Rotten to the core: I will be mercifully brief. News that members of this White House as well as American soldiers have used privileged information about foreign policy to place winning bets and play the stock market to their advantage reflects both a national addiction to online gambling and an almost cavalier attitude toward corruption that together cast a shadow not only on a mendacious president but on all who serve him. Before America’s immovable partisan divide, such allegations would have brought Congress to attention. But as it is now, the only congressional bipartisanship regards the Epstein scandal. This president has spent much of his second term posting insults to social media, with the Obamas as apes, India as a hellhole, Europe in the throes of civilizational erasure — hate upon hate, bigotry upon bigotry, vicious ignorance enough to fill all the space from sea to shining sea, and well beyond. If Americans otherwise estranged from political goings-on want a true sense of civilizational erasure, they need only crack open their windows. The stench will do the rest.