CLAD IN RED baseball caps, draped in the American flag and cheering for Donald Trump, the MAGA movement can be rather brash. Yet one of the people driving it forward is anything but. It is almost easy at first to overlook Russell Vought (pronounced “vote”), with his tortoiseshell spectacles, neatly trimmed beard and scholarly demeanour. That would be a mistake. Mr Vought’s calm exterior belies an incendiary streak, fuelled by his religious convictions. And he will be a pivotal player in Mr Trump’s administration, aiming at nothing less than a destruction of the status quo in American governance.

The residents of Bristol, Tennessee and Bristol, Virginia share a border, a downtown and even a nascar speedway. But thanks to the quirks of American federalism, the 27,800 Bristolians who live in the Volunteer State, as Tennessee calls itself, reside in what one ranking determines to be America’s least democratic state, while their 16,800 neighbours to the north live in one of the most democratic.

In his memoir Jimmy Carter recalls trying to copy the habits of black boys. In his poor peanut-farming community his closest confidants did not share his skin colour, and he wanted to fit in. But Mr Carter lived in the big house; his friends in tenant shacks. In Plains, Georgia, it still seems a wonder that the white child who was always out of place in the Jim Crow South became America’s 39th president. On December 29th he died, at 100, a mile from where he was born.