“Chinatown... is about terrible truths you can’t undo, a cynical world where you can’t beat the house and money wins, where you think you’ve got it figured out, and then, you realize you’re dead! The movie is a good metaphor for the Trump era, when you hope that this grotesquerie is an aberration but you worry that the bad guys have already won. What makes the metaphor so powerful is its unAmericanness. In democracy, we supposedly have the power. But in Chinatown, there’s nothing you can do. Forget it, Jake. It’s an oligarchy.Even if Donald Trump is impeached, we know now that the Russians have figured out how to rig our elections — and our dictator-loving president doesn’t seem too disturbed about that.Is the impeachment inquiry the false hope, the cocky detective?"
At www.nytimes.com
