This will be my last column.

I’ve been writing on The Los Angeles Times twice a week since April 2020, which means over 150 weeks and over 300 columns on everything from Donald Trump and Joe Biden to the uses and abuses of American history, the immorality of out-of-control income inequality, the history of call waiting music, the new plague of mosquitoes in Southern California, and how the US Constitution was violated. Before that, I was editor of The Times editorial page for 11 years.

That’s a lot of opinions.

It has not been an easy time to write about the world. Considered opinion is out of fashion. Readers are angry and polarized. Democracy is in danger, extremism is on the rise and a new Cold War is upon us. Armies are fighting again in Europe and climate change is receding. No one has much patience for nuance or to listen to

those with whom they disagree. A combative certainty rules the day in the United States, especially on the right but also, all too often, among progressives.

In the world of journalism, we live in an age of clicks and financial problems. And in terms of public opinion, those who shout the loudest are rewarded, as you can see every night on the cable news networks. Politeness, compromise, forbearance and other dull concepts of smoother days are derided as forms of surrender.

Democrats and Republicans increasingly see each other as close

i.e

minded, dishonest and less intelligent than other Americans, according to a Pew Research Center report last year. Even worse, 72% of Republicans view Democrats as much or slightly more immoral than other Americans, up from 47% in 2016. Sixty-three percent of Democrats say the same about Republicans, up from 35%.

About a year after I started writing the column, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote his last regular op-ed. He said he regretted being mean too often,

other

easy shooting at political opponents. He feared that columnists were adding to the toxic tone of American discourse. And that we all too often ignored ambivalence and ambiguity.

I took that to heart and tried not to do the same. Not that I haven’t expressed my fair share of outrage at, say, the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, and at climate change, political hypocrisy, and what I see as the wrong and dangerous policies of ultra-conservatives in Washington

.

But I also tried to speak out for the kind of reasonable cooperation and rational engagement that could help get American democracy back on track.

That didn’t win everyone over. I still regularly received hate mail. I hope you get the Chinese virus and suffer because you really lie to people,

wrote a reader.

(Admittedly, I just called Trump “vengeful” and irresponsible and averse to complicated thinking.) And this one: “Shut up, kike.” And libturd, pathetic, FOS.

But I also got enough thoughtful responses, including from people who disagreed with my views, to know that there are still Americans who value serious discussion of complicated social issues. My faith in people was battered but not broken.

Looking back on my own mistakes, sometimes I didn’t take a

strong

stand enough, fail

to come firmly to one side or the other. Sometimes shade

,

ambiguity and calls for bourgeois discourse

necessary; other times

,

they’re just cops.

The columns I enjoyed writing the most were the ones where I tried to raise topics that were off the beaten track and didn’t lend themselves to easy answers, where I tried to listen to different viewpoints with an open mind before drawing my own conclusions. .

Should Boston Fly a Christian Flag from City Hall? Should the Supreme Court be barred from declaring laws unconstitutional? After 22 years in prison, had a South African anti-apartheid fighter who was released early in exchange for abjuring violence done the right thing?

A

topic on which I could not be unbiased was Donald Trump and those who empowered and embraced him. Trump, Trumpism and the threat they pose to the United States are the defining issues of our time.

When Trump first took office, I wrote

in an editorial series, Our Dishonest President, that what was troubling about the new president wasn’t

so much

his views, policies or ideology, but Trump himself.

He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-respect, so unattached to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation, I wrote.

Trump’s indictment in New York

for alleged falsification of business documents,

his arraignment this month in the federal classified documents case, his two charges and now his terrifying attempts to regain power confirm that assessment. His incessant lies and his furious efforts to undermine the 2020 election show that he is deviant and extremely dangerous.

Perhaps my biggest regret about the column is that I didn’t write enough about climate change, which experts believe will not only lead to more of the raging storms, droughts, deadly wildfires and heat waves we’ve already been accustomed to, but

So

very likely to famine, mass migration, collapsing economies and war. It’s the biggest threat facing the planet, but I, like others, have written about it only sporadically, and often as if it were just one of many fun issues like taxes, crime, or schools. Maybe I shouldn’t have written about anything else.

And a final word on the state of journalism: many newspapers

shrink and falter, local news faces an existential crisis, investigative reporting has been scaled back, opinion journalism has too often been reduced to swear words, and objective, honest, credible reporting of events is under attack from the right and the left.

These are dangerous developments because journalists provide much of the information and context that enable citizens to participate informedly and effectively in a democracy. Let’s stand up and support great reporting where it’s still being done.

This column has run its course. It was an honor to write it. I want to miss it. As I go on, I keep wondering what, when and if anything will get us back on track as a country. I’m not sure we can continue down this path of dysfunction and discord for much longer.

@nick_goldberg