“It’s even worse than it looks,” quipped a 2012 book by Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann.22 Such pessimism invited the reply, “That’s what you said last time.” Things have looked bad before without the world coming to an end. Why panic now? But it can equally be true that things were bad before, that things have gotten worse since, and that things may get even worse in the future. Like a man falling downstairs, each thump and tumble may be a prelude to the next, with the final crash still waiting for him even farther down. Since the election of Donald Trump, the hard and painful floor seems to
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