Sublime

anthropomorphically.”

It was impossible to tell if they were protecting her, changing her, or breaking her body down—just as I could not know whether some version of the anthropologist had indeed appeared to the surveyor near base camp after I had left for the lighthouse …

Real America isn’t a shining city on a hill with its gates open to freedom-loving people everywhere. Nor is it a cosmopolitan club where the right talents and credentials will get you admitted no matter who you are or where you’re from. It’s a provincial village where everyone knows everyone’s business, no one has much more money than anyone else,

Reading to Learn,

I was struck by how the deprivations that people experience can lead to eccentric kinds of compensation—like the hoarding syndrome of some of the poor.

randomized trials

been—through the concerted proliferation of social services, designed in ways that help people in their moment of need and, as important, fold them into a broader philosophical community.

In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.

The result was a combination of anarchy and Orwellian bureaucracy with horrifying consequences. Trucks with water and food were halted or diverted or refused entry by authorities—the supplies were not part of their plan. Bus requisitions were held up for days; the official request did not even reach the U.S. Department of Transportation until two d