WHY TRUMP IS MORE POPULAR THAN EVER:

There was, I like fondly to imagine, a different course that might have been taken here. It is just possible, I suppose, that members of my profession could have exercised their reasoning faculties to decide what in the administration was good, what was bad, what was unremarkable or indistinguishable from what any modern president would do, what was painfully idiotic, what was, perhaps, evil. We chose not to exercise this responsibility. Instead we decided to indulge in our live-action roleplaying fantasies about being brave selfless journos taking on a mean demagogue because we love the Constitution so much.

Trump’s singular gift is his ability to reveal our ruling class, sector by sector, as being not simply incompetent, and not merely evil, but — most damagingly — utterly ridiculous.