I want to find a way to express the question I’m about to ask in the spirit I mean it, which is a spirit of genuine and humble puzzlement. I’m not just trying to say, “I told you so.” I’m honestly confused, and it makes me feel — of all things — lonely, as if maybe I’ve been away from home for so long that I don’t really understand my own country anymore.

What I don’t understand is why so many people seem to be genuinely surprised by the emergence of a tape of Donald Trump making vulgar remarks. As everyone here knows, I’ve misunderstood everything about this campaign from the very beginning, which necessarily means that there’s a lot about my own country that I don’t understand. At first, I just didn’t take his campaign seriously. Yes, he was getting lots of media attention, and let’s be honest, I gave him a lot of attention on Ricochet, too: Like the rest of the media, I fell for it and gave him free attention. I thought it was because his campaign was good for a laugh. It never even occurred to me at first that a significant number of Americans would really vote for him. I assumed that within a few days or weeks he’d go the way of other fleeting media sensations.

But to my astonishment, his polling numbers held up — and then he won state after state in the primaries. You all know how I felt about that. Among other things, I was stunned, absolutely floored, that so many Americans, so many people who I thought I knew and understood, thought Donald Trump should be the president. It seemed so absurd to me that I almost couldn’t bring myself to argue that he shouldn’t be: It seemed self-evident. I’ve been unable to shake the feeling throughout that this has all been a madcap practical joke that somehow got out of hand. And as this has progressed I’ve felt, increasingly, lonely — as if everyone but me is on a joke that I don’t get. And frightened, too.

But I’ve believed many of the things that people who support Trump say about why they support him. One thing that many people say, and some have said on Ricochet, is that Trump’s vulgar comments (whichever ones we’re discussing, because every day seems to bring new ones) are a feature, not a bug. I’ve seen quite a few people on Ricochet saying things like, “We’re sick to death of political correctness. We’re sick of hyper-sensitivity and being told there are things we can’t say. Trump says whatever he feels like and he never apologizes for it. We need someone like that to open the Overton Window and take a sledgehammer to Washington. A normal politician won’t be able to shake things up.” I think that’s a fair paraphrase of the sentiments of many Trump supporters, don’t you? I don’t agree with the argument, at all, but I think I understand it.

So why is that tape — which to me just sounds like Trump being Trump — the straw that broke the camel’s back? Or the one that seems to be, anyway. So many people seem honestly surprised that he said those things. Is the surprise a pose? If so, why this, why now? It’s a very offensive tape, but to me it’s not more offensive than so many of the other things he’s said, the things that at first made me think his candidacy was a joke, and later made me think I was in a nightmare from which I couldn’t wake up. This is the candidate who said, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” — and I’d begun to believe he was right, that he was popular because he said outrageous and offensive things and refused ever to back down.

Why is this different? Why would it change anyone’s mind about Trump? If, like me, you see this as “just more of the same,” why do you think other people are reacting to it as if it’s different? Is it because his comments were about sex? Is that the ultimate American taboo?

I’m asking in good faith, I promise. I’m truly not trying to say, “I told you so.” I genuinely don’t understand, and not understanding makes me feel lonely and stupid and out-of-it. I was taught long ago that it’s better to admit that I don’t understand, raise my hand, and ask my question — however dumb  –than to pretend everything makes sense because I don’t want to reveal how much I don’t know. So that’s my question: Why is this worse than all the other things he’s said?