I say all this not to enroll you, the reader, in my particular political views; only to indicate that, for each of us, there may be things about our “normal,” including our sense of who we are and the nature of our society, that we are reluctant to let go of. My serial disillusionments were painful at the time, to be sure: they meant leaving something behind, something I had cherished and built a part of my world around. And yet I would not trade the freedom that has accompanied each relinquishing of illusion for the comforts I had to give up. When a false belief falls away, after the ache of
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