History, which will judge Trump among the worst of U.S. Presidents, hasn’t been a guiding light for voters in this election, but it may yet offer some hints about what to expect next. In short, watch your wallet. It might be worth remembering that America’s most ambitious and accomplished demagogues have also all been crooks: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Spiro Agnew. Let’s not be surprised about where this is heading. If history is allowed a word in this moment, let it be informed by the visionary anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian leaders of our time, such as Alexei Navalny, but also by our own squalid experience with the kind of guy we’ve just put back in the White House.

The gender war, as pitched by politicians, revolves around two competing visions of a woman’s life. The Trumpists believe that the left wants women to be Plan B-gobbling dilettantes in their youth; dick-stomping corporate drones in early adulthood; lonely, angry spinsters who approach forty in a mania for egg-freezing or emasculation. The libs believe that conservatives want women to spend their youth in training to attract, submit to, and please men—a life of wiping asses, both literally and emotionally. What baffles me about this supposed contest between ideas of womanhood, both of them invented by men for political purposes, is its distance from the reality of living as a woman.

The weekend before the election, I found myself at Fort Sumter, where the Civil War began, and where the question, then as now, was: how could such nice and decent people support a cause so cruel and hate-filled? Pessimists—I have been a loud one—may see Trump’s victory as a hinge moment in history, when the liberal-democratic consensus that began in the Western world right after the Confederacy’s demise broke down for good. More positive-minded people may feel that the work that needs to be done involves a thousand small sanities ridding ourselves of the thousand small insanities that have brought us here. More than anything, we need to rebuild a common life with our opponents.

Though Democrats made abortion an issue, they may have committed a major blunder by failing to make the Supreme Court itself an issue. Overturning Roe v. Wade may have just been the start. The Court could permit the Justice Department to prosecute doctors or drug companies for sending abortion pills in the mail. It could permit the Drug Enforcement Agency to withdraw medical-abortion drugs. Republicans on the state level may attempt to prosecute people who help patients travel out of state for abortions. And Trump could cement the court’s conservative control for decades by replacing Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito with even more right-wing Justices. If that were to happen, five Trump-appointed Justices could easily serve until 2045.

In the nineteen-twenties, obsessive hatred of immigrants and people of color and deep-seated fears about the empowerment of women allowed a form of fascism to rise under the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan controlled the entire state, largely through the machinations of one man: David C. (D.C.) Stephenson. He controlled police departments, judges, and politicians, and he allied with them to terrorize people whom he considered insufficiently American. When I first learned of this chapter of history, I saw it as a fantastical tale from a never-to-be-repeated past. Now what happened in Indiana is a sobering reminder of just what American society has been and could be again. How did Stephenson come to such power? What broke his spell?

The idea that Trump was a white nationalist in disguise was horrifying to his opponents, but it was also seductive, because it made him seem like a fringe character, the kind of politician who might inspire a multiracial coalition of decent folks to rise up against him. Especially, perhaps, Latinos, since invective against Hispanic immigration was so central to Trump’s 2016 campaign. Instead, in his second run for the Presidency, Trump improved his performance among Hispanic voters. It’s possible that he also made gains among Black voters. Will the second Trump term bring statements or policies that reinvigorate our old arguments about racism and white supremacy, or is a new coalition, and white identity, emerging?

I’ve never read the word “welcome” as many times as I did during my three days of canvassing for Democrats around Allentown, Pennsylvania, and in Northeast Philadelphia. There were welcome signs on doors, doormats, banners, and placards: “Welcome Fall!” “Welcome to our home.” “Welcome, family and friends.” Outreach by Democrats was intense, well organized, and hopeful. But, since I got the news that Pennsylvania had gone to Trump, encounters that felt like outliers in the moment keep floating back.