I’ve detected a new note in mainstream opinion writing these past few months, in big liberal outlets like the Guardian and the New York Times, which I’d broadly characterize as “whistling past the graveyard.” You’ll notice now that columns and op-ed pieces are larded with little asides, varyingly apologetic or ha-ha funny or frankly cynical, vaguely acknowledging the terrible, terrible straits we’re in, collectively…but then the piece kind of resumes its previous direction of travel, makes some trivial point, and nothing further is said about the matter of greater consequence engulfing us all. It’s like some remnant of integrity or sense compels the writer to at least gesture at the thing that’s in front of us, but they can’t or don’t want to take it in in its full enormity, and so they just move on to the TV review or the analysis of fashions at the US Open or whatever. I can’t unsee the pattern now, and it scares the crap out of me.