The specter of American authoritarianism has been waved away in polite circles of opinion with the mantra “It can’t happen here”—to name-check Sinclair Lewis’s political satire of the same year showing that indeed it can. And more to the point, it has happened here—just never so fast and so flagrantly. Americans are used to their leaders cloaking their anti-democratic and inhumane policies under the pretense of patriotism, instead of, like Trump, openly denigrating the country, its citizens, and its laws.