When I'm not writing these columns, I'm a newspaper reporter. Today, I went out on what newspaper people call a "feature." The pastor of a Catholic church not too far from my office is going to celebrate a Latin Mass at his church this week.

I'm 59. I was one of the last kids to be trained to serve the Mass in Latin. "Serve" means help the priest. I wore a black robe and, over it, a snow white sort of smock. I had to memorize the altar boys' responses in Latin, though there were laminated "cheat cards" on the altar for kids with bad memories. I liked the Latin. It was the first consciously beautiful language I'd ever heard. If I'm a writer today, at least part of it is due to the sound of the old Latin Mass.

In the old days, the priest faced away from his flock. After they did away with the Latin Mass, priests began to celebrate Mass facing the people in the pews. The priest I spoke to today is a traditionalist.

"They said the priest had his back to the people," he said of the Mass as I knew it. "But that isn't true. He didn't have his back to them. He was facing God."

Most often, if you don't understand something, you're just looking at it the wrong way. Move a little to one side or the other, stand on your head or go around behind the thing and you'll understand.

I came out of the church and, while I reject the idea that I was inspired by God, I started thinking about Donald Trump.

And I got behind him.

I am supposed to be afraid of Donald Trump. Many commentators are, if only because we didn't take him seriously from the start and that embarrasses us. Because of this, we compare him to Hitler, because everyone knows that Hitler was the only Nazi in Germany.

And that isn't true. Hitler was popular. He was the people's choice. He was the savior. He said what other people were thinking. He spoke his mind.

Behind him there was a huge mass of Germans, beaten down by a lost war, beaten up by a depression, jobless, sure they were being cheated and manipulated by the Jews.

And behind Trump there is a huge mass of Americans, beaten down by purposeless wars they never win, beaten up by the loss of unionized factory work, jobless, sure they are losing their Jesus to the gays and their hard-earned money to crack-smoking welfare blacks.

They are my people. I come from a working-class family. When I was a kid, my father was a bartender and my mother was a clerk in a bank. I've worked on loading docks and in laundries. I've worked in furniture warehouses and as a security guard. In those jobs, I learned to love my own struggling, humorous, stubborn, dead-too-soon people.

I'm 59, the altar boy grown old, and God is far away and I'm afraid of my own kind.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, "King of the World on $14 an Hour," is available for Nook and Kindle.