This journal started in 2006, with the Iraq war still blazing, the financial crisis still to come, and progressives in a similarly dour place. And authors back then still tried to see ahead, see what was possible, see how the broad left could fill in the holes being created daily by a robust and headstrong conservative movement.

After the election, a common sentiment among folks like us, and we suspect like you, was some version of “Why bother?” If this can happen, what’s the use in advocacy work or releasing a white paper or even in high-minded political thinking itself? And while there was plenty of that in this office, and many other offices and homes around the country, we got back to it.

Because, hard as it may seem, essays on tax policy, like those of Lily Batchelder and Kim Clausing, still matter. Reviews on whether technological growth is a thing of the past, like Stephen Rose’s, still matter. Coverage of other countries, like Sophia Pandya’s rundown of the escalating situation in Turkey, still matter. Because government policy, economic trends, and societal change will continue apace, even with a new, very different President.

With that in mind, read a symposium unlike the usual horserace coverage, on the future of liberalism, conservatism, and even language and truth themselves, in the era of Trump. In a new partnership with the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, we have the first in a series of articles on some parts of government policy that could make our economy fairer. The first two articles are on how taxation of wealth and inheritances, and how it’s gone badly astray. Also in the feature well, essays on protecting workers from “big data,” an urgent topic that’s often missing in technology coverage. Finally, Yascha Mounk tells us what’s wrong with the politics of “personal responsibility,” but also what should be saved from it, Henry Farrell diagnoses the ills in British politics.