Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America

by Sarah Kendzior

my generation did not get to have choices. Instead we had reactions.

had been a long time since I or anyone I knew had dreams instead of circumstances.

American exceptionalism—the widespread belief that America is unique among nations and impervious to autocracy—is the delusion that paved Trump’s path to victory.

For over a century, Missouri was where you looked to discover what direction America would go. It’s now where to look if you want to know how the country went to hell. To understand the rise of Trump,

Cohn trained him in the strategy he refined under McCarthy and Nixon: counterattack, lie, threaten, sue, and never back down.

Trump was synonymous with all that was terrible about America: greed, cruelty, stupidity, rich people.

“When you are a young child, you have no sense of anything that happened before you existed unless it is explicitly spelled out.”