Ezra Klein in the New York Times:
Donald Trump is returning, artificial intelligence is maturing, the planet is warming, and the global fertility rate is collapsing.
To look at any of these stories in isolation is to miss what they collectively represent: the unsteady, unpredictable emergence of a different world. Much that we took for granted over the last 50 years — from the climate to birthrates to political institutions — is breaking down; movements and technologies that seek to upend the next 50 years are breaking through.
Let’s begin with American politics. Trump is eight days from taking the oath of office for the second time, and America’s institutional storm walls are not, in 2025, what they were in 2017.
The Republican Party is meek, and Trump knows it. He would not have dared to send Senate Republicans names like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth for cabinet posts in his first term. Even beyond the party, he faces no mass resistance this time, nothing like the Women’s March that overwhelmed Washington in 2017. Democrats are dispirited and exhausted.
More here.
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