By James Fitzgerald One of my favorite low-budget films from the 1980s was John Carpenter’s Escape from New York — an urban nightmare, where the imperial US is perpetually at war and the degeneracy of society results in a whole city being turned into a maximum security purgatory. Presumably the backstory involved protests that got out of control and which led to the annexation of New York’s Manhattan Island. There is a vicarious pleasure in watching characters navigating hellish dystopias — but the footage from the past week of American cities being trashed was gut wrenching. My exposure to these events came through social media and took the form of snippets of footage and photos and two-sentence commentaries. I didn’t look at a newspaper or switch on the TV, because I feel there would be no surprises in their coverage. What quickly became apparent was the incredulity and panic among…