
If you want to understand Donald Trump's malevolence and the immense harm he has caused the American people and the world, you need to follow one basic rule: Take the worst thing you can imagine about Trump's character, behavior and motivations. Then take that several steps further, into the realm of apparent absurdity. Then, quite likely, you will have arrived at some approximation of the truth.
Accept that Donald Trump is a bottomless maw of perfidy, enabling and perpetrating the worst excesses of human behavior, and the reality of the Age of Trump comes into sharp focus. That is not "doom porn" or "hysteria" or "Trump derangement syndrome." It is simply the truth, which offers us some possibility of understanding, and ultimately of victory. Refusing to believe the truth, however, leads to inevitable defeat in the struggle to save America and the world from the rising fascist tide.