Looking back on the last 3 ½ years has been less painful than living through them. With an eerie premonition, I started saving news alerts in October 2016 . Why then and not at the beginning of the campaign for the Republican nomination or when Trump clinched the nomination? Well, October 2016 was when disillusionment set in because Trump was being taken seriously. Far too many people than should have favored Trump.  October 2016 was when I realized that the main stream media was failing us. I thought they were going along to sustain the hype that sells subscriptions. Or that they were no match for Trump’s alt-right propaganda machine. Both were true.  In October 2016 my faith in my once fellow Americans began to slip.

I remember when well meaning people said that Trump would become more presidential with time.   That he would surround himself with smart people who would check his worse impulses.  I even remember some saying that the Trump depicted by his campaign rhetoric was not the real Trump.  My, mostly white, friends told me that Trump’s presidency would have little effect on my everyday life.  That our democratic institutions which had survived 250 years  would survive Trump.  They were all wrong.

Looking back one sees how the normal gave way to the abnormal until the abnormal became our new normal.  You can see how one lie became 20,000 and how a swipe at our democratic institutions became an all out assault.  Pick a year or any month in a year on the right to see how we got here.