resonated powerfully with Americans fed up of seeing their jobs disappearing, their livelihoods being sold down the river to China, and Mexico, and Vietnam. He has clearly shown that he loves America, and he takes seriously the threats that she faces. He has faced up to every challenge thrown in his way- while he hasn’t responded to them all particularly well, he has done well enough to warrant both respect and admiration.

I told my relatives that they simply could not see what Mr. Trump sees- and what I see. He sees a country brought to its knees by the colossally stupid, traitorous decisions made by its political elites- people very much like the ones I was talking to, people who all grew up in the same neighbourhoods and went to all the same schools and universities and started out working in the same politically connected companies.

He is winning because he appeals to mythical past glories- but he does so because he understands, as they do not, that human progress is not inevitable, and that regression is not only likely but natural. He understands that a huge swathe of the American population is looking at the 1950s with great envy and longing, yearning for a simpler time in which America was strong and her people were free.

My uncle countered by blustering about how we are living in a global economy and are all connected and no one can possibly shut down trade and free movement of labour and so on.

My father, who has even less patience for my uncle’s pomposity than I do, shut him down by pointing out, in no uncertain terms, that if he were a blue-collar worker whose job had just been lost because of “globalisation” and NAFTA, he would not be nearly so sanguine about the benefits of such a system. And if he were living in the American rust belt, near the now-shuttered factories of Ohio or Pennsylvania, or the coal mines of Virginia, and could not see any possible return to prosperity, he might be far more willing to listen to a candidate like Donald Trump who spoke of restoring American jobs and American greatness.

My old man, I should make it clear, is no fan of The Donald’s, at all. But he, like me, recognises a master of political rhetoric when he sees one. And I think that he admires, in a coldly dispassionate sort of way, the incredible skill that Mr. Trump routinely displays in defanging his critics and drawing their poison.

My cousin, who as I have said I admire immensely, stated bluntly that he simply could not see how Trump could win. He said that the demographics of the country make it impossible, after all of Trump’s statements about women and Hispanics and Muslims.

I simply looked at him, smiled, and said, “come back and talk to me in September, and then we’ll see about whether or not he can win.” (It turns out that I didn’t have to wait even that long.)

And you know what?

THEY STILL DIDN’T GET IT.

And they won’t anytime soon, either.

These people are some of the most successful one-percenters in America- on the surface, at least. My uncle and aunt came here and made the most of the opportunities that they received. They became wealthy and very comfortable. (Much of that wealth, I recently learned, was founded on debt, which I absolutely loathe– and they are now paying a very steep price for that.)

But they have spent so long among people like themselves- rich, successful, liberal to the max because they have eliminated much of the need for competition and struggle in their lives- that they have forgotten the realities of the ordinary American.

The real America does not exist in the bubble that is Manhattan. It does not exist in the extremely wealthy suburbs of northern Long Island. It exists in the “backwater” small cities and towns and villages and farms of the countryside.

Spend any amount of time driving through upstate New York, or rural New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, or Vermont, as I have and love to do, and you will immediately see how differently people think out there, where daily life is reasonably comfortable but still something of a struggle, and where a man’s support system comes from his community and not his rich friends.

That is the real America. And my relatives, whether they admit it or not, have a deep-seated contempt for it.

They don’t believe that it exists. They don’t consider its opinions worthy or relevant. They don’t think that those bitter clingers, who obsess about guns and religion, are important.

My aunt even said as much when I stated how much I like Texas; as I said, I love the fact that Texas believes in God, guns, and glory, in order, descending. She responded with bewilderment, saying, “well I don’t understand two out of… no, actually, I don’t understand any of those things”.

Their entire worldview revolves around the fact that, because they came to America and did well, and all of the immigrants they know did the same, rhetoric about deporting tens of millions of immigrants and building walls and tearing up trade agreements and so on is flatly insane.

They are incapable of understanding that the average American’s experience with immigrants is nothing like theirs.

About an hour’s drive away from where they live is an area of the borough of Queens known as Jamaica. If you drive or walk through there, you will swear that you are in some Third World hellhole, not in the busiest and probably most prosperous city in the world. Having been to some of those Third World hellholes, I can tell you that driving through Jamaica felt a lot like driving through a city in India or Bangladesh. It is not a fun experience, at all; by comparison, driving through lily-white Vermont is a great pleasure in and of itself, not least because New Englanders are a stout-hearted and polite people with many admirable qualities.

That is a much more accurate reflection of the average American’s experience with unlimited immigration. That is what they do not, and cannot, understand.

Now here’s the real kicker. In almost every way, I am exactly the kind of person who should hate Donald Trump.

I am a non-resident alien from one of the very countries that Mr. Trump (rightly) demonises so regularly for taking American jobs. I was educated in private schools for my entire childhood, and went to two of the most academically rigourous and demanding schools anywhere in Australia and Singapore.

I hold degrees from two of the world’s best (supposedly) and most elite globalist universities. I work in a big international bank.

I should, by rights, be ardently in favour for Hillary- if it weren’t for the fact that her pinched face and shrill nasal voice and utter lack of any discernible moral fibre makes me sick to my stomach every time I have to watch or listen to her.

I am a part of the very same elite that spawned the loathsome swamp-slime that is the Hilldebeast. I make no apologies for this; I do not pretend for one moment to be “one of the boys”, and I have no problem with who I am.

So why then do I support Donald Trump?

Because unlike my relatives, I do not have contempt for “middle America”. I understand, as they do not, that those “unwashed masses” are America- and that America feels under attack as never before in its history.

And because, like me, he is a traitor to his class.

As I said to my relatives that day, Mr. Trump has turned his back upon everything that created him. He has spat in the faces of the very globalist elite that once considered him part of their cabal. He has taken on immense personal, professional, reputational, and commercial risk for the sake of his convictions. He has ensured that, no matter what else happens, he will never be able to go back to being part of that elite club the way he once was.

Trump Muad’dib’s ascension, and his likely victory in November, is the first sign of hope that the people of this country have had in something like a generation. The TEA Party was a brave attempt, but it was co-opted quickly by the elites. Mr. Trump, however, has thus far refused to be silenced or co-opted, much to his credit.

For the first time in about 40 years, the American people now have a real choice- between a virile and proud nationalist who loves this country and what it stands for, and a lying shriveled-up old hag of a globalist, a career criminal and rapist-covering scumbag, who would happily sacrifice the souls of as many voters as it takes to the Dark One in order to gain political power.

I, for one, am very much looking forward to sitting at my aunt’s dinner table this Thanksgiving and giving thanks for being able to say, with immense relish, the words, “President Donald J. Trump”.