With his mendacity and increasingly virulent attacks on immigrants, Muslims, women, the press, the judiciary, the intelligence services, the F.B.I. - any group or institution that he finds threatening or useful as a scapegoat - Mr. Trump is attempting the Orwellian trick of redefining American reality on his own terms.

The removal of people of Japanese descent from their homes and their incarceration in camps were executed with the same sort of political calculus of fear and bigotry that Mr. Trump is using to redefine American immigration policy.

I've always been a news junkie, and an avid reader of newspapers and magazines, and this interest only ramped up during the campaign of 2016 and in the aftermath of the election.

Trump tapped into a lot of middle-class and working-class disillusion with the political establishment and into economic worries and resentments that ballooned in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.