MAGA men oil their guns with liberal tears, I know, but I have to admit I’ve been shedding them. Or not tears exactly, but a touch of liberal blood. Maybe that works on their guns too.

A few days ago, back when I was forcibly trying to tune out the drumbeat of war in Europe, I suddenly blacked out. When I came to, I was bruised and bleeding from the bridge of my nose. A sketchy medispa offered intravenous hydration, and, settling into a big chair with a needle in my vein, I went right back to scrolling.

At Davos, Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, declared American hegemony dead: “This is a rupture.” He’s looking for allies to organize a free world without us. Fascism is revving up here, but to the rest of the world, we’re at an ending. It’s curtains for the Pax Americana, and maybe even the dollar.

The night before I passed out, my timeline was seized with videos showing young men heading north to confront ICE. The street clashes and wails of imprisoned children are driving Americans, once again, to clash and put themselves in harm’s way, while others bear anxious witness. “Doomscrolling” should no longer be framed as a bad habit, unless you’re sold on denial.

In A Chill in the Air, Iris Origo’s Italian war diary (1939–40), she describes her utter dependence, as Mussolini’s Blackshirts thronged her village, on “the confused, discordant voices coming out of a little box” that foretold........

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