When There Is No Normal
History lesson: Radicals eventually will need the norms and safeguards they’ve gleefully destroyed.
One of the ancient and modern critiques of democracy is that radicals destroy norms for short-term political gain, norms that they themselves often later seek as refuge.
Schadenfreude, irony, paradox, and karma are various descriptions of what happens to revolutionaries, and unfortunately the innocent, who suffer their collateral damage when radicals of any stripe use any means necessary to achieve supposedly exalted ends.
Three of the most moving — and terrifying — passages in Greek literature involve...