Perhaps it’s presumptuous of me to assume you have this feeling. I sure do. So does David Roberts, as he explains: 

Contemplating the latest [Orange Menace] revelations, the chaos in the US House, the bullshit hearings, the servicing of Putin … it just makes me feel genuinely crazy that anyone is voting for a Republican for anything. I barely even know how to argue. I just wanna say: LOOK AROUND.

Look at this motley collection of dimwits, apparatchiks, back-biters, liars, grifters, and narcissists. You want to be on their side? You want them in charge? I’ll never understand it. It’s crazy-making trying to pretend there’s some normal political dispute happening here.

To be a normie, news-following Democrat is basically to feel gaslit all the time, all day every day. I know pundits are supposed to affect this world-weary, seen-it-all attitude — actually having feelings is unforgivably naive — but some days it just all gets to me.

Like, we find out that [the Menace] is repulsed at the sight of a wounded soldier and instructs a general to hide the soldier away. That … should be it, right? Discussion over. Horrible person. No place in public life. Obviously. Wait. What? You say we’re just gonna roll on?!

You say House Republicans are mounting an impeachment based on nothing, purely out of revenge? OK, well, that’s that. Clearly wildly irresponsible people with no business being near the levers of power. Surely will be universally denounced. Wait. What? We’re just rolling on?

Hearings full of demonstrable lies, slandering longstanding public servants? Hostage-taking that could destroy the economy, with no coherent demands? Open corruption on the Supreme Court? Senators voting against impeachment out of fear for their safety? Just roll on.

It does something to a person, being forced to pretend that this is normal, just something else to scratch our chins about and debate on the morning shows. Just one more thing to slipstream into a both-sides template. The cognitive dissonance is corrosive.

Unquote.

While I’m here, amid all the right-wing anti-immigrant hysteria, this news might have been widely reported, but wasn’t (I wasn’t able to find the actual Census report it’s based on, but I doubt the libertarian Cato Institute made up the numbers).

• the number of immigrants in 2022 was nearly 2 million immigrants lower than the Census Bureau’s 2017 projection for 2022;
• over the last decade, the United States has seen the slowest growth in the immigrant share of the U.S. population since the 1960s;
• the immigrant share is growing slowly, even while the United States faces the lowest total population growth in its history.