What 20th Century French philosopher, historian, and political activist Michel Foucault (no relation to the 19th Century physicist Léon Foucault of pendulum fame) said here is entirely correct, and it’s what has made life in America so jarring over the past decade.

Since the origin of democracy in ancient Greece, and certainly since the founding of the United States 250 years ago, there have always been rival political parties with their competing philosophies on important matters like the proper role of government in our lives.  Until recently, however, we lived within certain norms and boundaries that made America generally worthy of praise.

Yet today, we have somehow arrived at a point of pure insanity in the form of presidential criminality and the near complete absence of rule of law, as supported by almost half of U.S. voters.

For the first time in our lives, tens of millions of decent people are waking up to find that our “dominant cultural settings” are not what we believed them to be; in fact, they no longer exist at all.

Our Dominant Cultural Settings