By Anthony Esolen, Crisis Magazine - As the plague in Europe had its occasional years of acute virulence, so in the United States the election season is upon us again. And as the plague arrived in 1348 and would not be eliminated for five hundred years, and Europe was more or less always beset by plague, so the United States is now always in electoral dysfunction. And just as hanging posies around your neck did not help then, so the sweet platitudes of democratic procedure do not help now. For our problem is not procedural.