The question for so many is the quality of work, the future of work under globalism and de-industrialization. A typical example is a person who had a good factory job making 80,000 dollars, with health insurance, who was able to send his kids possibly to college and then he or she suddenly loses that job because the factory closed down. And now that same person is bagging groceries at Walmart and making $35,000.

Maybe Santa Claus is real. Here's the problem: reality.

I think we should be alarmed, watchful, and, as journalists, rigorous and fearless. I think we should be alert.

Disaster can take a nation by surprise, slowly, and then all at once.

I am an adult; deliberately naïve, dewy-eyed optimism is not the proper posture for a responsible adult, is it?

I would like to see Russia not invade Ukraine or put pressure on and threaten Baltic states. But we live in the real and existing world.

There are systemic, painful problems of globalization and de-industrialization that cannot be solved with a phone call or a tweet or an angry speech or trying to isolate the press and the first amendment. Sooner or later, the Donald Trump show, which is a projection of strength and authority, will have to deliver to his voters. And if he doesn't, in very real terms, if he can't supersede a situation where a president cut the unemployment rate in half, if he can't do better, if he can't open factories and all the rest that he's promised, then I think he's in trouble.