Sublime

I’ve met Ayn Rand fanatics all over—among Silicon Valley venture capitalists, at the office of the Tampa Bay Tea Party, even on a road paving crew. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (who read Atlas Shrugged in high school) brought her pitiless philosophy of egoism to policymaking on Capitol Hill. Libertarianism speaks to the American myth of the self-

And so, as the pandemic shut down cities and states, half the country looked to science and the other half looked to Trump. Americans didn’t look to one another because there was no longer any trust between them. Into this void government by the people collapsed, leaving the unelected elites and the elected demagogue to battle it out. The struggle

Essayist and investor Paul Graham writes that societies tend to develop ‘social antibodies’ . . .” Paul Graham, “The Acceleration of Addictiveness,” July 2010, www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html.

Glenn McDonald,

But even when the fog is pointed out, we’re no better at navigating through it.