Independence Day, the Delta variant, and the relentless pandemic story

Over the Fourth of July weekend last year, with the pandemic raging in the US, then-President Trump gave a pair of speeches in which he downplayed the threat of the virus and played up the threat of rampaging left-wing mobs; swathes of the press characterized his rhetoric as “dark and divisive,” implicitly situating it, as I wrote at the time, in stark contrast to America’s post-revolutionary trajectory of shared purpose. Over the Fourth of July weekend this year, with the pandemic having...