Donald Trumpâs National Campaign
Think about South Carolina for a minute. It is a specific place, made by the collision between gentility and brutality. The state is religious and poor by national standards, but not by Southern ones—the hard hill edges are softened by the prosperous country. Its racial history is especially violent. Its conservatism is fixed, and the distinguishing strain is military: the long obsession with the Confederate flag, the Citadel. Laid over all of this is the fantastical experience of the state’s great city, Charleston—to walk through it is, as the native-son novelist Pat Conroy once wrote, “like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.” You would not describe Nevada like this; the phrase doesn’t summon New Hampshire.
