The current presidential campaign is becoming a grand drama of dueling versions of reality, with us, the voters, sitting in the jury box, hoping to witness some semblance of justice.

It’s difficult to predict how a Ukrainian defeat would reverberate. Abandoning allies in a humiliating fashion has unpredictable consequences. When we cut lose South Vietnam in the 1970s, it catalyzed an anti-Western offensive around the world, and Joe Biden’s botched pull-out from Afghanistan may have tempted Putin into Ukraine.

In the aftermath of “from the river to the sea” anti-Israel protests on many college campuses and in the streets comes a perfectly timed book by Johns Hopkins University Professor Benjamin Ginsberg, titled “The New American Anti-Semitism: The Left, The Right, and the Jews.”

Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine began in 2004 with a covert attempt to subvert Ukraine’s 2004 national election and install a Putin puppet. Putin failed. Suddenly, the Russian despot had a czarist nightmare on his border — a food-exporting Slavic state with democratic aspirations and high-tech expertise.

Ukraine’s desire to be a sovereign state of its own and, in particular, to align itself with the hated West is intolerable for Putin. He’s explained at great length why he believes Ukraine has no legitimacy as an independent nation, and his model of a neo-tsarism where elections are fake and opposition leaders die in Arctic prisons would be threatened by a Ukraine that successfully embraced a version of the Western model.

In this age of individualism, just saying no at the start may help a lot of us avoid another addiction, this one to the blue glow of the computer, or “device,” as techies call it. Unlike many addictive drugs, the blue light is legal. And it may be as addictive as opioids.

During questioning of Fulton County, Georgia prosecutor Nathan Wade about his “relationship” with District Attorney Fani Willis there was a moment that cut through all the euphemisms we have become accustomed to when it comes to human behavior.

Her blank face in court spoke volumes. Jennifer Crumbley saw no problem handing her severely depressed 15-year-old a semiautomatic handgun as a Christmas present. Ethan soon after turned the gun on the student body of Oxford High, killing four.

Hosted by Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., “Gospel” traces the history of gospel music, which has sustained African-Americans through toils and troubles. Gates, who has created and hosted programs examining the family history of prominent Black Americans and others, has created an uplifting program that will bless all but the hardest of hearts.