In dramatic lore (and great sportswriting<\/a>), the Four Horsemen are Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. In St. John\u2019s original construct<\/a>, \u201cWar\u201d stands in for Destruction. We prefer Destruction, because it captures the many types of war not imagined in Biblical times.<\/p>\n This morning we reread the first paragraph of Barbara Tuchman\u2019s classic work on the worst century in Western history, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century<\/em>, reproduced below. Tuchman proposed seven horsemen:<\/p>\n Plague, war, taxes, brigandage, bad government, insurrection, and schism. Broadly defined, we\u2019ve got six of them running around the United States right now. \u201cBrigandage,\u201d which involves unemployed soldiers gallivanting around the countryside looting the undefended and disarmed locals, is common in the world but has not been a feature of American life since the years following our Civil War, no matter how you might characterize gun rights demonstrations of recent moment or the violent crime of the \u201960s to the \u201990s.<\/p>\n Plague? Check. Not literally \u201cplague,\u201d of course, which is a specific disease with a precise cause and an effective remedy, but plague in the sense that people who do not consort with medievalists or infectious disease experts use the word.<\/p>\n War? Nineteen years and running. We even confess to having supported those wars once upon a time, which is more than most people will admit. My guess is that nobody will care so much about terrorism now, so maybe we should generally withdraw and let all those people resume killing each other. But what about \u201cDestruction\u201d? We have made a policy<\/em> decision (which we admit we supported, for a while) to destroy our material well-being to save lives from plague, and there are those who argue that we need a good deal more destruction still. Maybe that policy choice is yet the most cost effective \u2014 we won\u2019t know for several years which choices were best<\/a> \u2014 but all Americans, including especially the WFH overclass, ought to have the courage to call it by its name: Destruction.<\/p>\n Taxes? They are coming hard. Beautiful taxes like you\u2019ve never seen before, in every American jurisdiction.<\/p>\n Bad government? No matter who you are, you have your favorite examples. As we have pointed out, everybody agrees that there have been massive failures of government in the United States. One\u2019s opinion as to the cause of those failures is a Rorschach test for one\u2019s pre-pandemic predilections<\/a>.<\/p>\n Insurrection? We are closer than we have been for some time. Google \u201cdefies.\u201d We have hair salon owners<\/a> defying judges, mayors defying governors<\/a>, and governors defying the president<\/a>, all of which seems weirdly reasonable under the circumstances. Nobody is shooting yet, but we are one out-of-proportion bad judgment enforcement action away from another Ruby Ridge<\/a> or Waco<\/a>. Brace yourself for the \u201cnational conversation\u201d about that<\/em>.<\/p>\n Schism? The Papal Schism of the 14th century was so scary because each pope excommunicated the followers of the other. When one believes that this life is the misery one must endure for immortal paradise, excommunication is the equivalent of killing one of Tolkien\u2019s Elves. The loss of immortality is a tragedy greater than mere mortal death, because the sacrifice is so great. Our schism today, which involves profound contempt verging on unqualified hatred for people who have a different vision of the meaning<\/em> of the United States, destroys the purpose<\/em> of our country, unique in the world, that moved our extraordinary ancestors to overcome challenges vastly more difficult than Covid-19. That is, or would have been to many Americans of old, a tragedy greater than mere mortal death.<\/p>\n The most profound sentence in Tuchman\u2019s first paragraph may, unfortunately, be the last: \u201cAll but plague itself arose from conditions that existed prior to the Black Death and continued after the period of plague was over.\u201d<\/p>\n Let us hope that history does not repeat itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It seems inflation strikes everywhere The Seven Horsemen of the Apocalypse In dramatic lore (and great sportswriting), the Four Horsemen are Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. In St. John\u2019s original construct, \u201cWar\u201d stands in for Destruction. We prefer Destruction, because it captures the many types of war not imagined in Biblical times. This morning we … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54953,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54952\/revisions\/54953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/blueberrytown.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/seven-horsemen.png?fit=1024%2C739\")
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