Whether one watches Fox News or MSNBC, reads The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, it has become difficult to view the United States as anything but a game of political dodgeball, with two opposing teams that loath one another trying to knock the other out by whistling partisan fastballs at any vulnerable opponent. Gone are the days of what Richard Nixon liked to call “the great silent majority” — a phrase he appropriated from Homer, who used it to describe the dead. There is not much silence in politics these days. Nor is there much reasonable discourse. Screeching has largely taken its place.

The proliferation of lying in the body politic and certain news media has reached proportions so great that America finds itself on the brink of a revolution that threatens our entire system of government.

In 2020, Donald Trump won Kansas over Joe Biden 56%-42%. In 2016, he bested Hillary Clinton there 56%-36%. And last Tuesday, by a similar margin, 59%-41%, Kansans voted to keep state constitutional provisions that protect abortion rights.

There’s a reason for the simultaneous mourning and celebration of the lives of a basketball player and an actress, both out of the public eye for years. Nichelle Nichols, 89, and Bill Russell, 88, were born during the Great Depression into a society that defined them as second-class citizens simply because they were Black.

It’s a truism of American politics that public frustration with the two-party system periodically erupts into a call for another option.

Should Chicago-area fans of professional golf boycott the Saudi Arabia-funded LIV Golf Invitational being held at Rich Harvest Farms in September?

They will write about it — the sports commentators and the sports historians — and the fans, or the older ones at least, will talk about it when they talk of summer and baseball. I’ll write about Vin Scully’s voice too, that honeyed tenor voice.

From Day One, President Joe Biden’s immigration policy has been largely incoherent. It’s now verging on a crisis.

On TikTok you’re liable to find restaurant recommendations, lip-syncing snippets and false claims stating that COVID-19 vaccines contain aborted fetal tissue and that crisis actors faked the Uvalde school shooting. TikTok, along with Instagram, is where Gen Z searches for information and entertainment. They often come up with a blurry mix between fact and fiction.

The Cleveland Browns’ regular season won’t begin until Sept. 11 when they play the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, but the team has already notched the most unconscionable of victories.

The nation now knows, and the world: Kansas remains a free state.

As Attorney General Merrick Garland and Justice Department professionals ponder charging Donald Trump with felony charges for his apparent crimes related to his failed putsch at the Capitol during the electoral vote count as documented in detail by the Jan. 6 committee, the great grifter has no such fears about state charges from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who either chickened out or didn’t care enough to fight.

Oil producers from the OPEC+ group meet on Wednesday to agree to the next step in their market management. For the first time in a year, there is no clear policy for them to rubber stamp. That could make for an interesting (virtual) gathering.

Even as Democrats reel from draconian impact of Republicans’ success at stacking the U.S. Supreme Court, the Biden administration is in danger of leaving scores of lower-court federal judgeships vacant by the end of this year — at which point, a Republican Senate might be in place to continue pushing the bench far to the right of America.