Indholdsfortegnelse for September 21-28, 2020 i The Nation

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or go to TheNation.com/StartMakingSense to listen today. STACEY ABRAMS MARGARET ATWOOD CHARLES M. BLOW SHERROD BROWN NOAM CHOMSKY GAIL COLLINS MIKE DAVIS ELIZABETH DREW BARBARA EHRENREICH DANIEL ELLSBERG FRANCES FITZGERALD ERIC FONER THOMAS FRANK HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. MICHELLE GOLDBERG AMY GOODMAN CHRIS HAYES MARGO JEFFERSON DAVID CAY JOHNSTON NAOMI KLEIN RACHEL KUSHNER VIET THANH NGUYEN NORMAN LEAR GREIL MARCUS JANE MAYER BILL MCKIBBEN WALTER MOSLEY JOHN NICHOLS LAWRENCE O’DONNELL LAURA POITRAS KATHA POLLITT ROBERT REICH JOY REID FRANK RICH ARUNDHATI ROY BERNIE SANDERS ANNA DEAVERE SMITH EDWARD SNOWDEN REBECCA SOLNIT MARGARET TALBOT CALVIN TRILLIN KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL YANIS VAROUFAKIS JOAN WALSH AMY WILENTZ GARY YOUNGE…

In between the lies and the fearmongering and the stories about having intimate conversations with Jesus that somehow didn’t include healing the sick or helping the needy, the goal of the 2020 Republican National Infomercial was pretty obvious. Republicans did everything they could to give white people permission to vote for a white nationalist bigot: Donald Trump. Of course, most white Republican voters don’t need permission to vote for a white supremacist, and the Republican National Convention had plenty for them. But there are other racist white people who miss their dog whistles. They don’t think of themselves as “racists” and get more offended when they’re called racist than they get over actual acts of racism. They support the bigotry and xenophobia that Trump brings, but they don’t want to…

Donald Trump has a few things in common with Joseph Stalin. In some ways, the comparison is an injustice to both men: Stalin was not a moron, grifter, or alleged rapist; Trump is not (as of this writing) a world-historical mass murderer. But both men were addicted to lies. They also smeared anyone who told the truth—or might one day tell the truth—as enemies of the people. A third, related similarity is that they listen to sycophants who praise their bravery and genius, even when the sudden, unpredictable shifts in their beliefs make it nearly impossible for these toadies to remain in good standing. Pity, therefore, the million-dollar babies at Fox News whose careers depend on this complicated skill. Brian Stelter tells their story in his best-selling new book Hoax:…

In 2016, when Time magazine named Donald Trump its person of the year, it cheekily labeled him “the president of the Divided States of America.” Four years later, with Trump stoking racist attacks and threatening cities run by Democratic mayors, the country is splitting—sometimes violently—along the lines of geography, class, religion, and race. Nation contributing writer Richard Kreitner, in his ambitious new book Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union, reminds us that the United States has always been a fractious country. He describes the long history of secessionist movements, from Northern separatist campaigns before the Civil War to more modern schemes for an independent Pacific republic, and writes, “Seeing the Union through the eyes of those who seek and have sought to divide…

If the DNC’s official roster centered on too many Republicans and white men, the Zoom family conversation did the opposite.JOAN WALSH I’LL ADMIT IT: MY EXPECTATIONS FOR THE UNCONVENTIONAL Democratic National Convention in mid-August couldn’t have been lower if I’d stuffed them under the sofa with my spare change, dust bunnies, and the remnants of my dog’s chew toys. While I was disappointed that Milwaukee, where I went to high school, missed its chance in the national spotlight, I was furious about the party’s roster of featured speakers—one minute for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but major platforms for former president Bill Clinton, former secretary of state (and losing 2004 nominee) John Kerry, and (really?) billionaire Michael Bloomberg, a great contributor to gun reform and environmental causes who is being sued by…

It starts with the sweetestcontaminant masks: hound’s-tooth, hummingbirds & hibiscus. The tagline:Breathe us in on Instagram. It starts with Instagram, the masks modelednear skateboards and gold-light palmettos. It starts with a sister’scall from the car: all these trees down from last night! In the backseatthe kids holler-sing. The weatherman looks surprised by the tornado in Baltimore.In Stanhope. In Bucks County, PA. Strange days, folks. It starts with a gonejetty. Gone campsite. Gone silo. It starts with did you see. With still? again?It starts with I could swear it wasn’t always. It starts and keeps starting.With a sidebar headline and a bummer of a vacation week—no ocean this year,sorry, kids. But let’s not make it worse with worry. We’ll play moremini-golf. We’ll still have a good time.…

Prey Without Predators Re “Man and Beast” by Valentine Faure [August 24/31]: Predators are a big influence on animal behavior. Prey herds will move constantly and never overgraze an area if there are active predators. Without them, herds overgraze and kill their forage. I applaud this effort to rewild the Oostvaardersplassen, but we must be humble enough to realize that we don’t understand the complexity of natural ecosystems that we may try to re-create. Don’t give up. It is a worthy experiment, but it will require human intervention until the sweet spot is found. TERRY SULLIVAN The Costs of Long-Term Care Great story on nursing homes [“It’s Time to Abolish Nursing Homes” by Sara Luterman, August 24/31]. But two important points were not mentioned. First, nearly 80 percent of nursing…

72% Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s net approval rating, despite more than 8,600 extrajudicial killings since he launched his war on drugs 55% Share of Bharatiya Janata Party supporters who approve of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s handling of Hindu-Muslim relations. He is accused of allowing an anti-Muslim pogrom that left more than 1,000 people dead in 2002. 76% Percentage of people in France with a favorable view of the National Rally who believe that refugees increase the likelihood of terrorism 47% Share of Brazilians who think President Jair Bolsonaro bears “no responsibility at all” for the country’s more than 100,000 Covid-19 deaths 57% Percentage of Republicans who said the US Covid-19 death toll of 176,000 people was acceptable…

On August 27, Hurricane Laura slammed into the Louisiana coast with 150 m.p.h. winds—the strongest hurricane to hit that area since 1856. Super heated conditions in the Gulf of Mexico had turbocharged the storm. Laura made landfall just hours after Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech laden with fascist overtones to the Republican National Convention and less than a day before President Donald Trump abused the White House by converting its grounds into a prop for his hour-plus speech, accepting the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Like his boss, who spent this week ginning up law-and-order rhetoric, Pence didn’t discuss climate change. Instead, he dismissed the protests against police brutality, going all in on the flag-waving, patriotism-and-glory message. If you thought there were more important issues than attacking people for…

THIS SUMMER, SHORTLY AFTER SCORES OF CAMO-WEARING, HEAVILY ARMED FEDERAL AGENTS DESCENDED ON Portland, Ore., to attack protesters, Charles Fried, Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general, pondered the implications of what he was seeing on the streets. What he saw scared him; he remembered the use of paramilitaries by fascist leaders in 1930s Europe, where he was born, and he feared he was now witnessing a slide into paramilitarism in the United States. (His family fled the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.) Fried felt that President Trump was using the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies in a way that was “very menacing. You might as well put brown shirts on them. It’s a very bad thing.” A Harvard Law School professor who still counts himself as a Republican and a…

Moses Sumney has an arch relationship with loneliness. The guitarist and singer makes love songs about rifts between lovers, savoring their conflicts, relishing their discord. He pens odes to solitude that are as sullen as they are victorious, his voice quivering with sorrow and pride. His music has all the signifiers of lonerism—introversion, withdrawal, outer space—without the accompanying misanthropy. He’s a recluse for whom distance from people, from ideas, is not detachment. On his sophomore album, græ, he gives shape to this peculiar pose, voicing a self-possession that’s born of loneliness yet emboldened by it. Split into two parts, the first (12 tracks) released in February and the other (eight tracks) in May, græ is billed as a double album, and it’s best experienced in full. Though the “sides” are…

Filled with grief and rage after the police lynched George Floyd, I began writing what became the op-ed “The Problem Is White Supremacy” in The Boston Globe. In it I explained that the nation’s racial quagmire is caused not by a few bad apples but by a centuries-old system of oppression, and I asked the question: “What if we launched an initiative on the scale of the Marshall Plan or the space race to eradicate white supremacy?” I intended my query to be thought-provoking, but answering it can help us understand how we might free this country from the terror and hypocrisy that poisons life on both sides of the color line. To start, I would call the project the Hamer-Baker Plan. Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker did as…

Dear Readers, I write, with regret, to tell you that this is my last “Asking for a Friend” column. Having read advice columns all my life, I was honored when The Nation asked me to write one, especially since it was the first one the magazine ever published. “Asking for a Friend” was uniquely of The Nation, reflecting the problems that arise from being on the political left in a capitalist and sometimes right-wing world. There is plenty of advice available from the mainstream media, especially on romantic relationships, parenthood, extended families, friendship, depression, and the workplace. But most of this advice assumes that your problems are entirely of your own making. “Asking for a Friend” was rare in its assumption that issues of the larger society—especially patriarchy, racism, and…

Two months. That’s how long it took for white Americans’ support of Black Lives Matter—which climbed to an unprecedented peak in June after the brutal police murder of George Floyd—to tumble back toward preprotest levels. Over the same period, surveys show, declining numbers of white respondents cited anti-Black racism as a “big problem” in American society. An NPR/Ipsos poll from late August found white people are the racial group least likely to report taking even the most minor “actions to better understand racial issues in America” since protests began sweeping the country. Just half of white Americans concede “racism is built into the American economy, government, and educational systems.” And 49 percent believe America has already done enough “to give Black Americans equal rights with white Americans.” MIC It’s always…

ON A JUNE AFTERNOON IN 2019, IN FRONT OF A STATUE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON AT FEDERAL HALL IN New York City’s financial district, more than 100 construction workers and activists gathered for a First Amendment rally. Amid chants of “Free speech, free speech!” an approximately 15-foot-tall gray inflatable rat with glaring red eyes bobbed in the sun. The workers, mostly members of Laborers Local 79, weren’t defending speech, exactly. Rather, they were demanding their right to display Scabby the Rat, the mascot deployed at job sites to shame anti-union bosses. The challenge to these workers came from a seemingly unlikely quarter: the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency responsible for interpreting and enforcing labor law. The NLRB’s general counsel, Peter Robb, had launched a legal assault to ban Scabby…

Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes was on the streets in the city and on screens nationwide calling for a reckoning. This was not new activism for Barnes. Before he was elected in 2018, at age 32, as Wisconsin’s first African American lieutenant governor, he joined Black Lives Matter demonstrations and advocated for criminal justice reform as a legislator from Milwaukee. I spoke with him about his frustration with justice delayed. Here are some highlights of our conversation. —John Nichols JN: The video from Kenosha was so jarring, you knew there would be a reaction. MB: I knew that there was no way that people would calmly react to any of that. I mean, one, it is anger inducing for some. It is depressing for others. It is downright frightening for more…