the Gentle Cabinet: the germaphobe president sealed in glass

Gentle's hygiene-as-statecraft carried into the Cabinet Room: the president governs "from [an] OXYGENATED PORTABUBBLE," addressing his secretaries "substantially muffled by both Fukoama microfiltration mask and oxygenated Lucite portabubble." The same contamination-horror that founded "a Tighter, Tidier Nation" (081) here literally walls the head of state off from his own government behind Lucite — the experialist logic of expelling filth turned inward until the leader is a man in a bubble. The scene's mask bookend (the Fresno mom's mud-mask at its open, Gentle's Fukoama mask at its climax) makes the point graphically. (The mask-as-concealment is surveillance-disguise's; landed here as Gentle's hygiene-politics per s-d's routing.)