I have this strange feeling that I’m not myself anymore. It’s hard to put into words, but I guess it’s like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling.

The message from Trump to conservative Christians is clear: This administration will privilege your particular beliefs above others. This isn’t a nation where all are treated equally, it’s a nation where you’re on top.   And that’s precisely what many Christians feel they’ve lost: the cultural hegemony that gave their faith a position so privileged that for a long time no one even questioned how things could be otherwise. That’s why something as innocuous as putting up a sign reading “Happy Holidays” in a department store could provoke such enduring rage. What to most people looked like nothing more than a well-meaning attempt to be inclusive and welcoming to all customers seemed to some like a displacement, a message that now, instead of their culture being the culture, they’d have to share space with everyone else.

When you are young, you believe there’ll be many people you’ll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.