Don’t Despair

The most apt coinage of recent years is . Early in the morning or late at night, you can scan through an app on your handheld device for infection numbers, test-positivity rates, and news of vaccine shortages. If your interests range more widely, you can monitor domestic-abuse and murder rates, cases of depression and anxiety, crumbling small businesses, and the lonely snuffings-out of the flickering light of life for hundreds of thousands of the aged and the vulnerable. Or you can scrutinize the latest deranged claims and incitements of a mad and evil president; statements of support made by politicians faithless to the Constitution, intellectuals unimpeded by truth, lawless lawyers, and godless pastors; and the fears of the residents of one city or another swallowing hard at warnings of riots and wild-eyed Proud Boy desperadoes toting long