By fall 2019—a year that began with the government shutdown, and for me had initially seemed to culminate with my summer departure from the NSC—I had started to fear that the U.S. was stuck in a period of profound and dangerous disruption. It was not just that Trump was embarrassing our country in press conferences abroad and playing a tin-pot dictator at home. It was that the disaffection, decay, and divisions that had given rise to Trump and the MAGA phenomenon were getting worse. They threatened to corrode the infrastructure of our democracy, affecting not just the oft-maligned government
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