1/36 A thread on Alana Newhouse's Tablet essay. I'm sorry to criticize an essay framed around a writer's ill child.

But my dream for the 2020s is to read big, serious essays whose premises aren't "everything is broken," & that don't say "how to fix

2/36 The writer rightly laments the "flattening" of thought to appeal to algorithms.

But the essay itself commits that sin. We can't observe *something*--problems in medicine--without expanding it to *everything*; & we can't observe *anything* without saying we can "fix it."

3/36 Two weeks ago, I saw a magazine at a cash register: THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, its cover said, quoting Naomi Klein.

I looked inside.

The cover was an ad, and the "thing" that changed everything turned out to be a Dolce & Gabbana-branded Smeg toaster.

4/36: Obviously, we--businesspeople, writers, editors, academics--feel we can't claims unless it's about "everything"--to be big enough, bold enough, attention-grabbing enough.

This is a really bad problem, though, not just the minor price of admission to public life.

5/36: Trump talked up this philosophy--hyperbole. "The key to the way I promote is bravado," he said in the '80s. "I play to fantasies"--even dark fantasies. "A little hyperbole never hurts."

I say "philosophy, not "tactic," b/c if we use it enough, it becomes a mindset.