A long trip on an American highway Lin the summer of 2024 leaves the impression that two kinds of billboards now have near-monopoly rule over our roads. On one side, the billboards, gravely black-and-white and soberly reassuring, advertise cancer centers. ("We treat every type of cancer, including the most important one: yours"; "Beat 3 Brain Tumors. At 57, I gave birth, again.") On the other side, brightly colored and deliberately clownish billboards advertise malpractice and personal-injury lawyers, with phone numbers emblazoned in giant type and the lawyers wearing superhero costumes or intimidating glares, staring down at the highway as they promise to do to juries.
A new Tocqueville considering the landscape would be certain that all Americans do is get sick and sue each other. We ask doctors to cure us of incurable illnesses, and we ask lawyers to take on the doctors who haven't. We are frightened and we are angry; we look to expert intervention for the fears, and to comic but effective-seeming figures for retaliation against the experts who disappoint us.
Much of this is distinctly Americanthe idea that cancer-treatment centers would be in competitive relationships with one another, and so need to advertise, would be as unimaginable in any other industrialized country as the idea that the best way to adjudicate responsibility for a car accident is through aggressive lawsuits. Both reflect national beliefs: in competition, however unreal, and in the assignment of blame, however misplaced. We want to think that, if we haven't fully enjoyed our birthright of plenty and prosperity, a nameable villain is at fault.
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TWERKERS' COMP
Earlier this year, the Cannes Film Festival observed a heroic first: the director who won the Palme d'Or, the event's highest honor, dedicated the prize to \"all sex workers, past, present, and future.\"
AMERICAN ATTITUDE
The docuseries Mr. McMahon” explores the underbelly of the WWE.
ORIGIN STORY
Ta-Nehisi Coates and the temptations of narrative.
THE IMPRESARIO
Alvin Ailey’ crusade to build a home for himself and other Black dancers.
MY CAMP
Human nature, yes. Nature nature, no. I know nothing about it.
PRISON DIARIES
The Russian opposition leader’ account of his last years and his admonition to his country and the world.
THE ASCENT
Can Kamala Harris defy her doubters—and end the Trump era?
PECKING ORDER
Language is said to make us human. What if birds talk, too?
COWBOY-DANCE FUTURE WORLD
It t is the year 2248. We live in what some would call a perfect world.
AS BAD AS ALL THAT
Donald Trump and the unmaking of America.