Chaplin’s words are timeless and stirring. It’s also a nice fantasy, that he’ll remove the mask and turn out to be a modest and kind man after all. But that’s not what happened.
The U.S. has done it: elected a preening right-wing populist to the executive branch, given him a majority of sniveling cowards, opportunists and other proto-fascists in Congress, and left him to fill a hole in the Supreme Court with whatever retrograde throwback he likes.
This being a democracy (for the moment) it is everyone’s fault. In our own ways we liberals and progressives thought it was impossible, but It Can Happen Here. And it did.
