Now that America is stuck with him — if America is lucky, only until November — everybody is rushing to explain How He Got Here. There’s King of the Teabaggers, or (our call) Reagan II, or George Wallace 1968, or…

But let’s cut to the chase: Donald Trump has always been with us. If Trump didn’t exist, America would have to invent him. And America tried, most recently with Sarah Palin, but that turned out to be a bad speed-dating session, so America booted up Tinder and kept madly swiping left until the right demagogue caught its fancy.

The position was always waiting to be filled. Trump figured out how to fill it.

And the position, to pick a moment, opened in 1948.

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One day in high school, we had a guest speaker for our Social Studies class. His name was Dean Kennedy, and he was there to tell us about the Mulatto Conspiracy.

And that was his first problem: Nobody in the room knew what a “mulatto” was.

But Dean Kennedy helpfully explained that, and much else, with crude printed charts, and citations from his extensive library of rare books, many of which, he told us, were the only copy that existed.

The presentation finished, and class over, Dean Kennedy left. And then we all spent the rest of the week laughing our asses off.

This was in 1975.

We’ve had many occasions to reflect upon Dean Kennedy and his unique brand of crackpot racism over the years. And every time, it starts with this fundamental point: If Dean Kennedy hadn’t visited, and the class politely listened — and then politely challenged each of his points — we never would have learned about what Dean Kennedy represents, and the kind of person who represents it. Hearing him out inoculated us against the very thing he promoted. It was flat-out absurd, especially to a 15-year-old.

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Are there any queers in the theater tonight?
Get them up against the wall!

If I had my way,
I’d have all of you shot!

Also, please enjoy this Trump rally from 1982.

Trump supporter charged after sucker-punching protester at North Carolina rally [WaPo / Photo via Daily Mail]

The fun thing about Donald Trum—

Whoa, whoa, time out. We need to establish some ground rules here. There’s a giant meteor hurtling toward Earth, on course to destroy us all at, like, midnight. All attempts to dislodge it from its path — lasers, nuclear-powered space farts, distracting it with a seductive meteor circling Venus — have failed. Humanity is doomed.

What do we do on the final day of our collective existence?

We fuck like bunnies, of course. No way we’re not enjoying the last moment left us.

So let us grant that a year from now we could all be eating cockroaches while hiding from the zombies that were unleashed when President Trump demanded that The Wall be painted with that cool new virus in the CDC vaults. This would be, we can all agree, a Bad Thing.

Meanwhile, let’s all enjoy Life As We’ve Known It while we can, by entertaining amusing hypotheticals that soon enough will be as meaningless as human attempts at civilization.

Cool? Cool.

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Okay, no, not Socks. For one, Socks is, uh — are the children upstairs? — dead. Carrying around the desiccated husk of the former First Cat is probably bad optics.

And even a Reanimated Socks wouldn’t test well in focus groups. Cat Lady vibes, for one. And, more broadly (oops! sorry), feminine vibes. Dogs are Manly. The American public approves of Manly Presidential Critters, which is why Bubba got Buddy, whom nobody remembers, because Buddy was a Usurper of Socks’ rightful throne.

No offense, Buddy, but you were just a dog. Socks owned the joint, as cats do.

Anyway: Hillary could use a cat, because being around a cat would bring out some humanity in her, which she sorely lacks. Unless it was one of those Bond Villain white cats, which it probably would be, so never mind, sorry to bring it up.

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Everything we know about American politics we learned thirty-five years ago.

It was the night of the Reagan-Carter debate, the only one before the 1980 election. Like all good liberals living in good liberal college towns, we had spent the previous months incredulous that Reagan was even in the race. We had heartily agreed with George (pre-HW) Bush, who, in the last honest statement he ever made in public life, called Reagan’s proposals “voodoo economics”.

Every criticism that everyone had about Ronald Reagan was true. And, as we were to learn that night, none of it mattered.

You had to be there, watching how Jimmy Carter was powerless against a confident fusillade of ignorance and lies, how “substance” was irrelevant against a supremely self-possessed delivery. Americans wanted to hear what Reagan was saying, see how Reagan was saying it, wanted it so badly they didn’t care about anything else.

That night, we knew Reagan would win the election. And we knew why: Americans love being lied to.

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The amazing thing about the Bernie Sanders candidacy is the sheer impossibility of it all. He’s 74 — Ronald Reagan was only 69 in 1980, when his age was an issue. He’s a declared Socialist — sure, a Democratic Socialist, but good luck explaining the nuances of European political traditions to an American electorate. And heck, Bernie is Jewish, really Jewish, New York Jewish, in a country where during our lifetime, serious doubts were raised about the electability of a Catholic President.

Did we say impossible? We meant inconceivable.

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