An aggravated cognitive numbness is drifting across America. We wake up clicking through new scandals, new insults and new eruptions that dominate our screens, but very few of them make life any better for anyone. If Democrats express concern, the Red Hat crowd calls it Trump Derangement Syndrome. If Republicans are up in arms, you’ll often hear of Trump Cult Dupes. Neither feel very good, do they? But this moment requires neither denial nor insults, nor timidity. It requires clear thinking and the courage to follow where clear thought leads.

Meanwhile the real problems, the ones that will shape the next decade of American life, move forward quietly while we look elsewhere.

The litany is long and diverse.

We are watching private wealth exert more direct pressure on public power than at any time in recent decades. Consider a tech billionaire mixing a cryptocurrency scheme with a national political campaign. Consider pardons linked to private financial interests. Consider a Supreme Court whose ideological imbalance is no longer subtle and whose decisions reveal a willingness to treat similar issues very differently depending on who is involved.

Add to that a Department of Justice increasingly pulled into political fights, a media landscape merging into fewer hands and major political actors shaping public policy through online platforms instead of through accountable institutions. The public square now sits on privately controlled servers.

Internationally, the........

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