The System

In the August 24 NEW YORKER, Lewis Menand wrote about Joan Didion and her insight into why media focus on sensational events. "It's not because the stories tell us who we are. It's because they don't.  They leave unexamined and untouched the class antagonisms and economic failures that are the underlying causes of socially destructive events. Personal stories feed the American illusion that the system is never the cause of anything."

This is Republican doctrine: each of us is solely responsible for whatever happens, and the carefully constructed system that helps to create us, our environment and Donald Trump remains invisible.