This is the state of play in America in February 2020. We are all Susan Collins, and we are all Rob Manfred, throwing our hands up to the sky in the face of flagrant wrongdoing and muttering to the world, “Whaddya are you gonna do?” It feels very much not coincidental that this is happening in baseball and American politics at the same time. It’s the culture — win at all costs, and any rules or resistance is “futile.” It’s why the cynical, amoral strategy of Mike Bloomberg — which would have been scorned just a few years ago as “buying the presidency” — suddenly makes sense, as we all struggle for oxygen in this new moral vacuum.