Every election is followed by post-mortems too many to count, and the 2024 US election will likely generate a record number of such autopsies. I’m not arrogant enough to suppose that the one that I will offer here is sufficiently unique or discerning to justify the pixels that it will consume, but I offer it nevertheless.

I have two amazing brothers and one wonderful sister, ranging in age from 58 to 64. Between the three of them, they spent a total of two semesters in college. Save for a trip to Hawaii and another to the Caribbean, none has ever been off of the North American continent. Career-wise, each is what the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies as a “production and nonsupervisory employee.” Two have family incomes that put them in the middle-income quintile and one has family income in the second-to-last quintile. Yet all live prudently and thriftily. None live paycheck-to-paycheck.

My siblings did not arrive at their political views through schooling, reading, or attending seminars. Like our parents, my siblings all simply go about their jobs and lives honestly, diligently, and with good cheer. They love their children, dote on their grandchildren, and they enjoy life.

Also like our parents, all of my siblings and I are allergic to envying other people’s economic success. Never in my life have I heard a sibling complain that other people are wealthier than they are. Indeed, mention to my brothers or sister the likes of the Walton family, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk – or even the high-income neurosurgeon, banker, or successful restaurateur who lives across town – and you’ll hear in return expressions of admiration. Although none of my siblings has ever taken an economics course or read an economics book, they understand that wealth is created, not ‘distributed.’ They understand this reality because of our blue-collar background and their genuine common sense.

My siblings also understand that government officials cannot work miracles and that  the government is not our guardian. Their level-headedness warns each of them that anyone possessing the power to boss other people around and to spend other people’s money will do too much of both.

Each of my siblings voted for Donald Trump and did not – as lots of Trump voters surely did – hold their noses while doing so.

We were all together for several days just prior to election day. Our only disagreement – thankfully, not remotely rancorous – grew from my hostility to much of the Trump agenda. They don’t doubt  me when I tell them that Trump’s protectionism will inflict economic harm on Americans, and especially on middle- and lower-income Americans. They believe me also when I warn of the foul consequences of Trump’s fiscal irresponsibility. But they don’t much care. What they do care about is that Trump isn’t a busybody in the same way that most of today’s Democrats are.

My siblings naturally think of themselves as adults. They despise politicians, celebrities, and journalists treating them as children who both need and crave parental coddling and discipline. Listening to my brothers and sister talk about Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, and “What’s the name of that b%&#h from Queens?” revealed to me that they react to much of what the modern state does as a sensible and responsible 22-year-old would react to an overbearing parent who refuses to stop treating him or her as a child, and who tries to purchase deference and docility from the 22-year-old by offering the person money.

Unlike some of our grandparents, my siblings are not a bit racist or homophobic. Nor, however, do they believe that because they are white – and two are male – they bear the original sin of being an oppressor. The presumption of each is that every able-bodied adult ought to be, and can be, responsible for himself or herself.

Identity politics is as foreign and loathsome to them as raw steak would be to a fawn.

Although we were all raised Roman Catholic, only one sibling regularly attends mass; the other two are indifferent to religion. The attitude of all is live and let live.

My siblings hate people in Washington, Baton Rouge, Nashville (my brothers now live in Tennessee), or Hollywood telling them how to think about other people or what pronouns are prescribed and proscribed. My siblings resent the supposition that they are incapable of taking care of themselves – that, because they aren’t in the top one or ten percent, they have been cheated either by the fates or by fat cats and, therefore, that they are entitled to money earned by others.

My siblings voted for Trump because Trump thumbs his noses at presumptuous elites. They are well-aware that Trump is an especially flawed human being, and they would react in horror if Trump were to attempt to grab a third term as president. My siblings have not the slightest itch to live under government by a strongman. Quite the opposite. They see Trump as protection from strongmen. You might disagree with my siblings’ assessment, but I’m here to tell you that it’s genuine.

At bottom, my siblings’ support for Trump isn’t an elevation of Trump but a rejection of progressivism – of arrogant and meddlesome elites, and of elite notions many of which my siblings believe to be (to quote one of my brothers) “looney-tooney.” When I proposed to them that their support for Trump over Harris is really a rejection of woke progressivism, each enthusiastically agreed, although each also said that he or she really hadn’t before thought of the matter in that way. They just instinctively find today’s progressivism to be deeply obnoxious. And who with any sense can blame them?

Trump defeated Harris in large part because very many Americans are like my siblings: ordinary, good, honest, hard-working people who are sick of being treated as if they are ignorant and helpless bigots.