Events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control. Donald Trump, Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, random bomb attacks.
Tyler Kent was a horrible man. He was a rabid anti-communist who believed that the Jews had been behind the Russian Revolution.
In the battle for Kobane on the Syrian border, everyone talks about the enemy - IS - and the frightening ideas that drive them. No one talks about the Kurdish defenders and what inspires them.
There is a lurking sense that there is a kind of seedy corruption underlying a lot of public life today. But while journalism does a very good job of describing that corruption, it is failing to bring it into a bigger focus. To explain what it is all about.
In 'Mad Men,' we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck.
Nobody trusts anyone in authority today. It is one of the main features of our age. Wherever you look, there are lying politicians, crooked bankers, corrupt police officers, cheating journalists and double-dealing media barons, sinister children's entertainers, rotten and greedy energy companies, and out-of-control security services.
In many cruise ships, there are hundreds of workers from some of the poorest countries on earth who are paid minute amounts of actual wages - sometimes less than two dollars a day - to attend to the passengers' needs.
The latest rule is: you cannot have protectionism - otherwise you will get a world war. Other rules say you cannot have collective ideas that involve the surrender of the individual to the group - otherwise, you get totalitarianism or, even worse, religion.
I have a suspicion that the politicians' revival of the old behaviourist ideas and techniques will be helped and reinforced by a powerful ally - the machines we have built. The computers.
I have always thought that pandas, in evolutionary terms, are the most sophisticated animals in the world. They cannot look after themselves; they are useless at reproducing. But to compensate, they have managed to persuade the most advanced creatures on the planet - human beings - to care for their every need.
At its heart, 'South Park' has a touching faith in human beings: that despite their absurdities and flaws, people have the capacity to create a better world.
When you bring God into politics, very strange things happen.
