When I asked Phillips-Fein what lessons she drew from studying Trump’s actions during New York’s debt crisis, her reply was all about fear. There was, she said, “this deep level of fear about bankruptcy, fear of the future. And it’s that kind of fear that really makes possible the cutbacks of the time, and also the sense that the city needs a savior in the first place.” Since the 2016 election, she has been thinking about this a lot. “The way that fear can make things that seem politically impossible suddenly feel as though they’re the only alternative. And so I think that is one of the things
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