Yanis Varoufakis on America's Lost Catharsis Through Art

In a personal essay for Project Syndicate, economist Yanis Varoufakis reflects on America's democracy through the lens of art and culture, arguing that the nation's capacity for catharsis—a concept he traces to Aristotle's Poetics—was stifled by economic shifts after the 1971 Nixon Shock. He recalls how American films, literature, and music once offered profound critiques of society, citing works like Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Roman Polanski's Chinatown, and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Varoufakis contrasts this with the rise of jingoistic entertainment in the 1980s, such as Rambo and Top Gun, and the financialization that led to Donald Trump's presidency. He concludes that America's tragedy remains unresolved, to the detriment of all.