With the current decade now past its halfway point (and well past its sell-by date), I’ve been wondering what to call it. We’ve had the Swinging 60s, the Me Decade, the Go-Go 80s. The ascendant grifters among us might call these hard times the Suckers Era, in homage to the law firms and universities that rushed forward on bended knee to see who could cut deals with the Trump administration first. For the millions of Americans who voted Republican and depend on SNAP food benefits and health-insurance subsidies, it could possibly feel like the Age of Lost Innocence. Two years ago, in these pages, my husband, Bruce Handy, suggested the Raging 20s. Not trying to best him or anything, but how about calling the 2020s the Smash-and-Grab Decade?
In October, we had the Louvre heist, where a gang of cheeky thieves driving a cherry picker broke a window of one of the world’s great museums and ran off with fistfuls of royal jewels in broad daylight. That same week, Trump launched a complete demo job on the East Wing of the White House before the public had time to evaluate the project, or preservationists could be consulted, or the National Capital Planning Commission or other oversight bodies could review whatever plans, if any, existed. What metaphors for our times! Take what you want while everyone is watching; they can’t do anything about it anyway.
Much of this greedy, “Grab ’em by the pussy” ethos relates to Donald Trump. Smash-and-grab is his longtime M.O., as a trail of stiffed creditors and Trump University degree holders will tell you. Returned to office, he has absconded with the Gulf of Mexico, unilaterally renaming it the Gulf of America. More consequentially, he has ordered ICE to detain and disappear not only refugees but people with the legal right to stay in the country, and even actual American citizens. The future Gaza Riviera? S & G, baby. DOGE, impounding cancer research, gutting FEMA, the suggested annexation of Greenland and Canada—the shattered glass cases and wrecking-ball debris are everywhere.
Well beyond the Louvre and the White House, my own e-mail in-box has been full of smash-and-grabs. My new pal A.I. has turned out to be a very bad boyfriend. As I learned, thanks to the lawsuit the Authors Guild has brought against Anthropic, some of my books were downloaded from pirate sites to teach A.I. how to write like me without my permission. Also, my husband’s books, and those of other friends and colleagues—roughly half a million books in total. Think of how much enjoyment we will all have at dinner parties asking A.I. to write fun essays for us in each other’s voices in 30 seconds or less! For that privilege, we’ve been led to believe we will receive $3,000 per hoovered book, now that the judge sort of found in our favor. But as with the East Wing, there’s no backsies. We can take the remittance and run, or not. Either way, our intellectual property is gone.
Visual A.I. systems have similarly been training on movies, TV shows, and other media, with droit du seigneur imperiousness. But you don’t need tech to smash-and-grab intellectual property. I’ve had a crush on the actor Noah Wyle since the 90s, when he played a handsome young medical student on ER, and I like his new series, The Pitt, even more. However, Wyle and his team are at the moment fighting a lawsuit from Michael Crichton’s estate, which claims that The Pitt—on which Wyle plays a handsome middle-aged E.R. chief—is an “unauthorized reboot” of ER, which Crichton created. Published correspondence between Wyle, his team, and the estate suggest that they were in talks regarding a collaboration on just such a project when negotiations broke down. Wyle and Co. went ahead with their show anyway. It is a hit, and Wyle now has two new Emmys, for best actor and, as its executive producer, for best drama. Smash-and-grab? This case is still being litigated, but it’s not a good look.
The question is, why do we seem willing to put up with all this? What happened to societal norms and actual laws? Why is the pushback so often feeble? I wish I had the answers. Is it because Americans have given up? Is it possible that we simply like it this way? Has the swirling chaos of the Trump tornado rendered the rest of the country helpless? Did the early capitulation to these power grabs (and a compliant John Roberts Court) pave the way toward this monarchical mania? Have we, as a nation, forgotten the old schoolyard axiom: Don’t dance with a bully; it just feeds the beast; gray-rock him instead?
The New Year offers faint hope for a counter-offensive, but maybe Democrats will seize a measure of power the old-fashioned way: by winning a few elections. Congressional oversight might not amount to much in the era of Smash and Grab, like bringing a rule book to a knife fight, but who knows? Maybe an administration figure or two will deign to answer the occasional question or strongly worded concern. Meanwhile, I’ll be waiting patiently for my $3,000 check that I’m sure is in the mail.
Helen Schulman is a New York City–based writer and professor. She is the author of several books, including, most recently, the short-story collection Fools for Love
