A few years ago, depressed by COVID-19 and Donald Trump’s presidency, I called an old friend. He is the most optimistic person I know, and I needed cheering up. Unfortunately, he was as despairing as I was. Everything, we agreed, seemed to be falling apart or becoming fodder for bitter partisan fights.
Was there anything, we wondered, that hadn’t become toxic? Sports? No, not with Trump bashing the NFL and with other leagues taking overt political stances. What about the arts? Maybe they’d escaped our polarized world and might offer us a way of . . . well, getting along. So we considered going to a gallery or listening to some live music, maybe taking in a play. Then we remembered that everything was closed. More gloom.
I thought of that conversation while reading All Things Move, Jeannie Marshall’s small...
Dan Dunsky was executive producer of The Agenda with Steve Paikin, from 2006 to 2015, and is the founder of Dunsky Insight.
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