This ship is sinking
I ’ve been looking at this all wrong. All this time I’ve been viewing this Trumpian madness as temporary and fixable. Yes, we have malignant fools steering the ship now, but soon they’ll be undone by their own incompetence and tossed overboard. This can’t go on. Right? Wrong. This situation looks to be a lot less temporary than I’d hoped. Not long ago we were sailing along with fair winds and a following sea, and then somehow the crazies mutinied and abruptly changed course. Now we’re headed straight into the storm of the century. Also, there are icebergs. The gale-force winds don’t quite drown out the maniacal laughter of the flaccid old Ahab up on the bridge. This will end, as all things do, but it will not end soon, and it will not end well. I just finished Ian McEwan’s latest novel, “ What We Can Know. ” In it, he imagines a historian 100 years hence, surveying this time with a mix of nostalgia and incredulity. Humanity is still limping along in 2125, in a chastened worl...