september 2000

The hypothetical couple were making $350,000 a year and just getting by, their income “barely” qualifying them as middle-class. Their budget, posted in September, showed how they “survived” in a city like San Francisco, spending more than $50,000 a year on child care and preschool, nearly $50,000 a year on their mortgage, and hefty amounts on vacations, entertainment, and a weekly date night—even as they saved for retirement and college in tax-advantaged accounts.

The internet, being the internet, responded with some combination of howling, baying, pitchfork-jostling, and scoffing. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York quipped that the thing the family was struggling with was math. Gabriel Zucman, a leading scholar of wealth and inequality, described the budget as laughable, while noting that it showed how much money consumption taxes could raise.

On September 22, 2001, 11 days after the worst terrorist attack on American soil, then–New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani looked squarely into the Saturday Night Live camera and told a shaken nation, “We will not let our decisions be made out of fear.” Flanked by a somber phalanx of uniformed police officers and firefighters, Giuliani offered stirring and patriotic words: “We choose to live our lives in freedom.”

Paul Simon performed a searing rendition of “The Boxer,” his folkie ode to a battered fighter’s gritty resilience. It was a total tonal shift for television’s longest-running comedy show, in line with the total tonal shift taking place across the country at the time. And then, Lorne Michaels, SNL’s creator and showrunner, appeared and asked Giuliani a sober question: “Can we be funny?” With a Borscht Belt comic’s perfect deadpan timing, “America’s Mayor” replied, “Why start now?”—and in one small, quiet, moving way, life reverted to normal.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—When Diane Zook, the chair of Arkansas’ State Board of Education, banged her gavel to bring the afternoon meeting into order on October 10, every seat in the cramped boardroom was filled. Nearly every inch of paint on the wall had been covered by a body before the fire marshal, concerned about capacity, ushered those standing out of the room. The crowd spilled into the overflow areas in a wave. Sixty-two years after the world watched Little Rock struggle to desegregate its schools, history seemed to be repeating itself.

Nearly five years ago, in January 2015, the state of Arkansas assumed control of Little Rock’s public schools. At the time, six of the schools in the district had “chronically underperformed” on state exams regularly for several years; 22 superintendents had passed through the district in 32 years, creating a sense of instability. The state gives a letter-grade assessment to every public school, which is based on a combination of state-exam results and other metrics, such as graduation rates. Because of that instability, and the handful of ‘F’-rated schools, the state believed the best way to steady the district was to take it over.

Updated on October 20, 2019, at 9:32 p.m. ET

Mitt Romney is leaning forward in his chair, his eyes flashing, his voice sharp.

It’s a strange look for the 72-year-old senator, who typically affects a measured, somber tone when discussing Donald Trump’s various moral deficiencies. But after weeks of escalating combat with the president—over Ukraine, and China, and Syria, and impeachment—the gentleman from Utah suddenly appears ready to unload.

What set him off was my recitation of an argument I’ve heard some Republicans deploy lately to excuse Trump’s behavior. Electing a president, the argument goes, is like hiring a plumber—you don’t care about his character, you just want him to get the job done. Sitting in his Senate office, Romney is indignant. “Are you worried that your plumber overcharges you?” he asks. “Are you worried that the plumber’s going to scream at your kids? Are you worried that the plumber is going to squeal out of your driveway?” I am playing devil’s advocate; he is attempting an exorcism.

On October 13, President Donald Trump’s average approval sat at 42.2 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average.

Then came an astonishing week, even by the standards of the Trump administration. A procession of diplomats trekked to Capitol Hill, where they outlined a consistent tale of an administration hell-bent on conspiracy theories, extracting quid pro quos from the Ukrainian government, all headed by a president insistent on placing his personal lawyer at the heart of foreign policy. Turkey’s government rampaged through Syria, attacking American allies, while U.S. forces frantically retreated and Iran and Russia celebrated. Meanwhile, Turkey’s president laughed at Trump’s threats.

The acting White House chief of staff acknowledged a quid pro quo with Ukraine and instructed the nation to “get over it.” In its most brazen profiteering so far, the administration announced that the Group of Seven summit would take place at Trump’s own resort. (Both positions were reversed in short order.) ProPublica turned up new evidence of Trump’s financial chicanery.

Like games, geese are notoriously annoying. They’re brusque, clumsy, and territorial. If you are a person, and one appears on your country estate, the advice recommends avoiding engagement and then standing your ground if it charges. Show the goose who’s boss. A recent, hugely popular video game, Untitled Goose Game, stages this conflict. For some reason it turns out to be familiar to everyone, even city slickers who have never seen a goose in person.

It’s fun! Being a goose for a while is diverting and surprising, and embodying one in a simulated, pastoral environment speaks to the flexible power of games as a medium. Games turn the world on its head, allowing you to become all the things you are not: a criminal in Grand Theft Auto; an explorer of alien worlds in No Man’s Sky; the universe itself in Everything. You gain a new perspective, having had the opportunity to be something grander—or just different—from yourself.  

Where in the pantheon of American commercial titans does Jeffrey Bezos belong? Andrew Carnegie’s hearths forged the steel that became the skeleton of the railroad and the city. John D. Rockefeller refined 90 percent of American oil, which supplied the pre-electric nation with light. Bill Gates created a program that was considered a prerequisite for turning on a computer.

At 55, Bezos has never dominated a major market as thoroughly as any of these forebears, and while he is presently the richest man on the planet, he has less wealth than Gates did at his zenith. Yet Rockefeller largely contented himself with oil wells, pump stations, and railcars; Gates’s fortune depended on an operating system. The scope of the empire the founder and CEO of Amazon has built is wider. Indeed, it is without precedent in the long history of American capitalism.

Several weeks ago, I met up with a friend in New York who suggested we grab a bite at a Scottish bar in the West Village. He had booked the table through something called Seated, a restaurant app that pays users who make reservations on the platform. We ordered two cocktails each, along with some food. And in exchange for the hard labor of drinking whiskey, the app awarded us $30 in credits redeemable at a variety of retailers.

I am never offended by freebies. But this arrangement seemed almost obscenely generous. To throw cash at people every time they walk into a restaurant does not sound like a business. It sounds like a plot to lose money as fast as possible—or to provide New Yorkers, who are constantly dining out, with a kind of minimum basic income.

Such is its devilish complexity, Brexit is often portrayed as a game of 3-D chess, understandable only to the grandest of grand masters. Yet in reality it is far simpler: a tedious game of political tic-tac-toe (or noughts and crosses, for our British readers) in which each side is forever countering the previous move by its opponent but unable to ever triumph. The winner is, then, not a master strategist, but simply the one who is last to make a mistake.

This is how best to understand the series of seismic but impenetrable battles being waged between Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government and his opponents in Westminster this week: battles that are not primarily about what they claim—whether for this motion or that amendment—but rather part of a much larger but simpler game in which each side is trying to ensure that it is not outmaneuvered by the other in a way that will make victory or defeat inevitable.

Janina Scarlet knew she finally had a way to connect with her patient when the girl began talking about Veronica Mars. At a recent American Psychological Association conference, Scarlet, a psychologist at San Diego’s Center for Stress and Anxiety Management, recounted how the 15-year-old at first had trouble speaking about past trauma. In sessions, her parents did most of the talking. In fact, the only thing the girl would talk about was the TV show starring Kristen Bell.

On the show, Mars, a high-school student who moonlights as a detective, gets put through the teenage wringer. In the show’s first episodes, she gets date-raped, dumped by her boyfriend, and alienated by her friends. Scarlet said her teen patient felt connected to Mars, almost as though the character understood her. So one night after seeing the girl, Scarlet went home and binged a full season of Veronica Mars. When she met with the girl again, they talked about her depression, and Scarlet asked her how she thought Mars would handle the situation. The girl suggested Mars would make a speech.