Photo by nahid hatamiz on Unsplash

Let us recall that, shortly after the 2016 election, the reigning interpretation was an anodyne economic misprision: the story we told ourselves said economic anxiety overcame every existing political rule and function, written or unwritten, to require Donald Trump as an outcome. This argument posits an essential untruth: the second coming of Dwight D. Eisenhower (Hillary Clinton) was destined to lose to the bastard offspring of zombie Richard Nixon and zombie Joe McCarthy. This explanation is barely plausible. There exists no policy, no question, no problem, and no situation for which the answer is ``Donald Trump.’’ The only reason for any such reason is that the alternative is wholly unpalatable.

Now we know. With every step and misstep the Trump Administration, like the Trump Campaign before it, peels back a layer to reveal, first, a feckless, if rather diffuse, racism and, more to the point, a compulsive and obstinate sexism.

One has only to watch, in squirming discomfort, the obvious discomfort President Trump has in the presence of powerful women like Nancy Pelosi, Angela Merkel, or recently Theresa May, Britain’s outgoing Prime Minister, to understand that the relationship the President has with women is wholly uncomplicated. One has only to contemplate the dismissive, indeed casual, cruelty of his claim, in a 2016 debate, that ‘locker-room talk’ describes a victim-less crime. One has only to listen to the actual ‘locker-room talk’…