I’ll get to the point: I watched the YouTube video “History Professor Answers Dictator Questions” by WIRED, featuring Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat responding to questions sent in over social media. The first question she answers in the video is, “Bro wtf is fascism”—and I found myself mulling over this question as I stepped away to take a short trip. If you’ve been listening to my podcast recordings with Heather Luna, you already know that I’ve been turning increasingly inward and focusing more on how I can support the people closest to me. This stands in contrast to the broader and more-abstract questions of sustainability I was writing about last year, starting with my first newsletter issue “The flying elephant in the room.”

I came back from my trip thinking the following: have I heard the people closest to me (which is naturally a small number of people) asking whether Trump is a fascist?

Answer: No.