I've been really angry about the Georgia indictment. Maybe because it includes several people who I happen to know professionally, who are the furthest thing from criminals I can possibly imagine. Maybe because the indictment includes ordinary political speech, meaning that people like me could be next in line for voicing our opinions.

What happened to the America I knew? I grew up in the liberal Chicago suburbs, where we learned to prize freedom of speech as the ultimate virtue. What happened to those Democrats?

The worst are Republicans like Brian Kemp, who are piling on with their "I told you so" lines about the 2020 election. This isn't about the 2020 election. It's about the perversion and politicization of justice in their own state, which they evidently care nothing about.

I'm bummed. And I hear the notes of defeat. I hear the voices telling us Republicans will never win another election because of vote-by-mail, and how Democrat billionaires have bought the media, and how AI will replace us all anyway so we might as well prepare for that.

Then I hear -- or don't hear -- from people in other contexts who otherwise would have every reason to respond to me but who have gone totally radio silent because they have found out I am a conservative and they can't handle it, so they'll just let me hang.

And I could let this get me down. And I get I have let it get me down, for a few hours. But I went for a run in the California sunshine -- which they haven't ruined yet -- and I swam in the wild sea and I realized that this is the kick in the pants I needed before next week.

Next week I will be in the spin room at the Republican debate. And I'm not going to ask about policy. I'm going to ask what these guys are doing to deal with the threat that the left's perversion of justice poses to all of us. Because that's the only thing that matters now.