4 things

Reason Takes Up Arms: How Best to Face the Total War of the Anti-Culture is a Touchstone article by R. J. Snell from a couple of years back. Some of the events of the current moment seem to confirm the author's analysis. He takes in Charles Taylor's concept of "exclusive humanism," Phillip Rieff's "anti-Culture," in order to posit what might at first seem a somewhat paranoid understanding of things. But the last two years only seem to confirm his analysis.

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David French at The Dispatch tells the story of the religious freedom culture wars. I read this after reading Snell article in Touchstone, which helps to put French's description of the religious freedom wars into a larger frame.

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Also in The Dispatch, and referenced by French, is Yuval Levin's Don't Panic, Just Worry. The election of the wrong dude in November is probably not the end of the world, American democracy, or all things noble and good. We should leave off the apocalyptic rhetoric.

This rush to apocalyptic rhetoric is both a cause and an effect of the paralyzing polarization of our politics. It is a way to sustain the partisan intensity and justify the outrageous levels of mutual animosity required to keep all arguments at a fever pitch on cable news, on social media, and on the campaign trail. Almost all of us fall into it sometimes (I’m certain I myself have done so over the years). 

And because our polarization often is not substantive but affective now, not about policy but about tribe, it requires the conviction that rule by the other party would guarantee utter ruin, and so requires us to raise the stakes of every political decision point beyond all bounds. 

Such logic also serves as an argument for suspending the usual rules and norms. If the fate of everything we care about hinges on winning this round, then no holds can be barred, and surely this is no time for bargaining, compromise, or incrementalism. And if it’s always such an emergency, then the rules cease to exist at all. 

Levin is like the anti-Cassandra, telling us that we are not doomed after all, but does anyone want to listen? 

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Peggy Noonan affirms what I've been thinking as well. That things have "gone south" for Donald Trump. Her article is behind the WSJ paywall, but this quote comes from Dreher's column at The American Conservative: 

Something shifted this month. Donald Trump’s hold on history loosened, and may be breaking. In some new way his limitations are being seen and acknowledged, and at a moment when people are worried about the continuance of their country and their own ability to continue within it. He hasn’t been equal to the multiple crises. Good news or bad, he rarely makes any situation better. And everyone kind of knows.

I don't think that it's inevitable he loses the coming election, but inevitability is looming on the horizon.