When people feel themselves powerless, out of control of their own lives, and fearful for themselves and their loved ones, it is all too easy to convert that sense of panic and impotence into blame, and the "othering" of outsider groups: immigrants, racial minorities, women. They have taken our jobs.

The problems that globalization creates for working-class Americans are real, deep and difficult to solve. Rather than face those difficulties and uncertainties, people readily grasp after villains and a fantasy forms: if we can somehow keep them out (build a wall) or keep them in their place (keep women in subservient positions), we can regain our pride and our masculinity.

When a leader tells people that these fantasies are true and reinforces them, great danger for democracy is created. Perhaps most dangerous has been the appeal to misogyny, the depiction of women as sex objects - or else disgusting non-objects, to be used or thrown away at the will of men.

But to ascribe this problem to working-class men is itself to engage in the politics of blame, in an unjustified way. Progressives too have been turning helplessness into villain-blaming: they say that the big banks are at fault, or Washington elites. And even centrists, rightly appalled by racism and misogyny, contribute to the problem when they portray working-class men as "deplorables" - repulsive villains who must be kept in their place.

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