certainly! in social affairs, causal lines nearly always go both ways. but there is something hopeful in that downstream direction. it’s more practical to fix policy than to exhort civic virtue. we can agree we want a policy apparatus that rewards civic virtue and enact it. 1/

if, of course, that opposite arrow, from (lack of) civic virtue to policy doesn’t foreclose it. we could of course just be doomed. but maybe this too shall pass, and we will have an opportunity to have learned something. /fin