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Urban myths about populism
关于民粹主义的都市传说
Alexander Heffner finds that the world’s mayors are the defenders of democracy and “authoritarians” have no place in city hall (By Invitation, October 3rd). But he limits his conception(概念，理解) of populism to the right-wing sort. His observation that “none of the 50 largest cities is run by a MAGA(“让美国再次伟大”缩写，特朗普政治运动标志)-aligned mayor” is less startling(令人吃惊的), for example, given that only seven are run by Republicans of any stripe(任何派别的). Of these 50 mayors, 41 are Democrats and at least five of those can be placed in the populist-left camp, including New York’s Zohran Mamdani and Chicago’s Brandon Johnson. His German example reinforces this point. Berlin has been immune to the AfD(德国选择党，右翼民粹主义政党)’s brand of populism, but it succumbed(屈服，抵挡不住) to the populist-left variety in September’s election by making Die Linke the biggest party.
亚历山大·赫夫纳认为，世界各国的市长是民主的捍卫者，“威权主义者”在市政厅没有立足之地（《特邀来论》，10月3日）。但他将民粹主义的概念局限于右翼类型。例如，他关于“50个最大城市中没有一个是与MAGA结盟的市长执政”的观察并不令人惊讶，因为其中只有七个由任何派别的共和党人执政。在这50位市长中，41位是民主党人，其中至少有五位可归入左翼民粹主义阵营，包括纽约的佐兰·马姆达尼和芝加哥的布兰登·约翰逊。他的德国例子强化了这一点。柏林一直对德国选择党式的民粹主义免疫，但在9月的选举中却屈服于左翼民粹主义变种，使左翼党成为最大政党。
Mr Heffner’s first explanation for why cities “hold” the line of democracy is that they have “younger, more diverse, more educated voters”. That is simply a more verbose(啰嗦的，冗长的) way of saying “heavily Democratic”. His second reason, that mayors are judged on more tangible accomplishments like fixing sewers, seems directly at odds with his wish to expand the mayoral domain into housing, crime and climate, all areas laced with partisan tripwires.(他的第二个理由——市长们要凭修下水道之类更实在的政绩来接受评判——似乎与他希望将市长职权扩展到住房、犯罪和气候领域的愿望直接矛盾，而这些领域都布满了党派纷争的绊索。)
赫夫纳先生对城市为何能“守住”民主防线的第一个解释是，城市拥有“更年轻、更多元、受教育程度更高的选民”。这不过是用更啰嗦的方式说“以民主党为主”。他的第二个理由——市长们要凭修下水道之类更实在的政绩来接受评判——似乎与他希望将市长职权扩展到住房、犯罪和气候领域的愿望直接矛盾，而这些领域都布满了党派纷争的绊索。
Fentanyl deaths in Europe
欧洲的芬太尼死亡
The bad old days
糟糕的旧时光
Get some rest
休息一下
Singapore responds
新加坡回应
The incentive to report errors
报告错误的激励