This gloomy op-ed from @michelleinbklyn captures well a prevailing sense of stasis and collapse.

My response, though, is that "the culture" to which she refers is only one of many. *That* culture ("our" culture) may be dying. But the world will go on.

nytimes.com/2019/08/19/opi… @michelleinbklyn There's definitely something to the comparison of the US's informational black hole to Russia. But Russia never had a "hysterical flight from enlightenment empiricism."

Russia was never "tuned in" to rationality. It floated on the twin faiths of Eastern Orthodoxy and "Rus."

Most interesting thing in this @jacobinmag piece on the French yellow vests is that the French press are treating the yellow vests the same way the Anglo press tends to treat Trump supporters & Brexiters...even as the Guardian celebrates the yellow vests. Here's the Guardian's editorial praising the rural "red states" of France for standing up to the city elites, taxes, and globalization.

I swear I've read these exact paragraphs in the right-wing press about MAGA Trumpites, attacking Hillary Clinton instead of Macron.