American politics, like the man who jumps from a plane and only then considers his parachute, is in a bad way. Joe Biden's administration has some important successes — a few of them even "bipartisan" — but the political system seems unable to gain substantial traction on a wide array of dire problems. Climate change, voter suppression, reproductive rights, gun violence — all these afflictions fester while Republicans flog Hunter Biden and fulminate, with no apparent irony, about the Biden "crime family."
If we reach for a cliché to describe this situation, we might alight on "fiddling while Rome burns" as a natural candidate, especially if our focus is on global warming. But fiddling is an activity that requites actual effort; this obstinate stasis in the face of existential challenges is an outrageously perverse refusal of action, undertaken simply because Republican politicians consider it to be in their political self-interest.
