Social Retreat and the Tumler

Human nature didn’t change once Ed Koch became mayor of New York, but it soon began to display its shabbier sides. The mood of the city seemed to grow sullen, as if in contempt of earlier feelings and visions….

Quick to sense the change, Koch attached himself to it. The mood of the city now revealed a weariness with the language of idealism, a coarsening of social sentiments, a resignation before inequities that had once troubled consciences. The city, we were told, was in ...