The director, Sam Mendes, is a British stage veteran whose understanding of America seems based entirely on our exported sitcoms and soap operas; in trying to turn those abstracted, idealized images on their heads, he produces only an equally abstract cynicism: an attack on institutions that no one really believes in, institutions that exist only as conventions in entertainment formulas.
"We must all be united in the face of this massacre, this attack on institutions," Antonio Di Pietro, a politician with the Italy of Values Party, told the ANSA news agency.
Arguably Trump's worst conspiracy is his insistence that voter fraud has "rigged" the election, which merges his fringe claims with his attack on institutions.
Chinese attacks on U.S. institutions through the Internet and other technological means should stop.
The attacks on national institutions, arts and science makes for a holy trinity of cultural crises.
Attacks on educational institutions have become a hideous way of marking the start of a new year in Pakistan.
Though no injuries were reported in the firebombing and other incidents of arson, analysts in Malaysia said there was no precedent for attacks on religious institutions.
Trump's attacks on the institutions of government have been so fast and brutal, however, that many people made the choice without torment: they left.
Trump's scorched earth insults, like his attacks on other institutions, try to delegitimize authority and leave only himself in its place.
