“What he didn’t understand was that the more heavenly our experience, the starker its contrast with my mind’s occupations, the wider the chasm would yawn between us, the more alienated I’d be. It was like the story of Moses, in which the water of the Egyptians was turned into blood. A curse had crippled me. Shown blue ocean, I saw crimson gore.”

The phenomenon that is “Trump” is a manifestation of patriarchal whiteness—the ghost still animating imperial and post-colonial machines—and its present incarnation carries the force of State violence to compel its attendant vision.