It's worth mentioning that ASU's English department has hired 7 tenure track English faculty in 2021 alone. Of course the job market is still prohibitively competitive etc. etc. but in a number of institutions the pandemic $ means tenure track hires. I still broadly think you're right--let's face it, people who go to state schools will either adjunct or leave the profession in 99% of cases, and admitting there is still a small chance enables people to delude themselves into thinking that a TT position is probable. But the institutional humanities are not quite yet a completely lost cause, as the fatalists on this and other websites might insist.
