But do we even have the capacity to recognize horrible mistakes in real time anymore? Things that cut against everything we’ve pretended to stand for? Because increasingly, that’s all we’re doing, is coasting on fumes, still paying lip service to freedom, rule of law, honesty, a moral universe not just bent on advancing our own narrow partisan interests, but a greater good – while our leaders and those who enable them come close to rejecting all of the above on the ground. We’re losing it, and in record time. And this is just one example I could pick from 100 or so in the last 100-plus days. Every day, a fresh assault by this administration on what we used to think of ourselves as standing for. Which seemingly doesn’t want us to think of ourselves in those terms anymore. As aspiring authoritarians often don’t. Their power comes from shattering all former notions of yourself. Rather, they want you to think of yourself as they think of themselves, as a people capable — as they have proven again and again — of much greater cruelty. Willing and even eager to ignore our conscience and our Constitution and our Sermon on the Mount.