> One participant in the groups described them as a “Republic of Letters,” a reference to the long-distance intellectual correspondence of the 17th century. Oth

> One participant in the groups described them as a “Republic of Letters,” a reference to the long-distance intellectual correspondence of the 17th century. Others often invoked European salon culture. It genuinely baffles and disturbs me that these corpos seem to think of themselves as the intellectual elite. History will remember them as little more than greedy idiots falling over each other to manifest a new age of violent and repressive authoritarianism.