On the question of normal:
It was normal for priests of the Aztec empire to remove the still-beating hearts of some 20,000 people every year. No anesthesia, no killing them first--just hack open the chest and scoop the heart right out so that a guy or gal might actually get a fraction of a second glimpse of his or her own organs before gasping their last breath.
It was so normal, in fact, that Aztecs who were on the list to be sacrificed considered it an honor, like "Whoo-hoo! I made the sacrifice list!" Occasionally, a person standing on the steps of the pyramid, waiting his or her turn to have their hearts carved out, would shit him or herself. Which, to me, seems like a perfectly reasonable response to that situation. But I'm not an Aztec. If you made the "mistake" of shitting yourself while awaiting your immanent chest cavity clearance, you'd lose your turn. Everyone would boo. You'd be pulled out of line and shunned, and thrown into exile.
Worst possible shame imaginable... That was "normal" for the Aztecs...
I'm not going to say, on the strength of objecting to the Aztec sacrifice plan, that the Aztecs deserved what Cortez ended up doing to them. But I am going to say this: 500 years later, you'd be really hard pressed to find a single descendant of the Aztecs who'd be willing to say, "Man, I wish we still did the living heart removal deal." Because what's normal now is very different than what was normal then. In modern day Mexico City, you go to jail for that shit, and everybody agrees that's for the best.
The inevitable parallel to draw is, sure--people in the heartland of America think their values are normal, because they and most of the people they know share those values. In that sense, the author of this piece (and I'm sorry if you can't get behind the paywall to read it) is correct: Trump supporters are already "normal." Wrong or right, their values are normal to them, and that point can't really be disputed.
However, if you're going to claim, as the author does here, that midwestern values are things like being plainspoken and honest and humble, never showy and brash, then it's a worthwhile question to ask: how the fuck does Donald Trump represent those values?
We blue staters get to ask that question--we just do. I don't care how honest and decent you think you are, if you're a midwestern trump supporter, you have to account for the totally self-sabotaging idea of supporting the exact opposite of everything you manifestly stand for in terms of plainspoken decency. Otherwise, everything you stand for is bullshit, and blue state guys like me get to say so, loudly and brashly.
Read it here