Sublime

To admit this is to admit the limits of state power and its legitimacy. Better to marginalize activists—to portray them as rabble on the fringe who are dangerous the way violent criminals are dangerous. Thus is the true danger to the status quo made into another “safe fear.” Thus are both the power and the legitimacy of the margins denied. Denied b

Bisogna dare atto di una cosa, a questo fascista: gli piacciono e gli sono sempre piaciuti soltanto quelli che sono in posizione di inferiorità. I magri contro i grassi, i poveri contro i ricchi, le carogne dichiarate, che sono rare, contro le legioni di virtuosi, e il suo percorso, per quanto ondivago possa sembrare, ha una sua coerenza, perché Ed

“The people around the Clinton Global Initiative or the liberal globalist establishment have told themselves a story about how they’re really working for the world,” Rodrik said. “But they are not really a part of a political process. A political process requires that you’re competing with and you’re testing ideas against other citizens. Citizens a

A borough president, searching desperately for a means of obtaining large-scale public works for his borough, could find only one way: to cooperate with Moses. He had no choice in the matter. Supposedly the servant of these elected representatives of the sovereign people of the city, Robert Moses was in reality their master.

At the moment at which Roosevelt was writing about “our side”—the side he believed Lyndon Johnson was on—Johnson had already joined the other side, the rabidly anti-New Deal San Antonio City Machine that had defeated Maverick. Roosevelt did not know this—and never found out. He never got more than an inkling of Lyndon Johnson’s quiet alliance with

Another lever was accountability. As the governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton was confronted early on with an impossible equation whereby his constituents wanted more public spending, but they hated any politician that raised taxes to finance that spending. Clinton experienced the bitter results: after becoming governor in 1978, he lost his reelectio

The smear technique that had been used then was used now—frequently. In the hands of a man for whom the press acted as a gigantic sounding board, repeating and amplifying his words, the smear was a terrible weapon—particularly when those words were as caustic and cutting as Moses’.

Charles Murphy had taught Roosevelt the importance of disparate political alliances and Democratic solidarity: “They may be sons-of-bitches, but they’re our sons-of-bitches.” Daniels taught him to be a team player—a lesson TR never learned.