On Super Tuesday, Donald Trump continued to lock in his chokehold on the Republican Party. He won seven of the 11 Republican 2016 presidential primaries and caucuses. Trump now has 302 delegates as compared to Ted Cruz’s 174 and Marco Rubio’s 104. The Republican “establishment” is in panic mode; it appears to most observers that Il Duce Donald Trump, the American right-wing’s version of Immortan Joe from the movie “Mad Max: Fury Road,” is a fait accompli as the 2016 Republican presidential nominee.

This is the macro level story that the commentariat will be focusing on until Trump’s formal coronation at the Republican National Convention in July

Campaigns and elections are also a collection of micro-level, personal experiences. The notion that “the personal is the political” is a cliché. It is nonetheless very true: this will be the first presidential election for millions of young and other new voters. Moreover, there are Americans who have never before volunteered to assist in a campaign or election. Some of them are “feeling the Bern.” Others are working for Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or the other prospective presidential candidates.

Movements like Black Lives Matter, as well as other citizen activist groups are standing up for the rights of immigrants, Muslims, women, and people of color more generally, in an era of police thuggery, surveillance, the neoliberal nightmare, a broken economy, and resurgent nativism and sexism. In all, these organizations and nascent social movements are introducing many Americans to the power of protest and the realization that they too—not just big money and inside the Beltway interest groups—have a voice.

Ultimately, these activities–voting, organizing, protesting, and other activities–will be one of the primary moments of political socialization for many millions of Americans. Their experiences in the 2016 presidential election will influence the rest of their lives and how they think about (and experience) what it means to be a member of the polity.

Politics can be messy. It involves what are called “push and pull” factors. At its worst, those moments can involve violence. In a functioning democracy such behavior is considered outside of “normal politics.” But as Donald Trump’s proto-fascist Herrenvolk nativism movement grows in power, and Republican Party elites are paralyzed by a knot of racism and demagoguery they both nurtured and created, many of the standing norms of recent American politics seem as though they are teetering on a precipice.

The following is a single data point, a news item that will likely be lost in the background noise of Super Tuesday, or just one person’s experience which they will remember for a long while and others will quickly forget.

As reported by the TV station WLKY and shared on social media, a black woman was repeatedly assaulted at a Donald Trump rally in Louisville, Kentucky. White men in the crowd repeatedly shoved this young black woman while white women yelled at and harangued her. Whiteness united them in their vitriol and meanness across lines of gender and sex.

It was an ugly and disturbing scene.

Violence at Donald Trump rallies is now a common and expected occurrence. Trump encourages violence with his Right-wing strongman professional wrestling routine. Trump’s backers have followed through on his edicts. They have attacked a homeless person who they believed was an “illegal” immigrant, beaten upon a Black Lives Matter protester, and engaged in violent and hostile acts against others who they identify as not part of the tribe.