The so-called patriots with their racial grievances, clutching their Second Amendment, their good old days.

always trying to avoid trouble, but you were also ready to confront trouble that couldn’t be avoided.

Being rich and powerful and white and male doesn’t prevent anyone from being scared.

A lot of guys were eager for conflict to escalate. Especially knuckleheaded incels draped in camo and nativism posting about the storm that’s coming, saddle up, lock and load. Guys who thought of themselves as men of action saving America or saving democracy or saving the world or whatever.

Men like her dad and her husband were becoming terrified animals, backed into the corner, lashing out in the same way.

Don’t solve a temporary problem with a permanent solution.

Like these people here in Florida, flying American flags on environment-ruining lawns maintained by undocumented immigrants who are paid illegally low wages, illegally. And they call themselves patriots.”

“The only thing I have against taxes,” he’d said, “is that the people who should pay the most avoid paying anything at all.

maybe Whit had evolved unintentionally, a victim of the times, swayed by a president who wallowed in immorality, who cheated on his taxes, cheated in business, cheated on his wives, cheated in politics, cheated the public health in a pandemic, and even bragged about all this cheating, making dishonesty into a core personality trait—the core.