You would think that by now a figure — someone younger than my 59 years — would have appeared to inspire people with true American
values, a figure who could serve as an antithetical rallying point, laying the groundwork for the midterm elections and beyond.
Perhaps the most disturbing portent of a bleak American future is
that for all the millions of words proving not just Mr. Trump’s dishonesty and unfitness to serve but also the dishonesty and unfitness of most of the people he has put in positions of authority and influence, there is no clamorous outrage that is not easily dismissed as partisanship.
For those of us who have lived abroad — when I was 19, I moved with my girlfriend to her grandmother’s house in Norway, fleeing my father’s bankruptcy
and my own economic struggles — migratory thoughts are a cozy daydream, fueled by nostalgia and idealism, but no more than that.
On those days when the daydream of escape to another country is strongest, I think to myself
that I do not want to live in, and I do not want my children to grow up in, a country where anyone, even a mentally ill person, can buy a gun.
But like thousands of crestfallen liberals, I ended up deciding
that things were bad but not quite bad enough — that George W. Bush was a terrible president, but that he was just one man, a usurper.
Donald Trump did not single-handedly create the present atmosphere of fear, violence
and impending chaos; the enthusiastic reception of propaganda and fake scares; the effectiveness of xenophobia and talk of war; the callous indifference to weakened and marginalized people.