Robert Reich’s op-ed in last Saturday’s New York Times has one of the most striking graphs I’ve ever seen as to what’s happened to the American middle class over the past 30 years.
All posts by James
The Long Game
By Thomas’s reading, Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act, to say nothing of Medicare and Medicaid, might all be unconstitutional. “Justices can be influential by indicating to lawyers the boundaries of what’s possible,” Eugene Volokh, a professor at U.C.L.A. School of Law and a widely read blogger, said. “There is conventional wisdom about what’s possible, like ‘Whatever you think about the Commerce Clause, no one is going to go back to the pre-1937 approach,’ or ‘The Second Amendment is a closed issue.’ Thomas has shown that sometimes the conventional wisdom is wrong.”
Jeffrey Toobin has a fairly terrifying story in the New Yorker about Clarence Thomas’ judicial philosophy and growing influence. “Partners” outlines how Thomas’ strict originalist approach is reopening Supreme Court rulings that have been thought settled for decades.
In aligning his decisions with the Tea Party political maneuvering of his wife, Thomas is leading a block to undermine the regulatory framework that enables many of our governing institutions.
Toobin also touches on the institutions, money and training networks that have brought this viewpoint to prominence. It’s sobering to think how little of a response has been organized by proponents of shared, effective government.
Killing Hitler
Here again Elser proved to have precisely the qualities needed for the job. Knowing that he had a year to prepare, he went to work methodically, obtaining a low-paying job in an arms factory and taking whatever opportunities presented themselves to smuggle 110 pounds of high explosives out the plant. A temporary job in a quarry supplied him with dynamite and a quantity of high-capacity detonators. In the evenings, he returned to his apartment and worked on designs for a sophisticated time bomb.
Past Imperfect, the Smithsonian history blog, has a fascinating feature about Georg Elser, a carpenter who came within eight minutes of assassinating Hilter in 1939. It’s meticulous in describing the care with which Elser approached his bombing. It also questions the ethics of his indiscriminate attempt, even if Hitler was the target.
Review: Il Posto
Il Posto captures the fragile moment of leaving your parent’s orbit and beginning to establish your own. Directed by Ermanno Olmi, the 1961 film is set in Milan of that era. It shares the path of young Domenico as he seeks a job with the local industrial-scale employer.
Roused from his bed in the family flat, Domenico joins a crowd of hopefuls for a bizarre, science-ish testing regimen that will determine who gets positions. He’s accepted, and we see him settle into working life at a massive bureaucracy. It’s a place where no one’s services seem particularly needed, except the secretary who brews the big boss’ coffee and the elevator man who takes his coat.
“It’s a job for life,” everyone tells the young applicant, and that seems to be true. Employees pass the time, clinging to their place in the corporate structure like Stephen Root holding to his stapler in Office Space. But while the situations provide some laughs, the need of the workers is evident—this workplace may be absurd, but it provides a living.
As the secretaries note, Domenico is very young and handsome. He’s also naïve—not willfully, but from inexperience. Every encounter still has something to teach him. He spends much of the movie passive but intent: watching, listening and looking to learn from the baffling world outside his home. His performance is excellent, capturing the tentativeness of late adolescence, the unwillingness to put oneself forward.
Olmi made the film on the weekends, using equipment borrowed from his day job as a documentary filmmaker for Edison. It uses the real corporate settings, filling them with nonprofessional actors, people who might inhabit these jobs in real life. It feels authentic, capturing the small details of working life—and life away from work—in rich, familiar ways.
This grounded approach sparks memorable results. The director captures a budding relationship with awkward advances and self-imposed barriers. He illuminates a party no one goes to, using it to highlight the fine line between wallflower and walled-off. He leaves the workplace for short vignettes to humanize the drones behind the desks. And he uses a literal race for the front desk to capture the way we’ll scramble for so very little.
Above all, he captures what it’s like to work when you have to work. In gaining his job, Domenico finds himself set for life—and probably already dreaming of something better.
Thanks to Ted Barron in Notre Dame Magazine for the recommendation.
Ralph Gamelli in the Bygone Bureau
FLYMF alum Ralph Gamelli has a nice humor piece in the Bygone Bureau: Dry Lightning FAQ.
Ralph’s story, Rocky Balboa Launches Into Inspirational Speeches Too Frequently, was published in FLYMF’s Greatest Hits. He also contributed How Long Before I Use My Ejector Seat? and Twilight Zone Episodes For the Internet Age.