I receive plenty of emails drawing attention to information and news stories from around the world. I’ve been busy, so few of the recent ones have prompted me to look closely. But one by David A. Graham immediately led me to an article in The Atlantic, my favourite U.S. publication. Titled “A Horrible Throwback to the Early 2000s,” it reveals some shocking American behaviour.

Excerpts for those who have not subscribed to The Atlantic:

Members of Congress are using the kinf of anti-Muslim rhetoric that was common then—this time with a president who has encouraged it.

No one could accuse Representative Andy Ogles of using dog whistles. The Tennessee Republican prefers a bullhorn.

“Muslims don’t belong in American society,” Ogles wrote on X on Monday. “Pluralism is a lie.”

The statement’s open bigotry is jarring. Where American Islamophobes in the past two decades have tended to demand that Muslims assimilate or denounce particular people or views, Ogles is taking a categorial approach. (In the past, Ogles has demanded the denaturalization of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom he called “little muhammad”— whatever that means—and told an activist that his attitude toward Gazan children was that “we should kill them all.”) 

But Ogles is not alone. Last month, his House colleague Randy Fine of Florida declared, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”

Recently I watched a YouTube video of police arresting a man for drunk driving and possession of meth. As officers took him into custody, he loudly insisted they had no right to arrest him and declared that Trump would soon make things right. It left me wondering how many poorly educated, marginally employed, and substance-addled Americans make up part of Trump’s base.

Yet members of Congress are supposed to be more respectable public figures. One might imagine that the rope-carrying grandfathers of Andy Ogles and Randy Fine once wore the white robes and hoods of the Ku Klux Klan. Overt displays of that sort have fallen out of favour, of course. African Americans have long demonstrated that they contribute as fully as anyone else to civil society. So racists have found new targets.

Muslims are convenient. They do not attend Southern Baptist churches, and many have brown skin—traits that make white supremacists uncomfortable.

At some point it will be demonstrated definitively that Trump is mortal. He will leave the scene. One wonders what follows. It is possible to imagine a kind of dynastic succession—echoing the way power passes within families in authoritarian systems, such as the leadership transition following the murder of Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran.

That may sound ridiculous, but democratic norms have clearly been devalued among some American leaders and a significant portion of the public. Consider that the senior U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, John Fetterman—a Democrat—has said that the United States should assassinate Iran’s new leader.

Is this the emerging model of American diplomacy? If you refuse to comply with Washington’s demands, we may respond with assassination, kidnapping, or economic strangulation—bombing, blockades, sanctions, and other measures that can impoverish entire populations and limit their prospects to live without fearing their families and communities will be destroyed.