Innehållsförteckning för June 20-27, 2016 från The Nation

@thenation.com For if Dreams Die… Many thanks to The Nation for publishing Debbie Nathan’s insightful article “What Happened to Sandra Bland?” as the cover story of your May 9/16 issue. I applaud Nathan for the extensive research that made it possible for her to answer that question, and for her desire to share her findings with your readers. As I worked my way through the story of Bland’s life, from one painful episode to the next, I remembered the lines of Langston Hughes’s famous poem “Harlem,” which also began with a question: “What happens to a dream deferred?” Hughes wrote his poem in 1951, before the civil-rights movement had reawakened the hopes that Martin Luther King Jr. described in his “I Have a Dream” speech. But that dream of dreams…

On May 12, Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s twice-elected president, was removed from office, the culmination of a soft coup long in the making. For months, opponents of Rousseff and her Workers’ Party (PT) prepared the ground for an impeachment vote, trying to convince the international community that they were acting constitutionally and disinterestedly. This is a lie. The man who replaced Rousseff, the venal Michel Temer, has aggressively moved to roll back the gains that the PT achieved and restore the class power of Brazil’s political and economic elites. An all-white, all-male cabinet is pushing a radical austerity budget and other “market-friendly” reforms, including cutting the PT’s signature Bolsa Família, a cash-transfer program that lifted hundreds of thousands out of destitution. The new government, which is conspiring with the military to…

Alleviating—even eradicating—poverty won’t end women’s need for abortions. As Katha Pollitt points out, women get abortions for many reasons. While almost 50 percent of the women surveyed in a 2013 study listed their personal finances as a motivating factor, only 6 percent cited it as their only reason for getting an abortion. Also, some countries with strong social safety nets actually have abortion rates that are higher than the United States’. Social spending, it turns out, does not correlate directly with a country’s abortion rate: Sweden spends 28% of its GDP on social services, and has a rate of 17.5 abortionsper 1,000 women. United States spends 19% of its GDP on social services, and has a rate of 13.2 abortionsper 1,000 women. Germany spends 26% of its GDP on social…

In the second round of France’s presidential elections in 2002, the left was faced with an unfamiliar challenge: What accessories to wear to the polls? The Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, had been knocked out in the first round. Now the choice was between the fascist National Front candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and the conservative sleaze magnet, Jacques Chirac. There were no good options: Chirac had once opined that French workers were being driven crazy by the “noise and smell” of immigrants. But there was certainly a catastrophic option: the election of Le Pen, who had branded people with AIDS “lepers” and trivialized the Nazi gas chambers as “a detail” in history. So the left debated casting ballots for Chirac wearing gloves or surgical masks (until they were told doing so…

ON MARCH 15, DONALD TRUMP WON FLORIDA, North Carolina, Missouri, and Illinois, dispatching Marco Rubio’s campaign to the ash heap of history and giving every impression that he had become the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. Hillary Clinton also did extremely well that day, taking Illinois, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina. The New York Times gave its prime spot—the top-right corner of the paper’s front page—to a story headlined “2 Front-Runners, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Find Their Words Can Be Weapons.” Readers quickly learned, if they had missed it previously, that Trump frequently used words like “bimbo,” “dog,” and “fat pig” to refer to some of the women he didn’t like, and this had led to disapproval ratings among women that reached historic proportions. And what “weapons” did Clinton give…

As barack obama’s presidency draws toa close, the flames of the counterterrorism frenzy that were ignited 15 years ago have begun to die down. Neither civil liberties nor the rule of law were consumed. Instead, what lies in the ashes are the most egregious violations of them: torture, mass surveillance, indefinite detention, extrajudicial trials, and indiscriminate drone killings—all of which, after bruising battles, have been reined in, if not abolished. This might not have been the case had the handful of officials who first objected to these policies at the end of George W. Bush’s first presidential term not worked hard—quietly and without fanfare—to change them. Nor would it have happened if the Obama administration had not been determined to return to the federal courts the jurisdiction that military tribunals…

In the world of American law, the Supreme Court is the Valhalla of the professional imagination. Majestic, forbidding, grander and higher than all other forums, it’s a sacred terminus for lawyers everywhere. None but the worthy can enter the prestigious (and clubby) world of the Supreme Court bar, whose members press their claims in hopes of shaping the nation’s understanding of its Constitution. And the justices themselves preside like divinities, berobed and cloistered in their hushed chambers. Yet law professor and longtime Nation legal-affairs correspondent David Cole thinks the Supreme Court’s role as an agent of constitutional change is overstated. In Engines of Liberty ( Basic; $27.99), he trains a light on civil society instead. “Look behind any significant judicial development of constitutional law,” Cole writes, “and you will nearly…

IN PLATO’S PHAEDRUS, SOCRATES TELLS the story of a race of men so enamored with a new technology—music—that they forgot to eat and died of starvation. Then they were reborn as cicadas. Are these cicadas a beautiful thing or not? The dialogue is ambiguous: On the one hand, they report to the gods when they expire, but on the other, their droning song induces the sleep of reason, which Socrates and Phaedrus must resist in order to carry on the work of philosophy. Reginald Gibbons’s How Poems Think (Chicago; $25) joins the many volumes on “poetic craft” marketed to our cicadas. The difference is that his book demands attention to technique across the ages and, crucially, across languages. And it argues that technique is no mere end in itself, but…

A year ago, Bernie Sanders launched his presidential campaign with an expression of outrageous faith in American democracy. At a point when the pundits said that the race for the Democratic nomination would be an afterthought, Sanders argued that a campaign “paid for by the people, not the billionaires” could upset expectations and begin a political revolution. By many measures, he has succeeded wildly: attracting huge crowds to rallies; drawing millions of young people and disenchanted voters to the polls; driving critical issues into the campaign; and winning 20 contests, 10 million votes, and about 1,500 pledged delegates by mid-May. Those numbers will rise substantially by the time the primary season comes to a close in mid-June. When it does, however, the challenge for the Sanders campaign will be to…

We’re pleased to announce that Erin O’Mara has joined The Nation as our new president. Erin brings to the role a great breadth and depth of experience in print and digital publishing, most recently in leading the consulting firm Shain+Oringer, where she placed a particular emphasis on audience development and strategic planning for titles at Johnson Publishing, Taunton Press, Lonely Planet, and other companies. Erin has a comprehensive understanding of the pressures facing publishing and independent journalism, and a proven ability to balance financial concerns with the mission-based priorities that define an enterprise as unique as The Nation. She shares our deep commitment to developing innovative business avenues that will sustain and enhance The Nation’s mission, its tireless advocacy of progressive ideals, and its fearless investigative journalism. We are excited…

If there were less poverty, would there be less abortion? At first, the answer seems an obvious yes. After all, in 2014, 49 percent of the women who had abortions were poor, and 26 percent were low-income—far more than their proportion in the population at large. In a 2005 survey by Guttmacher Institute researchers, 73 percent of women seeking abortion said they couldn’t afford to raise a child. A 2013 study by M. Antonia Biggs, Heather Gould, and Diana Greene Foster found that 40 percent of women cited “financial reasons” as a reason to have an abortion. Some otherwise progressive anti-choice Catholics—Elizabeth Bruenig and Charlie Camosy, for example—argue that if those women had had more economic support for motherhood, they would have had their babies. Is this correct? Not necessarily.…

Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America by Jennifer L. Anderson Harvard University Press, 2012 You’ve seen the musical—now enter Alexander Hamilton’s material world. In Mahogany, Anderson invites us inside the founding fathers’ surroundings, in which luminous objects made of silk, silver, and mahogany were featured. The “consumer revolution” of the mid18th century is as central to capitalism as the Industrial Revolution that followed. In the West, Europeans gained access to more goods than ever by exploiting slave labor. Venturing forth from the British West Indies (much like Hamilton himself), Anderson’s account blends ecological, labor, cultural, and imperial history. Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class by Devin Fergus Oxford University Press, 2017 (forthcoming) Debt stands between millions of Americans and their…

ACROSS 1 Large cat doesn’t finish eating large fruit (4) 3 Someone, moving in the old ways, ran and flocked together in disarray (4,6) 10 More lush? That’s a relief, surprisingly (7) 11 Texas city, lacking leadership, invested in Gregory’s bird (7) 12 Environmentally sound generators, halfbroken (5) 13 Competition fight in a ring—this has what it takes to set you on fire (8) 15 Artwork of a biblical prophet (6) 17 Darn tot tipped over a condiment (7) 19 and 24 Secure ’60s band? What a treat! (3,5) 20 Red small mark? (7) 21 Ailing source for international water? (6) 23 Enchant Circe (not with musical works) (8) 25 Joshua and Henri taking in a successful movie like Milk (5) 28 Distrust head of school mishandling PE cuts (7)…

60 Democratic and Republican nominating conventions between 1868 and 1984 (the last year a nomination seemed somewhat uncertain) 18 Candidates whose nominations required multiple ballots 16 Number of days the 1924 Democratic “Klanbake” convention lasted, with a record 103 ballots 64 Years since the last multiple-ballot nominating process (won by Democrat Adlai Stevenson in 1952) “This is no time for Democrats to keep fighting each other. The general election has already begun.” California Governor Jerry Brown, in his endorsement of Hillary Clinton…

Dear Liza, I am considering the drastic step of fleeing the country as a healthcare refugee. I have a medical condition that requires expensive medications, frequent doctor’s visits, and regular blood work, which costs me considerably more than my monthly rent. I live alone, and I am penniless and constantly stressed about money. I work full-time, but if I want to keep this medical condition in check, I desperately need to cut back on my hours. I met someone online, a longtime friend of trusted friends who lives in a European country that still has national healthcare. He has been romancing me now for five months; I went to visit him, and the sparks flew. I am very much in love with him, but I recognize that it’s early days…

In this issue, D.D. Guttenplan explores the possible roads ahead for the movement behind the Bernie Sanders campaign. The question is redolent of a November 1920 editorial in this magazine, bluntly titled “Should the Democratic Party Die?” After Warren G. Harding won the presidency with large Republican majorities in Congress, The Nation despaired of the party’s plight, “for it is not only defeated, but morally bankrupt.” Having made a pact, under President Woodrow Wilson, to accommodate Southern segregationists and disenfranchise “millions of American citizens because of the color of their skin,” the Democratic Party could “pretend to be liberal only by the sheerest hypocrisy. “Truly, the Democratic Party has been poisoned by the hypocrisy of its leaders. Its members who believe in holding down the working classes, in privilege…and [in]…

THE TRUTH IS, NOBODY KNOWS HOW THIS STORY ENDS. WE KNOW WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO happen: Bernie Sanders was a sideshow act, a relic to entertain the kids. After warming up the crowds and falling amusingly on his face in the primaries, Sanders was supposed to disappear, leaving the audience happy to settle down for four—or eight—more years of grown-up government under the Clintons. Instead, Sanders waged a campaign that stunned both Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment. Raising in excess of $200 million through more than 7.4 million contributions, he proved that candidates no longer need rich donors or corporate money to compete. Winning in state after state, Sanders refused to triangulate, instead expanding the American political universe to the left, putting the vision of a social democracy…

THREE YEARS AFTER EDWARD SNOWDEN’S REVELATIONS REGARDING THE National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program, Eric Holder has decided that Snowden may have done the right thing after all. His whistleblowing was “a public service,” the Obama administration’s former attorney general said on a podcast released May 30. Snowden should still be prosecuted, Holder added—leaking top-secret documents is illegal, after all—but his disclosures helped in “raising the debate.” Snowden welcomed Holder’s about-face, which buttresses Snowden’s longstanding offer to return home and face trial if he is allowed to offer a “public-interest” defense for his actions. In a tweet, Snowden seemed bemused but hopeful about the evolution in officialdom’s views: 2013: It’s treason! 2014: Maybe not, but it was reckless 2015: Still, technically it was unlawful 2016: It was a public service…

The Camera Does the Rest How Polaroid Changed Photography. By Peter Buse. Chicago. 308 pp. $30. Frances Richard is a poet who is currently editing a volume of essays on the work of Joan Jonas, to be published by the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. She teaches at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Peter Buse, the head of the School of Performance and Screen Studies at Kingston University in London, has previously written on such non-kitschy topics as the influential poststructuralist journal Tel Quel and The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin. The Benjamin connection is especially apropos, for as Buse explains in the introduction to The Camera Does the Rest, his new study of the Polaroid camera’s influence: “Benjamin saw the key to modern culture in…