Andrew OHehir is always a fun, smart read, and nobody else writing about the NYPD vs. de Blasio has dredged up a Sinclair Lewis novel as a point-of-reference! A clip: We still don’t know where this confrontation between de Blasio and his cops will lead, or how it will be resolved. (So far, the city has been peaceful – and nobody on my block got a parking ticket all week! So it’s win-win.) But I’d like to strike a counterintuitive position and insist that it’s important not to overstate the threat, or to give an arrogant blowhard like Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association head Patrick Lynch more importance than he merits. * I suspect the spectacle of those cops turning their backs on Bill de Blasio is best understood as a rearguard action, a pathetic echo of the campaigns of vilification and de-Americanization conducted against Clinton and Obama. It’s fascist wishful thinking, a nostalgic appeal to a white working-class, Reagan Democrat demographic that is fading away. It might yield some short-term political benefits for the Republican operatives who apparently orchestrated it, but it is not the first stage of a putsch.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 20:44:03 +0000
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