I was in middle school when my father came home from his job in 1984. A fairly conservative man, he would have described himself as an Eisenhower Republican. He voted for Kennedy. He was a Reagan Republican, but he was never a hardliner. He came home from his average workday and for the first time in years, I heard him curse: “If any of this is true, I’m not going to vote for a damn Republican again.” He was talking about Iran-Contra. That fire didn’t last very long, and he was able to move back to being a regular Republican.

It has been more than 30 years since then. The last few times I have been home, one network dominates the dial: Fox News. At the local retirement community, the same: the only show on the TV anywhere is Fox News, at all hours. In public spaces and beyond.

In an editorial written for the New York Times, Kara Swisher expresses a similar feeling: