We who experience these events through the media are infinitely better off than people for whom they are life-or-death reality.  But even at our remove, it’s hard not to feel beaten up and helpless.  This feeling is amplified by the media’s economic self-interest in keeping us anxious and riveted, and by our addiction to our ubiquitous screens.  Steven Pinker’s argument – that this is actually the least violent time in human history – may be factually accurate, and there are plenty of genocides within living memory to put today’s torrent of rotten news in perspective.

The spirit of John Hancock and his gang of aristocrats——optimists all who risked their lives and property as signatories to revolution——is rare. Regrettably, that optimistic spirit——that spirit that drives all American progress——has been at historic odds with an uncharitable impulse among the American people: a selfishness that paradoxically afflicts both the afflicters and the afflicted, as we see in this election season.