Indholdsfortegnelse for March 11, 2019 i The Nation

Laughing Through the Pain Thank you for the good laugh you gave me with the title of John Nichols’s article, “Trump at Two” [Feb. 11/18]. I had to pause to ask myself whether the piece might be about this point in Trump’s presidency or about his level of psychological maturity. WENDY WEIDMANGIG HARBOR, WASH. Past as Prologue Re Greg Grandin and Elizabeth Oglesby’s “Washington Trained Guatemala’s Killers” [Feb. 11/18]: More can be learned about the US role in Guatemala’s current problems from this four-page article than from a book. It should be read to or by anyone who wonders why people are leaving Guatemala and walking to the US border to seek a better life. What people in the United States don’t know allows the current administration to fill their…

COMMENT Santiago de Chile Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s embattled president, has frequently invoked Chilean President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown and died in a US-backed coup on September 11, 1973, as a hero. As someone who worked for the democratically elected Allende before the military takeover, I can imagine the advice that Allende might direct from beyond the grave to his Venezuelan colleague at this dangerous moment: Señor Presidente Nicolás Maduro: I send you these words as you fight for your political life, vowing that you will not be deposed as I was in Chile, by a military coup carried out by Gen. Augusto Pinochet that terminated democracy in my country for 17 years. You are wrong to undermine, through your repressive actions, the democracy you claim to be protecting. I…

Thailand’s Pauline Ngarmpring is running to become the world’s first openly transgender head of state. As part of the center-left Mahachon Party, she’s unlikely to win in the March 24 general election—the country’s first since a military coup in 2014. But Ngarmpring says she’s campaigning to raise awareness of LGBTQ issues and to address the hazards faced by sex workers, whom she views as her main constituency. Ngarmpring, a former journalist and businesswoman, wants to legalize sex work. The unregulated industry, she says, leaves workers vulnerable. When Ngarmpring campaigned recently in one of Bangkok’s red-light districts, masseuse Wassana Sorsawang shared her top concerns with the candidate: “Our welfare, mostly. Health.” Even if she doesn’t become prime minister, Ngarmpring hopes that she and her party’s human-rights agenda will earn enough votes…

You can believe one of two things about Donald Trump’s national emergency. You can believe that the National Emergencies Act (NEA) confers such far-reaching powers on the president that we’ve been living within a hair’s breadth of a dictatorship since 1976, and Trump is the first man smart enough to figure it out. Reagan? Obama? Amateurs! Only Trump has noticed this constitutional kryptonite buried in our own laws, and now we must kneel before him like his name is Zod. Or you can believe that the NEA does not preempt our entire system of democratic self-government. You can conclude that Trump is not, in fact, a Machiavellian genius so much as a tantrumming demagogue whose quest for power is helpfully mitigated by the Constitution, common sense, and his own stupidity.…

Dear Liza, I’m in an unexpected situation: I’ve found myself (a man) single and infatuated with another professor (a woman) in my department. Our department is large; we don’t see each other often; and while we collaborate occasionally, it is minimal. The university’s rules wouldn’t preclude us from dating, but I fear that even letting her know I’m interested could create discomfort for her. How should I approach this situation? —Lovesick Professor Dear Lovesick, If you make your feelings known, you do face some risks (aside from the usual danger of heartbreak). She may, as you fear, experience your interest as sexist, especially if you’re in a discipline where women struggle to be taken seriously. Even worse, she may feel harassed. What if she rejects your overtures? If you’re in…

I grit my teeth as I sit down to write—yet again!—on the question of blackface. Gucci kicked off Black History Month with the debut of an $890 black balaclava with big, red, knitted lips surrounding the mouth opening. This seemed exceptionally provocative given that Dolce & Gabbana is still apologizing for last year’s “slave sandals,” and the luxury-coat manufacturer Moncler is still making nice after mass-producing a line of clothing emblazoned with loud images of black-faced “golliwogs.” Meanwhile, there’s the viral photo taken at Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky showing a crowd of students, some in full black body paint, taunting an African-American basketball player from a visiting team. “School spirit” is how some people described the scene of howling, scowling boys, but to me, they looked nothing less…

HAD THE OCCUPATIONS OF AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ NOT GONE SO wrong, perhaps George W. Bush might have been able to contain the growing racism within his party’s rank and file by channeling it into his Middle East crusade, the way Ronald Reagan broke up the most militant nativist vigilantes in the 1980s by focusing their attention on Central America. For nearly two centuries, from Andrew Jackson forward, the country’s political leaders enjoyed the benefit of being able to throw its restless and angry citizens—of the kind who had begun mustering on the border in the year before 9/11—outward, into campaigns against Mexicans, Native Americans, Filipinos, and Nicaraguans, among other enemies. But the occupations did go wrong. Bush and his neoconservative advisers had launched what has now become the most costly…

$10M Amount solicited by Elliott Abrams from the sultan of Brunei to fund the Nicaraguan contras in 1986 $50 Amount that Abrams was fined after pleading guilty to charges related to the Iran-contra affair 305K Estimated death toll for the civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala—conflicts for which Abrams supported US military intervention 18 Minimum number of fellowships and board and committee memberships that Abrams has held since 1981 “I fail to understand why…the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful.”Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), to Abrams during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing…

Professional, evidence-based journalism has been under assault for decades now, but over the past few months, fresh attacks have battered it further. These attacks arrive fast and furiously, from so many directions that one hardly has time to acknowledge them all, much less address them in a way that keeps journalism’s business model alive and protects the integrity of the original enterprise. Just since my last column in the Jan. 28/Feb. 4 issue we have seen: § More than 1,000 employees laid off at BuzzFeed, AOL, Yahoo News, and HuffPost. The broadcast and digital company Vice Media denuded itself of 350 people. And last year, Mic—a site aimed at and staffed by young people and once valued at $100 million—eliminated virtually its entire staff. § GateHouse Media, which publishes 145…

WHEN SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN DECLARED THAT SHE WAS RUNning for president in February, she described Donald Trump’s administration as “the most corrupt in living memory.” But she didn’t stop there: “Even after Trump is gone, it won’t be enough to do a better job of running a broken system,” she said. Warren’s speech was centered around the notion that political corruption is not a uniquely Republican problem. “To protect their economic advantages, the rich and powerful have rigged our political system as well,” she continued. “They’ve bought off or bullied politicians in both parties to make sure Washington is always on their side.” Anyone who’s followed Warren’s career knows she’s been making statements like this for years. But her position is suddenly mainstream: Almost every major contender for the Democratic…

AT 10 AM ON MARCH 14, 2018, SOME 200 students at Great Mills High School in Great Mills, Maryland, walked out of our classrooms in the 30-degree cold. We were among the roughly 3,000 schools to participate in the nation’s first-ever National School Walkout observing the one-month anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. I passed out stickers to my classmates that said “Enough Is Enough” and “#NEVERAGAIN School = A Safe Space,” along with instruction cards on how to register to vote. At around the 11-minute mark—the amount of time it took law-enforcement officers to enter the high school in Parkland after the first reports of the shooting—a circle formed around my classmate Mikayla, who spoke through a megaphone. “We’re here to…

What I took to be desert bighornsrunning straight up the ridge makinga sound like breaking plates didn’tturn out to be either of those things,& what I took to be fog shopliftingthe top half of the mountain was reallysomething more like the problemwith trying to remember your childhoodfrom pictures of your childhood.It was the blackened stump with armsfooling me on the hillside again,telling me to go buy a curtainI didn’t need at all, & it was the fireyou must sometimes light on purpose& the swallow that repeatedall powerful to them was the sun,& it was that sun still marchingup the cliff like an army that made mewonder why the apples were smallerthis year, and so quick. We used to takepictures of people taking pictures& call it memory. We used to callnostalgia…