[!@#$%!]

“stop saying the trump era is not normal”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...n-here-before/

Slavery, the Klan, Jim Crow, the Klan again. Internment of Japanese Americans. Gender discrimination and scientific racism. McCarthyism. George Wallace. All leading to a president whom Meacham considers “an heir to the white populist tradition,” a leader eager to undermine the law, the truth and “the sense of hope essential to American life.”

Trump is normal in that he embodies recurring maladies of American public life; perhaps the main anomaly is that he brings so many of them together. Such historical awareness can comfort, especially if you believe, as Meacham does, that every generation considers itself under siege and that, with the right leadership, Americans usually find a way forward rather than back. “The good news is that we have come through such darkness before,” he writes. “All has seemed lost before, only to give way, after decades of gloom, to light.”

Of course, if you’re living in the gloom, awareness of historical patterns bestows limited consolation. It might, however, inject small doses of those qualities that latter-day resistance requires: Inspiration. Patience. Even humility.