It’s pointless to yearn for a post-pandemic return to normalcy. Or is it normality?

Making it abundantly clear why H.L. Mencken characterized Harding’s oratorical style as reminding him of “a string of wet sponges,” and “dogs barking idiotically through endless nights,” to say nothing of “balder and dash,” the eventual 29th president of the United States could not leave well enough alone. Harding also noted that the country’s other present needs took in “not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity” — I’m not making this up, I promise — “not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise,” and, well, it goes on a bit more from there.