When was the last time you tried to talk to a recalcitrant child? I don’t have kids in the house anymore, but sometimes I volunteer for the privilege of grandmothering a family in my church. Two years ago, on a camping trip, I had to correct the boy of the family, an 11-year-old who was going through a “difficult” stage.

I don’t understand anti-Semitism, and don’t believe I’m afflicted with it. That’s no credit to me, any more than I should pat myself on the back for not having cancer. Anti-Semitism is a cancer, an inexplicable blot on human consciousness. It’s different from every other prejudice—none are as deeply rooted or pervasive. Many decent, talented individuals harbor the disease, including personal acquaintances. For example:

• Someone I know subscribes to online newsletters that regularly report the supposed nefarious doings of “Zionist agents.”

I write on the cusp of a momentous event—the most crucial midterm election of my lifetime. It replaces the previous most-crucial midterm of my lifetime, which occurred in 2014. Farther back in memory is the third most-crucial midterm of 2010. But no sooner will Nov. 6 come and go than the general election of 2020 will loom like a tidal wave of crucial importance. Every two years the stakes crawl higher, with more lives and futures at risk. Everything we hold dear is on the line, threatened with extinction if the other side wins.

Or maybe not.

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.