An I am not talking just about Trump (othe Presidents have misused it as well), but the notion of the Presidential Pardon itself. As an outsider, I find it quite odd that the Presidents have such an outstanding power.

To be clear, I don't love any expanded Executive powers, the pardon power among them. But these uses - even including the pardon of Beau - felt like the least corrupt wielding of said power.

But I think most people in the world today understand that something is amiss. Even as we are told again and again that things like violent crimes are at a low, that the streets are safer than ever, that illegal behaviours occur less often than ever, we still feel threatened, and that feeling overwhelms the weight of any amount of evidence to the contrary. 

You could say it's a symptom of the way we consume news, and that might be true except it seems as if a lot of people don't consume news at all, and they still feel threatened. Maybe the issue is that we really are all in danger, not because of any one violent group or country, but because of the way we're choking our planet right now.

In any case, it makes sense to me from a biological standpoint that when we feel threatened, we act more conservatively. We become more tribal. We look for "stronger" leaders who act more decisively. In other words, our survival instincts are guiding us to do the very opposite of what might be best to ensure we actually do endure as a species. 

It feels likely to me that we're going to end up with more MTGs in government and fewer AOCs. It's probably the reason why countries continue to skew towards totalitarianism and away from democracy. It's troubling because I don't think we have the collective willpower to change course. I feel incredibly worried for the kids living today, including my own. I can't see a way for them to avoid a lot of hardship, and it sucks because we could have prevented it but have failed at every step.