But you rarely hear rationalizations of that sort any more. Now the open-secret premise usually leads to a follow-up question. If “everyone” knew what was going on, why didn’t anyone do more to stop it? And this in turn has led to institutional and personal self-examinations.

In the best circumstances, organizations have asked: How could we have failed that badly? What should we do differently? Individuals have asked: What should I have known, that I merely suspected (or willfully ignored)? What more could I have done, based on what I actually knew? For powerful illustrations in this last category from members of the Atlantic family, involving episodes at The New Republic, see this by Michelle Cottle, this by Peter Beinart, and this by Franklin Foer.

In the worst circumstances, details have piled up about organizations that made deals, payoffs, or threats to keep ugly specifics of what they knew from getting in the way of their business plans. Thus the tens of millions of dollars in harassment settlements while Bill O’Reilly was still a Fox cash cow; thus the payoffs and investigations by the Weinstein organization to placate or intimidate women who might otherwise go public with their complaints against Harvey Weinstein.

In all these cases, the malefactor remains most to blame. But “it was an open secret” now properly seems a broadened indictment, of all those who quietly let him get away with it, rather than an excuse.

***

The details in Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury make it unforgettable, and potentially historic. We’ll see how many of them fully stand up, and in what particulars, but even at a heavy discount, it’s a remarkable tale.

But what Wolff is describing is an open secret.

Based on the excerpts now available, Fire and Fury presents a man in the White House who is profoundly ignorant of politics, policy, and anything resembling the substance of perhaps the world’s most demanding job. He is temperamentally unstable. Most of what he says in public is at odds with provable fact, from “biggest inaugural crowd in history” onward. Whether he is aware of it or not, much of what he asserts is a lie. His functional vocabulary is markedly smaller than it was 20 years ago; the oldest person ever to begin service in the White House, he is increasingly prone to repeat anecdotes and phrases. He is aswirl in foreign and financial complications. He has ignored countless norms of modern governance, from the expectation of financial disclosure to the importance of remaining separate from law-enforcement activities. He relies on immediate family members to an unusual degree; he has an exceptionally thin roster of experienced advisers and assistants; his White House staff operations have more in common with an episode of The Apprentice than with any real-world counterpart. He has a shallower reserve of historical or functional information than previous presidents, and a more restricted supply of ongoing information than many citizens. He views all events through the prism of whether they make him look strong and famous, and thus he is laughably susceptible to flattering treatment from the likes of Putin and Xi Jinping abroad or courtiers at home.