In October 2010, liberal comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert gathered over two hundred thousand fans in Washington DC for their Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Its premise was to restore “sanity” and respectful discourse to American politics to break through the noise of the extremes, especially in the face of the rising Tea Party.

Though few expected a satirical rally hosted by two comedians to course-correct our country’s slide toward extremism, thirteen years later, it’s clear any such attempts were a failure. In 2016, Donald Trump beat all predictions to become president of the United States. He injected a new type of viciousness into American politics, expressing explicit xenophobia and a disregard for democratic norms, with a bombastic style that whipped up his base while provoking outrage on the part of the traditional political class and punditry.

Many have since reiterated Stewart and Colbert’s 2010 plea for the country to return to normalcy and to repudiate Trump and his style of politics. Those pleas have largely landed on deaf ears. Over the past few years, Trump’s movement has successfully monopolized control of the Republican Party while taking an increasingly authoritarian bent.