Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court has been ugly and bizarre, even by Washington's standards.

But with so much at stake, it's natural to obsess over the hearings and the spectacle they've become. This is neither constructive nor healthy, however.

Research shows that focusing on politics often makes us feel helpless and depressed because we're expending energy on matters beyond our control. Venting on Twitter or Facebook might make us feel like we're influencing events, but we're almost certainly not.

There's a temptation, of course, to believe that politics is the only way to keep evil in line, and that we must confront power with power. But Gandalf probably had it right when he suggested the opposite is true. In the 2012 film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's book The Hobbit, Gandalf says: