In retrospect, Barack Obama’s Presidency was like a psychic strike, a knife plunging into the unconscious wound of White America. Obama awakened the country’s racist, genocidal legacy. The barely suppressed “bad parts” (in Internal Family Systems) of our collective Psyche, the demonic forces — racism, cruelty, intolerance, and so on — were waiting for their chance to erupt back into public life.

Daniel Pinchbeck