Today's Must-Read: A Crisis of Public Sanity

I'm borrowing Tom Sullivan's title for this one, because I can't come up with a better one. He starts off:

In many ways, Americans never seem to have recovered psychologically from the September 11 attacks. They were a kick to the gut, a shattering of our sense of invincibility still recovering from the trauma of Vietnam, a shattering of our sense of how things are and ought to be.

Digby tweeted an article Saturday from a February Texas Observer describing a bill introduced by Representative Matt Krause from the state legislature's far-right House Freedom Caucus. It would not only make it easier for state parents to get exemptions from vaccinating their children, it would prohibit the Texas Department of State Health Services from keeping a record of vaccine exemptions, limiting its ability to respond to disease outbreaks.

There's much more to it, of course -- decades of propaganda disguised as news; relentless attacks, mostly from the right, on mostly left-wing public figures (does the name "Hillary Clinton" ring a bell?); fringe elements not only becoming more open, but tolerated. That's just the first few things that come to mind, but they've all contributed to an American public life that is through the looking glass -- anti-vaxxers are just the latest manifestation.

The phenomena are not just a public health crisis, Bruni writes, but "a public sanity one, emblematic of too many people’s willful disregard of evidence, proud suspicion of expertise and estrangement from reason."

Read it -- it's a good summary on the rise of things like the Trump cult and associated aberrations. Bruni's piece is worth the time, as well.