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During Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, she found herself in the presence of the King of Hearts. He wanted her to go, so he cited Rule 42: “All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.” Heads turned to Alice. “I’m not a mile high,” she objected. “You are,” said the King. The queen testified that Alice is nearly two miles tall. “Well, I shan’t go, at any rate,” Alice said, “besides, that’s not a regular rule: you invented it just now.”

Nearly seven weeks into our otherworldly adventures in COVID-related confinement—a home-prison sentence with occasional trips to the Save Mart—more of us are bristling at the irrational restrictions that our elected officials are placing on us. Americans gave them the benefit of the doubt for several weeks, acknowledging the unusual circumstances of a novel coronavirus that experts originally claimed could take millions of lives.

But now we’re left stuck in the King of Hearts’ court, amazed by the illogical and arbitrary nature of the newly imposed rules. In Michigan, you can go boating, but may get arrested if you use a motor. In California, selling marijuana is essential, but not giving a haircut. We can’t know what the exact rules are because they change so quickly and without the usual vetting. Who knows if we’ll be the next person handcuffed for playing in a park?

Our democratic system of sausage-making is odd enough and results in a crazy array of sometimes-oppressive laws. But there’s a process for making them, a system of checks and balances, and court systems that keep it all in check. It’s not perfect, but it’s not arbitrary and capricious. In a world of executive orders, though, truth is whatever the king—or the governor or president—says it is.

Rules don’t have to be logical, but we must obey. There’s no room for local decision-making or thoughtful disagreement. It’s all about power. As author Ayn Rand wrote, “The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

And that’s where we are now. The government, under the auspices of addressing an admittedly serious health crisis, can criminalize virtually everything—from leaving your home for a stroll, to operating your business. Some states have begun loosening the restrictions, creating a path for the reopening of society so people can take care of themselves again. Have you noticed that Gov. Gavin Newsom keeps moving the goalposts?

The curve has been flattened and there’s plenty of hospital capacity. In fact, hospitals throughout the state are laying off nurses given that there’s little for them to do. People are avoiding the hospitals except for true emergencies, and in California there aren’t that many COVID-19 patients.

The governor’s roadmap for reopening offers six indicators before he rescinds the orders. It requires the state to have “the ability to monitor and protect our communities through testing, contact tracing, isolating and supporting those who are positive or exposed.” It requires “the ability to develop therapeutics to meet the demand.” But these are open-ended measures. Basically, California will reopen whenever it pleases the king.

Until his recent decision to allow some re-openings beginning May 8, Newsom had been tightening the reins. News reports showed crowded beaches in Orange County last weekend, which angered the King of Sacramento. I’m not sure why. The official statement by Newport Beach police and fire officials acknowledged that “the overwhelming majority” of beach-goers were “practicing social distancing.”

Nevertheless, Newsom then announced a hard shut-down of Orange County beaches (but later decided that some could be open during limited morning hours). He wasn’t pleased seeing Californians out enjoying fresh air and sunshine after many weeks of solitary confinement. It seems like an arbitrary response, but in a world of unchallenged power, who am I to object?

On its Twitter feed, the Office of the Governor posted a catchy statement: “The longer we go out, the longer we all stay in.” That’s something of a threat. State officials want us to more strictly follow Newsom’s orders, or else they will punish us with them longer. Apparently, the beatings will continue until morale improves, even though there’s scant evidence that these outings imperil public health.

Unfortunately, the nationwide rallies have seemed ineffective. Newsom said he wouldn’t listen to them and California Highway Patrol has banned and cracked down on protests at the state Capitol. There’s still a way for the out-of-work peons to proceed.

I went out for the first time in days and found the streets crowded, parking lots full and people following the social-distancing rules. Maybe our best approach is to begin to quietly live our lives as normally as possible. We won’t question the sensible measures, but, as Alice noted, we shan’t stay silent in the face of arbitrary nonsense.

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Mrs. America, the excellent nine-part series currently midway through its introductory run on FX on Hulu, approaches a still-hot-button political issue in an unusually even-handed way. The subject is the 1970s struggle over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), with lefty feminists pushing to have it installed in the Constitution and right-wing warrior Phyllis Schlafly battling to stop its proponents in their tracks.

Reactions to the series have been impassioned, even among those who hadn’t yet seen it. As a critic at the pro-Schlafly Daily Wire put it, “Early reviews suggest” that the series “paints the social conservative in a most unflattering light.” The leftish Vanity Fair waited until actually watching Mrs. America to announce in a headline that it “Tells the Villain’s Story.”

In fact, Mrs. America presents a fairly rounded portrait of Schlafly (with the usual history-pic caveat that a lot of the dialogue has been invented). Its clear-eyed assessment of a contentious public figure is a tribute to the series’ creator, Mad Men veteran Dhavi Waller, and to its incomparable star, Cate Blanchett, who carefully negotiates all of Schlafly’s contradictions. She was a tireless campaigner for female submission to husband and home (and had six children herself), but also an author (of 26 books), a congressional candidate and a national-defense expert with a law degree and a steely determination to project her uncompromising views.

Schlafly was a dark-mirror reflection of the angry feminists she so ferociously opposed. Like them, she was repeatedly written off in the world of male action and enterprise. We see her trying to assert her policy expertise in a political strategy meeting and being told by one of the men present to just sit down and take notes for them. Later, passing out some homemade muffins she’s made as part of a clever political strategy, she’s asked by an appreciative man if she’s ever thought about starting a baking business. “No,” she says, after giving the question about two seconds’ contemplation, “I’ve never thought about that.”

But it’s Schlafly’s opponents who receive the series’ most detailed examination. We see that Ms. magazine editor Gloria Steinem (glowingly portrayed by Rose Byrne) is a casual bohemian with a painful secret in her past and that she’s resisting calls to become the pretty, press-friendly face of the feminist revolution. We meet the abrasive Betty Friedan (a fierce Tracey Ullman), author of that movement landmark, The Feminine Mystique, who’s been cast aside by her husband for a younger woman; and the flamboyant congressional activist Bella Abzug (Margo Martindale, superb yet again), who’s determined to convince fiery black Democrat Shirley Chisholm (a rousing Uzo Aduba) to give up her presidential bid against George McGovern—the preferred candidate of the movement’s middle-class white feminists. It could be said that intersectionality starts here.

The cast is filled with familiar faces, which gives the series a rich texture. John Slattery plays Phyllis’ staunchly anticommunist husband, Fred Schlafly (he’s convinced abortion is part of the commie plot to promote population control). Jeanne Tripplehorn is Phyllis’s lonely, middle-aged sister-in-law (“Why didn’t anyone marry me?”). And Ari Graynor brings a surge of emotional energy to the role of Brenda, an ACLU lawyer whose open marriage is unsettled by her sudden lesbian awakening. (“That’s practically a rite of passage for a radical feminist,” says her proto-woke husband, played by Adam Brody.)

The story begins with Phyllis, a Goldwater Republican, paying little attention to the ERA, even though it’s been ratified by 28 of the 38 states it needs to become law. She becomes alarmed, however, by what she sees as the possibility that the proposed amendment could lead to the drafting of women for military service and the end of separate restrooms for men and women, among other things. She starts an anti-ERA group called STOP (“Stop Taking Our Privileges”) and begins drawing a national following. “The feminists think it’s settled,” she says. “They’re not expecting a fight.” Phyllis and her pro-family adherents are angered by feminist slogans like Friedan’s “Marriage is a comfortable concentration camp.” Says Schlafly, “They think if you don’t feel enslaved you must be dumb.”

The series manifests an uncommon sophistication in showing us that both Phyllis and Gloria Steinem are beginning to worry about their respective movements. When one woman at a STOP chapter meeting expresses admiration for a conspiracy-mongering rightwing group, the John Birch Society, Phyliss tells her “Keep that to yourself” (although Schlafly had her own ties to the Birchers, something she long denied). She’s even more taken aback when another of her followers says, “The Lord made men and women different, just like he did white people and the colored.” Meanwhile, we find Gloria observing a boisterous feminist cabaret show in which anti-marriage sentiments are in the air and the central prop is a large fake penis. “This is why they hate us,” Steinem mutters.

It can’t be a spoiler to reveal that Phyllis Schlafly finally did prevent the ERA from being ratified, although it was close (the feminists won 35 states to their cause, out of the necessary 38). An ever-evolving feminism went on to soak deep into American culture. But Schlafly’s brand of hard-edged right-wingery proved influential as well. The last of her many books, published in September 2016, the month she died, was titled The Conservative Case for Trump.

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5/8/1884: President Harry S. Truman’s birthday. He would make four appointments to the Supreme Court: Chief Justice Vinson, and Justices Burton, Clarke, and Minton.

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“Another Shitstorm in Fucktown”: That’s the name of the first chapter of Sinking in the Swamp, an extended profile of the numerous, eclectic grifters surrounding President Donald Trump. Given their gonzo style, the book’s authors—Daily Beast White House reporters Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng, two close friends of mine—clearly would have preferred the more profane but less marketable title of that chapter to adorn the book’s cover.

Sinking separates itself from a pack of recent Trump administration tell-alls by honing in on the D-list celebrities who latched on to the former reality TV star. The White House is no longer the seat of power, in Markay and Suebsaeng’s telling: That designation has moved six blocks east to the Trump International Hotel, where the pair successfully enmeshed themselves in Trump’s outer orbit by occupying the lobby bar and regularly grabbing drinks with the president’s sycophants.

The book sheds light on some significant characters whose names don’t always make front page news. “Gabe,” for instance, is Trump’s most-trusted teleprompter operator, a man who intuitively knows when to fast forward or rewind the president’s prepared script. (He warms up for the job by playing Candy Crush.) Then there’s former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, described by the authors as “the single most dishonest person” in Trump’s world—and they have receipts to prove it.

It would be impossible to come away from this book believing that Trump has “drained the swamp,” as he promised on the campaign trail. On the contrary, the president has attracted a coterie of charlatans to splash around in the mud.

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