Burn it down or come together? So many of this year’s indicators have pointed to a riled-up electorate, disgusted with the old invocations of inoffensiveness. The institutions of the status quo seem hollow and corrupt, from the Democratic National Committee to the government and the banks.

“A year ago, I would have voted for Hillary,” a 57-year-old white man from Florida named Russ Vitt told me on Wednesday, as we stood in the blazing square adjacent to City Hall that was perpetually filled with a motley array of protestors. “That was before I realized how stacked the deck was, how the system was rigged.” The Bernie Sanders candidacy had awakened something in Vitt, who wore a Feel the Bern ballcap and held a black dog on a leash. And now there was no going back.

It was a successful convention, rousing and well-orchestrated and slick, the way these things are supposed to go. The voices of the objectors, so loud at the beginning of the week, when they drowned out speakers with boos, grew steadily quieter as the days wore on, won over by Sanders’s endorsement or the Obamas’ speeches or simple weariness. Yet this constant undertow, this zeitgeist, this stench of rot could not be ignored. There is something in the air in 2016 that will not be placated, and whoever wins the election, stability may not be so easily restored.

The Occupiers camped out in a park just across the barriers erected around the convention zone. To get around the separating wall required a walk of more than a mile. As the sun set on the encampment, a couple dozen determined demonstrators kept up a steady stream of sign-waving and chanting next to the barrier (“I believe that we will win!”). Later, the wall would be briefly breached. I watched a group of young Trump supporters march through with a banner and an “End the Fed” sign, trying unsuccessfully to persuade the protestors that Trump was a social liberal who would shake up the system for the better.

“FUCK THE DNC,” said the letters in chalk on the street.

“THE PARTY CULT GETS YOU KOOL-AID.”

“WHAT’S THERMITE, AND WHY WAS IT FOUND AT GROUND ZERO?”

“NO MORE ELEPHANTS, NO MORE DONKEYS, WE VOTE FOR THE TREES NOW. #DEMEXIT”

“RIP DEMOCRACY.”

Further into the park, a large soundstage was projecting a movie about voting rights to a mellow crowd. There was a first-aid tent, plenty of Port-a-Potties, a communal tile painting reading “REVOLUTION.” Here, the smiley status-quo-ism inside the hall resonated as a deeply alienating complacency, a conspiracy to conceal the messed-up reality.

“Hey, Democrats, Your Party’s Over!” said a sign.

“Fascist Hillary Loves War!” said another.

At a tent on the lawn, a group of 20-somethings cooked chicken and hot dogs on a portable charcoal grill. “The general consensus of me and other people my age is a jaded attitude toward life,” said Cristian Galvan, a 20-year-old college student in Texas. “We grew up with 9/11, the recession, our parents suffering, nothing but disappointment with the institutions we’re supposed to be proud of.”