I didn’t have time to do a retrospective of Week 3 of the Trump presidency re-run, but in its place I thought I’d direct readers to this darkly tongue-in-cheek overview by journalist Garrett Graff. He assumes the point of view of a foreign correspondent reporting on American politics, rendering our crisis simultaneously alien and more comprehensible. It’s a case where a slightly “fictional” approach captures our reality better than a more traditional one in various ways. The use of accurate terms like “Christian white nationalists” and “purges” of the security services are particularly welcome and on point.

Speaking of purges, I’d also recommend this recent snippet from David Kurtz, whose been a steadfast chronicler of our still-reversible dissent into strongman rule. He reminds us that all the talk of “firing” federal employees is a misuse of an economics term, when the more apt word is closer to “purges.” After all, firing hardly captures the mix of illegality and malice inherent in the dismissals of thousands of skilled workers loyal not to the bottom line, or to the president, but to the Constitution and the public they serve. Kurtz’s note that even “purge” may be a placeholder for a better word is well taken, and points to a larger challenge we all face — that we lack some of the basic vocabulary to describe the onslaught we’re collectively experiencing. To describe the overall Trumpian-MAGA project, I’ve played around with “MAGA authoritarianism” and “MAGA fascism,” which honestly feel good to write, and I continue to think that “white nationalism” and “white supremacism” are extremely useful supporting terms, and need to be mainstreamed (as descriptive terms, not as ideologies!) far more than they are. But I share the sense that we’re still building up a necessary vocabulary to describe, and fully confront, the array of assaults on America.