Or perhaps he suffers from the anomie said to be characteristic of modernity? Did you see this? Coming so soon after the proverbially zealous Adrian Vermeule's last appearance in the popular press, it is bound to seem a little eyebrow-raising, especially given that it seems to adduce without further comment Rod Dreher as an affiliate of an affinity group said to reject ethnonationalism and to be characterized by political progressivism.

Aside from that funny little misstep, it's really mostly quite predictable, especially in its apparently reiteration of well-known themes apparently in the sincere belief that they are new or, worse, old—by which I mean, these people protesting the ugliness of modernity against the aesthetic pleasures of hearing mass in a language they don't actually know (the better, I guess, to display themselves as capitulating), or this SCA-like immersion in an imagined past as if that were a revolt against modernity and not just about the most modern thing you could do (is this not the same impulse that leads to "authentic" performances of period pieces, or to barbershops trying desperately to look like manly Old West saloons?).

But that isn't what I want to talk about. What do I want to talk about? I'll tell you—don't think I won't. I want to talk about these two consecutive paragraphs:

"The idea of the individual as the basic unit of society, that people are best understood by thinking about them as sole lone beings" is fundamentally misguided, she told me. "It doesn't make enough space to talk about human weakness and dependence" - conversations that she believes are an integral part of Christianity, with its concern for human life from conception until death.

Weird Christianity represents an alternative to "both more liberal and conservative forms of American Christianity," said Mr. Crosby, the seminarian. While he acknowledges he's more intuitively in line with the progressive left - he worked as a union organizer after college - his time in the labor movement left him disillusioned with a purely political solution. "We're not going to save ourselves," he said. God will.

Dependent Rational Yet Firm Hand of Tradition–craving Animals, you know? Nur ein Gott kann uns retten is maybe not a great look for someone who thinks of himself as "intuitively" in line with the progressive left (though of course, that's a concessive "while"), but, like, a purely political solution to what? To … labor's woes? (Is God going to lower the price of bread or shield whistleblowers from reprisals?) To his personal problems? It seems odd that this former union organizer is only now able to say "it turns out we need each other". It just seems … weird, I suppose, if your diagnosis of your inability to sustain meaningful cathexeisthe ills of modernity is its atomistic individualism, and your cure is a confessedly aesthetic, and perhaps not confessedly but obviously actually idiosyncratic, withdrawal from the political into the comfort of rules provided from without along with a big dose of smells and bells [1]. (Wait--isn't this also the appeal of a certain non-medium lobster?) Like, Dreher explicitly wants people to just opt out, which seems awfully "I've got mine" for someone turned of by individualism. But Dreher (IIRC) and Vermeule (definitely) at least also think that their personthe ills of modernity call for a comprehensive political overhaul! These people (one assumes, if they can at all think of themselves as progressive) don't even want that! What the hell! Perhaps in reality they don't take themselves as seriously as they seem to here, but man, I dunno.

[1] Would you believe that I almost forgot to include the phrase "smells and bells" in this post? What saved me was that I thought about changing the title, until I remembered that I included "censer" precisely because I'd intended to write "smells and bells" later. Apparently some people prefer the order "bells and smells", which seems obviously inferior to me.

This is intended to be our system for checking in on imaginary friends, so that we know whether or not to be concerned if you go offline for a while.

Episode 14.

1. These are really sensible guidelines for what's safe and what's not.

A Toilet flush: Without a seat to close, a single flush releases ~8000 droplets into the air. If the person using the restroom before you was infected, you have a chance of contracting the virus via breathing the air in the bathroom. While the paper in question did not look for live virus, it is clear that infected people are releasing, at a minimum, viral RNA, in bowel movements. Don't use public bathrooms or wait a few minutes before entering so gravity can bring the droplets to the floor.

However, it really drives home the point (to me) that there's no way to safely reopen k-12 (without spending huge amounts of money).

Unrelated, that business about suppressing the CDC guidelines for reopening - and they are so milquetoast and general - shouldn't surprise me. But I am perpetually surprisable.

2. I haven't posted about the killing of Ahmaud Arbury yet, because what is there to say? It's beyond horrible. But I want to acknowledge it.

3. I thought I had a third. I'll update when I remember.

My clothes are getting tighter.

The latest in the war against the post office:

A top donor to President Trump and the Republican National Committee will be named the new head of the Postal Service, putting a top ally of the president in charge of an agency where Trump has long pressed for major changes in how it handles its business.

The Postal Service's board of governors confirmed late Wednesday that Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman who is currently in charge of fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, will serve as the new postmaster general.

The action will install a stalwart Trump ally to lead the Postal Service, which he has railed against for years, and probably move him closer than ever before to forcing the service to renegotiate its terms with companies and its own union workforce. Trump's Treasury Department and the Postal Service are in the midst of a negotiation over a $10 billion line of credit approved as part of coronavirus legislation in March.

I don't have much to say. Whenever Trump gets his (short, vulgarian) fingers into anything, it rots on the vine. And this vine has been rather plucky for so long, but also deprived of proper water and soil for a long time.

The Post Office clearly couldn't lay low and avoid notice during a pandemic which relies on the mail so dearly to keep everything running, especially with its constrained budget. And so now it's in the crosshairs.

...

(I do have one question, but I want to ask it very quietly: should the Post Office actually be charging companies like Amazon more? I know Trump just hates Bezos because of the WP. But is Amazon actually getting some kind of special deal? Or is the gripe just that Amazon could be squeezed for more profit, since they are such a wealthy company?)

Mossy Character says: Dalriata and I are willing to do Elizabeth Economy The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State. Other readers, or votes for other books, invited.

Heebie: Plan away!

This is making the rounds: the plan is to have no plan.

The plan is to have no plan, to let daily deaths between one and three thousand become a normal thing, and then to create massive confusion about who is responsible-- by telling the governors they're in charge without doing what only the federal government can do, by fighting with the press when it shows up to be briefed, by fixing blame for the virus on China or some other foreign element, and by "flooding the zone with shit," Steve Bannon's phrase for overwhelming the system with disinformation, distraction, and denial, which boosts what economists call "search costs" for reliable intelligence.

It's pretty short, and I didn't want to quote too much.

I'm just feeling so angry about this. The country shut down pretty well in March. That one piece happened surprisingly well. But this reopening is going to go incredibly badly.

Also saying "there is no plan" is correct, but it downplays the malevolence at play.
1. They just don't want to spend the money to shore up unemployment.
2. I'm too angry to remember where I was going with this list. Oops.

Anyway: regional outbreaks seems like the right way to think about this. That link is about how, if you subtract out New York's numbers, the rest of the country is still ascending its first peak.

Trump is just doing so much to tie everyone's hands and wreck the response. That's what is tipping me over the edge. The bald fact that a pandemic is politicized is fucking nuts. They just don't know how to do anything except grab money and oppose Democrats, and so if Democrats oppose the pandemic, then they become "my enemy's enemies are my friend" about a fucking virus. Way to go, jackasses.

Marracter Character writes:

1. Mongolia. If the ger won't come to the census, the census must go to the ger.
2. South Sudan. Amazing cows.

Heebie's take: It's the type of thing MC does best.

This is intended to be our system for checking in on imaginary friends, so that we know whether or not to be concerned if you go offline for a while.

Episode 13.

I know that the federal government has been maliciously interfering with different states' resources to hospitals and health care providers. Still:

Maryland has National Guard troops and state police guarding coronavirus tests at a secret location because of concerns that they might be seized, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan told The Washington Post Thursday.

I mean, calling the national guard to protect your state from the feds is getting into civil war territory, no? Or at least Cold civil war? Trump hasn't shown much interest in flexing his military might, but if he were slightly more bellicose, this seems like it could go south, fast.

And I'm not blaming the Maryland governor (or should I?):

Hogan, who is a Republican, said he had heard reports from other states of the federal government confiscating supplies. He specifically pointed to an incident in Massachusetts.

After 3 million masks purchased for the state were confiscated in New York, state leaders in Massachusetts turned to New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft to help bring in coveted N95 masks from China on a private plane.

Many times when I gasp in horror, everyone here gently informs me that the behavior I'm reacting to goes on all the time. (I do recall when Texas called in the Texas State Guard to protect us against Obama's Jade Helm. And lo, we were protected!) So maybe this is not a sign of escalating tensions?

I guess I'm just staggered at the amount of counterproductive harm being created by this administration. Bungling incompetence, sure. But actively working to fan the flames has been bewildering to me. (Yes you can gently remind me why I ought not be surprised.) But really: Inciting people to protest their state governments is shocking, even if only dinky numbers of white supremacists have showed up. I guess this whole paragraph is brought to you by Russian troll farms and Vlad, isn't it.

I just finished N.K. Jemsin's latest, The City We Became, and I've never felt so precisely catered to in my whole life. It's about NYC -- not just set in NYC, but literally about the city in a fantasy genre way -- and by two chapters in, she was describing in detail the packed dirt around a specific rock that I'd stepped on while running earlier in the morning of the day I'd read the book. And some nice forensic subway tile analysis*. And I love her version of Queens very much. I honestly have no idea if it's any good if you're not sentimentally affectionate about the city to the point of irrationality; I'd love to see a reaction from someone who isn't emotionally involved.

Anyone else reading something good?
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*There is one geographical/public transportation howler that made me yelp with outrage, but just one. At which point I will give her credit for it being some editing thing where a scene got rewritten incompletely or something, rather than actual confusion.