My wife and I saw “Drop Dead City” tonight at the IFC in Manhattan. It’s a riveting documentary about the New York City Fiscal Crisis of 1975. I know that statement sounds like a parody of a lecture in a poli sci class, but it happens to be true. The documentary is also riveting just as a cinematic experience. If you love the scene and soundscape of New York City film from the 1970s—from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three to Dog Day Afternoon—you’ll love this documentary. The archival footage alone will bring you back to the feel and time of another place. For me, the film was not just political (more on that below) but also personal. Figures […]
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Categories
Economies, Labor/Workplace, The Left, The Right, The State
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Tags Abe Beame, Albert Shanker, Buddy Beame, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Gerald Ford, Hugh Carey, New York City Fiscal Crisis, Svetlana Alexievich, Woody Allen, Zohran Mamdani
Yesterday, I posted Part 1 of this excerpt from Chapter 9 of The Reactionary Mind. Today, I post Part 2. • • • • • What is it about being a great power that renders the imagining of its own demise so potent? Why, despite all the strictures about the prudent and rational use of force, are those powers so quick to resort to it? Perhaps it is because there is something deeply appealing about the idea of disaster, about manfully confronting and mastering catastrophe. For disaster and catastrophe can summon a nation, at least in theory, to plumb its deepest moral and political reserves, to have its mettle tested, on and off the battlefield. However much leaders and […]
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Categories
Foreign Policy, Political Theory
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Tags Abu Ghraib, Admiral Mayorga, Alan Dershowitz, Daniel Pearl, David Brooks, Donald Rumsfeld, Geoffrey Miller, Henry Kissinger, Henry Shue, Isaiah Berlin, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Laurence Olivier, Liza Minnelli, Machiavelli, Mama Rose, Marathon Man, Mussolini, Rebecca, Richard Perle, Sanford Levinson, Seymour Hersh, Taguba Report, Thomas Carlyle, Yitzhak Shamir