There Can Be No Return to Normalcy

Photo by Ferne Pearlstein. Pro-Trump conspiracy-mongering graffiti on Canal Street, Lower Manhattan, November 2020.

How many times have you been at a party and a fistfight has erupted over what’s Brecht’s best play? We’ve all been there, right? If I had a dime for every time some drunk kept shouting about “Mother Courage and Her Children,” while another loudmouth stinking of White Claw insisted on the merits of “The Caucasian Chalk Circle,” and of course the dilettantes wouldn’t shut up about “The Threepenny Opera” or “Aufstieg und Fall der…