Christopher Hitchens writes about George Orwell and the common capacity for / effort toward ethical and intellectual integrity.
Democracy’s keenest enemies are willfully ignorant and fanatical cultists, most vividly on display in America’s covid-indifferent, Trump-besotted ultraorthodox Jewish communities. No demographic in this country will have higher Trump vote totals. As in Israel, if you want to chart the decline of democratic instincts and institutions, there’s no better place than in the heart of this withdrawn, uneducated, law-flouting, and violent group. Herd obedience to authoritarian religious leaders means it will deliver, today, a virtually solid Trump vote.
As the returns from all over America come in, let us see if reason, civic sentiment, and morality can triumph over passion, indifference to the public realm, and cruelty.