Summary

Chapter Seven is called “Lesser Evils” and begins with a brief description of a dead child with a cartoon character on her shirt. The narrative shifts to Simi Valley in 2015, where Akkad attended the Republican Party convention where they chose their next presidential candidate. Akkad recalls that no one was taking Donald Trump seriously as a candidate at the time. Akkad criticizes the Democratic Party’s tactic of suggesting people should vote for them to stop Trump and the Republicans from doing negative things, rather than offering a positive vision of what they themselves will do. He finds this especially egregious in relations to criticisms of the Democratic government’s stance of Gaza, which he feels were brushed aside in the election in favor of warnings about the potential dangers of a second Trump presidency. He argues that the Democrats...