The Trump Presidency is an animate example of what happens when the term “for argument’s sake” becomes an actual political ideology. Trump’s élitist contrarianism has been able to masquerade as conservatism, in part, because it exists explicitly in opposition to everything that the liberal Barack Obama stood for. Trump is not a Republican; he’s whatever is the opposite of a black Democrat who became President.

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But you cannot turn to Donald Trump to understand Chicago, because you would then be trading presumptions instead of ideas, and putting empty placeholders where reflection and analysis belong—a known formula for idiocy.