America descended into a horrific darkness under Trump — but it was a necessary prelude

About a year ago, at the start of the Trump regime, a woman was about to pass me on the sidewalk and then stopped, turned toward me, and almost shouted, “It’s a f-----g nightmare!”

It has been a “f-----g nightmare.”

But sometimes a nation needs a nightmare before it can fully awaken to long-simmering crises.

Martin Luther King Jr. mobilized the nation against racial injustice by making sure almost everyone in the United States saw its horrors — on the nightly news, watching peaceful...