Three days ago, the president of the United States was credibly accused of rape. It’s a horrifying statement, and also an unremarkable one. Donald Trump has been publicly accused of some level of sexual misconduct or assault by more than 20 women. Last week, columnist and author E. Jean Carroll joined their ranks. In a gutting essay published in New York Magazine, aptly titled “Hideous Men,” Carroll recounts a violent encounter she had with Trump in the mid-’90s in the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman department store when she was 52 years old. She describes how she ran into the 50-year-old real estate tycoon. How he told her he was shopping for a gift. How she accompanied him on that search. How he told her to try on some lingerie he had selected. How she laughed. How he lunged at her. How she laughed again. How he held her against the wall. How he shoved himself inside of her. How she struggled. How she eventually ran out of the dressing room and out of the store and onto 5th Avenue. How she still has the Donna Karan coatdress she was wearing that day hanging in her closet. How she never had sex with anyone ever again after that day.

The Washington Post via Getty Images Columnist and author E. Jean Carroll at her home.

In response, President Trump told the press that “it’s a false accusation and it’s a disgrace.” Since Friday, the reaction has predominantly been muted exhaustion, exasperation and despair. The story didn’t even make the front pages of some of the nation’s biggest newspapers ― The New York Times covered the news as a books story. And the big five news networks’ Sunday morning shows largely ignored Carroll’s claims altogether. The horror of watching the public and media flounder with how to respond to Carroll’s story is about more than one man and his awful and allegedly criminal, violent behavior. It’s about what that floundering says about the culture we all exist in. Eighteen months of national dialogue about sexual abuse and the bad behavior of powerful men (and a few powerful women) should be enough for anyone to understand that sexual violence is normal in our culture. But watching that validated in the highest chambers of power ― the presidency, the Supreme Court ― has been particularly devastating. “In Trump’s world, women are objects ― objects that only hold a value based on how physically attractive he personally finds them to be,” I wrote back in October 2016. “And if women are objects, rather than whole human beings, it follows that Trump must deserve them.” When Trump bragged in January 2016 that he could “stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and [he] wouldn’t lose voters,” it was met with shock. It seemed a dangerous statement, yes, but also audacious and absurd. These days, I wonder if he could rape a woman in the middle of 5th Avenue with little to no consequence.

Trump is a symptom of a larger disease, just one particularly malignant tumor in the tumor-ridden body of America.