Remember the good old days — by which I mean just a few weeks ago — when there was hope and talk that Donald Trump’s 36-year-old son-in-law would play the angel to Steve Bannon’s devil, tempering the president’s policies and keeping his crudest and most belligerent tendencies in check?

Well, the devil is running rampant in the Trump administration so far. The angel looks ever paler and frailer, with a halo that’s hard to find.

Jared Kushner, where are you?

I ask that specifically, in terms of Trump’s inner circle and Bannon’s obviously greater sway. But I ask it in a broader sense as well. Where among Trump’s sanest advisers and the most reasonable Republicans in Congress is the degree of pushback that’s called for? Where are the sufficiently loud voices of dissent? Right now Trump has too many mum collaborators too content to hope for the best. I put Kushner in that pack.

Bannon certainly knows how to manipulate the president and get what he wants. He’s Trump’s unabashed Iago, whispering sweet fictions about the magnitude of the “movement” that the president is leading and specifying how to feed it. He has a seat on the National Security Council. Kushner has his hand on Ivanka Trump’s seat.