Two important reads.

The Atlantic.

‘It’s 2020, four years from now. The campaign is under way to succeed the president, who is retiring after a single wretched term. Voters are angrier than ever—at politicians, at compromisers, at the establishment. Congress and the White House seem incapable of working together on anything, even when their interests align.’

It goes from here. The author is Jonathan Rauch.

‘I could continue, but you get the gist. Yes, the political future I’ve described is unreal. But it is also a linear extrapolation of several trends on vivid display right now.’ 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/

And this, by Evan Osnos in The New Yorker.

‘Making a Killing.’

‘The greatest legal and political questions around guns today are not what types of weapons people will be allowed to use in the future but who can use them and why. On June 9th, a federal appeals court in California sided with gun-control advocates, ruling that local governments can set conditions on the right to carry concealed weapons. “This is the beginning of a battle, not the end,” Adam Winkler, a specialist in gun law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said. The Supreme Court has ruled that Americans have a right to “self-defense within the home,” but it has said nothing regarding what Americans can carry in public “It’s the next great frontier for the Second Amendment,” Winkler said.’

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/after-orlando-examining-the-gun-business