Yesterday, the grifters and the charlatans, the political opportunists, and the white supremacists who were behind the protest melted away like cowards and abandoned the field to the desperate people that they'd led astray. I can only hope that they will be held accountable for their part in all of this and that we can find a way, as a country, to immunise ourselves against their malign impact in the future. A friend sent me this this morning: "I walked across the snowy plain of the tiergarten—a smashed statue here, a newly planted sapling there, with its red flag flapping against the blue winter sky. And on the horizon, the great ribs of a gutted railway station like the skeleton of a whale. In the morning light, it was all as raw and frank as the voice of history, which tells you not to fool yourself: this can happen to any city, to anyone, to you."