In my 2024 election post-mortem, I wrote about President Donald Trump’s deft use of “security” as a means of garnering support. He played off people’s fears, promising protection from dangers real and imagined. These were the pillars of his campaign:

Physical security: Crime is out of control (it’s not). Look at Kamala’s San Francisco! Immigrants want to murder you!

Economic security: Inflation, grocery prices, housing—he promised lower costs “on Day One.”

Cultural security: Pronouns, drag queens, white dispossession, “toxic masculinity.”

When people feel unsafe, as they genuinely did in my native El Salvador, they’ll gladly surrender civil liberties and embrace a dictator for a sense of safety. That’s why the Democratic message fell so flat in 2024.

We warned about fascism. Voters sh

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