Tag: turn of the millennium
Zombie History Stalks Ukraine – The Atlantic
The Ukrainian writer Tanja Maljartschuk’s novel Forgottenness broods upon what I’d call zombie history. There are other terms for inherited memory of catastrophic events experienced by one’s forebears, such as intergenerational transmission of trauma and postmemory. But the past in this novel rises from the grave and takes possession of the bodies of the living. Memories resurface as tics, gestures, obsessions—the condensations of meaning that Freud called neurotic symptoms. Sometimes these show up in the personally traumatized. Much
Americans Vote Too Much – The Atlantic
It’s always election season in America. Dozens of local contests are taking place across the country this month, from Montgomery, Alabama to the Mariana Ranchos County Water District in California. On August 8 alone, Custer County, Colorado held a recall election for a county commissioner; Ohio asked residents to consider a major ballot measure; and voters in Oklahoma weighed in on several ballot measures.
America has roughly 90,000 local governing bodies, and states do not—at least publicly—track all of
American Politics Looks a Lot Like Pro Wrestling
Awash in strobes, Seth “Freakin” Rollins begins his waltz to the ring. His nemesis, the YouTube star Logan Paul, is there waiting for him.
Rollins pauses beneath the jumbotron and holds his arms outstretched like Christ the Redeemer. Green and purple spotlights dart and swirl around Boston’s TD Garden. Thousands of fans start screaming the “whoa-ohh-ohh” part of Rollins’s theme song; exponentially more are live-tweeting the broadcast at home. It’s just before 9 o’clock on a frigid
No One Really Knows Why People Stutter
Okay, here comes our waiter. I stare at the silverware. He clicks his pen. I’m always the last to order. Sometimes my mom tries to help me by tossing out what she thinks I want.
“Cheeseburger, John?”
“… Yyyy-uhh … yyyueaah,” I force out.
If I’m lucky, there are no follow-up questions. I’m rarely lucky.
“And how would you like that cooked?” the waiter asks.
“… … … … Mmm-muh … mmm-edium.”
His face changes. I want it medium
What Brexit Promised, and Boris Johnson Failed to Deliver
Britain today is a poor and divided country. Parts of London and the southeast of England might be among the wealthiest places on the planet, but swaths of northern England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are among Western Europe’s poorest. Barely a decade ago, the average Brit was as wealthy as the average German. Now they are about 15 percent poorer—and 30 percent worse off than the typical American.
The great project of Boris Johnson’s government is to “unite