newyorker--2020-10-28--A Young Politician Revisits Her “O.K., Boomer” Moment in Parliament

Back in the halcyon days of 2019 , when we merely faced the existential threat of climate change and not yet a pandemic , a meme began to pick up speed , first flooding TikTok and seeping into the general lexicon from there : “ O.K.
, boomer , ” a catchphrase young people used to condescendingly dismiss the generation they believed had created many of their problems .
As the phrase proliferated on social-media platforms , a particular video caught the wave : a woman giving a speech about climate change in New Zealand ’ s Parliament and brushing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ almost throwaway “ O.K.
, boomer.
” In the clip , the young M.P.
, whose name is Chlöe Swarbrick , moves on to her next line seemingly without much reaction from the audience in the room , but the moment wound up garnering her more global attention than the rest of her precocious political career up to that point .
The video of Swarbrick spread at the same time that a shockingly high number of mainstream news outlets started to gleefully cover the controversies surrounding the meme , and a backlash occurred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ term ’ s flippant intent .
Swarbrick faced criticism from her colleagues , including the conservative M.P .
who interrupted her speech , but stood her ground .
“ My ‘ OK boomer ’ comment in parliament , ” she wrote in the Guardian , “ was off-the-cuff , albeit symbolic of the collective exhaustion of multiple generations set to inherit ever-amplifying problems in an ever-diminishing window of time.
” At this point , the meme had reached a point of saturation that diminished its coolness—Swarbrick conceded that she was “ responsible for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ internet ” —but the intergenerational resentment that inspired it remained .
Despite the fluky , absurd nature of viral fame , Swarbrick is , in reality , one of the more serious possible representatives of the reasons that some millennials and members of Gen Z feel frustration with those who came before them .
At the age of twenty-two , working as a journalist , she interviewed the potential candidates for mayor of Auckland and found them all “ uninspiring , ” so she decided to run for mayor herself .
She did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she placed third in a field of nineteen .
She joined the Green Party , ran in the general election , and secured a place in Parliament through New Zealand ’ s enviable system of proportional representation , which grants each party seats based on the percentage of votes it earns .
Since joining , she has fought for , among other things , a motion to declare a climate-change emergency , the divestment of public funds from fossil fuels , and an effort to reduce New Zealand ’ s carbon emissions to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when she swatted down her heckler .
Knowing the stakes of her speech , one might argue that unadulterated politeness is less important than keeping the planet habitable .
The documentary “ OK Chlöe , ” filmed in the wake of the attention Swarbrick received from that viral moment , offers a more detailed look at her life and its subtleties .
Although her political project is idealistic in nature , she expresses her weariness with her job ’ s long hours , constant conflict , and public scrutiny .
“ This system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sitting in the empty Parliament chamber and looking gravely downward , “ and you , therefore , become inhuman and disconnected from the people you purport to represent.
” But , at other moments , she is animated by exchanges with her constituents , whom she appears to charm effortlessly at a march for L.G.B.T.Q .
rights and during a letter-writing campaign to increase voter turnout .
And her gruelling efforts appear to be bolstered by close relationships with her father , whom she calls her hero , and her sister , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to pick up her FaceTime calls .
As a child , Swarbrick ’ s father explains in one scene , she frequently asked him , “ Dad , what is the purpose of life ?
” ( “ While that sounds quite sweet , ” he adds , “ when it ’ s every week for about five years , the novelty wears off.
” ) For many members of a generation born into rising inequality , economic instability , and the pressing dangers of a warming planet , the answer to that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the troubled course of the world through activism and political engagement .
It ’ s admirable for the young to be so decisive about political action so early in life , but there is an element of tragedy in the necessity of their work and the pressure they feel to take it on .
Both come from the knowledge that most people in positions of power do not share their priorities or their acute fears about the future .
Swarbrick says that she considers leaving her position in Parliament all the time , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there for the long haul , then , it ’ s hard to see the work getting done at all.
” There can , at least , be moments of hope along the way : the carbon-emissions bill that Swarbrick was speaking in support of when she uttered the “ O.K.
, boomer ” heard around the world became law .

Back in the halcyon days of 2019, when we merely faced the existential threat of climate change and not yet a pandemic, a meme began to pick up speed, first flooding TikTok and seeping into the general lexicon from there: “O.K., boomer,” a catchphrase young people used to condescendingly dismiss the generation they believed had created many of their problems. As the phrase proliferated on social-media platforms, a particular video caught the wave: a woman giving a speech about climate change in New Zealand’s Parliament and brushing off a heckler with a brisk, almost throwaway “O.K., boomer.” In the clip, the young M.P., whose name is Chlöe Swarbrick, moves on to her next line seemingly without much reaction from the audience in the room, but the moment wound up garnering her more global attention than the rest of her precocious political career up to that point.
The video of Swarbrick spread at the same time that a shockingly high number of mainstream news outlets started to gleefully cover the controversies surrounding the meme, and a backlash occurred as baby boomers began to parse the term’s flippant intent. Swarbrick faced criticism from her colleagues, including the conservative M.P. who interrupted her speech, but stood her ground. “My ‘OK boomer’ comment in parliament,” she wrote in the Guardian, “was off-the-cuff, albeit symbolic of the collective exhaustion of multiple generations set to inherit ever-amplifying problems in an ever-diminishing window of time.” At this point, the meme had reached a point of saturation that diminished its coolness—Swarbrick conceded that she was “responsible for killing the meme, according to the internet”—but the intergenerational resentment that inspired it remained.
Despite the fluky, absurd nature of viral fame, Swarbrick is, in reality, one of the more serious possible representatives of the reasons that some millennials and members of Gen Z feel frustration with those who came before them. At the age of twenty-two, working as a journalist, she interviewed the potential candidates for mayor of Auckland and found them all “uninspiring,” so she decided to run for mayor herself. She did not come close to winning, though she placed third in a field of nineteen. She joined the Green Party, ran in the general election, and secured a place in Parliament through New Zealand’s enviable system of proportional representation, which grants each party seats based on the percentage of votes it earns. Since joining, she has fought for, among other things, a motion to declare a climate-change emergency, the divestment of public funds from fossil fuels, and an effort to reduce New Zealand’s carbon emissions to zero by 2050—the policy she was advocating when she swatted down her heckler. Knowing the stakes of her speech, one might argue that unadulterated politeness is less important than keeping the planet habitable.
The documentary “OK Chlöe,” filmed in the wake of the attention Swarbrick received from that viral moment, offers a more detailed look at her life and its subtleties. Although her political project is idealistic in nature, she expresses her weariness with her job’s long hours, constant conflict, and public scrutiny. “This system dehumanizes people,” she says, sitting in the empty Parliament chamber and looking gravely downward, “and you, therefore, become inhuman and disconnected from the people you purport to represent.” But, at other moments, she is animated by exchanges with her constituents, whom she appears to charm effortlessly at a march for L.G.B.T.Q. rights and during a letter-writing campaign to increase voter turnout. And her gruelling efforts appear to be bolstered by close relationships with her father, whom she calls her hero, and her sister, who complains affectionately that Swarbrick is too busy to pick up her FaceTime calls.
As a child, Swarbrick’s father explains in one scene, she frequently asked him, “Dad, what is the purpose of life?” (“While that sounds quite sweet,” he adds, “when it’s every week for about five years, the novelty wears off.”) For many members of a generation born into rising inequality, economic instability, and the pressing dangers of a warming planet, the answer to that question seems to involve trying to steer the troubled course of the world through activism and political engagement. It’s admirable for the young to be so decisive about political action so early in life, but there is an element of tragedy in the necessity of their work and the pressure they feel to take it on. Both come from the knowledge that most people in positions of power do not share their priorities or their acute fears about the future. Swarbrick says that she considers leaving her position in Parliament all the time, but “if you’re not there for the long haul, then, it’s hard to see the work getting done at all.” There can, at least, be moments of hope along the way: the carbon-emissions bill that Swarbrick was speaking in support of when she uttered the “O.K., boomer” heard around the world became law.


newyorker--2020-10-28--The Best Horror Movies for Halloween—Without the Gore

Halloween is my least favorite viewing season because genre is a curse and horror films carry an extra curse—the curse of gore .
I consider it a dereliction of directorial duty for horror films to yield to disgusting the viewer—and not only because I ’ m squeamish .
I ’ ve said often that doing justice to the extremes of human experience in filmmaking demands extraordinary artistry , because such extremes—whether involving violence , sex , the demonic , or the divine—involve primal , powerful emotions that fall at the limit of the representable .
The curse of genre , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , allowing filmmakers to rationalize a movie ’ s ordinariness as adherence to convention .
It ’ s precisely such ordinariness , such deference to formula , that turns so many horror films ’ depiction of monstrous violence not just revolting but morally repulsive , not just trivializing but pornographic .
That said , there ’ s a formidable tradition of films that express horror according not to a set of established guidelines but to freely expressive impulse , evoking , through far-reaching imagination rather than blood and guts , the emotions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sense the uncanny .
Here are ten of my favorites .
Some of these movies start with classic stories ; others graft well-worn tropes onto sharply observed realities and , in the process , transform both .
All convey a sense of awe in approaching the mysteries of mind , of family , of desire , of history , of existence—and of the cinema itself .
They suggest the extremes of experience that are evoked by the very effort to explore the supernatural , the haunted , the tormented , the dreadful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his surprising venture into horror , the Danish director avoids following the lead of his only peer in the genre , F. W. Murnau , in “ Nosferatu ” ( 1922 ) —he avoids showing a monster at all ( no fangs or bat wings or pointy ears ) .
Instead , Dreyer offers a meticulously rational story ( loosely based on tales by Sheridan Le Fanu ) of a vampire curse that spreads on contact from person to person like a plague .
The story is centered on a man who enters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ man ’ s terror and confusion in the face of the deadly curse using a hallucinatory repertory of images , featuring shadows and reflections , distorting angles and multiple exposures ( and , though I didn ’ t count , seemingly even more shots of ceilings than in “ Citizen Kane ” ) .
What ’ s more , Dreyer elicits stunned and eerie performances from a cast composed almost entirely of nonprofessional actors .
“ Vampyr ” is perhaps the most effective and most radical Surrealist movie ever made .
One of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ independent films , “ Carnival of Souls ” —made for a mere thirteen thousand dollars in cash—was released at a time when there was hardly an outlet for such work .
Its director , Herk Harvey , was a Kansas-based maker of industrial films ; its screenwriter , John Clifford , was his colleague ; its spark of inspiration was an abandoned amusement park in Salt Lake City that Harvey saw during a road trip ; and its story—of a woman ( Candace Hilligoss ) who , after a catastrophic car accident , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seemingly ordinary life until her nonexistence catches up with her—veers from the merely macabre ( which it delivers lavishly , in hectic , Gothic flourishes ) to the profoundly socially isolating .
With boldly imaginative effects that defy the scant budget , Harvey leaps out from the company of Ed Wood and George Romero to join that of Michelangelo Antonioni as a poet of post-industrial alienation .
He died in 1996 without making another feature .
Another classic shocker trope , chaos in a mental institution , gets a sharply avant-garde expansion in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ British playwright , theatre director , and feminist activist Jane Arden .
The ramshackle institution ’ s patients are all women , as are its doctors and attendants ; the film ’ s allusive and symbolic extravagance blasts down the boundaries between physical reality and psychotic delusion .
Terrifying performances of dissociated patients veer into theatrical tableaux of double-talk and outlandish costumes , of religious rites merging with marriage fantasies , music-hall bawdiness with rock-club slasher games .
There are visually intricate tricks with mirrors and ingenious effects involving movies projected onto bodies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they render the occasional interludes of stillness all the more chillingly warped .
A special aspect of the movie ’ s hallucinatory power is the music by the cellist Sally Minford , which she performs live on-camera as one of the inmates .
I shiver even recalling watching this drama of primal terror , about a Dutch couple vacationing in France when the woman ( Johanna ter Steege ) , who ’ d been haunted by a recurring nightmare , vanishes at a gas station and her partner ( Gene Bervoets ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ man who claims to be her kidnapper ( Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu ) .
Sluizer isn ’ t among the more original stylists , but the literalness of his direction suffices to evoke the horrific and monstrous possibilities lurking behind the façades of ordinary life .
The American director ’ s first feature , made in Iceland , stars the pop singer Björk in a cruel medieval tale of witchcraft and revenge by the Brothers Grimm .
Two wandering sisters , Margit ( Björk ) and Katla ( Bryndís Petra Bragadóttir ) , have fled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ execution on a charge of witchcraft—because their own mystical powers pose risks to them , too .
In the rocky wild , the two young women encounter a widowed farmer named Johann and his young son , Jonas .
Katla marries Johann and becomes Jonas ’ s stepmother , sparking the resentment of the boy who remains loyal to his late mother ’ s memory .
In response , Katla conceives a vengeful plot that leads to catastrophe and unearths ancient transgressions .
In Keene ’ s rough-textured , stone-cold black-and-white images ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spells and spirits , legends and reminiscences , animistic forces and mystical visions tremble with age-old violence and unslaked fury .
Though Tolkin has had success as a screenwriter , his first feature should have launched him as a director ( instead , he has made only one more film ) .
It stars Mimi Rogers as Sharon , a telephone operator in Los Angeles who compensates for her daily boredom with sexual encounters—until she experiences strange visions meshed with strangely overheard snippets of dogma and becomes a devout Christian obsessed with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The frozen metaphysical stillness of Tolkin ’ s manner—conjuring a world that exists outside of human time—is matched by the quietly hypnotic ferocity of Rogers ’ s performance .
It ’ s one of the most terrifying of religious films ; an astounding synthesis of style and subject , it merges the meticulously practical and the terrifyingly visionary with a breathtaking audacity .
Writing and directing her first feature , Kasi Lemmons offers an inside-out horror film—a coming-of-age melodrama replete with visions , curses , and a haunted family backstory that lands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of history and of patriarchy .
Its protagonist is Eve ( Jurnee Smollett ) , a ten-year-old Black girl in small-town Louisiana , around 1960 , who sees her family falling apart because of the infidelities of her father ( Samuel L. Jackson ) , an esteemed local doctor , whom she soon suspects of more grievous misdeeds .
Eve possesses the gift of clairvoyance , and she focusses her gift—and summons the power of a voodoo priestess ( Diahann Carroll ) —to do justice .
Lemmons pursues the story with a sharp-eyed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s authentic emotional pressures along with the strangeness of the supernatural powers that impose a higher responsibility—and a grim burden—on the young heroine .

Halloween is my least favorite viewing season because genre is a curse and horror films carry an extra curse—the curse of gore. I consider it a dereliction of directorial duty for horror films to yield to disgusting the viewer—and not only because I’m squeamish. I’ve said often that doing justice to the extremes of human experience in filmmaking demands extraordinary artistry, because such extremes—whether involving violence, sex, the demonic, or the divine—involve primal, powerful emotions that fall at the limit of the representable. The curse of genre, though, pulls in the opposite direction, allowing filmmakers to rationalize a movie’s ordinariness as adherence to convention. It’s precisely such ordinariness, such deference to formula, that turns so many horror films’ depiction of monstrous violence not just revolting but morally repulsive, not just trivializing but pornographic.
That said, there’s a formidable tradition of films that express horror according not to a set of established guidelines but to freely expressive impulse, evoking, through far-reaching imagination rather than blood and guts, the emotions of fear, dread, foreboding, and a sense the uncanny. Here are ten of my favorites. Some of these movies start with classic stories; others graft well-worn tropes onto sharply observed realities and, in the process, transform both. All convey a sense of awe in approaching the mysteries of mind, of family, of desire, of history, of existence—and of the cinema itself. They suggest the extremes of experience that are evoked by the very effort to explore the supernatural, the haunted, the tormented, the dreadful, both outward and within.
“Vampyr”
(1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
For his surprising venture into horror, the Danish director avoids following the lead of his only peer in the genre, F. W. Murnau, in “Nosferatu” (1922)—he avoids showing a monster at all (no fangs or bat wings or pointy ears). Instead, Dreyer offers a meticulously rational story (loosely based on tales by Sheridan Le Fanu) of a vampire curse that spreads on contact from person to person like a plague. The story is centered on a man who enters a vampire-poisoned household; Dreyer depicts the man’s terror and confusion in the face of the deadly curse using a hallucinatory repertory of images, featuring shadows and reflections, distorting angles and multiple exposures (and, though I didn’t count, seemingly even more shots of ceilings than in “Citizen Kane”). What’s more, Dreyer elicits stunned and eerie performances from a cast composed almost entirely of nonprofessional actors. “Vampyr” is perhaps the most effective and most radical Surrealist movie ever made.
“Carnival of Souls”
(1962, Herk Harvey)
Photograph from Everett
One of the most distinctive and original of American independent films, “Carnival of Souls”—made for a mere thirteen thousand dollars in cash—was released at a time when there was hardly an outlet for such work. Its director, Herk Harvey, was a Kansas-based maker of industrial films; its screenwriter, John Clifford, was his colleague; its spark of inspiration was an abandoned amusement park in Salt Lake City that Harvey saw during a road trip; and its story—of a woman (Candace Hilligoss) who, after a catastrophic car accident, returns from the dead to live a seemingly ordinary life until her nonexistence catches up with her—veers from the merely macabre (which it delivers lavishly, in hectic, Gothic flourishes) to the profoundly socially isolating. With boldly imaginative effects that defy the scant budget, Harvey leaps out from the company of Ed Wood and George Romero to join that of Michelangelo Antonioni as a poet of post-industrial alienation. He died in 1996 without making another feature.
“The Other Side of Underneath”
(1972, Jane Arden)
Another classic shocker trope, chaos in a mental institution, gets a sharply avant-garde expansion in this chaotic yet hypnotic film by the British playwright, theatre director, and feminist activist Jane Arden. The ramshackle institution’s patients are all women, as are its doctors and attendants; the film’s allusive and symbolic extravagance blasts down the boundaries between physical reality and psychotic delusion. Terrifying performances of dissociated patients veer into theatrical tableaux of double-talk and outlandish costumes, of religious rites merging with marriage fantasies, music-hall bawdiness with rock-club slasher games. There are visually intricate tricks with mirrors and ingenious effects involving movies projected onto bodies; along with frenetic camera movements, they render the occasional interludes of stillness all the more chillingly warped. A special aspect of the movie’s hallucinatory power is the music by the cellist Sally Minford, which she performs live on-camera as one of the inmates.
“The Vanishing”
(1988, George Sluizer)
Photograph from Everett
I shiver even recalling watching this drama of primal terror, about a Dutch couple vacationing in France when the woman (Johanna ter Steege), who’d been haunted by a recurring nightmare, vanishes at a gas station and her partner (Gene Bervoets), obsessed with finding her, encounters a man who claims to be her kidnapper (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu). Sluizer isn’t among the more original stylists, but the literalness of his direction suffices to evoke the horrific and monstrous possibilities lurking behind the façades of ordinary life.
“The Juniper Tree”
(1989, Nietzchka Keene)
The American director’s first feature, made in Iceland, stars the pop singer Björk in a cruel medieval tale of witchcraft and revenge by the Brothers Grimm. Two wandering sisters, Margit (Björk) and Katla (Bryndís Petra Bragadóttir), have fled their village following their mother’s execution on a charge of witchcraft—because their own mystical powers pose risks to them, too. In the rocky wild, the two young women encounter a widowed farmer named Johann and his young son, Jonas. Katla marries Johann and becomes Jonas’s stepmother, sparking the resentment of the boy who remains loyal to his late mother’s memory. In response, Katla conceives a vengeful plot that leads to catastrophe and unearths ancient transgressions. In Keene’s rough-textured, stone-cold black-and-white images (with cinematography by Randolph Sellars), spells and spirits, legends and reminiscences, animistic forces and mystical visions tremble with age-old violence and unslaked fury.
“The Rapture”
(1991, Michael Tolkin)


newyorker--2020-10-29--How America Escapes Its Conspiracy-Theory Crisis

The public raged at Guiteau , a delusional political wannabe who believed he deserved an appointment as a U.S. official in Europe .
While Guiteau considered himself an important Garfield supporter , he was actually just one of thousands of hangers-on who hoped to obtain a post in the federal government under what was then known as the “ spoils system , ” in which each new President appointed thousands of supporters to federal jobs , prioritizing loyalty over merit .
( “ To the victor belong the spoils , ” as one senator put it . )
Under such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a country still divided after the Civil War lacked the political will to address it .
Garfield ’ s death proved a turning point .
Sixteen months later , on January 16 , 1883 , Congress passed and Arthur signed the Pendleton Act , a historic government reform mandating that almost all federal employees had to be hired on the basis of skills , training , and education , rather than political patronage .
The act would give Americans the benefit of an independent , professional civil service—one which was answerable to elected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Last week , President Trump signed Executive Order 13957 .
Although its title , “ On Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service , ” is almost aggressively banal , it is an unprecedented election-eve power grab that could undo much of the Pendleton Act .
The order could strip hundreds of thousands of federal officials of their civil-service protections , allowing them to be quickly dismissed , like political appointees .
It has the potential to expand the number of people appointed by each President from about four thousand to hundreds of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attempt to redefine the civil service as a political arm of the Presidency rather than public servants who work for the American people , ” Don Beyer , a Democratic representative from Virginia , told the Washington Post .
Democrats have decried the order as a return to Civil-War-era cronyism .
Some conservatives , however , have praised it as a brave attempt to tame the “ deep state.
” The imaginary “ deep state ” —a permanent , unelected shadow government which is said to have relentlessly gathered power to itself—has long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ According to the President and his allies , the deep state might include not just power-mad F.B.I .
and C.I.A .
agents but military leaders , journalists , tech executives , and F.D.A .
regulators ; some have extended it to include infectious-disease experts fighting the pandemic , such as Anthony Fauci .
The idea of the deep state saturates Trump ’ s rhetoric and worldview .
His Presidency is predicated on the idea that the United States government is itself an enemy of the people .
“ Somebody said , President , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deal with ?
Is it Russia ?
Is it China ?
Is it North Korea ?
” Trump told attendees , at a recent fund-raiser .
“ No , the toughest country by far is dealing with the United States .
It ’ s true .
These people are sick.
” On the day that he signed the civil-service executive order , the President tweeted , “ I am not just running against Biden , I am running against the Corrupt Media , the Big Tech Giants , and the Washington Swamp.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in conspiracy theories for political gain .
Where other conspiracy theorists might demonize racial or religious groups , however , he focusses on the government he leads .
Through social media and the bully pulpit , he has persuaded many Americans to take the same view .
Belief in a “ deep state ” has become pervasive in the United States .
In 2018 , a poll administered by Monmouth University found that three out of four respondents agreed that “ a group of unelected government and military officials ” either definitely or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy in secret .
Eight in ten people said that the federal government currently monitors or spies on the activities of American citizens .
Views about the nature of the deep state increasingly diverge along party lines : a 2019 YouGov poll found that , among people who have heard the term , eighty-three per cent of Republicans thought that the deep state was trying to undermine Trump , while only ten per cent of Democrats did .
But the theory is by no means confined to the right .
Belief in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conservative members of the National Rifle Association but among centrist and left-leaning members of racial minorities , who associate it with the persistence of prejudice against them .
The concept of a deep state is popular , in part , because it is flexible .
Conservatives who look askance at QAnon—a lurid theory positing that Trump is combatting a Satanic child-sex-trafficking ring run by Democrats—might use the term to refer to what they see as an overzealous , regulation-loving “ administrative state.
” Many on the left are less likely to use the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they fear the military-industrial complex , a “ cabal ” of generals and defense contractors which they worry pushes the country into endless wars .
Many voters in both parties see the politicians , lobbyists , and journalists associated with politics as members of an unaccountable élite focussed primarily on their own interests , not the public ’ s .
Skepticism about government can be a sign of health in a democracy .
Concentrations of power and secrecy have always struck Americans as unjust ; since the country ’ s founding , politicians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and change Washington .
Past eras of government misconduct and duplicity have validated these anti-government attitudes .
In 1958 , seventy-three per cent of respondents told the National Election Study that they trusted the federal government to do the right thing most of the time , according to a Pew Research Center analysis .
By 1974—toward the end of the Vietnam War , and after Watergate—only thirty-six per cent of Americans felt that way .
Since then , no President has been able to restore trust for a sustained period .
During Obama @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump Administration , the percentage of Americans who say that they trust the government has hovered around eighteen per cent .
When distrust of government reaches saturation levels and stays there , it begins to corrode the society it might otherwise help protect .
Today , widespread skepticism about public life , fuelled by political polarization , racial discrimination , economic inequality , and the culture war , is being heightened by an online information crisis .
Social-media platforms amplify the most provocative voices , and are filled with alternative facts about our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ functioning of society .
This spring and summer , as the pandemic unfolded alongside protests against racial injustice , the effects of such a system were impossible to miss .
A video falsely claiming that Fauci and other élites were responsible for the pandemic and had been using it for their own ends received more than eight million views .
Thousands of Twitter and Facebook posts claimed that Derek Chauvin , the police officer accused of killing George Floyd , was an actor hired by the deep state .
A candidate who believes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to win a seat in Congress .
Two-thirds of Trump supporters surveyed said that they didn ’ t believe that absentee or mail-in ballots would be counted as voters intended .
Convinced that government officials and experts are conspiring against them , large numbers of Americans plan to vote for a President who wants the power to hire and fire more of them himself .
For years , the phrase and concept remained on the fringes of American politics .
But five weeks after Donald Trump won the Presidency , Breitbart News—whose former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s chief strategist—introduced the idea to a broader conservative audience .
In a tendentious , four-thousand-word article titled “ The Deep State vs. Donald Trump , ” an anonymous author , writing under the pseudonym “ Virgil , ” argued that federal , state , and local government employees , policy experts , contractors , and journalists together constituted a “ deep state ” stretching “ across the whole of the federal government—indeed , the entirety of the country.
” A “ great power struggle , ” Virgil theorized , was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state .
The following June , Trump retweeted to his followers a post from the Fox News host Sean Hannity , in which Hannity promoted an upcoming segment of his show dedicated to “ the Deep State ’ s allies in the media.
” The term “ deep state ” soon became part of the Trumpian lexicon , along with “ witch hunt ” and “ fake news.
” The concept has proved potent enough to change core tenets of the Republican Party .
Today , in a reversal , slightly more Democrats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ C.I.A .
positively .
Americans have long used many terms , derogatory and complimentary , to describe government workers .
An official with the Environmental Protection Agency may be a “ watchdog ” to a Democrat but a “ job-killer ” to a Republican ; Democrats hail the experience of “ public servants ” while Trump derides the Washington “ eliteswamp.
” One might begin to describe this workforce objectively by saying that roughly nine million Americans hold positions with the federal government , as health-care workers , soldiers , park rangers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and so on .
The vast majority of them are unelected , but they are required , by statute , to implement the lawful policies of the elected officials for whom they work .
( Like members of the military , American civil servants take an oath of office , swearing to “ support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies , foreign and domestic.
” ) About two million Americans work as civil servants in various federal departments—a figure that has remained largely unchanged since the nineteen-fifties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stay on no matter who ’ s elected .
Countries supervise them to different extents .
After taking office , a British Prime Minister installs several hundred appointees ; an American President , by contrast , appoints about four thousand .
American Presidential appointees work not just at the tops of federal agencies but throughout them ; in Britain , although the Prime Minister appoints the head of each government ministry , virtually all ministry employees are members of the permanent government .
( Two popular BBC comedies , “ Yes Minister ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” have centered on the power struggles between a newly appointed minister and the “ permanent secretary , ” or career civil servant , who runs an agency day to day ; usually , the permanent secretary is concerned mainly with defending the agency ’ s reputation , turf , and budget . )
American civil servants are also constrained by law .
In addition to the Pendleton Act , the Hatch Act , passed in 1939 , bars them from engaging in political activity on the job .
France , Germany , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like the British system .
In general , American elected officials have more power over permanent government workers than their counterparts in other liberal democracies .
Comparatively , our state is shallow .
The report emerged as the country was reeling from a decade of war , assassination , protest , and Presidential corruption .
Its revelations confirmed many Americans ’ worst fears about their own government .
The C.I.A .
and the F.B.I .
had opened and photographed nearly half a million letters mailed between private citizens , snooping on the personal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Richard Nixon .
The Justice Department had gathered information on hundreds of anti-Vietnam War activists and shared it with the C.I.A.
, which maintained files on at least four members of Congress and John Lennon .
F.B.I .
agents had illegally investigated five hundred thousand Americans whom they deemed “ subversive , ” and infiltrated political groups spanning the ideological spectrum .
J. Edgar Hoover , the F.B.I .
director , had created a list of twenty-six thousand Americans to be rounded up in the case of a “ national emergency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the writer Norman Mailer .
Under Hoover , agents conducted a secret campaign to discredit Martin Luther King , Jr. , who he believed was a Communist sympathizer .
F.B.I .
agents planted negative stories about King in the press and bugged his hotel rooms .
In 1964 , shortly before King travelled to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize , agents sent him and his wife a tape recording which they claimed contained evidence of King conducting extramarital affairs and an anonymous letter suggesting that he commit suicide .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Republicans , declared these practices abhorrent , immoral , and criminal .
The committee issued ninety-six bipartisan recommendations to prevent future abuses .
An activist Congress , with the support of Presidents Ford and Carter , spent years enacting a historic wave of reforms .
New Senate and House intelligence committees were created to monitor the work of America ’ s spies .
Ford issued an executive order limiting C.I.A .
operations inside the United States .
Congress set a ten-year term limit for F.B.I .
directors .
Jimmy Carter signed laws @ @ @ @ @ @ @ illegal acts by the President and White House aides , created a dozen independent inspectors general to investigate whistle-blower complaints , and established a new federal court to approve national security-related eavesdropping inside the United States .
The oversight system ushered in by Church and Tower reset how elected leaders controlled the F.B.I.
, the C.I.A.
, and workers across the federal government .
But the system wasn ’ t without its opponents .
After leaving office , Ford began to argue that the increased congressional oversight had perilously weakened the President ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country .
In the nineteen-eighties , after the Iran-Contra affair—in which White House aides and the C.I.A .
secretly provided military aid abroad without notifying Congress—Dick Cheney , then a congressman , argued that nothing improper had occurred , since , in his view , foreign policy and national security should be controlled solely by the President .
Over time , Cheney ’ s view gained ground among conservatives .
After losing the 1992 Presidential election , George H. W. Bush , with the support of his then Attorney General , William Barr @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ d been convicted of lying to Congress and other offenses during Iran-Contra .

On July 2, 1881, President James A. Garfield arrived at Washington, D.C.,’s Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station to depart for summer vacation. An Ohio Republican, Garfield was considered one of his era’s most promising Presidents; at forty-nine years old, he was the third-youngest man ever elected to the office. As he walked arm-in-arm across the station with his friend, Secretary of State James G. Blaine, a forty-year-old lawyer turned bill collector turned preacher named Charles Guiteau walked up behind him and pulled out a revolver. Guiteau fired two shots into the President’s back. One missed, grazing Garfield’s arm; the other struck dead center. Before being taken away by the police, Guiteau bizarrely declared his loyalty to Chester A. Arthur, Garfield’s Vice-President: “I am a Stalwart, and Arthur is President now,” he shouted. News of the shooting spread instantly, via telegraph, across the country. For the next seventy-nine days, Garfield lingered, his health improving and declining, in part due to botched medical care. On September 19th, he died.
The public raged at Guiteau, a delusional political wannabe who believed he deserved an appointment as a U.S. official in Europe. While Guiteau considered himself an important Garfield supporter, he was actually just one of thousands of hangers-on who hoped to obtain a post in the federal government under what was then known as the “spoils system,” in which each new President appointed thousands of supporters to federal jobs, prioritizing loyalty over merit. (“To the victor belong the spoils,” as one senator put it.) Under such a system corruption was rampant, but a country still divided after the Civil War lacked the political will to address it. Garfield’s death proved a turning point. Sixteen months later, on January 16, 1883, Congress passed and Arthur signed the Pendleton Act, a historic government reform mandating that almost all federal employees had to be hired on the basis of skills, training, and education, rather than political patronage. The act would give Americans the benefit of an independent, professional civil service—one which was answerable to elected officials without being beholden to them.
Last week, President Trump signed Executive Order 13957. Although its title, “On Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” is almost aggressively banal, it is an unprecedented election-eve power grab that could undo much of the Pendleton Act. The order could strip hundreds of thousands of federal officials of their civil-service protections, allowing them to be quickly dismissed, like political appointees. It has the potential to expand the number of people appointed by each President from about four thousand to hundreds of thousands. “It’s an attempt to redefine the civil service as a political arm of the Presidency rather than public servants who work for the American people,” Don Beyer, a Democratic representative from Virginia, told the Washington Post. Democrats have decried the order as a return to Civil-War-era cronyism. Some conservatives, however, have praised it as a brave attempt to tame the “deep state.”
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The imaginary “deep state”—a permanent, unelected shadow government which is said to have relentlessly gathered power to itself—has long served as a foil for Trump. According to the President and his allies, the deep state might include not just power-mad F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents but military leaders, journalists, tech executives, and F.D.A. regulators; some have extended it to include infectious-disease experts fighting the pandemic, such as Anthony Fauci. The idea of the deep state saturates Trump’s rhetoric and worldview. His Presidency is predicated on the idea that the United States government is itself an enemy of the people. “Somebody said, President, what’s the toughest country to deal with? Is it Russia? Is it China? Is it North Korea?” Trump told attendees, at a recent fund-raiser. “No, the toughest country by far is dealing with the United States. It’s true. These people are sick.” On the day that he signed the civil-service executive order, the President tweeted, “I am not just running against Biden, I am running against the Corrupt Media, the Big Tech Giants, and the Washington Swamp.”
Since entering politics, Trump has trafficked in conspiracy theories for political gain. Where other conspiracy theorists might demonize racial or religious groups, however, he focusses on the government he leads. Through social media and the bully pulpit, he has persuaded many Americans to take the same view. Belief in a “deep state” has become pervasive in the United States. In 2018, a poll administered by Monmouth University found that three out of four respondents agreed that “a group of unelected government and military officials” either definitely or probably “manipulate or direct” national policy in secret. Eight in ten people said that the federal government currently monitors or spies on the activities of American citizens. Views about the nature of the deep state increasingly diverge along party lines: a 2019 YouGov poll found that, among people who have heard the term, eighty-three per cent of Republicans thought that the deep state was trying to undermine Trump, while only ten per cent of Democrats did. But the theory is by no means confined to the right. Belief in the deep state is high not just among conservative members of the National Rifle Association but among centrist and left-leaning members of racial minorities, who associate it with the persistence of prejudice against them.
The concept of a deep state is popular, in part, because it is flexible. Conservatives who look askance at QAnon—a lurid theory positing that Trump is combatting a Satanic child-sex-trafficking ring run by Democrats—might use the term to refer to what they see as an overzealous, regulation-loving “administrative state.” Many on the left are less likely to use the term “deep state,” but they fear the military-industrial complex, a “cabal” of generals and defense contractors which they worry pushes the country into endless wars. Many voters in both parties see the politicians, lobbyists, and journalists associated with politics as members of an unaccountable élite focussed primarily on their own interests, not the public’s.
Skepticism about government can be a sign of health in a democracy. Concentrations of power and secrecy have always struck Americans as unjust; since the country’s founding, politicians have been elected on promises to tame and change Washington. Past eras of government misconduct and duplicity have validated these anti-government attitudes. In 1958, seventy-three per cent of respondents told the National Election Study that they trusted the federal government to do the right thing most of the time, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. By 1974—toward the end of the Vietnam War, and after Watergate—only thirty-six per cent of Americans felt that way. Since then, no President has been able to restore trust for a sustained period. During Obama’s second term and into the Trump Administration, the percentage of Americans who say that they trust the government has hovered around eighteen per cent.
When distrust of government reaches saturation levels and stays there, it begins to corrode the society it might otherwise help protect. Today, widespread skepticism about public life, fuelled by political polarization, racial discrimination, economic inequality, and the culture war, is being heightened by an online information crisis. Social-media platforms amplify the most provocative voices, and are filled with alternative facts about our government, our institutions, and the functioning of society. This spring and summer, as the pandemic unfolded alongside protests against racial injustice, the effects of such a system were impossible to miss. A video falsely claiming that Fauci and other élites were responsible for the pandemic and had been using it for their own ends received more than eight million views. Thousands of Twitter and Facebook posts claimed that Derek Chauvin, the police officer accused of killing George Floyd, was an actor hired by the deep state. A candidate who believes in the QAnon conspiracy theory is set to win a seat in Congress. Two-thirds of Trump supporters surveyed said that they didn’t believe that absentee or mail-in ballots would be counted as voters intended. Convinced that government officials and experts are conspiring against them, large numbers of Americans plan to vote for a President who wants the power to hire and fire more of them himself.
The term “deep state” predates social media. It was first used in the nineteen-nineties, by political scientists, to describe the political power wielded by the Turkish military, which opposed democratic reforms. In 2007, Peter Dale Scott, a retired English professor at the University of California, Berkeley, applied the term to the United States government in a book called “The Road to 9/11.” In the book, Scott accused American political leaders and the U.S. military of intentionally fuelling conflict at home and abroad in order to secure funding and status. After its publication, Scott became an occasional guest on Alex Jones’s far-right, conspiracy-minded radio program; Jones and his audience seized upon the concept of the deep state, expanding its scope and falsely claiming that the U.S. government had carried out the Oklahoma City, 9/11, and Sandy Hook attacks.
For years, the phrase and concept remained on the fringes of American politics. But five weeks after Donald Trump won the Presidency, Breitbart News—whose former chairman, Steve Bannon, had become Trump’s chief strategist—introduced the idea to a broader conservative audience. In a tendentious, four-thousand-word article titled “The Deep State vs. Donald Trump,” an anonymous author, writing under the pseudonym “Virgil,” argued that federal, state, and local government employees, policy experts, contractors, and journalists together constituted a “deep state” stretching “across the whole of the federal government—indeed, the entirety of the country.” A “great power struggle,” Virgil theorized, was currently underway between Trump and this deep state. The following June, Trump retweeted to his followers a post from the Fox News host Sean Hannity, in which Hannity promoted an upcoming segment of his show dedicated to “the Deep State’s allies in the media.” The term “deep state” soon became part of the Trumpian lexicon, along with “witch hunt” and “fake news.” The concept has proved potent enough to change core tenets of the Republican Party. Today, in a reversal, slightly more Democrats than Republicans say that they view the C.I.A. positively.
Americans have long used many terms, derogatory and complimentary, to describe government workers. An official with the Environmental Protection Agency may be a “watchdog” to a Democrat but a “job-killer” to a Republican; Democrats hail the experience of “public servants” while Trump derides the Washington “eliteswamp.” One might begin to describe this workforce objectively by saying that roughly nine million Americans hold positions with the federal government, as health-care workers, soldiers, park rangers, C.I.A. operatives, accountants, soldiers, and so on. The vast majority of them are unelected, but they are required, by statute, to implement the lawful policies of the elected officials for whom they work. (Like members of the military, American civil servants take an oath of office, swearing to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”) About two million Americans work as civil servants in various federal departments—a figure that has remained largely unchanged since the nineteen-fifties.
Trump’s Presidency is predicated on the idea that the United States government is itself an enemy of the people.
All nations have permanent governments—workforces that stay on no matter who’s elected. Countries supervise them to different extents. After taking office, a British Prime Minister installs several hundred appointees; an American President, by contrast, appoints about four thousand. American Presidential appointees work not just at the tops of federal agencies but throughout them; in Britain, although the Prime Minister appoints the head of each government ministry, virtually all ministry employees are members of the permanent government. (Two popular BBC comedies, “Yes Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister,” have centered on the power struggles between a newly appointed minister and the “permanent secretary,” or career civil servant, who runs an agency day to day; usually, the permanent secretary is concerned mainly with defending the agency’s reputation, turf, and budget.) American civil servants are also constrained by law. In addition to the Pendleton Act, the Hatch Act, passed in 1939, bars them from engaging in political activity on the job. France, Germany, and many other countries work on something like the British system. In general, American elected officials have more power over permanent government workers than their counterparts in other liberal democracies. Comparatively, our state is shallow.
And yet the question of how closely government bureaucrats are supervised is not what animates the most committed deep-state conspiracy theorists. They are more concerned with the misdeeds of a secretive inner circle of agents and spies. On April 29, 1976, a select investigative committee of the U.S. Senate, led by Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho, and John Tower, a Republican from Texas, released a twenty-seven-hundred-page report detailing decades of illegal F.B.I. and C.I.A. spying on Americans. The report showed that the F.B.I. had compiled more than half a million domestic-intelligence files on individuals or groups who were engaged in constitutionally-protected political activities. The misconduct spanned the tenures of six Presidents, from both parties.
The report emerged as the country was reeling from a decade of war, assassination, protest, and Presidential corruption. Its revelations confirmed many Americans’ worst fears about their own government. The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. had opened and photographed nearly half a million letters mailed between private citizens, snooping on the personal correspondence of John Steinbeck, Ted Kennedy, and Richard Nixon. The Justice Department had gathered information on hundreds of anti-Vietnam War activists and shared it with the C.I.A., which maintained files on at least four members of Congress and John Lennon. F.B.I. agents had illegally investigated five hundred thousand Americans whom they deemed “subversive,” and infiltrated political groups spanning the ideological spectrum. J. Edgar Hoover, the F.B.I. director, had created a list of twenty-six thousand Americans to be rounded up in the case of a “national emergency”; it included doctors, scientists, and the writer Norman Mailer. Under Hoover, agents conducted a secret campaign to discredit Martin Luther King, Jr., who he believed was a Communist sympathizer. F.B.I. agents planted negative stories about King in the press and bugged his hotel rooms. In 1964, shortly before King travelled to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, agents sent him and his wife a tape recording which they claimed contained evidence of King conducting extramarital affairs and an anonymous letter suggesting that he commit suicide.


newyorker--2020-10-29--Halloween Around the House

Halloween Around the House

Yes , we must ready ourselves to celebrate the turning of the seasons .
But these are dark and isolating times .
There will be no passing of candy from strangers to children as their parents look on , no ironic yet sexy costumes , no bowls of spaghetti brains and peeled-grape eyeballs , no masks other than all the regular masks .
That doesn ’ t mean we can ’ t still have a little fun !
Here are some tips for dressing up and decorating your home this especially scary Halloween .
MUMMY COSTUMES !
For a moment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was gone .
You checked five stores repeatedly for two weeks and eventually came to find paper plates an acceptable substitute , or you ordered bamboo toilet paper from Sweden , or , if you were a very lucky monster , ripped some rolls out of a terrified older person ’ s hands .
Whatever the means , you panicked , and now you possess a closet full of toilet paper , having vowed never to be caught unprepared again .
Wrap yourself in toilet paper—now you ’ re a mummy !
SKELETONS @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that you accumulated while making your mummy costume and run them through with dental floss until they ’ re stacked like a limp strand of broken bones .
You ’ ve got a leg !
Do it again .
That ’ s one more leg !
Do it again , shorter ; that ’ s an arm .
Again !
Another arm !
Tie the limbs together and fan them out , like a fatigued skeleton lying prostrate , waiting for the final chapter of the apocalypse !
GHOST HATS !
Hang all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a hat on a golf club !
Hang a hat on a bookshelf !
Hang a hat on a hat stand !
On a doorknob !
On a reading lamp !
On the corner of a mirror !
Watch the news and go to bed , then wake up multiple times in the night , terrified that someone ’ s in your room !
SPIDERS !
Shake all of your party shoes out onto the ground .
You haven ’ t worn them in months , and now they ’ re full of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ THE WINDOW !
As you contemplate a shower , drape a towel over your head and stand at your window , not moving or blinking , just staring mournfully ahead .
Wait for passersby to look up .
“ Are y-y-y-you seeing that , too ?
!
” they ’ ll scream to a friend .
They ’ ll be talking about you , but they ’ ll think you ’ re a ghost , and they ’ ll be a little bit right—BOO !
JACK-O ’ -LANTERNS !
Some traditions never go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in your Instacart and , when it arrives , don ’ t forget to tip the anxious former graduate student or father of three who brought it to you in under an hour .
Carve a screaming , beady-eyed orange face .
Sit at your kitchen table and stare at it in fury until night falls .
GHOST CAT !
Throw a white sheet over your cat , so that it looks like a small , long ghost .
Laugh and laugh with harmless pleasure at its innocent confusion .
If you don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through cat-adoption sites at 2 A.M. while trying , unsuccessfully , to fall asleep .
CACKLING WITCH !
Nothing ’ s scarier than the unexpected cackling of a witch , shocking you out of your complacent routine with her frenzied mania .
So throw on some pants and go yell at joggers to put their masks on !
As they break stride only long enough to roll their eyes at you , toss your head back and laugh and laugh into your own , smelly mask .
VOTE !
Celebrate this holiday as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the unknown !
Then light a candle and vote .
Cast a spell that next year will be better , haunted only by the dread spirit of 2020 .

The nights come sooner, and the air is thick with ash and hurricane rain. Leaves redden and tumble. Summer salads give way to roasted roots. Horror films raise your pulse to a near-fatal rate, because you haven’t exercised for months. The sky is orange. The moon is the same color as the sun. All of which can only mean one thing—it’s fall, and Halloween is nigh!
Yes, we must ready ourselves to celebrate the turning of the seasons. But these are dark and isolating times. There will be no passing of candy from strangers to children as their parents look on, no ironic yet sexy costumes, no bowls of spaghetti brains and peeled-grape eyeballs, no masks other than all the regular masks. That doesn’t mean we can’t still have a little fun! Here are some tips for dressing up and decorating your home this especially scary Halloween.
MUMMY COSTUMES! For a moment in time, all the toilet paper was gone. You checked five stores repeatedly for two weeks and eventually came to find paper plates an acceptable substitute, or you ordered bamboo toilet paper from Sweden, or, if you were a very lucky monster, ripped some rolls out of a terrified older person’s hands. Whatever the means, you panicked, and now you possess a closet full of toilet paper, having vowed never to be caught unprepared again. Wrap yourself in toilet paper—now you’re a mummy!
SKELETONS! Take all the discarded toilet-paper rolls that you accumulated while making your mummy costume and run them through with dental floss until they’re stacked like a limp strand of broken bones. You’ve got a leg! Do it again. That’s one more leg! Do it again, shorter; that’s an arm. Again! Another arm! Tie the limbs together and fan them out, like a fatigued skeleton lying prostrate, waiting for the final chapter of the apocalypse!
GHOST HATS! Hang all your hats around your bedroom. Hang a hat on a golf club! Hang a hat on a bookshelf! Hang a hat on a hat stand! On a doorknob! On a reading lamp! On the corner of a mirror! Watch the news and go to bed, then wake up multiple times in the night, terrified that someone’s in your room!
SPIDERS! Shake all of your party shoes out onto the ground. You haven’t worn them in months, and now they’re full of spooky, spooky spiders!
FIGURE AT THE WINDOW! As you contemplate a shower, drape a towel over your head and stand at your window, not moving or blinking, just staring mournfully ahead. Wait for passersby to look up. “Are y-y-y-you seeing that, too?!” they’ll scream to a friend. They’ll be talking about you, but they’ll think you’re a ghost, and they’ll be a little bit right—BOO!
JACK-O’-LANTERNS! Some traditions never go out of style. Put a pumpkin in your Instacart and, when it arrives, don’t forget to tip the anxious former graduate student or father of three who brought it to you in under an hour. Carve a screaming, beady-eyed orange face. Sit at your kitchen table and stare at it in fury until night falls.
GHOST CAT! Throw a white sheet over your cat, so that it looks like a small, long ghost. Laugh and laugh with harmless pleasure at its innocent confusion. If you don’t have a cat, scroll through cat-adoption sites at 2 A.M. while trying, unsuccessfully, to fall asleep.
CACKLING WITCH! Nothing’s scarier than the unexpected cackling of a witch, shocking you out of your complacent routine with her frenzied mania. So throw on some pants and go yell at joggers to put their masks on! As they break stride only long enough to roll their eyes at you, toss your head back and laugh and laugh into your own, smelly mask.
VOTE! Celebrate this holiday as its creators intended—with heartfelt human terror of the unknown! Then light a candle and vote. Cast a spell that next year will be better, haunted only by the dread spirit of 2020.


newyorker--2020-10-29--How New York City Ballet Took On the Pandemic

The company tried to turn the page .
In February of last year , it announced that Jonathan Stafford , a ballet master who ’ d been appointed as the interim head , would assume artistic leadership , with Wendy Whelan , a former star ballerina , overseeing programming and commissions as the associate director .
Whelan , the first woman to hold a permanent artistic leadership position at the ballet , went on a listening tour of the hundred company members , “ trying to let them know that I see them as more than just a body , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eager to bring in more contemporary choreographers , especially women and people of color .
At the start of this year , she was busy commissioning future pieces by such choreographers as Miller , Jamar Roberts , Pam Tanowitz , and Sidra Bell , who was to be the first Black woman to choreograph for the company .
Plans changed .
In March , as the coronavirus spread and N.Y.C.B .
projected that cancelling its spring season meant the loss of eight million dollars , it committed to paying its employees through May @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or went home to live with their parents , keenly aware that ballet careers don ’ t last forever .
Whelan , whose husband has a heart condition , moved with him to their house upstate .
She figured that the company would be back by winter , a lucrative time that includes the cash cow “ The Nutcracker.
” “ We felt a little lucky , ” she said .
By June , it was clear that there would be no fall season , no “ Nutcracker.
” Like the Met , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ streaming , so that audiences could catch up on “ Ballo della Regina ” from home .
There were devastating human losses .
Clem Mitcham , the theatre ’ s longtime head of security , died of COVID complications , as did a member of the marketing staff .
The company moved its training courses to Zoom , which opened up unanticipated hurdles .
Flooring was an issue .
“ If you ’ re on linoleum or a rug or a wood floor , you can ’ t really work your footing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Marley dance floor , ” Whelan said .
The company sent six-by-six-foot strips of vinyl flooring to each dancer .
Teaching online had its benefits , though .
“ I can actually see everybody on a screen—I don ’ t have to walk around the room , ” Whelan said .
“ I had a panic attack the first time I did it , but I ’ ve found a way of kind of loving it.
” Her mission had been to help drag the company into the new decade .
Now it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Was it possible to do both at the same time ?
During the summer , Lincoln Center asked the company to help “ enliven the plaza ” by creating a short film for Pride Month .
The result was a ballet solo performed in front of the central fountain , which was lit up in rainbow colors .
Whelan expanded the idea to the five socially distanced ballet films , corralling four of the choreographers she had already commissioned , as well as Justin Peck , the company ’ s resident choreographer .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ worked on street corners and at other unconventional sites seemed prescient .
Like Miller , Jamar Roberts was drawn to the reflecting pool as a location .
“ I ’ m very interested in tension , ” he told me .
“ I like to imagine that the air is thick .
It gives the body more resistance .
Or the air is thin , and you slip through it.
” His piece , “ Water Rite , ” a staccato solo for the dancer Victor Abreu , was prompted by a quotation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ He referred to jazz as being a lily that grows in spite of the swamp , meaning that it is a music that comes out of oppression , ” Roberts said .
“ I was inspired by that , just thinking of the time that we ’ re in now .
In the midst of such a shitty time , so many beautiful things are being made .
Kids are being born .
We ’ re still able to make dance .
So this water here represents the swamp , and Victor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the lawn that swoops up from the plaza to the top of a glass-walled restaurant , overlooking Sixty-fifth Street .
Bell had been quarantining in White Plains with her father , the composer Dennis Bell , who wrote a string quartet for her piece .
“ I was rehearsing in the living room , he was composing in the basement , ” she said .
Bell has an architect ’ s eye , and she told me that she wanted to play up “ the rough edges and the angles ” of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ skewing and warping ” of its reflective surfaces .
Her piece , “ pixelation in a wave ( Within Wires ) , ” features four dancers in skintight monochromatic suits , sometimes dancing at different elevations ; their rolling backs and sharp movements make them look like statues in a sculpture garden .
As in Miller ’ s piece , two of the dancers are a couple , and they start the piece with a duet .
Romantic pairings within the company , a fraught topic in the past few years , @ @ @ @ @ @

She also found it liberating. With her own company, Gallim, Miller has done site-specific work, including a flash mob at Grand Central Terminal and a piece at the Temple of Dendur. Before the pandemic, N.Y.C.B. had commissioned her to create a piece for its Fall Fashion Gala (cancelled), and she had been plotting to entice the seventy-two-year-old company into using more nontraditional spaces. Now it had no choice. “It’s freeing for those of us who’ve been trying to get people to believe in it,” she said with a laugh. “All of a sudden, they’re, like, ‘Yeah, this is great!’ ”
Miller watched the dancers perform what she called a “jig” around “Reclining Figure,” the bronze sculpture at the center of the pool. Her piece was surf and turf, moving from the grove to the pool, and would be filmed in a single shot. As the dancers, two men and two women, practiced entering the water, they instinctually shifted into épaulement, tilting their cheekbones up in a way that George Balanchine, the company’s founder, likened to asking for a kiss on the cheek. But Miller told them to flatten their bodies; she wanted them to look stoic, hieroglyphic. “Almost like a monk,” she instructed. The empty Lincoln Center had reminded her of a temple. “Without people, without prayer, it’s just stones,” she said.
As she rehearsed a solo with Indiana Woodward, the two men, Harrison Coll and Sebastián Villarini-Velez, sat poolside. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to put my feet in this water?” Coll said. Miller had set the dance to “Manifiesto,” a sombre guitar ballad by the Chilean protest singer Víctor Jara, and she had translated the lyrics for the dancers early on. In 1973, Augusto Pinochet’s regime had imprisoned and tortured Jara at Chile Stadium. Before executing him, the guards smashed his fingers and then mocked him by handing him a guitar. “In this song, he’s saying, ‘I don’t sing because I have a beautiful voice or because my guitar sounds good. I just sing because it’s my soul. It’s who I am,’ ” Villarini-Velez said. “This pandemic has forced us to shape our identities beyond our profession. Because we start at such a young age, it defines us. It’s good to step back and ask, Why do we dance? I’ve thrived during this time, because it’s allowed me to appreciate things like this. It’s more than just the parts, the bows, the claps.”
“We’re so used to working in studios, having a mirror and really analyzing every part of our shapes and our lines,” Coll added. “Through this process, we’ve never been able to look at ourselves once. Everything about this piece is freeing. We’re usually rehearsing in a building that doesn’t have windows! We’ve been outside, and people will stop and just watch. You get a sense of how the city has reacted to not having art.”
“There was this elderly woman in her wheelchair,” Villarini-Velez recalled. “She had her caretaker stop. She kept pointing at us and touching her heart.”
In the pool, Miller frowned and told Woodward, “It’s not working.” The movements that she had created on land felt “alien” in the water, so she decided to redo the solo. She dunked her hair in the water and improvised. By the time they filmed, the dancers had learned entirely new choreography, including a pas de deux for Woodward and Coll, which was permitted only because the pair have been dating for two years and had been quarantining together, on Ninety-fourth Street.
This was already supposed to be a year of reinvention for N.Y.C.B., after a period of turmoil. In 2018, its longtime artistic director, Peter Martins, retired while under investigation for allegations of physical and sexual abuse against dancers. Martins, who had led the company since Balanchine’s death, in 1983 (he and Jerome Robbins were “co-ballet-masters in chief” for the first six years), denied the allegations, and the investigators could not corroborate the claims against him. Not long after, a nineteen-year-old former student at the School of American Ballet, the company’s affiliate conservatory, discovered that her boyfriend, a principal dancer, had shared explicit images of her with other male dancers and a young donor. She sued the dancers, the school, and N.Y.C.B., which she blamed for creating a “fraternity-like atmosphere.” Last month, a New York Supreme Court judge dismissed nearly all her claims.


newyorker--2020-10-29--In Pennsylvania, Republicans Might Only Need to Stall to Win

The playbook that Republicans could put to use in Pennsylvania this year was partially developed in 2000 , in the aftermath of the Presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore .
That year , the election was close , and the contest came down to Florida , where the candidates were separated by only a few hundred votes .
After the initial count , a swarm of attorneys and poll watchers descended on the state to catalogue small mishaps that might serve as grounds to challenge the results .
Most notably , they found that some voters had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , creating what came to be known as “ hanging chads.
” Legal disputes about whether to continue tallying ballots , and which to count , wound their way to the Supreme Court , which eventually halted further recounts , leaving Bush in the lead .
Gore conceded on December 13 , 2000 .
But , even if the Supreme Court hadn ’ t intervened , Gore still might have lost the state .
In Tallahassee , the Republican legislature had already begun the process of choosing a set of Republican electors who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This year , Wisconsin , North Carolina , and Michigan all have conditions that would allow for such an eventuality .
( G.O.P .
lawmakers around the country have denied any such plans .
Andrew Hitt , the G.O.P .
chair in Wisconsin , recently said that he ’ d heard of “ no such discussion.
” ) But Pennsylvania seems most vulnerable .
“ Harrisburg in 2020 could be Tallahassee in 2000 , ” Ari Mittleman , a political analyst with Keep Our Republic , told me .
There are many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that could leave it exposed .
In 2018 , the Department of State ordered all counties to introduce new voting machines with paper trails .
The change is likely to cause confusion for voters and poll workers , as well as mechanical mishaps .
During an election in 2019 , a failure to properly calibrate new voting machines led to large-scale dysfunction in Northampton County , in the northeastern part of the state .
If that kind of error is sufficiently widespread during the 2020 election , it could give Republicans an opening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could also cause trouble .
During the primaries , Erika Bickford , an elections judge in Lehigh County , was charged with interfering with ballots ; she claimed that she was darkening the bubbles and trimming ballots so that they could fit into a scanner .
Such a mishap could also lead to votes being challenged .
“ Elections are run by human beings , ” Adam Bonin , a Democratic election lawyer , said .
“ When you ’ re dealing with millions of ballots , what you have to hope for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on a question , and levels of review , to make sure that things are as standardized as possible.
” Republicans could also exploit the state ’ s mail-in voting system .
The pandemic has led people to vote by mail in unprecedented numbers : to date , Pennsylvania has sent out more than 2.6 million ballots , and gotten back five hundred and eighteen thousand .
Mail-in voting was only introduced to the state this year , and all sixty-seven counties have different procedures for receiving and counting mailed ballots , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ procedural discrepancies between counties served as part of the basis for Bush v. Gore , the lawsuit that challenged the validity of the election results .
In Pennsylvania , under-resourced election boards , inexperienced voters , and exacting technical procedures could also introduce dysfunction into a system under strain .
For example , in Allegheny County , the home of Pittsburgh , a printing mistake caused nearly twenty-nine thousand mail-in ballots to be sent out twice , and many voters aren ’ t certain which to complete .
“ I ’ m a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suppression than I am about voter-system failure , ” Charlie Dent , a former Republican representative from Pennsylvania , told me .
Any idiosyncrasy will come under intense scrutiny .
This month , the Trump campaign called for fifty thousand supporters , a group dubbed the Army for Trump , to descend on polling places and the offices of election officials in Pennsylvania and other states and observe voting .
The tactic seems designed to intimidate voters , as well as to encourage allegations of voter fraud .
( The effort is led @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history of challenging votes on behalf of Republicans : in 1993 , he helped overturn the results of a local election by convincing a judge that there were irregularities among the ballots of Latino voters . )
So far , the plan has been stymied : earlier this month , a federal court in western Pennsylvania upheld a provision that banned out-of-county poll watchers .
“ Corruption !
!
!
” Trump tweeted in response .
“ Must have a fair Election.
” But even without Trump ’ s “ army , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely to surveil ballot-drop-off locations , looking for ways to invalidate votes .
( Such surveillance occurred in the primary . )
Dropping off a ballot for someone else , unless the voter is disabled or hospitalized , is called ballot harvesting and can cause the vote to be invalidated .
In an article in The Atlantic , Barton Gellman detailed an internal memo written by J. Matthew Wolfe , a Republican operative and attorney in Pennsylvania , who catalogued other problems that he had noticed with mail-in ballots in the primaries , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issues in the general election .
Some voters , for example , had appended partial signatures , or had forgotten to sign entirely .
( On Friday , the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that ballots can not be invalidated because a voter ’ s signature does not match the one on file . )
Pennsylvania is also one of a handful of states that require a mail-in ballot to be sealed within a second “ secrecy ” envelope , another provision demanded last year by state Republicans , which was recently upheld by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ballot is received without the secrecy envelope , it is termed a naked ballot and is discarded .
In the state ’ s primary , six per cent of ballots were thrown out because they did not arrive in that second , sealed envelope .
A recent investigation conducted by “ Frontline , ” USA Today Network , and the Columbia Journalism School showed that , nationwide , naked ballots could lead to the rejection of as many as 2.15 million votes in the Presidential election , a number equal to the population @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Democratic chairwoman of the Philadelphia city commissioner ’ s office , warned that , in Pennsylvania , a hundred thousand votes could be invalidated .
( In 2016 , Trump won the state by only forty-four thousand votes . )
More Democrats than Republicans have requested mail-in ballots in the state , by a margin of two-to-one .
This means that in-person returns on Election Day are almost certain to favor Trump , an advantage that he will likely exploit , however falsely , to claim victory .
“ There ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Christopher Borick , a professor of political science at Muhlenberg College , told me .
“ Republicans can start building public consensus about what happened.
” It also means that subsequent efforts to contest mail-in ballots will primarily invalidate Democratic votes .
Trump has a history of calling for mail-in ballots to be thrown out mid-count .
In the middle of the 2018 Florida governor ’ s race , he tweeted , “ An honest vote count is no longer possible—ballots massively infected .
Must Go With Election Night !
” Last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ticked down to the election , the mood was one of uncertainty .
Owing to several outbreaks of the coronavirus among legislators , and the fact that many Republicans still refused to wear masks on the floor , the Democratic leadership had requested that its members vote from their offices ; cases of COVID-19 in Pennsylvania were at an all-time high , but “ so are the stakes of democracy , ” Danielle Friel Otten , a state legislator , told me .
The capitol building felt ghostly : fluorescent lights flickered over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about Pennsylvania ’ s dinosaurs .
That afternoon , I found Representative Boyle sitting in a red-leather chair in his office , sparsely decorated with a photograph of his father ’ s village , in Ireland , and a child ’ s drawing of a bunny .
He apologized for the state of the room .
“ I haven ’ t had any visitors here since March , ” he told me .
One of the last remaining fights in the legislature centered on how votes would be counted .
Many states had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they will have results in a timely manner .
But Republicans in Pennsylvania had refused to allow ballots to be counted , or even sorted and opened—a process known as pre-canvassing—before 7 A.M. on Election Day .
This will likely cause significant delays .
The count in Pennsylvania will be further delayed by the secrecy envelopes .
Bob Harvie , a Democratic county commissioner in Bucks County , recently told me , of this summer ’ s primaries , “ What took us the longest was to open the envelope , then open @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ballot as much as we could before it was counted .
It was an endless process.
” In the primary , his district counted seventy-two thousand votes .
For the general election , he is expecting to count roughly a hundred and sixty thousand , and he estimates that it will take his team an hour to open every four thousand envelopes .
“ We ’ re going to have a hundred people working twenty-four hours a day to count these ballots , ” Harvie said .
Gene DiGirolamo , a Republican minority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ We ’ re stuck with the way the law is written.
” He feared that it would be days after the election before Bucks would be able to come up with a preliminary vote count .
“ This isn ’ t just about Trump and Biden , ” he told me .
“ We ’ ve got one shot of doing this , and if the country is waiting on Pennsylvania , we ’ re going to look terrible.
” During the primaries , owing to processing issues , it took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vote .
In the general election , there will be more than twice as many ballots to count .
There will only be five weeks after Election Day before the legislature could appoint the electors .
Some involved in the process are not concerned .
“ We fully expect the vast majority of the ballots to be counted by sometime on Friday , barring attempts to disrupt the count , ” Kevin Greenberg , an election lawyer and the chair of the political bar in Pennsylvania , told me .
Pennsylvania ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ overwhelming majority ” of votes would be counted by then .
However , some observers remain worried .
Last week , before the legislative session ended , Democrats , along with a few Republicans , tried to push for a bill to allow pre-canvassing to begin .
But the majority of Republicans refused to budge on the issue , and the effort failed .
“ It ’ s a blow for anyone who wants the election to run smoothly , ” Fiedler , the Democratic representative from Philadelphia , told me .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ false narrative , the claim that there ’ s fraud , or that someone ’ s trying to rig the election , when people are sitting there working as fast as they can .
”

On September 10th, Kevin Boyle, a Democratic state representative in Pennsylvania, opened his e-mail to find an invitation to a Zoom call with several Democratic advocates and former politicians. They wanted to speak with him on behalf of Keep Our Republic, a nonpartisan civic-engagement group that formed this past summer, amid the pandemic, to investigate unconventional threats to the election. The call included high-powered figures such as Richard Gephardt, the former U.S. representative and Presidential candidate, and Tom Rogers, the founder of MSNBC and CNBC. Boyle, who is forty and has a thick beard, represents a working-class district in northeast Philadelphia. He wondered why they wanted to talk to him. “I’m not a big shot,” he told me recently. “I represent sixty-five thousand people.” In the state legislature, he is also the minority chair of the Republican-dominated House State Government Committee, which oversees, among other things, the governor’s emergency orders regarding the coronavirus pandemic, and all matters related to voting.
Boyle prepared for a perfunctory discussion of Pennsylvania’s election. When he joined the call, however, the tenor was more alarming. “It was DEFCON 5,” he said. The former politicians warned Boyle that the Trump campaign might try to hijack the 2020 election, and that this effort could hinge on his state. “Pennsylvania, like Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Michigan, isn’t only a battleground state,” Mark Medish, the co-founder of Keep Our Republic, told me recently. “Pennsylvania has a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature. This political division sets up a potential dispute over who, in a contested election, can appoint special electors.” In Pennsylvania, even if Democrats win the popular vote, Republicans could contest the results, arguing that various procedural aspects are illegitimate. Court cases regarding the election could end up before the Supreme Court, which will be filled with Trump appointees and likely to rule in his favor. But Republicans don’t even have to win; all they have to do is stall. If the vote is not certified by December 8th, the Republican-controlled legislature could appoint electors, who would likely cast their votes for Trump.
Trump has been laying the groundwork for questioning the election results for months. He has repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power, and made unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud, especially among mail-in ballots. Much of his rhetoric has focussed on Pennsylvania. On September 26th, Trump held a rally at the airport in Harrisburg, where he claimed that there was rampant fraud in the state, noting that nine ballots cast for him had ended up in a trash can in Luzerne County. “The only way they can win Pennsylvania, frankly, is to cheat on the ballots,” Trump said. “Keep your eyes open if you see any shenanigans, which you probably will.”
Kevin Boyle, a state representative, leaving the Mayfair Diner.
President Obama’s New Memoir Read an excerpt in this week’s issue.
Boyle left the Zoom meeting extremely concerned; he notified the Party leadership and the Democratic governor’s chief of staff, but was unsure how else he could help. Then, two days after Trump’s rally at the airport, Boyle’s Republican colleagues on the State Government Committee announced that they were introducing a measure to establish a special panel called the Select Committee on Election Integrity. The panel would have sweeping powers to oversee the election. Nominally, it would investigate claims of voter fraud. Kerry Benninghoff, the House Majority Leader, suggested that the panel would balance a recent slate of state supreme court decisions, which have favored Democrats and which he claimed have “injected chaos into the general election.” Boyle worried that the panel could be used to derail the election. The committee could have the authority to subpoena election officials, making it impossible for them to count ballots. It could impound ballot boxes in Democratic districts, making them unavailable to tally. If the committee delayed long enough, the legislature could take matters into its own hands.
The panel would likely be drawn from Boyle’s fellow State Government Committee members, a collection of ardent Trump supporters. In 2015, the former chair, Daryl Metcalfe, invited an avowed white nationalist to address the committee. One member, Cris Dush, has compared the Governor’s handling of information related to the pandemic to the media restrictions of Nazi Germany. Last spring, another member, Andrew Lewis, withheld the fact that he had contracted COVID-19. (Lewis said that he had kept his diagnosis private “out of respect for my family” but that he had informed everyone he came in contact with who “met the criteria for exposure.”) Boyle tweeted, “The membership is the most firebrand hardline conservative north of the Mason Dixon line.” He worried that they would do anything they could to insure Trump’s election.
The vote on the Election Integrity committee’s creation was supposed to take place three days later. But on the morning of the vote, a Republican legislator on the State Government Committee tested positive for the coronavirus, and the session was called to an emergency halt. The delay allowed for more scrutiny of the proposal. “This committee touched on a lot of fears disenfranchised people have right now,” Liz Fiedler, a Democratic representative from Philadelphia, said. “They’re afraid that their votes won’t be counted accurately, and they wonder if there are outside, or inside, forces that will mess with the actual result of the election.” Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democrat on the State Government Committee, went on national news to decry the effort. Fiedler’s team drafted a petition against the new panel and circulated it around the state. “We wanted to shine a light on what was happening in Harrisburg, to let people know what the stakes actually were,” she said. Boyle frantically filed amendments to the resolution, twelve in all, including an attempt to remove the Election Integrity committee’s subpoena power and a provision to formally designate it as a “coup.” Republicans in swing districts soon became worried that the resolution could imperil their electoral chances. Valerie Gaydos, a Republican from outside Pittsburgh, issued a statement against the new committee: “I have urged our House Republican Leadership team to permanently table this legislation immediately. I strongly support free and fair elections and the democratic process, but adamantly oppose legislation which is unclear and undefined.” On October 9th, the Republican leadership announced that it was pulling the resolution.
Democrats rejoiced, but Boyle remained wary. He worried that, the day after the election, if their candidates were safe, Republicans could resurrect the panel and begin causing trouble. “This measure could come back to us in November, and we could have to vote on it within twenty-four hours,” he said. He feared that, as in 2016, the polls risked giving Biden supporters a false sense of security. “A lot of us Democrats are a little overconfident,” he added. But Pennsylvania’s votes could become decisive, and Boyle feared that state Republicans were ready to implement a series of controversial measures to upend the popular vote; they had already put preliminary efforts into motion. “This is so monumental,” he told me. “I don’t understand why people aren’t paying more attention.”