Editor’s Page

It has been said about Dissent’s editors and writers that we turn to culture only when politics is impossible for us, when the left is defeated or in the doldrums. Cultural criticism is an antidote for, or a diversion from, political pessimism and incapacity. But as soon as there is any sort of revival, the smallest sense of possibility, we are quick to turn away from literature, art, music, architecture, and popular culture, and come back to “real” politics as if to our natural ...