Here’s what we know: Natalie Wood, then 16, was brutally raped in late 1954 or early 1955.

Here’s what we don’t: The rapist was Kirk Douglas.

The subject came up following his death last Wednesday at age 103, as it did following a Golden Globes appearance two years ago, and as it will Sunday night at the Oscars, following his last-minute inclusion in the Death Montage.

And really, it’s not an unreasonable suspicion. But the certainty with which it’s expressed goes beyond any fact we can nail down. As does the certainty surrounding much of the discussion about it.

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When you’re a President, they let you do it.

They let you lie.

And lie.

And lie.

They broadcast your lies, no matter how bald, with the weakest of clarifications.

They never call them lies.

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World War II — the American part of it — lasted less than four years.

It must have seemed like forever.

Time does that. We can measure time — by day, by year, by atomic second — but the experience of time is not the duration of time. If we’re having a good time, time flies, we don’t know where the time went. If we’re miserable, well…

It’s been a long time since November 2016. Less than four years.

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So, what’s the point?

We know how the Senate trial’s gonna end — we’ve always known how it would end — and while there may be a few twists along the way, the conclusion is not in doubt.

So why bother? What’s the point?

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It’s pointless, really. Everybody knows that. The last British monarch to exercise significant power — even then, slight and declining — was Queen Victoria. The British Empire, once counting a quarter of the world’s population as its subjects, has been whittled back down to the UK itself, and there’s no telling whether that will hold together after Brexit. The monarchy is just a show, now, available on Netflix.

What? Why, yes, of course we watched it. We’ve watched that movie as well, twice. Got up in the middle of the night to watch the wedding — sardonically, mind you. Happened to stumble onto CNN when the Paris news was breaking, and there went that weekend.

No excuses. We can’t help paying attention.

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“If you’re old,” the tweet requested Thursday night, “please attach a link to your 2003 take on the invasion of Iraq to your 2020 take on Iran.”

We are old, but we wouldn’t be blogging for another five years, so we have no links to offer.

But we remember.

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A decade is an arbitrary unit of time, but there’s usually a story you can tell about it, at least through the 20th century and into the 21st. And had Hillary Clinton won the Electoral College, perhaps we could have coherent thoughts about the 2010s as well.

Instead, Donald Trump descended the Escalator to Hell on June 16, 2015, pretty neatly cleaving the story in half.

If you ignore Death Panels, anyway.

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