Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2024 i The Nation

LIKE MOST AMERICANS MY AGE, I STILL REMEMBER exactly what I was doing when I heard the news that John F. Kennedy had been shot. My mother and I were in an elevator at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where I was being treated for cancer. Although I had no idea at the time (my parents spoke simply of a cyst that had been removed from my neck), I was not expected to survive. The elevator operator, a middle-aged Black woman who always asked after me, was crying, and when my mother asked what was the matter, she replied, “They killed the president.” As a 6-year-old, I had a less than perfect grasp of the machinery of our democracy. All I knew about Kennedy was that, like my father, he had…

THERE IS A SET OF IMAGES TO WHICH AMERICANS DO not have much access. It consists of photos of German cities after the American bombing raids of World War II: photos of Germans pulling the bodies of children out of their bombed-out homes, stacking corpses on carts, sifting through the rubble for what might remain of their possessions. Why are these images missing from the collective memory? Is it because the United States had no photojournalists in enemy territory? Or are they unremembered because, unlike so many of the bombing campaigns that followed, this one belonged to what we think of as a good war? Most US readers probably have little desire to contemplate the collateral damage, measured in German civilian lives, of a victory over fascism that everyone agrees…

READERS OF THIS MAGAZINE WHO LIVE IN NEW YORK are likely so incensed at Kathy Hochul for blowing up congestion pricing earlier this summer—somehow managing to unite the Democratic Socialists of America and the business community in their ire—that it’s hard to imagine what could possibly match such a fantastic display of self-inflicted damage. Hold on to your shorts. New York’s taxpayers are already $8.2 million in the hole for disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo’s legal bills, which doesn’t even include the cost of defending his associates, who are also being sued for covering up his abuse of public employees. But that’s not even the most offensive part. The latest twist comes to us courtesy of his successor, the woman who would not be governor but for the 168-page report…

New York City I SAT DOWN WITH KAMALA HARRIS ON A SCORCHING JUNE AFTERNOON, ONE OF A nearly week-long string of 90-degree-plus days. Staffers escorted me to a well-cooled hotel room that had been made over into an interview chamber. I sat at a spare table where a bed would normally be. It was draped in one of those forlorn table skirts and set with two empty glasses, and the window’s thick curtains were closed to the midday sun. It was a little bleak. I heard the rapid staccato click of high heels. Harris walked in, greeted me warmly, and immediately yanked open the curtains. She was not afraid of the heat. She wanted sunshine in here. She is about to get much more sunshine—and heat—than she asked for. A…

Amman, Jordan THE PALESTINIAN ACTOR AND DIRECTOR MOHAMMAD BAKRI IS singing the Israeli national anthem, his voice rising as he belts out a few lines in Hebrew. The 70-year-old is reminiscing about his primary-school days, which occasionally began with a rendition of the song. He remembered a speech that his principal made him deliver on Israel’s Independence Day to the Israeli officer who was overseeing martial law in his hometown of Al-Baneh in the Galilee. Like every Palestinian town that survived the Nakba, avoiding the fate of at least 530 villages that were destroyed and emptied of their residents, Al-Baneh was incorporated into Israel in 1948 and then placed under martial law until 1966 (Bakri was 13 years old when it ended). The speech, he recalled, “was about ‘We stand…

HERE’S ONE WAY TO START TALKING about Helen Oyeyemi: For many years, I taught her 2011 novel Mr. Fox to undergrads in an intro-tofiction class, lecturing with bravado about its narrative manipulations but disconcertingly uncertain that I’d fully got it. In this novel about writing novels, a fictional character is conjured into life, intervening in the very life of her creator, only to become a writer herself. For most readers, this leaves them wondering who or what is real in the world of the book, blurring the lines between writers, characters, and readers. This was the case for me as well. My students would ask question after question about the novel as though I could answer them in a definitive way, trusting that I understood the text with some comprehensive…

Even the blossoms blownoff in a throb of wind so god help usto make love with- out becoming a plotof fresh earth some day the night curvedas a sky sinking inside an eye Iwalk across a yard of fallenapples kicking them to reveal still-damp flesh & hear the feet beforethe first snow fell on our lovers& land before we worshipped the goodmorning in a tongue trimmed of light I liftflowers I forgot the names to inany English & say your names the wayI was taught one after the other.…

It was “Black cool” before it was cool. Before it was “woke,”it was funky and fly, fleek and bae. Before it was FUBU, it was woke. Our language, just like every other catch phrase and dance move, taken, appropriated, pop-culturalizedinto a tweetable talking point. Now we’re “woke.” I have always loved that word. The shorthand of a head nod fromsomeone who looks like me, talks like me. I see you, sis. “Stay woke!” But I get it. The raised fist of vernacular meaning, We’ve been through some thingscan be uncomfortable. If you know, you know. If you don’t, are you unwoke? Is your man cheating on you? Is your girl stepping out? On his groove“Redbone,” Childish Gambino tells us not to close our eyes. “Stay woke.” In the 1920s, Marcus…

WHEN PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN ENDED HIS EMBATTLED BID FOR A SECOND TERM on July 21, he placed Vice President Kamala Harris on a trajectory that could well make her the first woman to win the Oval Office. Harris moved to the top of the ticket in a matter of minutes; key Democrats rushed to endorse her; and she raised a record $81 million within the first 24 hours of her campaign launch. The circumstance is unprecedented, the challenge daunting, but Kamala Harris is up to it. Despite what Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his MAGA cabal may suggest in public, they know this—and they fear her. That’s why, amid a rising chorus of calls for Biden to stand down after a miserable debate performance in June, Trumpworld went oddly…

THE PROGRESSIVE PROPOSITION AGENDA ISSUED BY the Congressional Progressive Caucus is a commendable effort to push the Democratic Party to put people and the planet ahead of corporate control and profits. The proposal includes a call to “end hunger and support farmers and local producers” and to “invest in rural infrastructure, small farms, and break up Big Ag.” This should be welcomed, as should the recommendation to increase funding for rural hospitals. Nevertheless, giving rural Americans just 24 words in the CPC document—out of a total of 1,656—is far from adequate. Indeed, what’s missing could fill a barnyard. For those of us who believe that fixing our economy and politics requires addressing the root causes of the rural/urban divide, there are many good elements in the CPC agenda. One of…

BEFORE THOUSANDS OF ANTI-ABORTION PROTESTers at the Texas Capitol in 2023, Republican Governor Greg Abbott brazenly touted his party’s passage of draconian abortion laws as “lifesaving.” “We promised we would protect the life of every child with a heartbeat, and we did. I signed a law doing exactly that,” Abbott told the crowd at the annual Texas Rally for Life event. “All of you are lifesavers, and thousands of newborn babies are the result of your heroic efforts.” Abbott’s words now ring particularly hollow in light of a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealing that infant deaths in Texas starkly increased following the passage of SB 8, which bars abortion care at the first sign of embryonic cardiac activity, typically around six weeks of pregnancy,…

MICK JAGGER AND KEITH RICHARDS BOTH turned 80 last year. Their first performance together was in the summer of 1962, or well over a year before the Kennedy assassination. On the microphone at Lincoln Financial Field in South Philadelphia, where I joined 60,000 other people still eager to see the Rolling Stones in 2024, Jagger told us he could remember an early Stones gig in Philly in 1965. Some people grumble that these old men shouldn’t still be getting up there and peacocking like vain and troubled teenagers. It’s a fair point. Jagger and Richards are the only original members of the band, and over the years they’ve become more or less synonymous with the whole outfit. Any ensemble still in operation for six decades is bound to have some…

CALLED “THE YEAR OF THE ELECTIONS,” 2024 HAS seen a withering of political objectives to their lowest common denominator: blocking the far right from power. From the United States and Europe to Narendra Modi’s India, it’s hard to deny which camp has the momentum in the 2020s. In many of the world’s democracies, a commanding plurality—what Henrik Ibsen called the “compact majority” in his 1882 drama An Enemy of the People—is turning toward authoritarian ethno-nationalism. The ideas and leaders that offered some hope only a few years ago are in retreat. In the United Kingdom, a de-Corbynized Labour Party may have won a majority in early July, but the best that can be said of new Prime Minister Keir Starmer is that he’s not 14 years of Tory rule. Having…

SUSAN NEIMAN IS A PROMINENT AMERICAN POLITICAL philosopher living in Berlin, where she directs the Einstein Forum. She is the author of many books, including Evil in Modern Thought and Learning From the Germans. Her most recent book, Left Is Not “Woke,” from Polity Press, has sparked an international conversation, with translations, she told me, coming out in languages from Thai to Farsi. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed. KATHA POLLITT: What do you mean by “woke”? When Lead Belly urged Black people to “stay woke” in a 1938 song about the Scottsboro Boys, he meant “Watch out for racism.” To be woke was good. Now it’s somewhere between a joke and a pejorative: Ron DeSantis named his law against teaching about racism the Stop Woke Act. SUSAN…

The 100th anniversary of the Immigration Act of 1924 came and went this spring with little fanfare. Perhaps that’s because it would have been difficult to tell a simple, linear story about the law, which severely limited immigration to the United States from Southern and Eastern Europe and much of Asia. The most egregious provisions were modified in 1965, but the quota system introduced by the bill remains in place today—while the nativism that fueled its passage has come surging back into American life. The Nation immediately grasped the implications of the law. When eugenics advocate and Washington Representative Albert Johnson introduced it in Congress, the magazine warned that it was “expressly designed to restrict future immigrants virtually to the so-called ‘superior races’ of Teutonic, Scandinavian, and Anglo-Saxon countries…. The…

The Republican National Convention opened and closed in Pennsylvania today, lasting approximately seven minutes. J.D. Vance “I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy.” “I never liked him.” “You’re an idiot if you voted for him.” “Might be America’s Hitler.” “Might be a cynical asshole.” “Cultural heroin.” “Noxious.” “Reprehensible.” Nikki Haley “I want to make one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my full endorsement, period.” Charlie Kirk Extreme MAGA youth organizer “We are going to work harder than ever before to chase ballots.” Rep. Tom Emmer “Donald Trump stands with the police, our men and women in blue, not with criminals and the rioters.”…

ON NOVEMBER 7, 2006, SENATOR JON TESTER GATHERED WITH HIS campaign team at the Heritage Inn in Great Falls, Montana, a former smelter town with a population of 60,000 clustered around five hydroelectric dams on the Missouri River. It was election night, and the mood was ebullient. The upstart campaign was about to upend the balance of the US Senate. “We had a stage with balloons, and everyone was ready for a big party,” remembered Bill Lombardi, Tester’s former state director, “but the AP wouldn’t call it because it was so close. So we told everyone to go home.” At the time, Tester was just a third-generation farmer and butcher from Big Sandy, a town with 600 people, three bars, and one grocery store. He was also a former music…

THE SUPREME COURT IS THE MOST ANTIDEMOCRATIC branch of government. Its justices are nominated, not elected, and they hold their positions for life, making them unaccountable to the people whose rights and liberties they curtail. For at least the past 24 years, ever since the court installed George W. Bush as president instead of permitting a recount of votes cast in Florida, the Republicans controlling the court have been increasingly hostile to democracy. They’ve gutted the Voting Rights Act, allowed states to gerrymander away the voting power of entire constituencies, overturned or vitiated popular legislation regarding gun safety and environmental protection, and expanded their own power at the expense of the other branches. The president and Congress have done nothing to stop these attacks on democracy. Lawmakers won’t pass an…