At the Free Press fete in New York City, Hurwitz writes, everyone from young journalists to against-the-grain hangers-on, from “techno optimists” to “reactionary homesteaders,” came together to lambast democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani and recruit one another for trips to Israel. Her conclusion? “It is difficult to position yourself as the voice of the sensible unheard when the ‘anti-wokeness’ your publication feeds on is unequivocally in power.” That anti-wokeness has been displaying itself in many forms these days, from the 800 National Guard personnel stomping the ground in DC, to ICE officers and DEA officials rampaging in search of some imagined rising crime to fight. Is this what writer Jeff Sharlet calls a “slow civil war?” Walsh asks.

In theory, there may be no better movie for this retrograde moment than Eddington, an attempt to rehash the liberal vs. conservative battles over Covid through the guise of an old western. But Weston finds that Aster fails to stake any real political claims with this film, or, ultimately, to “reckon with the uglier dimensions of what afflicts this country.”

-Alana Pockros

Associate Editor, The Nation

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