The &quot;Other side&quot; is scared, not dumb. Molly Ivins used to point this out. For the white lower middle class, life has been a slow downhill slide since the mid-1970s.  Those are the people who support Trump and the Tea Party.<p>Unfortunately, exploiting that fear is politically effective.  This is a problem with a long history.  There are records of it back as far as Cicero.<p>It&#x27;s not their fault that they don&#x27;t know what to do. Nobody knows what to do. We have all this productivity, and we don&#x27;t need that many people to make all the stuff. Economic policymakers don&#x27;t know how to deal with that.  If you want to look for dumb, look at what comes out of economists.  There&#x27;s a sizable faction that says there can never be a shortage of demand. Tell that to Wal-Mart&#x27;s CEO, who says their customers are spent out.<p>(Sometimes they really are dumb, as in that Oregon &quot;militia&quot; group camping out in the bird sanctuary.)