Back in 2015, 2016, there was a minority group of people who saw what Trump really was, Modern-day Cassandras who had a vision but were not listened to.
Why were they afraid of this? Or, put better, how did they correctly see all this coming? Virtually all the Cassandras would make the same points. They used different examples and discussed them in different ways, but the bones of the argument were the same. The experience for me, as interviewer, was like hearing the same song played by different musicians—once by a folk guitarist, then sung by an opera singer, then played by a heavy metal band, then a string quartet, and so on. Very different styles, but clearly working from the same sheet music.
I started to think of this as “The Cassandra Song.” It plays as follows:
- Trump (or senior people in the movement) said (insert bad outcome or values).
- We had good reasons to think he/they meant it.
- We had good reasons to think his base wanted it.
I still remember how the arguments with family members were that this was not going to go well. While they may not concede that I was right, they can definitely see that a lot of things did come true.