The dead end of Just America is a tragedy. This country has had great movements for justice in the past and badly needs one now. But in order to work it has to throw its arms out wide. It has to tell a story in which most of us can see ourselves, and start on a path that most of us want to follow.

Related to this unsubtlety is our lack of gravity—the disregard for limits and sense of eternal possibility in new things. We untether, flit, and make ourselves over as if nothing is too fixed or solid for change. We are world-class inventors, especially of ourselves. At the same time, we take pride in ordinariness and are suspicious of airs,

In the same way that libertarian ideas had been lying around for Americans to pick up in the stagflated 1970s, young people coming of age in the disillusioned 2000s were handed powerful ideas about social justice to explain their world. These ideas came from different intellectual traditions: the Frankfurt School for Social Research in 1920s

Freedom sealed a deal between elected officials and business executives: campaign contributions in exchange for tax cuts and corporate welfare. The numerous scandals of the 1980s exposed the crony capitalism that lay at the heart of Free America.

“White nationalist” comes closer. Throughout his adult life Trump was hostile to Black people, contemptuous of women, vicious about immigrants from poor countries, and cruel toward the weak. He was an equal-opportunity bigot. In his campaigns and in the White House he aligned himself publicly with hard-core racists in a way that set him apart from

And so, as the pandemic shut down cities and states, half the country looked to science and the other half looked to Trump. Americans didn’t look to one another because there was no longer any trust between them. Into this void government by the people collapsed, leaving the unelected elites and the elected demagogue to battle it out. The struggle

But that will need a better story.

The American passion for equality is thwarted by vastly and permanently unequal conditions. If Americans are to achieve the equality that has always attracted and always eluded us, government will have to be the prime mover, though not the only one.

Trump’s language was effective because it was attuned to American pop culture. It required no expert knowledge and had no code of hidden meanings. It gave rise almost spontaneously to memorable phrases—“Make America great again,” “Drain the swamp,” “Build the wall,” “Lock her up,” “Send her back.” It’s the way people talk when the inhibitors are