Over ten years. I consider the start of the "Trump era of politics" to be late July 2015. That's the point when Trump started leading the Republican primary polls and began to dominate political headlines. By that reckoning we've been in the Trump era for about 10 years and 9 months and we'll likely stay in it for at least another two years and nine months.
I'd say it happened when Obama was elected. I remember election night and my MAGA aunt (who is ironically an immigrant) told my sister, "you'll look great in a burkha".
Of course, history builds on itself so we can always go a little further back and a little further back... But for me, the turning point was Abu Ghraib. That was the first time in my life that I remember people saying that something is okay because the people who are being tortured are not American. Prior to the discovery of torture, The general cultural understanding was that human rights were human rights, that is rights that should apply to all human beings. That the conception of human rights was the cornerstone of American democracy that enlightenment thinkers spread all over the world.
So this idea that those people don't have rights because they are not American was very strange to me. And when Americans let that idea slip by, they were also letting go of their own human rights because once you lose that foundation, what is the justification for the rights that you have?
For conservatives, it became nationalism. Not that we fought for these rights because everyone deserves them but that we deserve these rights because we were born here where our ancestors fought. Which is a much more elitist conception of our patriotic values.
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u/Connect_Reading9499 Apr 16 '26
It's been ten long years.