To paraphrase Neil Young, here is a new essay that’s guaranteed to bring you right down. It’s by Russ Roberts.

The current state of the country and the current state of political and intellectual conversation depresses me in a way that it never has before.

I share his despondent mood. Here are what I see as the causes.

1. For a conservative-flavored libertarian, or libertarian-flavored conservative, the Overton Window is moving away from our views all over the place. Health care policy obviously, where Obamacare is most likely to be replaced by full-on single payer. Fiscal policy in general, where tax and spend (or maybe just spend and spend) is entrenched. Trade policy, where protectionism now has bastions in both parties.

Mainstream economics will soon be all about inequality, secular stagnation (i.e. the theory that government needs to spend because everyone else is saving too much), climate change, race/gender bias, market failure, and market power. In other words, reinforcing rather than counteracting what Bryan Caplan calls anti-market bias in the general population.

The Trump Presidency is not the solution to this Overton Window trend, and one can argue that it is part of the problem. The Republican Party won about as much as it possibly could last November, but in terms of American football, the Republicans have not moved the ball. When the Democrats get it back, they will have excellent field position.

2. The people who care most about politics want to have their outrage validated. The media cater to that desire. Does the sight of neo-Nazis marching validate your outrage as a progressive? The progressive media will make as big as story as possible out of it. Do the antics on campus validate your outrage as a conservative? The conservative media will make as big a story as possible out of it. This reinforces the destructive feedback loop to which Roberts refers.

3. The Internet encourages immediate reactions. As articles appear, your instinct is to share those with which you agree and denounce those with which you disagree You don’t take the time to think through an issue in a nuanced way. In fact, stories come and go so fast that by the time you think about something, it is no longer being discussed.

4. The U.S. lacks an external threat that is widely recognized and powerful. Sure, some people think that Muslim radicalism is an existential threat. Some people think that climate change is an existential threat. But for an external threat to lead us to pull together, there needs to be a consensus about the threat. Without the consensus, these sorts of fears instead exacerbate divisions. Russ and I worry that the outrage cycle is an existential threat. But that is an internal issue, not an external one.

In conclusion, it looks as though the country is in what some have called a cold Civil War. That is unsettling enough. Moreover, it seems highly probable that the left will come out on top, and that it will in victory show no signs of heeding Lincoln’s call for “malice toward none and charity to all.”