Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic (gift link), on the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection and the first year of the second Trump presidency:
We have been watching indecency triumph in the public sphere on
and off for more than 10 years now, since the moment Trump
insulted John McCain’s war record. For reasons that are quite
possibly too unbearable to contemplate, a large group of American
voters was not repulsed by such slander — they were actually
aroused by it — and our politics have not been the same. Much has
been said, including by me, about Trump’s narcissism, his
autocratic inclinations, his disconnection from reality, but not
nearly enough has been said about his fundamental indecency, the
characteristic that undergirds everything he says and does.
