He yelled to the rafters for nearly 45 minutes, sneered his way into bawling. He contorted his face into pitiable, kabuki-like expressions to show he could not possibly have sexually assaulted any woman because he has known so many who were “awesome.” He argued that he wasn’t an alcoholic by repeatedly professing his love for beer. He spent ten minutes rambling about his boyhood practice of keeping calendars, arguing that this showed he could never have assaulted a woman. He arrogantly interrupted the Democratic senators and rarely attempted to answer their questions. He sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee with his arms crossed, like the boy in the backseat not getting his way.

The confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh initially showed us a man widely described as the guy from college everybody knew or knew of—the fraternity bro who seemed sanguine and academically mediocre when sober and a red-faced, jacked-up maniac when drunk. Oh, how well we knew this type—preppie from a well-to-do family who might go to law school or for an MBA and be passed along on a current of hereditary privilege and connections. But then Christine Blasey Ford came before the Senate Judiciary Committee to allege that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her during a college party, and Kavanaugh’s own testimony later in the day was nothing like what we’d expect from that guy we knew in college.

There’s a character in Muriel Spark’s novel The Comforters whose function of sowing pain and discord is so entwined with her identity that she simply disappears when she’s alone. Her name is Mrs. Georgina Hogg, and when she doesn’t have access to other people to torment, she has no existence. Spark’s novel is from 1957, so obviously a very online Georgina Hogg of today might find an audience to offend at any hour.

Since Donald Trump unleashed his 24/7 narcissistic insecurity on Americans, I’ve thought that during those one or two hours of the day when he puts down his phone and is cut off from the world, he, like Georgina Hogg, must also disappear. Trump seems to have no existential function without a digital audience or a full-bodied one of at least one. It’s hard to imagine him sleeping let alone dreaming. That would deprive him of his words.

Donald Trump’s July 13 visit to Windsor Castle hit some turbulence. He’d been invited to join Queen Elizabeth’s ceremonial inspection of the Coldstream Guards, and all he had to do was walk this way, as he must’ve heard Steven Tyler advise at some point in his life. The Queen, in her cornflower-blue brocade coat and matching hat, walked at a pace suitable for a 92-year-old. Trump plowed ahead of her and then abruptly stopped, which cut off her path, forcing her to sidestep around him like he was a tiki totem pole.

Walking ahead of the Queen is not great statesmanship. Neither is failing to bow upon introduction (although few Americans expect their president to bow to anyone but Vladimir Putin). Trump managed to tick off the British public in just 60 minutes at the castle, but he also seemed distracted by the guards and their big hats, comporting himself, as one royal commentator described, as if “wandering up and down a golf course.” To me, his look seemed one of rumination, most likely caused by his stymied attempts to get a military parade in the nation’s capital for the Fourth of July.

In December 2016, the gilt lobby of Trump Tower became the visual center of American power. Cameras followed the comings and goings of middle-aged and older white guys amid a large plainclothes security detail. A surprising number of the men in Donald Trump’s orbit—longtime cronies, legal counsel, crony-legal counsel hybrids, along with Secret Service and ancillary bodyguards—wore overcoats . . . long overcoats with the wide, drooping shoulders of the early 1990s. Klatches of these coats seemed to linger in every alcove, creating a mood that even the camera crews in North Face jackets could not dilute.

Though I found that overcoat lobby scene as ominous as the impending presidency, it was also hilarious, like a Sidney Lumet shoot that got lost in time. I remember the mental scrolling through lots of memes—gangsters or Gotham or any Marvel/DC Comics dystopia—that all seemed too self-serious. It’s taken me a while to finally hit upon the right one: the decadent metropolis in The Triplets of Belleville, Sylvain Chomet’s Oscar-nominated animated comedy.

The White House recently treated the American people to one of the most Kim Jong Un moments of the five-month-old Trump presidency: a video of a Cabinet meeting and press gaggle where the President calls on his secretaries and agency heads round-robin style to report out his praises for the cameras. Mike Pence kicks it off: “The greatest privilege of my life is to serve as vice president to the president who’s keeping his word to the American people.” Chief of Staff Reince Priebus gets right to the point: “We thank you for the opportunity and the blessing to serve your agenda.” Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Who were these men and a few women only six months before? Do their families even recognize them? As George Orwell wrote of the white man in colonial India: “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”

As with most table reads from this administration, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I laughed more because the performance reminded me of something I hadn’t thought about in ages: WKRP in Cincinnati, a sitcom about a struggling AM radio station that aired from 1978 to 1982. I loved the show as a teenager because it was about the station’s do-or-die switchover to a rock and roll format. The goal was to make this hokey little station cool, because everyone wanted to be cool. The writing was usually good (except for the racist context of the station’s Black DJ), the humor subtle, and the characters respected one another despite their oddities.

Before many millions of Hillary Clinton’s “everyday Americans” voted to make Donald Trump their leader, I didn’t think how a Trump victory would mess with the background story that resides uneventfully in my head. It has evolved over a lifetime, and in many ways it’s not even rational. Mostly it superimposes images from childhood and adolescence onto intersecting narratives about our democratic government as each was learned, edited, and relearned. This story about America has always looked and felt a certain way, and when Trump tramped all over it, I immediately yanked it away for safekeeping. It could no longer be left out for company; it could no longer carelessly assume a pervasive and enduring atmosphere of civic trust. What that meant, of course, is that I needed new analogies—or at least one new analogy—to replace what was reliably present in every room of thought as a counterbalance to fiery or untenable emotion. What I, like everyone, needed was an origin story for Trump’s people.

I’ve studied American history, but my attempts to make sense of the world tend to break toward literature. The national grieving and psychic withdrawal that took hold in the weeks after the election coincided with the approach of Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year in the northern hemisphere and a very brief moment when we think about Druids and pagan rituals involving bonfires. Our election day also arrives within a few days of Guy Fawkes Day in the U.K., a night of bonfires and burning traitors in effigy. I’m sure it was these two factors that gave me an odd but satisfying metaphor for what 63 million Americans might have been thinking when they elected Donald Trump president: The world of Egdon Heath that Thomas Hardy brought to life in The Return of the Native.