POLITICS sometimes needs melodrama. And at certain times politics is itself a melodrama. Like the TV soap operas we watch, one after another—the plots predictable, kitsch unabashedly trading in simplistic moralizing—politics as melodrama can speak about “morals” and at the same moment be unconvincing.

Melodrama is built by “monopathy”, a word I take from Oliver Marchant (who in turn was drawing on Robert Heilman) in his excellent ess