Cheer Up. History Will Forget This Dismal Campaign.

With its insults, lies, rancor and racism, this has been the most depressing election cycle of my lifetime. So it’s worth reminding ourselves that there’s plenty of good news for the U.S. of 2016, and that the good news probably far outweighs the bad.

When historians look back on our era, the Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump campaign probably will be a modest footnote to broader and mostly uninterrupted positive trends. For instance, in a remarkably short time, America has gone from clunky, joke-worthy cell phones, to having most of its citizens connected to much of the world’s information, and to most of the world’s people, at a moment’s notice. That is actually one of the greatest achievements of human history, even if we are far from realizing its full practical benefits.