The only way Democrats can successfully handle the Donald Trump tsunami at this point is to understand the emotions driving it, and address these in better ways.  A good route to this understanding is by considering a paradox, then a contradiction of conventional wisdom.

The paradox involves an eagerness to dismantle large portions of our government, while simultaneously dreaming of expanding its reach—into (at last count) Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, and Gaza.  From a purely practical standpoint, this makes as little sense as doubling the size of a stadium without adding any more restrooms.

When logically inconsistent ideas are held by the same people at the same time, the situation can often be better understood by paying more attention to how they feel than what they think.

The aspect of conventional wisdom that needs challenging is the assumption that, with the advent of high-speed travel, instantaneous global communications, and open borders and trade, our world has gotten smaller.  This is valid only in one sense, which turns out to be very limited.  At the same time, most people’s world—i.e., our primary frame of reference—has gotten intolerably vast.

Each of these factors compounds the effects of the other.