I started this column hoping to focus on Václav Havel’s great 1978 essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” collected here. I’ll get to that. But in the meantime, the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida, an action unprecedented in U.S. history. So adjustments must be made.
Just four weeks ago in this space, I suggested that
The threat of impending “Fascism! Right around the corner!” – a treasured anxiety of the Trump Dark Ages – might oddly come true. Just not from the direction you thought. Mr. Trump, with his vulgar style and legion of faults, nonetheless had the effect of a sun lamp or disagreeable medicine on a nasty boil: He drew all the hysteria, fanaticism, and arrogance of hardcore progressive thought to the skin’s surface, where the boil and its poison popped. …