After 2016, the United States became a country of staged crises, such as supposed refugee “invasions.” A real plague that killed became an opportunity for those who opposed health measures to “liberate” their states. A real murder of an African American became an imagined wave of violence against the suburbs. A secure election became the occasion for a big lie about its results. This took the form of the “stab in the back,” a betrayal by internal enemies: the founding myth of the Nazis.
