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Don't fall into the Electability Trap

No matter who the nominee, they will be slimed by the right-wing machine. Vote for who you like, but steel yourselves to the coming onslaught.

Welcome, passionate Democratic Primary voter. You love the candidate you have chosen, just like I love the one that I have chosen. It is your very love for your candidate (whoever that might be) that fills you with dark imaginings about all the others. In every candidate not your own, you see a laughing specter of Trump. If we nominate [Insert Candidate Here] we will be handing over the election to Trump in a cakewalk. Is that what you want, you say, passionately, eyes wide with concern.

No. That’s not what I want.

But I’ve got news for you. This is a country where a black man with the middle name of “Hussain” (and a pastor who once said “God damn America”) won twice. Handily. Once, against a war hero and longtime Senator. And once against a man who looked like he was out of central casting for the role of President. This is a country that elected a buffoonish conman over a former Secretary of State in a victory that no one expected, least of all the buffoonish conman and his team.

Any of these candidates can win against Trump. Yes, I mean any—including the Socialist Jew, the young gay-married Vet, the women, the touchy-feely fuddy-duddy, the Asian book-writer. How do I know this? For proof, I offer the man sitting in the White House. QED.

But looking at it another way, every single candidate running for the Democratic nomination can lose. Every single one of them will piss off important constituencies. Every single one of them has glaring inadequacies. Every single one of those inadequacies will be endlessly flogged on Fox News and some that don’t even exist and have to be made up. They will make them up. There is no candidate who will emerge unscathed from the right-wing slime machine.

In fact, it is almost guaranteed that Trump will open bogus investigations into the Democratic nominee, whipping up a frenzy. Remember Emails? Uranium One? All of which came from nothing, amounted to nothing, but did their damage.

Let alone the slime that will come from the Right. The nominee will also face deep suspicion from other blocs within the Democratic party, no matter whether it is a centrist or a leftist who wins. The mutual recrimination is already intense and will only grow.

Think about the constituencies in the Democratic coalition that the nominee must please. The young (mostly white) Progressives. The hard-core Lefties. The White Working Class that inhabits the diners that beat reporters haunt. The Hipsters in the coffee shops that Jacob Wohl haunts. The Moderate voter who is always seeking, but never finding, bipartisanship. The Centrist, equally frightened by Socialism and Fascism. The Racist who nonetheless is very angry about being called a Racist. The older church-going African Americans. The young Latinos who resent being thought of as solely concerned with immigration. The Farmers. The Coal-miners. The Toothless. The Heartless. The Penniless. The Wall-Streeters. The Religious. The Spiritual. The Atheists. The Celebrity-obsessed. The Conspiracy-theorists. The Political Pundits and their doppelgangers, the Political Analysts.

Why, it is a miracle that anybody wins, ever.

In fact, among the Democratic field today, you can argue and second-guess every single candidate into Trumpian Hell in short order. In fact, I’ll show you how it’s done.

These attacks may be impressionistic and juvenile but the Democrat will be facing a juvenile opponent with a juvenile media as the peanut gallery. I lay these out there so we can steel our spines and anticipate them.

The Oppo dump

Joe Biden

How he will be attacked: Old. Gaffe-prone. Is he facing cognitive decline? Fuddy-duddy with old-fashioned notions of women. Treated Anita Hill shabbily in the 1990s. Voted for the Iraq War. Long career with many questionable votes. Likes Republicans (is he insane?) and thinks he can work with Mitch McConnell; will give away the farm instead. Trumped up accusations about corruption in Ukraine might have an impact. Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden. Uses old-fashioned language like “malarkey.”

Was he really sniffing that one woman’s hair?

His pluses: Will bring normalcy back. Has done this before. Good guy and basically nice. Been through personal tragedies which taught him empathy. Trump is obviously terrified of him to the point of getting impeached over trying to muddy him up.

Says “malarkey” frequently. People love that (think of the SOTU drinking games). Experienced. Reminds people of the halcyon days of the Obama Administration, when all was love and harmony, green fields grew golden corn, and Russia was that country that had Olympics or something.

Bernie Sanders

How he will be attacked: Old. Had a heart attack. Yells. Angry. Socialist. If you think Middle America will vote for Breadline Bernie you’re insane.

Suspiciously Soviet-friendly—he actually honeymooned in—wait, in Moscow? Who does that when he could have gone to Paris or Rome? Why on earth were Soviet officials congratulating him for winning a mayoral race in the People’s Republic of Burlington? Why were the Russians trying to help him in 2016? It says so in the Mueller Report. Read it for yourself. What shenanighans did his wife pull at Burlington College that the FBI was investigating?

What has he done in his 30 years in Congress besides naming Post Offices? Why did he call the first female nominee of any major party “unqualified”? Why doesn’t he control the social media trolls who attack anyone—women, especially—who dare to say a word against Saint Bernie, sometimes with snake emojis? Does he really think he can convince people in McConnell’s state to support Medicare For All? That is a fantasy, and he is a fantasist. If that could be done, why doesn’t Vermont have single-payer?

His pluses: He has created a movement, not just a base. His candidacy has inspired a generation to fight for Medicare For All and other basic things that other Western nations all provide. He is authentic, has never changed his message for different audiences, and nothing if not consistent. Anti-Iraq-war from the beginning. In 2016, he polled better than Clinton in head-to-heads against Trump. Seems to have a similar appeal for the populists and the rurals that Trump had. Joe Rogan has endorsed him; and that is about 100 times more meaningful than a New York Times endorsement in this fallen world.

Elizabeth Warren

How she will be attacked: Female. Contains ovaries. Speaks of female things like childcare and selfies and her Aunt Bee. Who cares about her Aunt Bee? Or Cee or Dee or other relatives she might have. Tries too hard to be the populist with those folksy stories and comes across as fake. Is a school teacher, and looks like she might scold you. Wall Street hates her and Wall Street is the engine of all that is good. Scoldy, angry, female. Don’t tell me what to do, school teacher.

She’s a liar. She lied about being Native American. She can never survive being called Pocahontas and Fox News will rebrand itself as Pocahontas News if she is the nominee.

Centrists think she is too far left, more-or-less the same as Sanders. Leftists think she may as well start heading up Goldman Sachs.

Her pluses: She is tough, smart, pragmatic, and has the deepest policy understanding of any of the candidates. She has shown she can solve problems. Created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Wall Street is legitimately terrified of her. Has the best understanding of the structural inadequacies of the country and how to solve them with detailed, workable solutions.

Pete Buttigieg

How he will be attacked: Who is this guy? Looks like Alfred E. Neuman from MAD Magazine. A mayor of some small town somewhere? What makes him think he can be President? What does he know, what has he done? Wasn’t even a good mayor. Marijuana prosecutions in South Bend went up disproportionately for African Americans while he was mayor. People of color don’t think much of him.

He’s gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But did I mention he’s gay? The country has moved beyond homophobia. But have those 80,000 voters in WI, PA, and MI?

A McKinsey consultant and it shows. Isn’t that the nihilistic company that puts lipstick on some pigs, including Saudi Arabia and the maker of OxyContin? Or something? His responses sound rehearsed, as though they’ve were produced during a brainstorming session at a consulting company workshop. A master of platitudes who can impress people at first glance but what’s beneath the facade? He’s the teacher’s pet front-bencher that everyone hated.

He is good friends with Mark Zuckerberg and takes advice from him. Will he be tough on big tech? Sure doesn’t look like it. Big tech billionaires love him for a reason. If Neoliberalism was given a human form, it would be Pete Buttigieg.

His pluses: Young, fresh-faced, so unlikely to have a lot of baggage that he can be pilloried with. A Vet. Says reasonable, smart-sounding things. Not divisive. Seems capable-ish.

Amy Klobuchar

How she will be attacked: Female. Many people will not vote for woman. Boss from hell. Throws things and yells when a subordinate displeases her. Vindictive. Eats salad with a comb…or was it a hairbrush? Did she pick out the hair at least?

Inspires no one. Flat affect and moderate policies. Not known for any policies in particular aside from airy generalities. Ex-cop. Sucks on environmental issues. If you want same-old same-old, vote for Klobuchar. You’re not going to have “Klobucharmentum”, like ever. Can never fill a stadium. Hey, have you seen the number of people at a Trump rally? Beat that!

Her pluses: Practical, calming, humorous and comes across as someone who’s got this. Can handle it. No Drama Klobuchah. Just efficiency and competence in a nice Midwestern package. One of the most popular Senators in the country. After Trump, people will be yearning for the Basic Girl of American politics.

The Woman Thing and Other Things

I get it. Democrats lost an election in 2016 and we are all suffering from PTSD. Clinton is a woman. Does that mean, therefore, that “this country will never elect a woman”?

No, of course not. This country did elect a woman.

Yes, I know she lost by a surgical strike exactly where it mattered: in the heart of the electoral college. But think of the forces that needed to align against her in order to pull that off. Trump had come through the Apprentice, a ten-year informercial about his skills as a businessman framed as a “reality” show, even though we know now that it was not, by any means, reality. He was always destined to get partisan Republican votes in a strongly partisan country; plus, Clinton had faced over two decades of propaganda, with Wikileaks and the Russians pitching in. Despite this, she almost won.

No candidate will escape Trump’s jabs, and the media will dutifully play along. Each jab at each potential candidate jabs at the very soul, increasing our worry that perhaps that will be the killer shot. How can we choose? No one actually knows who is electable. In the absence of data, we permit our fears to drive us.

But look. We need not ascribe magical powers to Trump. He’s no political savant. He has run in two elections in his life. He won the first (the Republican Primary of 2016) quite emphatically, because his demagoguery against immigrants and Obama-hatred was tailor-made for the Republican base, and none of the others felt the resentment that the base jived with.

He won the second election by a hair.

By an absolute razor thin, feather-light, puff-of-wind; by a flap of a butterfly’s wings: under 80,000 votes in 3 states.

Since then, many who thought he’d be the competent businessman portrayed in the Apprentice reality show are tired of his bullshit. Yes, his base has stuck with him. We can’t shake them. But they don’t matter. He needs more than his base to win.

Democrats are in a solid position. The midterms of 2018 showed that voters are fired up; the turnout was higher for a midterm than any election since 1914. Those who learned to distrust Trump by 2018 have not learned to love him since.

Democrats can lose. Elections are full of contingencies; Nate Silver, statistician extraordinaire, pontificated that if it hadn’t been for the Comey Letter in the last week before the election, Clinton might well have won. One cannot draw grand conclusions from a loss that narrow.

Any such contingency can arise again. We will have to fight for every vote. It’s going to be an insane dash for the finish line no matter what. But Trump is incredibly beatable. And any of these Democrats can beat him.

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Why I am voting for Elizabeth Warren

I will vote for any Democratic nominee against Trump. But I do have my favorites.

Warren’s campaign has recently framed her as the unity candidate.

For those who like her, this formulation makes sense. She started life as a Republican from Oklahoma. Her brothers are Republican. She understands heartland culture from the inside. She is a capitalist down to her bones—she just wants to fix it so it works for everyone. This has led her to one of the most progressive platforms of all candidates in the Democratic field. This, as I imagine she would say, is a reflection of how far into the direction of oligarchy our particular version of capitalism has strayed.

On the other hand, for those who don’t like her, she is easily pilloried. For centrist Democrats, her antagonistic stance towards corporations and desire to restructure great swaths of the economy make her a Leftie, barely distinguishable from Sanders. For the Sanders Left, her friendliness towards the idea of capitalism makes her a Neoliberal, the same as Clinton, Obama, or Biden.

I can’t tell whether this Rorscharch nature of her candidacy is a strength for the General Election or not. Will it enable all stripes of voters to see her candidacy as a solution to the dissolution of Trump? Or will voters be demagogued into believing the worst of her, no matter what their ideology?

Oh, did I forget to mention that she is a woman?

But this is neither here nor there. The General Election appeal of a candidate is impossible for me to surmise. I can be afraid of aspersions that will be cast by this team or that team. But the Primary season is one for making one’s choice, not guessing at the choices of others, that we only have a dim understanding of in any case. This is a time for choosing.

This is why I am voting for Warren in the CA primary. I hope she wins.

From the time she came into national politics, I have been impressed by two things: one, her intellectual heft at being able to home in on the heart of the problem and identify the exact thing to do that would solve it. As a software engineer, this impresses me perhaps more than it would a normal person—she comes across as a fantastic debugger.

And second, her ability to connect intellectual theorizing down to the ground level, with real people and their lives.

The former quality may be called competence, or pragmatism, take your pick. A couple examples. Of all candidates running for President, she was the first to home in on the exact structural problem that strangulates progressive legislation in the Senate: the 60-vote threshold. This is by no means a built-in rule of the Senate. It isn’t sacred. It’s just the weaponization of an arcane rule that permits filibusters, that lay fallow until Mitch McConnell weaponized it to block everything. Warren has suggested dropping it. This excites me greatly.

That she is competent is best shown by the work she did setting up and staffing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She stood this up against the odds, and it struck fear into the hearts of many Wall Street miscreants. Her Presidency would be a continuation of this work.

The second quality that impressed me may be characterized as empathy. One small example will suffice. During the IA caucuses, her campaign is offering free childcare to caucus-goers, offering a slate of options for each child. It’s one thing to tout the need for government-provided family leave, as Warren famously does by using her reliance on her own Aunt Bea as an example. It’s another to connect that policy with what is happening in the here and now.

In addition, she has surprised me by being a spectacular retail politician. You may scorn the selfie lines and the First Dog Bailey giant cutouts. But it helps create a groundswell and excitement among the grassroots and helps to feed a movement. If she becomes President, these skills will come in handy selling policies in towns across the country.

It also helps negate the image of her as being angry. Two people (make that three) have said to me that they see her as angry, and that detracts from her appeal.

I suppose she is angry. I am too. But, I don’t see her as fundamentally an an angry person, but rather, as a happy warrior, bouncing up on stage, dancing clumsily to music—situationally angry at where we in the country find ourselves.

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Who has leverage in the impeachment fight?

Who actually has leverage in the Impeachment fight? Is it Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, or Trump?

The House passed two Articles of Impeachment back before Christmas on December 18th. Meanwhile McConnell (Senate Majority Leader) and Lindsey Graham (Chairman of Judiciary Committee) were both signalling that the Senate trial would be a total sham and that they would instantly acquit Trump.

This is why, after rushing through impeachment due to its national security implications, Pelosi became reluctant to hand it over to the Senate urgently. Not a surprise, because no prosecutor wants their case to be put through a sham trial. Indeed, although people unfailingly try to read into her public statements to intuit motive, she has been fairly upfront: she wants to know what rules the Senate will agree upon before she sends the articles over.

Since then, people have argued about who has the most leverage in the impeachment fight. In order to judge this we have to figure out what the incentives are on each side.

Best outcomes for each player:

Pelosi & House Dems: (1) Senate holds a fair trial with witnesses; convicts Trump. (2) Failing that, continued scrutiny on Trump’s crimes, and plenty of heat on GOP Senators for running a sham trial.

McConnell & GOP Senators: (1) The House to not have impeached at all. (2) Failing that, articles of impeachment to arrive at the Senate as soon as possible, so that the trial can be quick and painless without TV drama; acquittal without much focus on what Trump crimes they might be covering up.

Trump: (1) The House to not have impeached at all. (2) Failing that, a Senate trial full of drama: Hunter Biden, Pelosi, and Schiff called to the witness stand; grandstanders Jim Jordan & Matt Gaetz yelling and disrupting; chaos; for nothing to make any sense; acquittal and an abject apology.

Worst outcomes for each player:

Pelosi & House Dems: (1) A super-quick Senate trial, no witnesses, over before one can blink: and exoneration for Trump. (2) The public losing interest in impeachment.

McConnell & GOP Senators: (1) Continued drip-drip of impeachment-related news; (2) Continued focus on the sham Senate trial; (3) Articles to drop into the Senate at any moment without much warning, perhaps during a low cycle for Trump, or during a vulnerable moment for GOP senators.

Trump: (1) Conviction. (2) Non-acquittal—have the impeachment charge hanging over his head. (3) A “proper” Senate trial with witnesses, serious questions, proper handling of processes by Chief Justice Roberts.

So, who has leverage?

With this laid out, one can see that no one is getting best outcome. Trump/McConnell aren’t getting the House to un-impeach (even if that were possible), and Pelosi is probably not getting a conviction in the Senate and possibly not even a fair trial.

But Pelosi is already sitting on her 2nd best outcome, while avoiding Trump and McConnell getting theirs. And she is doing this while avoiding what she wants least: she postpones the inevitability of a sham trial, while the constant will she/won’t she news dribbling out of the House keep the public mind on impeachment. She gets to bask in constant breaking of impeachment-related news: the latest being Lev Parnas’s phone records being released to the House. Finally, she also has Trump and McConnell stewing in one of their least favored situations, at least for the moment.

So I ask you: what is her incentive to deliver articles to the Senate, without assurances that the trial won’t be a sham one?

Indeed, through the din of pundits arguing this way and that, the actions of the players have confirmed the landscape of leverage as I’ve laid out above.

Pelosi hasn’t said much about when she intends to proceed. When asked, she has been consistent: some variant of wanting to see what the rules of the Senate are going to be before she decides on House Managers, or how to proceed. While McConnell and Trump keep rattling the cages.

One day McConnell dares Pelosi to send along the House’s “shoddy work product“. Another day Trump claims the holdup is “unfair” while Pence’s Chief of Staff states confidently that she won’t be able to hold onto them for long. Then McConnell chides Pelosi for the “fantasy” of daring to believe she can shape the trial; while Lindsey Graham tries to “break the deadlock” by moving forward without the articles being received at the Senate. Then McConnell colorfully says Democrats are “floundering” and warns that if Pelosi doesn’t send the articles over soon, that the Senate will move on to other business: to this, Pelosi retorted that . This is akin to threatening Pelosi with legislation while they wait: as if to threaten that then the Democrats will be left a dry husk of a pointless impeachment.

The one thing they haven’t done is stay silent. From the day the Articles of Impeachment passed the House, through their recess, till today, they have kept up the goading.

I believe they are bluffing. For the reasons I listed above, I believe Pelosi can afford to wait as long as she wants, perhaps forever. She is the master of the wait. She withstood intense pressure from her own caucus to start impeachment until she was good and ready; she can face down McConnell without flinching. Trump is already impeached.

Follow me on Twitter at @TheOddPantry and on Facebook at The Odd Post.

My wish list for Utopia in the 20s

(Featured image: The Prologue and the Promise, Robert McCall)

The movie Back to the Future in the 1980s imagined a millennium with flying cars and hoverboards. My “Utopia” is more pragmatic and less fanciful. I don’t want flying cars. I just want some irritants to go away and some basic problems solved. I wants some checks that are sitting right in front of us, forgotten, to be cashed.

McConnell and Graham must recuse: how to make them

Two Republican Senators have made public comments that show that they cannot be fair jurors in Trump’s impeachment trial. They must recuse.

On December 12th, Senate Majority Leader McConnell went on Hannity’s show on Fox News and laid an egg. He reassured Hannity’s viewers that there was no way Trump would be removed from office and that he was coordinating closely with the White House counsel for the upcoming Senate impeachment trial, going so far as to say that he would “take his cues” from the White House team.

For normal Senate business this would be unremarkable. The Senate Majority Leader coordinating with the White House on Senate business, particularly if they are both of the same party, is quite normal. But he wasn’t talking about normal Senate business.

Senate trials for impeachment are a unique setting, especially impeachment of the President. The trial will be presided over by Chief Justice Roberts. The case for the prosecution will be presented by House Managers—members of the House or counsel selected by them to prosecute the articles of impeachment. The President will be defended by his lawyers. Each side can summon witnesses to the stand.

That leaves the Senators. They will have one job: to shut up and listen. The normally garrulous bunch are not permitted to talk: according to Rule 19, they must not “engage in colloquy“. Any questions they might have must be put in writing and handed to the Chief Justice.

This is because, during the Senate trial, Senators play the role of Jurors. They will take a Juror’s Oath, to be administered by the Chief Justice: ‘‘I solemnly swear … that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald J. Trump, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God.’’ Their role is to be impartial and weigh the facts presented at trial.

This is why Mitch McConnell’s statement was so inappropriate. He was not only reneging on the promise to be impartial, but also colluding with the defense.

Excuses, excuses!

Since the Whistleblower’s Complaint, Republicans have scrambled to find excuses for Trump. The only problem? The excuses don’t stand up to scrutiny and often contradict each other.

Remember when Trump’s call with Ukraine leader Zelensky was “perfect” with “no quid pro quo” except that his Chief of Staff said yes, there was a quid pro quo, it happens all the time and we all need to get over it? Remember when Republicans stormed the SCIF, courted arrest, and ordered pizza—but the hearing they tried to block still took place, if delayed?

While the Ukraine story that Trump is being impeached over remains a simple one—that Trump held back Ukraine’s military aid in return for two “favors”: that they announce an investigation into Biden, and exonerate Russia from the 2016 election attack—Republicans under the glare of scrutiny have twisted this way and that, scrambled to find one excuse after another, watched their excuses crumble, and scrambled to find new ones, even though they might contradict the old ones.

None of it matters, because the idea is to confuse and obfuscate: a lights-and-sounds show that will distract from the basic fact that Trump has no good defenses left. All of these excuses have been debunked by experts and some actually contradict each other.

A masterclass in how right-wing propaganda is manufactured

This NYT interview with two Ukrainian oligarchs gives an inside view into how right-wing dirt peddled by the likes of John Solomon and Sean Hannity is manufactured

(Featured image credit: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Source: NYT.)

NYT published an astonishing article this morning about Rudy Giuliani’s interactions with two Ukrainian oligarchs, in that it gives an inside view into how right-wing dirt is manufactured by such luminaries as John Solomon (formerly at the Hill) and Sean Hannity.

Background

Rudy Giuliani had been attempting to get Ukraine leaders to announce an investigation into Biden for almost a year. He was on the verge of getting the last Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to do so, when Poroshenko lost the election to newbie politician Volodomyr Zelensky on 21st April 2019.

This story picks up when Rudy, with his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman (now under indictment at SDNY) scramble to influence new President Zelensky to continue the sham investigation of Biden.

No, Mr. Zuckerberg, it’s not about free speech. It’s about your propaganda machine.

Facebook’s touting of free speech is deceptive. They want you to forget how their platform works.

In a recent speech, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, claimed that their promotion of known lies in political ads is “something we have to live with” because of Facebook’s devotion to the principle of free speech. He cast this decision in the same light as the civil rights struggles of Martin Luther King Jr. and Black Lives Matter.

A couple weeks later, he informed Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a hearing that the reason they do not fact-check political ads is that they “want people to see that the politician has lied”—thus, once again touting free expression as the animating principle behind their policy.

Nice.

That’s one way to explain away Facebook’s bumbling, incoherent, opaque, and self-serving rules about content moderation on their platform.

Whistleblower, blow thy whistle

A cinematic treatment of the Whistleblower’s Complaint.

The Scene: Morning of July 25, situation room

Picture this, if you will: It is the morning of July 25. The US President is in the Situation Room speaking on the phone to the new leader of an allied nation. All is routine: a dozen staffers listen in. Transcripts will automatically be produced. That conversation will be treated as “policy” and distributed to the Cabinet and others. None of them suspect anything amiss. The conversation begins with pleasantries.

The allied nation is Ukraine. Volodomyr Zelenskyy has become President a scant two months prior. He used to be a comedian who played a President on TV. He got elected because he promised to drain the swamp of corruption.

Volodomyr Zelenskyy (SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images)

The US President often speaks like a mob boss. He used to be a reality show star who played a successful CEO on TV. He hit upon the slogan “drain the swamp” by accident and milked it to become the President of the United States.

Twelve Angry Trump Voters

A black-and-white film from 1957 has a strange resonance with contemporary Trumpist America

The 1957 Sidney Lumet classic Twelve Angry Men is a fable about how control of a small tribe shifts from one faction to another.

The “tribe” is actually a jury of twelve men, assembled to rule on the question of guilt of a teenager. But quite apart from the arguments, one can see how one faction (the “Not Guilty” one) starts off powerless, and through moral suasion, ends up snatching the majority from the “Guilty” faction. At the end of the film, the “Guilty” faction ends up where the “Not Guilty” faction had begun: composed of just one man, eyes of the crowd on him, asking him to explain himself.

Now I may be obsessive and I may be a fool—after all, this film was made in 1957—but in it I saw an allegory for contemporary Trumpist America. I saw how xenophobic and authoritarian viewpoints can score early victories and appear invincible. I saw how the smallest crack in that facade can permit moral arguments through. I saw how opening of that smallest crack can find adherents and grow into a movement.