“When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.” Great lede by The Atlantic’s George Packer for his piece: We Are Living in a Failed State. (Even if his sub-headline writing editor paid a bit too much homage to my recent essay, America is sick. Yes, this is a petty aside, but if we give up our petty asides, the virus wins.)

+ “This week’s public displays of defiance — a march for the freedom to be infected — are the logical conclusion of the modern far-right’s donor-funded, shock jock-led liberty movement. It was always headed here.” Charlie Warzel on one the State’s biggest failures: (Which I’ll shorthand as self-serving donors and insane media personalities prompting imbecilic faux patriots to take to the streets for a cause that could kill them.) Protesting for the Freedom to Catch the Coronavirus. Here’s this story coming to life and captured on video. And yet another photo that defines an era.