The Enemy’s An Age

Even the very emotional, very illogical lunatic fringe: they’re not the enemy. The enemy’s an age—a nuclear age. It happens to have killed man’s faith in his ability to influence what happens to him. And out of this comes a sickness, and out of sickness a frustration, a feeling of impotence, helplessness, weakness. And from this, this desperation, we look for a champion in red, white, and blue. Every now and then a man on a white horse rides by, and we appoint him to be our personal god for the duration. For some men it was a Senator McCarthy, for others it was a General Walker, and now it’s a Donald Trump.

— John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May (1964), which might as well become Seven Months in A Presidential Campaign (2015)