The principles of classical liberalism that underlie the American political system emerged in an era, the late 17th century, when people were exhausted by violent religious wars. The philosophy that eventually created our democracy was therefore designed to “lower the temperature of politics,” as Francis Fukuyama has recently written, to take issues of existential truth off the table so that people could live in safety.

In Corinne Hoex’s Gentlemen Callers, sex is a dream. The book’s protagonist floats between abstract, ethereal trysts. When she visits a gas-station attendant in her sleep, she is a soapy sponge in his hands. Caressed by a pet groomer, she purrs; she’s his cat. Her liaisons are absurd and illicit—yet, crucially, never dangerous. Gentlemen Callers is not a classic romance novel or a straightforward bodice ripper, Zoë Hu points out.

In the introduction to her book Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, Angela Garbes describes these times as “strange and difficult years of instability, loss, and grief—both general and intimate.” That’s it, I thought. Sometimes it feels as though decades of tragedy and erasure have been smashed into the past 30 months.

Randy Lubin recalls the exact moment his life became an improvised musical. The 35-year-old game designer from San Francisco never used to sing, not even in the shower or alone in the car. At his wife’s request, he would perform the kiddush, a Jewish prayer sung each week during Shabbat, but that was it. “Singing wasn’t something I sought out or particularly found a lot of joy in,” Lubin told me.Seeing his son, Curio, for the first time changed everything.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.“Trump can’t hide from the Mar-a-Lago photo,” my colleague David A. Graham wrote yesterday. I called David today to talk about what makes the DOJ’s latest filing so powerful.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

Updated at 4:50 p.m. ET on September 1, 2022.Mary Peltola was declared the winner of Alaska’s special congressional election last night, defeating the former GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. A Democrat hasn’t held the seat in 49 years, and Peltola will be the first Alaska Native elected to Congress.The election was the first in Alaska to utilize ranked-choice voting, a system adopted by the state’s voters in 2020.

A viral video starring an adorable child has briefly united the world in shared understanding: “It’s corn!”The child, whose first name is Tariq and whose last name is unknown, but who also goes by “CEO of Corn,” appeared in a video on a popular Instagram account called Recess Therapy. (Recess Therapy is a man-on-the-street-style interview show on which all the guests are children.