DID THE MASSIVE RALLIES OF THE PAST FEW WEEKS REALLY HAPPEN: The Washington Post has this story, about foreign bigwigs being astounded by what the article describes as the Trump administration’s inept handling of the coronavirus, and what they see as the U.S. giving up on containing it. I don’t think any of our elites come off especially well in how they have handled the virus, but I do seem to recall this series of events, which is entirely absent from the Post article: (1) Hundreds of thousands of people coming out in the streets with little social distancing in defiance of all previous public health guidance; (2) various mayors and governors who had been among the strictest in fining, denouncing, and generally bullying anyone who defied social distancing guidelines not only not trying to break up these gatherings, not only leaving them alone, but actually (3) attending them, encouraging their attendees, and praising them; (4) various respected public health experts, who had previously been adamant about banning large public gatherings, at best not saying anything (with very few exceptions) and in many cases actually praising the gatherings as a net benefit to public health; (5) leading to even more people coming out on the streets in defiance of all prior public health guidance on social distancing, tens of thousands at a time all over the country; (6) leading to the utter breakdown of obedience by the rest of the population to any distancing guidelines, as many people who had been banned from attending church, funerals, opening their businesses, and so on figured that the people who had been insisting on strict social distancing were frauds and liars.

But since the Washington Post couldn’t find a single foreign observer to comment on such a remarkable chain of events, and since in any event they can’t be blamed on Trump, they must never have happened, must be my imagination.