Fourth, Trump does have two real achievements to his credit, two campaign promises kept. One is the successful nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The other — a more provisional win, but still a striking one — is the rapid falloff of illegal crossings on the southern border, seemingly driven more by the mere threat of tougher enforcement and increased deportations than by any dramatic policy shift.

This drop-off is a good thing, period, because it means that fewer people are undertaking a dangerous journey that falls afoul of United States law, and because it suggests that America might actually be able to establish more control over migration than many of our supposed wise men have long claimed. But it’s a particularly good thing given Trump’s tendency to demagogue the issue: If illegal immigration weren’t declining, he would face increasing pressure to turn ever-more-draconian, which would set off a dangerous cycle of protest and backlash in an already polarized environment.

Which leads me to the fifth piece of good news: As fraught and strange as our political moment may be, thus far the anti-Trump side has not yet fallen into the kind of madness that swept through our politics in the 1960s and 1970s.