The fallacy of Whig historiography is the idea that history is a progression, has a story and a point, a destination. It’s not. People do things, and things are done to them. Maybe we learn from those events, maybe we don’t. Maybe we take away the wrong lessons. Maybe the real treasure is the friends we made along the way. Maybe the real treasure is a trillion-dollar coin.
A senator calls for the military to be deployed against American citizens based on an imaginary threat from an amorphous philosophy, and the New York Times deems this idea worthy of discussion. The senator is running unopposed.
Former US spies announce that they see the warning signs of dictatorship looming, and they’d know, they’ve helped install dictatorships before.
The leading challenger to the current regime thinks maybe it’d be OK if cops shot people in the leg instead of the face.
Perhaps we are at a tipping point. Maybe we make it tip toward good. Maybe we don’t.
People keep getting this wrong. Frankenstein is the doctor’s name. The monster is Mitch McConnell. https://t.co/IsVNJdW2ZX
Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) April 23, 2020
Other Newsletters In Case You Don’t Get Enough Email
Pome: Daily poem
Letters from an American: This specific American is a professor of history
Popular Information: Independent journalist Judd Legum calls people and organizations to account
Best of Twitter
Family lore discussion: This person’s Grandma had an affair with…. Don Knotts?
/r/relationships advice: Who among us has not had a violent feud with a Waffle House line cook?
Dave Pell switched to edibles.
Literary games of Twitter: Quote the first sentence of a book, then add “and then the dragons arrived.” In these sorts of challenges I always go with 100 Years of Solitude: “Many years later, facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon his father took him to discover ice, and then the dragons arrived.”
Cultivating Joy
Komondor goes swimming
Muppet dog courtesy of /r/rarepuppers
Dogs working from home
Stay safe out there, friends.
Secretly Ironic 