Donald Trump sets new tone in election night speech

2. Half of America did not, in fact, just reveal themselves to be closet Nazis.

My family back home aren't Nazis. Neither are their neighbors. This is the last thing many of you want to hear at the moment, and that's fine -- feel free to bookmark this and read it a few months from now. But you can see the numbers for yourself, if you go issue by issue. Shit, at least three Trump states just voted to legalize marijuana, maybe more by time you read this. This is not your grandfather's GOP. This is something different.

The truth is, most of Trump's voters voted for him despite the fact that he said/believes awful things, not because of it. That in no way excuses it, but I have to admit I've spent eight years quietly tuning out news stories about drone strikes blowing up weddings in Afghanistan. I still couldn't point to Yemen on a map. We form blind spots for our side, because there's something larger at stake. In their case, it's a belief that the system is fundamentally broken and that Hillary Clinton would have been more of the same. Trump rode a wave of support from people who've spent the last eight years watching terrifying nightly news reports about ISIS and mass shootings and riots. They look out their front door and see painkiller addicts and closed factories. They believe that nobody in Washington gives a shit about them, mainly because that's 100-percent correct.

That pressure was building and building all around us, and we kept ignoring it. We media types were baffled when Trump won his first primary, and then his second, and then his third. We desperately tried to figure out how the system had failed. We were bemused when he won the nomination, then when he continued to hang around in the polls, we had approximately the same reaction one would have to seeing an invisible dagger floating across the room, aimed right at our fucking face. "How is this happening?!?"

Stop being baffled. Understand why it happened. Do the opposite of panic. Work through the problem.

3. The internet lets us live in social bubbles that blind us to what's really happening.

"How can he keep winning when 100 percent of the comedians and smart commentators have nothing but derision for him? How can he keep finding voters when everyone on my Twitter feed thinks he's a monster?" Well, we can stop being confused. That invisible hand on the dagger belonged to a forgotten entity called "Most of America."

That sick feeling some of you have right now? They've had that for the last eight years. Call them racists, if you want -- some of them definitely are -- but mostly they're regular people who want jobs, security, and safety. Part of that bubble effect is that we're often shielded from "the other side" just enough that only the loudest, craziest assholes leak through. Some of you never had a single polite conversation with a Trump supporter, but did hear about hate crimes and the baffling Reddit spammers and Breitbart bigots. You didn't think Trump would win because you didn't think half the country could be crazy assholes.

Well, I've got good news: You were right. If you focus on the racism and ignore the economic anxiety, you're intentionally blinding yourself to much of the problem. It doesn't matter how much you hate them; their concerns must be heard and addressed or else this will happen again. Or, as someone on Twitter put it, "I'm begging liberal Democrats to discover a tactic other than wealthy celebrities mugging in a camera about how dumb the GOP is."

They don't need your sympathy, they don't need your thinkpieces. They need fucking jobs. They need to feel like they're not getting left behind and they need to not actually get left behind. The system needs to change, and only one candidate promised them it would. If he fails, they'll turn against him too. Watch.