The pandemic has taught and re-taught me much about the frailty of human psychology, and that most people are eager to go full Nazi if they can find an excuse to head that way that matches their ideology. For the conservatives, it’s the specter of The Other, the detestable foreigner. For liberals, though, it’s the idea of equitable justice and “protection from harm.” Most people want to go Nazi, to feel that camaraderie, to have a goal that feels noble to them but is in fact a zealot’s quest to enforce their fanaticism on the rest of the world. You don’t have to coerce or convince most to join the Party. No, they absolutely yearn to join.

And both sides, of course, if they can find an excuse to so will put you in the damn camps. Or in the case of the liberals, hiding inside your house or in your prison country in perpetuity (followed by the pods).

This makes me trust people far less now than I ever did. If they can find an excuse, they will have you locked away and disappeared — the reasons just differ.