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.