2021 / The U.S. presidential election of 2016 was a stunning blow. The four years of the first Trump presidency saw the re-emergence of the hating class. The country's titular leader had made it acceptable again to spew poison across all channels of communication, and those who had been shamed into masking their hatred for years now streamed triumphantly into the open. I thought: is this the same country I know—is this MY America? But I began to recognize (belatedly) that, for millions of our neighbors and friends, this was their America, had always been their America. Hate had been background to me, but it was foreground to others.