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The setting for this address was as significant as the words themselves. Returning to the public eye after a period of intense legal and media scrutiny, Clinton appeared weathered by the “bruised darkness” of the current political climate. His voice, famously capable of commanding a room with a whisper, wavered as he spoke of a pervasive “fear and fatigue” that has taken root in the American psyche. He described a citizenry that no longer trusts its institutions—from the courts to the press to the ballot box—and, perhaps more devastatingly, families that have been “split by politics at the dinner table.”
