“That’s not who we are.”

Barack Obama used that phrase no less than 46 times in November of 2018 alone — the first days of the Era of Trump. He used it many times thereafter, and no one was in any doubt as to its meaning. There was a general understanding that America basically stood for something other than bullying, bullshit, racism, and hate. We thought we stood for an idea, and an ideal — a country where everyone got a fair shot at happiness, where one had a right to justice (if not always right away), and one’s character and abilities and behavior counted for more than the size of one’s bank account or the inherited advantages conferred by one’s social heritage. Obama could use it so confidently only because everyone understood it. He didn’t have to cite chapter and verse with each new outrage. It was a pithy useful shorthand to convey a pithy and indignant message : ‘Have hope. This presidency is an aberration, and it, too, will pass.’

I fear its very pithiness is becoming embarrassing as the evidence piles up that Mr Trump IS in fact what we are. We (or at least a voting majority of us) have long secretly nurtured a wish that the good old days would come back, that the white majority could regain its conviction that an unreliable and undisciplined citizenry would once again become docile and allow itself to be screwed by the elite as their status is diminished and their money is stolen, unhindered by Rooseveltian conscience twinges or common sense, and that future historians may have to dig deep to figure out what he meant. Because today it is becoming more and more obvious that that is exactly who we are. And presumably have been, under a thin skin of pretense at better, for most of these two and a half centuries since the Founders tried to codify ‘decent’ behavior for us in a Constitution. Bullies, bullshitters, racists, and haters.

We enjoy standing in the sunshine in our red baseball caps with our hot dogs askew and mustard dripping into our sleeves chanting “Lock her up!” and “Build That Wall” far more than we enjoy paying attention when an aspiring young leader proposes an actual solution to an actual problem. ‘Actual’ carries no weight against ‘Fake’ if fake promises that with just one more megaphone-inspired yell you, too, will be entitled to screw your neighbor and evade the common sense of regulation to protect us all.

This is not a new revelation, of course. There has always been a minority nursing this conviction, but it has generally found it wise to keep the worst offenders safely hidden under their cone-headed sheets or in their evangelical pulpits where the misapplied quotes of long-dead and mythological figures can be freely misinterpreted to one’s heart’s content without repercussions (thanks mostly to the Founders’ respect for free speech and their confidence in its power). The minority’s numbers have, however, generally been kept within bounds by the restraining attitudes of the ‘Establishment’ — a combination of the public school system, the church, and the hopes of a political reversal giving the dissenters access to the public trough before their own opportunity slips away. This time we have found ourselves with a leader with a foghorn voice and a fogged brain willing to voice the worst of our prejudices and make them ‘mainstream’. And we are thronging to acclaim him as our Pied Piper while the exhilaration of freedom from restraint and responsibility lasts. It’s a party, and you’re all invited. The way we laugh and cheer and jostle on our way to the cliff’s edge you might think that we had all gone mad, but for the little side drams and subplots of the Wells Fargos and the Sacklers and the calculated infiltration of political water-carrier judges to where the Supreme Court is today merely a reliable a 5-4agency of the administration’s policies, probably soon to become 6-3 and then 7-2 and then — quite possibly : think about it for a moment — just another patronage job to be awarded by the Leader for loyalty and faithful service..

Is there anything to be done about it? Yes, but only one thing suggests itself : throw the bum out, and his whole filthy crew after him. Is such a thing possible? Again, yes, but on one condition : that his opponents decide to act in unison and accept the fact that it will take a whole village — not just half a village. Your most precious project may have to be put aside — or even be abandoned for this generation — to create a united front. that will sometimes seem to be caving in, but think of the alternative : Ivanka and Jared and more tanks and bombs and planes and invective and the disrespect of every civilized county on the planet.

We might contemplate using Joseph Welsh’s “At long last, sir, have you left no sense of decency?” as our ultimate test. Each of us can think about it separately and come to his or her own conclusion. If we do that carefully, there is still plenty of time to clean the house and send the creeps back under their cone caps and guilty anonymity.

For how long? Who knows? But I’d rather take my chances about that than go down divided, leaving Mr. Trump ‘s divide and conquer strategy the winner.