You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni**er, ni**er, ni**er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni**er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni**er, ni**er.”

What about talking to non-racist parents who worry their children will be taught propaganda at school? Or people in Black or brown communities who worry about barriers to voting, increased poverty and more militant policing? Or people in immigrant communities who don’t want to see their neighbors deported? Or trans people, who would have reason to be scared for their lives? Or government employees who would be asked to do things they consider abhorrent?

Or hang out at a Unitarian Church, or a reconstructionist synagogue, or a mosque, or a Common Cause meeting? Or, hell, just talk to people in a blue-state diner, if that’s easier? (Maybe make that a deli.)

It’s not only liberals who are terrified, either. It is, forgive me for saying so, pretty much anyone who occupies the reality-based sphere and is paying close attention.

The 2020 election must also be remembered for another turnout statistic: 70.9 percent of white voters cast ballots while only 58.4 percent of nonwhite voters did. As the graph below shows, 62.6 percent of Black American voters, 53.7 percent of Latino American voters, and 59.7 percent of Asian American voters cast ballots in 2020.