Would Anyone Believe You?

Jonathan Last wants to pretend we could go back in time, to January 2017, and tell people that in six years:

• Trump will have been impeached twice.
• He will have been found guilty of rape by a jury of his peers.
• He will have been soundly defeated for re-election, but refused to concede the loss.
• In an effort to remain in power he will put in motion a vast conspiracy to overturn the result through extralegal methods.
• When this conspiracy fails he will incite a violent insurrection in which he directs his armed supporters to invade the Capitol and prevent the certification of Electoral College votes.
• He will be indicted in four separate criminal cases.
• He will seek a return to the White House explicitly for the stated purpose of “retribution.”
• And he will be leading the Republican field by >30 points.

“My point is that six years ago I don’t think many people on either side would have believed that today’s reality was likely. Or even possible. Yet here we are, actually living in something close to the worst-case scenario.

“And yet we are so habituated to this dark reality that we’ve come to see it as normal.”