GETTYSBURG — This is the most American of towns. It is where Robert E. Lee tried to destroy the nation, where Abraham Lincoln tried to heal it, and where William Faulkner revealed a century later that the country was still irretrievably racist and broken.
Even though much of its bloody Civil War past is hidden behind McDonald’s and Burger King and Dairy Queen and Walmart, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, today is still the symbolic capital of the endless American fight over the nation’s history.
Inevitably, that fight always comes down to race.
And so that means that this is the town that best explains Donald Trump.
Once you understand that Trump’s rise is all about white fears and white power — the same motivations that triggered the Civil War — the Trump agenda begins to make sense.. …..more
