It’s too soon to tell, of course, but that’s not going to stop me from wondering. Historians, science-educators, and members of the Democratic Party have all been horrified by Trumpism. But murmurs from the field suggest that Trump’s excesses are sparking a pro-history, pro-science, pro-donkey backlash. At least a little.

History first. It didn’t take an expert to be shocked by some of Trump’s campaign rhetoric. Shouting about “America First,” for example, seemed to willfully ignore the tortured history of that phrase.

Then science. Trump has long bashed climate-change science as a “hoax,” a “Chinese plot,” a “con job.”

And politics. Trump’s surprise victory had many Democratic Party faithful wringing their hands at their abject failure. If they couldn’t stop a buffoon like Trump, how could they expect to get anywhere?

So bad it’s good…?

So maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but we’re hearing all sorts of mumbling about anti-Trump backlash.

Amy Wang asks if Trump’s surprise victory has sparked renewed interest in history on college campuses. In the past few years, the number of history majors has slumped, as more and more college students study business and engineering. At Yale, however, the history major recently regained its top spot. Elsewhere, students are looking at the history major with renewed interest. Wang wonders if Trump’s victory

has broken through an apathy barrier of sorts. People who’d become disengaged with politics suddenly started paying attention again.

And at least one progressive Seattle science teacher claims that Trumpist science-denialism has sparked greater interest among his students in studying real science. As he put it,

My students are angry and frightened and I am humbled by the fact that most of them have only deepened their commitment to do what Trump will not: honestly explore and enact how best to live on Earth.

When it comes to politics, too, Democrats are finding that Trump and DeVos make excellent fundraisers…for Democrats. As Politico reports, Democratic Party campaigns that focus on DeVos’s policies are raking in the dollars. As Politico’s Michael Stratford reports,

Emails citing DeVos are raising money at a faster clip than others and driving engagement from supporters.

We shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. No one was less popular in the 1930s than FDR, and he stayed in office for four terms. Nobody provoked greater animosity than Abraham Lincoln, and he got the penny. So we don’t want to overestimate the importance of inevitable anti-Trump backlash.

We can’t help but wonder, though: Will Trumpism really spark a renaissance of academic history, science education, and Democratic Party politics?