As the end of the first month of President Donald Trump’s second term approached, the New York Times sounded an alarm: He has, America’s paper of record breathlessly intoned, “carried out a campaign of retribution that has little analogue in history.”  Trump did indeed swear to be “retribution.” But that is too small a word to capture the magnitude of his actions over the initial 30 days of his return to Washington, D.C. There has been a vehemence, a ferocity, even a kind of rage to his conduct that transcends the mere pursuit of vengeance. Damnatio memoriae, the Romans called it, the blotting out of a name, an idea, even an era as though it never existed. And so Trump’s first month back in the White House has been one long purge — of the fact he ever left it...