In a country where we can finally stop wearing masks to get pizza and go to the movies, and where we again have a president who isn’t dumb as a two dollar ham, hard-working, middle-aged liberals Ralph and Alice wistfully yearn for The before Times, when things seemed normal. But for Zoe - their twenty-something daughter who grew up in a world of climate change, housing crashes, student debt, the rise of dictatorships and the fall of democracies - there is no “better” to go back to. For her the purgatory of the last two years was just a pause from life in Hell. So what’s the point? Isn’t it easier to just give up?