For a decade, good-hearted citizens witnessed horrors and insisted: ‘This is not America.’ Finally, the conversation has shifted

For the past 10 years – such brutally discouraging years in the United States – we’ve been hearing good-hearted citizens put forth something they believed to their bones.

“This is not America,” they would insist as federal agents shot people on city streets, as immigrants were called rapists and animals, as Donald Trump and his cronies stuffed their own pockets while they shrugged at the price of gas and groceries, and humiliated the nation on the world stage, alienating allies and sucking up to autocrats.

With his poll numbers tanking and his behavior getting odder, the remark seems more appealing to himself than to voters

As he criss-crosses the nation, stumping for Republican candidates, Donald Trump keeps asking voters to use their imaginations.

“In this election, I’m asking you to pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot. Just pretend,” he urged at a Kansas rally as he campaigned for the incumbent senator Roger Marshall and gubernatorial challenger Ty Masterson last month.