My analysis begins with a remarkable essay that Jonathan Rauch wrote for National Affairs in 2018 called The Constitution of Knowledge. Rauch pointed out that every society has an epistemic regime, a marketplace of ideas where people collectively hammer out what's real. In democratic, nontheocratic societies, this regime is a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge.

Part of it was that as much as I respected filial devotion and as much as I liked Sarah Barstow, it would have been a real satisfaction to put her across my knees and pull up her skirts and giver her a swell fanning, for not taking a look at that driver.

Also the Parisian sadness, which is that of satiety and reaction; and the Viennese, which is that of Strauss. / There is the Bostonian, which is commercio-literary; and the New Yorkian, which is faro-commercial, inspired with or “Sass and Brass,” and steamed up with enterprise, deviltry, fun, humbug, and go-aheaditiveness; and the Philadelphian, which advanceth also, but with a more measured tread—which is peculiar in being without a peculiarity, which moveth silently, divineth unutterable things within itself, and behaveth decently—a very comme-il-faut sort of sadness, which presenteth many solid points of social comfort. / These are the varieties of sadness pertaining to each city.

Her floppy hat came down to the tip of her nose, revealing only a long chin and a wide tight mouth, twitched up at the corners by a nervous contraction of her cheek muscles, which gave her an unexpected air of smiling sardonically in the recesses of her hat.