Have you heard any good news lately? In the clamor of furious partisans, furious weather, and furious rhetoric, it doesn’t seem like it. Random conversations on the bus or in the checkout line, if they go beyond cute shoes or that book I’m holding, often end with sighs and head-shaking. Prices going up, kids don’t listen, can’t afford my mortgage, worried about my health coverage. Wall Street banksters, rotten Republicans, demon Democrats—the world’s a mess.

The Ford-Kavanaugh hearing on Sept. 27 was one of the most dramatic days in recent American history. It featured pathos, chest beating, and heart wringing, elements of tragedy that Aristotle once described as “catharsis”—the purging or cleansing of emotion. Only, at the end, no one felt cleansed. It was a terrible day, all commentators agreed: terrible for our country, for justice, for honor, for due process, for common decency.

On March 15 of this year, a celebrated footbridge in Sweetwater, Fla., crashed into the evening news. The bridge was a key component of Florida International University, linking the main campus with student housing on the other side of a seven-lane boulevard. The design expressed forward thinking and innovation: Though it resembled a suspension bridge, the cables and tower were more for dramatic effect. The actual support came from a series of concrete trusses (triangles), repurposed for a new concept dubbed the “reinvented I-beam.”

One hot August day in 1902, a farmer was walking beside the Iron Mountain Railroad in Washington County, Mo. He paused when he heard the #4 approaching Big River Bridge, and when the clatter and rumble of the train had passed, he heard a weak wailing from the river. Climbing down to the bank, he noticed a “telescoping valise,” a kind of long squared suitcase, washed up in the shallows. The sound was coming from inside. It turned out to be a baby boy, about 5 days old, bruised and dented from his 50-foot fall off the train, but not seriously injured.

In a lecture at the Harvard Kennedy School last year, Arthur Brooks, of the American Enterprise Institute, analyzed the state of public discourse: “We don’t have an anger problem in American politics. We have a contempt problem in American politics.” Though “Contempt” was not the subject of the lecture, audio engineers chose those comments to feature in a promotional video on Facebook. Within a very short time, the video had received over 12 million views—making Brooks think he might have touched a nerve.

In the last week of 2016, I lined up at the box office to see Rogue One, the Star Wars prequel. I had not heard much about it beforehand, so I was startled by the appearance of Grand Moff Tarkin (villain of Star Wars: A New Hope), played by the original actor from 1977. Peter Cushing had been dead for 22 years, but his head was masterfully superimposed on the body of a live actor. The appearance of a young Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in the last moment of the film enhanced the creep factor, as her death on Dec. 27 was still headline news.

How did an unassuming Sacramento lawyer become the most powerful man in America?