The dominant tenor of contemporary American politics would seem to be mistrust. Trumpism is its purest expression, impermeable even to the humiliation of an electoral rebuke; the majority of Trump supporters still doubt the legitimacy of Joe Biden's victory. Diehards in Arizona are, more than half a year after the election, searching fruitlessly for bamboo fibres on ballots to prove that they were flown in from Asia. Conservative news outlets remain committed to the lucrative business of constructing hermetically sealed echo chambers.
