When a detective asks where you were last night, and you say, “Certainly not in the parlor with a candlestick,” that might be true, but the strange precision would also make you an immediate person of interest. It’s possible to say something that’s both true and weirdly revealing. The argument that the United States is not a democracy originated in the heads of conservative thinkers with an incentive to preserve the power of the two fast-shrinking majorities that form the core of the Republican base Reading Time: 4 minutes