The opposing, or, if you prefer, comforting view, as best I can distill it, is threefold.
But on a six-month trip to Mars, that comforting view of the Blue Planet will be gone.
Isaiah's theology included the sometimes comforting view that God shapes history, traditionally entering the human scene to rescue his people from national peril.
Three months into Trump's Presidency, many people seem prepared to offer a mildly, marginally optimistic, if not exactly comforting, view of where we stand between those two terms: mostly, they say, it's been sickening, but, with the horrifying kept at bay, the horrifying looking for the moment like the zombies who can't, yet, get over the big high wall in a zombie movie.
What evidence does one have to offer in support of such a simplistic, conventional, and psychologically comforting view?
Now there's comfort viewing for you.
"It's comfort viewing," says one leading producer.
Gareth McLean: The Good Wife, comfort viewing extraordinaire, is back on More4 this month.
Add very glossy production values and a Disneyfied sparkle to proceedings, and it's pretty much the best Sunday night comfort viewing this side of Antiques Roadshow.
It is my comfort viewing, an old friend I see from time to time if I'm at a loose end on a Saturday night.
Adapted from Ms. Isaacs's novel by Jon Maas and directed by Scott Smith, "After All These Years" is perfectly acceptable, lightly amusing Saturday night comfort viewing with a touch of self-awareness.
