Sarah Kendzior

Americans have grown accustomed to the inflammatory rhetoric of Donald Trump. That doesn’t mean his words fail to provoke a reaction, as the aftermath of Charlottesville and his comments condemning black football players who refuse to stand during the national anthem have made clear. But eight months into his presidency, and many more into his time in the national spotlight, Americans know that it’s not always easy to discern when Trump is posturing and when he’s being serious—which makes it hard to tell just how bad things are.

On Tuesday (June 13), Jeff Sessions, the attorney general of a US administration that has argued for the existence of “alternative facts,” swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He then spent two hours spinning a web of contradictions, selective omissions, and vague recollections. Whether these officially constitute lies—and whether Sessions is a perjurer—is an issue best determined by legal experts. But the fact that the country’s highest-ranking legal official seems to have such a fuzzy relationship with his facts does not bode well for the integrity of the whole truth under president Donald Trump.

On Oct. 3 2016, Mike Pence took to the stage for his first and only US vice presidential debate—and calmly lied through his teeth about Donald Trump for 90 minutes. He lied about whether Trump had said more countries should have nuclear weapons. He lied about Trump saying he wanted to punish women who had abortions. He lied about Trump defending dictators. He lied about Trump doing business with Russia. Every time his opponent, vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine, brought up a statement by Trump—a public, documented statement, the veracity of which Americans could easily validate—Pence did not embellish. He simply smiled and lied.

Last night, US president Donald Trump gave what was, by the eroded current standards of American political discourse, a very good speech. It was a very good speech full of very big lies and very cruel policies disguised as empathy.

On Dec. 22, president-elect Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin both announced that they intend to increase their respective countries’ nuclear arsenals. Their use of language eerily paralleled each other. “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” Trump tweeted. “Russia should fortify its military nuclear potential and develop missiles that can penetrate any missile-defense system,” Putin said at a defense ministry meeting.

In August, Donald Trump’s adviser, Roger Stone, announced there would be a “bloodbath” should the GOP nominee lose. Since then, Trump’s white supremacist fans have given many indications that they intend to make good on his promise. Trump campaign chairman Steven Bannon has bragged of “voter suppression” efforts while fans proclaim plans of voter intimidation. Authorities have thwarted violence aimed at Muslim communities, including a planned bomb attack in Kansas and a planned Columbine-style shooting in California. A black church was burned, with Trump’s name spray-painted on the side.

At an Oct. 11 rally in Newton, Iowa, Mike Pence was confronted by a call for revolution.

There can be no real doubt about who “won” the US presidential debate on Sept. 26. For 90 minutes, Hillary Clinton cheerfully dismantled a stammering Donald Trump, who admitted to stiffing his workers and dodging his taxes while ruminating on the threat of 400-pound, bedridden hackers to American security.

Guns seem to be ubiquitous in Missouri. In cities like St. Louis, street corners are marked by shrines to the slain and teddy bears are tied to trees to commemorate young gun homicide victims. In rural Missouri, guns are sold inside candy stores and pawn shops—rifles casually displayed near salt-water taffy or traded to cover rent. Mundane places—libraries, grocery stores, children’s arcades—post “NO FIREARMS” signs on the doors, because the assumption is that everyone in Missouri is packing.

Donald Trump gave the appearance of statesmanship a shot during his trip to Mexico. But on Aug. 31, following a subdued policy speech that US reporters gullibly lauded as “presidential,”  he returned to America and promptly reverted to his old demagogic form.

To the north, Milwaukee is burning, streets set on fire as black citizens protest the killing of a black man by police as well as decades of racial discrimination. To the south, Baton Rouge is flooding, with thousands fleeing their homes after a natural disaster that the Red Cross is calling the worst since Superstorm Sandy. From the middle, where I live, both crises seem familiar: apotheoses of repression and neglect.

In Feb. 2014, Donald Trump appeared on Fox News to defend Putin from mockery over Russia’s Sochi Olympics, which was a breathtakingly expensive spectacle marred by numerous infrastructural failures.

Donald Trump’s erratic behavior over the past week has led to speculation that he is purposefully trying to sabotage his own campaign.

On the morning of July 25, Americans woke up to the news that Donald Trump, fresh off the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, was beating Hillary Clinton in a CNN poll, 44% to 39%. By the time you read this article, this statistic will have likely changed. Perhaps you’re reading this article in October, frantically checking the latest projections. Perhaps you are reading it years from now, surprised that your internet connection still works under Trump’s martial law—or alternatively, you may be reading it from the comfort of your home, shuddering and saying “Remember when we thought he could win?”

Three years ago, TIME magazine published a cover story called “The Me Me Me Generation—Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents.” It was the print version of clickbait, designed to be devoured by TIME’s Baby Boomer base, or perhaps flipped through angrily by millennials killing time at TIME’s most reliable subscriber, the doctor’s office. That is, if the millennials in question were lucky enough to have health insurance, which roughly 23% did not at the time.

On Jun. 7, Hillary Clinton became the first woman in US history to become the presumptive nominee for a major political party. “Tonight’s victory is not about one person,” she declared. “It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible.”

This post has been updated. 

In early May 2016, the Missouri state legislature submitted a bill to the governor requiring that citizens must show photo ID in order to vote. Democrats staged an all-night filibuster opposing the measure, noting that it could potentially disenfranchise over 220,000 voters who who lack proper ID. Missouri attorney Steve Harman noted the bill would most likely affect black Missourians—11% of the population—and that it echoed the political aims of Jim Crow. As is true in most states, there has never been a case of voter fraud in Missouri history, leading many legislators to question the true intent of the law.

On January 25, Donald Trump, the millionaire-by-birth turned billionaire GOP frontrunner, released a video called “The Establishment.”

This June, it will have been seven years since the official end of the “Great Recession,” which began in December 2007. Pundits and politicians continue to laud what US president Barack Obama called in February “the strongest, most durable economy in the world,” boasting of soaring stock prices and allegedly low unemployment. And yet, in 2008, 35% of Americans self-identified as “lower class.” In 2015, 48% of Americans claimed that title, according to a 2015 Gallup poll. Similarly, the number of Americans self-identifying as “upper-middle to middle class” dropped from 63% from 2008 to 51% in 2015.

On Apr. 14, Bloomberg News announced that jobless claims in the US have reached their lowest level since 1973. “All other labor market data are telling us that the economy is creating a lot of jobs,” economist Patrick Newport told the outlet. “This is further confirmation that the labor market is strong.”

On a warm September evening, hundreds of St. Louis citizens gathered in a parking lot off the commercial street of Delmar Boulevard to demand that 60,000 Syrian refugees be settled in St. Louis. The crowd was a mix of white Americans, Arabs and Pakistanis, united in their determination to make St. Louis the destination for Syrians whose homes have been destroyed in their country’s four-year conflict. “Millions hungry and displaced—make St. Louis your new place!” they cried as they marched down the boulevard.

ST. LOUIS—On Feb. 27, the city of Cleveland proclaimed that Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy shot to death by a police officer at a park last November, had caused his own death by failing “to exercise due care to avoid injury.” For activists rallying against police brutality, Cleveland’s cold proclamation was the final straw. “We should SERIOUSLY consider a smart, but nuanced, full-fledged boycott of Cleveland Ohio & anything related to it,” tweeted Shaun King, a Daily Kos columnist based in California.

On Nov. 30, dozens of protesters took to the streets of St. Louis’s south side to decry the killing of an innocent man. Waving signs that read “no justice, no peace,” the grieving community marched, blocking off a major intersection. St. Louis police arrived in riot gear only to discover that this was not one of the Ferguson protests that had been popping up around the metro area. That morning, Zemir Begić, a 32-year-old Bosnian immigrant, had been beaten to death by teenagers wielding hammers. The Bosnian community of St. Louis—at roughly 70,000, the largest in the US—was not protesting the police: it was demanding their attention and protection.