The cable-news coronavirus chyron counters note the number that die, but nothing about the people we lose. They tend to be really old and already quite sick. Men outnumber women in cases and fatalities. In the United States, the tri-state…
Charles Mackay wrote not of pandemics but “moral epidemics” 179 years ago in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. “We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object,” he observed, “and go mad in its…
We could organize a mass protest. But then the health police then soon organize our mass incarceration. We could pray together that our leaders regain their senses if only they did not take away church as well. Maybe a teach-in?…
The speech America needed to hear came on Wednesday night from Instagram and not the Oval Office. A bare-chested, tattooed Chet Hanks offered a calm voice amid a din of nervously cackling Chicken Littles. “I just got off the phone…
“Socialism is coming,” J. A. Wayland promised in 1902. “It’s coming like a prairie fire and nothing can stop it!” No man did more than Wayland, a millionaire socialist–entrepreneur, to fulfill this unrealized prophecy. In the decade leading up to…
A resilient people overcoming SARS, the Y2K bug, acid rain, and killer bees confronts yet another existential challenge in the Wuhan coronavirus. The response to this crisis resembles the resolute reaction to the 1976 swine-flu epidemic, which killed but one…
When it comes to a brokered Democratic Convention, the odds are good because the goods are odd. In Wednesday’s debate, former front-runner Joe Biden confused “moderators” for “monitors,” said “secondly” on a thirdly or fourthly, and talked about the five…
A joke going around Democratic circles: What’s the difference between Joe Biden, Jesus Christ, and herpes? Joe Biden ain’t ever coming back. Four nurses not in on that joke feverishly sought to resuscitate the ailing candidate on ABC several hours…
The Democratic Party drove its carbon-neutral clown car off a cliff this week. Jerry Nadler, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Adam Schiff, and other passengers euphorically urged Nancy Pelosi to step on the accelerator in midair. The overstuffed car that launched in the…