While America Watches the Spectacle, the Republic Goes Unattended

Six urgent questions that should dominate the 2026 midterms— but won’t, unless citizens demand it.

I am a psychiatrist by training, and I can tell you that what is happening to our national attention right now has a clinical name. It is called perseveration—the compulsive, involuntary repetition of a response regardless of whether it remains useful. Patients who perseverate get stuck on a single thought or action and cannot redirect their focus to wh…