In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I mentioned the influential sociologist C Wright Mills in yesterday's post, but later I discovered an op-ed in the Washington Post that discussed him in some depth on Monday. (For some reason, it's not behind their paywall, so anyone can read it.) There are clear parallels between today’s populist right and the new left movement that exploded in the 1960s and 1970s. C. Wright Mills, a sociologist at Columbia University, was that movement’s intellectual godfather. Consider a passage from his 1956 bestseller, “The Power Elite,” a polemical attack on the structure of America’s institutions that would inspire a generation of new left activists: “[The power elite] are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effect...