Tuesday, September 17, 2019
50 movies about 50 cities. Pretty good list. Most people in Buffalo would say our most representative movie would be The Natural, but they are wrong: it is actually Hide in Plain Sight.
Monday, September 16, 2019
Dahlia Lithwick: "Much of the maelstrom around Donald Trump’s electoral victory stemmed from the shock of recognition that many purportedly democratic institutions have come to serve anti-democratic purposes: Fears swirled over the Electoral College, gerrymandered districts, and hacked elections."
I gotta say that this has been apparent for a good long time, or at least since 2000, but the conversation has shifted. We seem to recognize, for example, that it isn't merely a fluke when the Electoral College serves up a President who fell short of an electoral majority, and some people are noticing that the Senate is a dysfunctional anachronism which has been a greater impediment to democracy than we've been willing to admit. Part of this is, I think, attributable to the fact that our governmental institutions went through a period of liberal reform that more or less coincided with the time we children of the post WWII generation have been alive, but perhaps a bigger part has just been denial.
I gotta say that this has been apparent for a good long time, or at least since 2000, but the conversation has shifted. We seem to recognize, for example, that it isn't merely a fluke when the Electoral College serves up a President who fell short of an electoral majority, and some people are noticing that the Senate is a dysfunctional anachronism which has been a greater impediment to democracy than we've been willing to admit. Part of this is, I think, attributable to the fact that our governmental institutions went through a period of liberal reform that more or less coincided with the time we children of the post WWII generation have been alive, but perhaps a bigger part has just been denial.
