His hapless, bored and obsessive characters, natural liars and fantasists all, may require the insularity of a small, isolated, self-mythologizing world to flourish and self-destruct credibly.
Many liberal opponents of Trump want to insist that he is the natural heir to the past twenty years of increasing ideological insularity within the Republican Party, and in the sense that that insularity helped produce the radicalism and polarization that made Trump possible, this may be true.
Historically, Mormons spent many years being persecuted by other Christians, and it was natural that once forced out west to Utah, an insularity developed, as well as a pride in being a "peculiar people" who did Christianity very differently.
Some demographic and genetic features of this population, related to its insularity, offered the opportunity to study the impact of natural selection, for instance in determining resistance against malaria [1] and to clarify relevant aspects of the molecular bases of monogenic diseases common in Sardinia such as Thalassemia [2], Wilson disease [3], and APECED [4].
She captures their patronizing insularity: "They wanted somewhere cheap, somewhere with characteristic types, absolutely natural, busy with picturesque occupations and, above all, plein air.
Isolation was a natural response: China feared foreigners because it had good reasons for fearing foreigners, not because insularity is a feature of the Chinese character.
First, non-insular feral and early Neolithic insular populations are required to properly contrast the effects of insularity and feralisation.
But when the natural flow of immigration becomes a flood — whether in our nation, a particular state or a city — it promotes segregation and insularity rather than diversity.
