Новости за 02.06.2020

Contrary to most of American folklore, the Founding Fathers were not a supernaturally wise monolith. Leading revolutionary figures like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton may have shared certain broad values, such as a commitment to republicanism, but they often passionately disagreed about what, exactly, the new nation’s political systems should look like. The Constitution that they ultimately wrote is more of a compromise between those differences than a perfect resolution to them.

A young woman stands in front of a canvas, painting a swan nestling in tall reeds. The canvas is bigger than she is, so she must travel around its surface to fill in the details. Finally, after several days, it’s finished: The Swan Song. The bird is curled up on the ground, safe in her own home, but there is a sense of danger, too—anything could come barreling through the greenery.

“Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes,” Umberto Eco wrote in 1995. “It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, ‘I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.’ Life is not that simple.” Eco, the great theorist and novelist, had been an adolescent in northern Italy under Mussolini’s fascist regime, and half a decade later, as ultranationalist demagoguery and violence were set aflame by the Cold War’s last European embers... Читать дальше...

In recent days, New York Police Department officers have violently thrown protesters to the ground, arrested journalists, maced a state senator, and used a car door to strike a man standing in the street. In one video that circulated on social media, a police officer removed the face mask of a black man, whose hands were in the air, to pepper spray him. There is abundant evidence that the NYPD has escalated confrontations with protesters who have been agitating against police brutality, and there... Читать дальше...

On January 6 and 7, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake and aftershocks struck Puerto Rico, killing at least one person, injuring more, and causing mass blackouts across the island’s already hobbled electrical grid. Citing damage to the Costa Sur power plant, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or Prepa, said in late January it would need to purchase some 500 megawatts of temporary generating capacity.

It is only a slight exaggeration to say America is burning. Protests over the killing of George Floyd by police have led to destruction of property in many cities across the country over the past few days; in Washington, DC, fires were set near the White House. These protests were characterized by endless incidents of the police deploying aggressive force against the crowds, using batons, rubber bullets, tear gas, and even their vehicles—frequently, according to attendees, unprovoked. Cops targeted the press, even when clearly marked. Читать дальше...