So, What's with All the Malthusian Terror?

Things look pretty good at home, too. There are things I would prefer to see done differently, and some important problems that are not being treated as seriously as I would prefer. But the nation is at peace, and it is prospering. (For the most part.) Americans have developed a weird, cultish, caesaropapist attitude toward the presidency, without ever stopping to consider that the nation has thrived under the administration of a succession of very different men with very different political agendas: Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and, now, Donald Trump: The fact that America just keeps on trucking irrespective of the qualities or character of the man in the Oval Office ought to make us think rather less of the presidency and rather more of ourselves — and think better of our neighbors, our businesses, our public institutions, our civil society, and much else — including the citizens who do not share our political views.So why the mass hysteria?