Новости за 14.04.2017

The consolidation of Republican power in Washington was supposed to create huge dividends for every kind of interest group by eliminating legislative gridlock and brinkmanship and giving a single party power to set policy. By the same telling, this was supposed to be a particular boon for business owners (and, downstream, for workers), who would welcome a climate of lower taxes, laxer regulation, and greater certainty with new investment, and thus more jobs.

“The real, the unique misfortune: to see the light of day,” wrote the dour Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran in his 1973 masterwork, The Trouble With Being Born. “A disaster which dates back to aggressiveness, to the seed of expansion and rage within origins, to the tendency to the worst which first shook them up.” Cioran was writing about the trouble with being born, a problem that even suicide could not fix. (“It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late,” Cioran writes in the same text... Читать дальше...

In a 2001 New York Times review of The Fast and the Furious, the first installment in what would become an eight-movie juggernaut of gleaming muscles and chrome, Elvis Mitchell wrote, “Neither fast nor furious, this film belongs in the section of the supermarket where blah-white labels and big block lettering denote brandless cigarettes, vodka, crushed pineapple, and, in this case, action picture.” The Los Angeles Times called the film “lame” and “essentially an hour and 45 minutes of Rebel Without... Читать дальше...

After Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress last month—a high-water mark for the president’s popularity with elite political pundits—conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks penned a piece titled “Trumpism at Its Best, Straight Up.” Brooks attempted to define Trump’s political philosophy as an “utter repudiation of modern conservatism,” which he defined as foreign policy hawkishness, social conservatism, and fiscal hawkishness. “For the last 40 years, the Republican Party... Читать дальше...

The presidency is an educational experience for everyone who assumes the office, since there is no other job like it. “For any new occupant of the White House, the early months are like a graduate seminar in policy crammed into every half-hour meeting,” Peter Baker wrote in The New York Times on Thursday. “What made sense on the campaign trail may have little bearing on reality in the Oval Office, and the education of a president can be rocky even for former governors or senators. For Mr. Trump... Читать дальше...

Racism, lying by officials, cracks in the edifice of civil society, widespread stupidity, and the lure of authority—these are among the issues that plagued Hannah Arendt during her years in the United States. Jewish, middle-aged, and displaced from her homeland, the German-born political theorist tried to fathom the collapse of the democracy that had formed her and the dangers within the one she now lived in. Today, her words resonate like never before.

What do Leonid Brezhnev and the guy who invented the slinky have in common? Nothing, besides being dead. Each also warranted an obituary in America’s paper of record, the New York Times. They earned that spot—although, of course, no obituarized person is around to enjoy that particular honor—through the nebulous idea of impact. OBIT, the new documentary from director Vanessa Gould, lingers at the newspaper’s death-desk to think through the meaning of remembrance, and to show the workday of these uncommon journalists. Читать дальше...

A popular image of resistance during the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2012 showed a ballerina poised atop the Charging Bull statue in New York City’s financial district. The aggressive capitalist system that had failed so many in the 2008 financial crisis needed, the image suggested, to bend to fundamental human values like grace, dignity, and compassion. Yet the socialist and Marxist thought that many of the protesters favored did not do a great job finding beauty in resistance either. The... Читать дальше...