Particular and abundant disdain should be reserved for American pundits and intellectuals who demand and expect civility while the country is coming apart, thousands of people are dying, Trump has shat on checks and balances, fascist paramilitaries snatch people off the street.

The house is on fire, the roof is caving in, the kids' bedroom is in flames, but the silver is unpolished and the help is uppity.

The fantasy of American exceptionalism is contingent upon the perpetuation of patriotic oblivion, which is the job of the punditocracy.

It is not that the country is unsustainable with its commitment to racism and inequality, but that somehow some people became too loud and unnice and now we can't enjoy our cocktails productively.

And then the nostalgia for the imagined time when everything was creamy fucking peachy and you could discuss things confident that nothing will ever change, or get blind drunk with Hitchens even if you disagreed on what number of dead is acceptable in conquering Iraq

Somehow, they seem to think that American fascism is too much of an aberration to be relevant. They're confident that, given time, America will return to its greatness. Talking back not nicely and demanding accountability, though, violates the foundational values of America.

And the implication that fascism starts with disrespect for already existing intellectual and political hierarchies, and not with racist capitalism that is congenital to America.

No matter what happens, we must not move our upper lip.