Trump is the latest iteration of American betrayal, not an aberration.

Evidence

But to view Trump in the light of the lynching memorial in Alabama is to understand him in the grand sweep of American history: He and his ideas are not exceptional. He and the people who support him are just the latest examples of the country’s ongoing betrayal, our version of “the apostles of forgetfulness.” When we make Trump exceptional, we let ourselves off the hook, for he is us just as surely as the slave-owning Founding Fathers were us; as surely as Lincoln, with his talk of sending black people to Liberia, was us; as surely as Reagan was us, with his welfare queens. When we are surprised to see the reemergence of Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and other white nationalists, we reveal our willful ignorance about how our own choices make them possible. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 561

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: the myth of Trump’s exceptionalism as a way Americans ‘let themselves off the hook’ — arguing Trump is the rule, not the rupture.