This week in Washington, the ugly doggerel of the present was voiced in angry and tendentious tweets from the White House. President Donald Trump’s decision to forcibly separate migrant children from their parents at the border provoked a heated and sustained backlash, both at home and abroad. Nevertheless, even after they grudgingly moved to end the policy on Wednesday, Trump and his lieutenants continued to tar immigrants as criminals and their political opponents as the enablers of crime.
The president’s rhetoric, so baldly demagogic and polarizing, led a host of pundits and analysts to point to the echoes of a darker past, when the vilification of minorities preceded both the collapse of democracy and far more violent ends.