I was finishing getting dinner prepared — always a shaky moment for me personally — when news of Trump’s indictment dropped, leading to a barrage of questions from our older son. Some of the questions I couldn’t really answer because I didn’t know (“I’m not sure, I don’t think they’ve actually said what he’s being charged with”), some of them required a delicate bit of circumlocution (“Well, imagine how mamá would feel if I was hiding the fact that I had the same kind of relationship with another woman”), and some led to still more questions (“Do you know what ‘allegedly’ means?”). We mostly let it drop during dinner.

All of the for and against arguments feel so pre-rehearsed at this point. Is this a relief? A win for democracy? The final blow to cleave the nation? I have no idea.

In the early days of the Trump era, possibly even before he took office or even won the nomination, I remember thinking how disgraceful it was that he even managed to get that far. Obviously, we’re well past that now, but this remains such a great indignity: there were countless opportunities to stop this and none of them were taken by people who know better. That moral failing feels like one we’re not coming back from any time soon.