Innehållsförteckning för July 18-25, 2016 från The Nation

@thenation.com London Calling Thank you for D.D. Guttenplan’s short and inspiring article [“Yes He Kahn,” June 6/13]. The election of Sadiq Khan as mayor of London is a true source of hope for other Global North countries—a great step forward and a wake-up call for the United States. SUSAN ALLMAN CEDAR CITY, UTAH Sign of the Times? “Monopolized” by Mike Konczal [June 6/13] made me think of the comment Victor Serge made while reporting from Germany in 1923: “The monopolist is one of the last products of an exploiting society in disintegration.” ANDREW MAYO ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. Connecting the Dots I was surprised several months ago to see Frank Luntz interviewing folks about current affairs on CBS. He’s a longtime strategist for the Christian right, so I found it hard to…

The stunning British vote to leave the European Union has roiled diplomats and central bankers across Europe and the United States. The political establishments on both sides of the Atlantic are finally beginning to get the message. For too long, their policies have failed to provide either shared prosperity or security. For too long, they have ignored the many who are struggling while catering to the few who are thriving. The British vote should force fundamental reassessments in the EU and the United States—of austerity; of rule by technocrats; of immigration policy; of economic and foreign policy. With its allies in NATO, Washington should place a particular focus on reassessing the dangerous descent toward a new Cold War with Russia, which has received shamefully little attention. William Perry, defense secretary…

Plenty of Americans have been unsettled by Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. And much of what unsettles them has to do with Donald Trump’s claim that the Brexit vote sets the stage for a similar reaction against elite political and economic arrangements in the United States. COMMENT Trump’s a blowhard, and an opportunist. But the angst and agitation over the Brexit vote, and Trump’s statements regarding it, is appropriate. Britain’s 52–48 vote for Brexit confirms that millions of voters in Western democracies are so frustrated with politics as usual that they’re ready to embrace extreme options. Some of them are responding to crude racist and xenophobic appeals. But the voting patterns in Britain, like the polls from battleground states in the US, suggest there are other factors at…

The changes depicted in Pew Research Center’s “State of the News Media 2016” report are not only bad for journalists, but for the functioning of democracy in America, as Eric Alterman notes at right. A thinly stretched media pushed by advertisers to focus on clicks has had a particularly odious impact on this election season by aiding the rise of Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential candidate. Consider the changing ways in which Americans consume news: -7% Drop in daily newspaper circulation in 2015 -2% Drop in magazine subscriptions in 2015 21% Americans who have listened to a podcast in the past month 44% Americans who get their information about the election from social-networking sites, compared to just 17% in 2012 65% Americans who get their information about the election…

On the morning of June 24, Donald Trump arrived in Scotland just as all of Britain woke up to discover that it would be exiting the European Union. Trump’s appearance at this moment of nativist triumph laid bare one of the paradoxes of right-wing populism: Even as its advocates demand bigger walls, more guards, and tougher laws to stop immigration, the ideology itself respects no borders. The chaos that has ensued since the Brexit results came through has also exposed the central evasion underpinning the populist right-wing agenda: While the right can successfully rally a faction of the poor on the basis of race, nation, religion, or all three, it cannot deliver for them, even on its own sordid terms. Having mobilized public support for their pledges to restrict immigration,…

In a normal country, the stunning rebuke the British public delivered to the country’s political establishment last week by voting to leave the European Union would be an occasion for humility, soul searching, and, above all, a recognition that it wasn’t only the pollsters who kept predicting a “Remain” victory that were fatally out of touch. For a few hours on Friday morning, as the implications of what had just happened sunk in—the likely unraveling not just of Britain’s ties to the rest of Europe, but of the United Kingdom itself, with Scottish independence back on the agenda, Northern Ireland’s Good Friday agreement seriously undermined, and the whole European Union now at risk of dissolving under a rising tide of nationalism—Britain was that country. London, a cosmopolitan capital that voted…

In a 2012 New Inquiry essay titled “The IRL Fetish,” Nathan Jurgenson argued that what happens online is just as real as what happens offline—that those who lamented the rise of technology for invading “real life” interactions were misguided. One essay, however, wasn’t enough, so Jurgenson, along with editors Rob Horning, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Alexandra Molotkow, and Soraya King, and with funding from Snapchat, launched a magazine. “Popular discourse on technology has sustained the idea that there is a digital space apart from the social world rather than intrinsic to it,” Jurgenson says, “while popular tech writing is often limited to explaining gadgets and services as if they’re alien, as well as reporting on the companies that provide them.” Real Lifewill approach tech writing through a range of reported, theoretical,…

In October, this Supreme Court term looked like it could be a disaster. The Court had taken review of cases involving multiple hot-button issues that typically divide conservatives and liberals, and, as has been the case since 1972, the Court’s conservatives outnumbered its liberals. Abortion, affirmative action, public-union dues, President Obama’s immigration initiative, voting rights, and the Affordable Care Act (again) were all on the chopping block. Many observers predicted this would be the year the Roberts Court showed its full conservative strength, and the only question that remained was how devastating the results would be. Then Justice Antonin Scalia died, and everything changed. There was no longer a conservative majority; instead, the Court was evenly divided, 4 – 4, between conservative and liberal justices. Lawyers preparing for their Court…

Evidence of the slow death of the American newspaper has lost its news value in recent years, rather like evidence of the warming of the earth’s atmosphere. As with global warming, we know what we’re losing but remain paralyzed, unable to take significant steps to stop it. The topic comes up on certain occasions: when a media company sees its stock tumble, lays off a significant percentage of its employees, tries (and often fails) to sell itself, merges with another conglomerate to increase “efficiency,” pretends to be some other kind of company with a hipper brand, hires a CEO famed for his or her “turnaround” capabilities, or hands pages over to a right-wing billionaire to use as a daily propaganda pamphlet. Otherwise, the news is like the weather: It’s getting…

In July of 1990, The Nation devoted an entire issue to “The American Neo-Nazi Movement Today,” a report by the journalist Elinor Langer. It was the story, she wrote, “of something secret becoming public; of something forbidden becoming permitted; of the long, slow re-emergence of racial thinking in the United States from its retreat after World War II to the point where it can once again energize action; of the gradual, tentative crystallization of a political movement openly aimed at white hegemony.” After rereading the piece 26 years later, Langer told me she was “appalled by its relevance.” The important question for Langer, as she argues in a recent forum at TheNation.com, is not whether Donald Trump resembles this or that fascist leader of the past, but the extent to…

ACROSS 1 Legume enthusiast catches Gardner with bare shoulders (4,4) 5 Love to sail to Washington with Native American (6) 10 Restore unfinished puzzle with broken lid (7) 11 Dress to shock, concealing note (7) 12 Hot rod crashing outside a stockpile (5) 13 One who might perform sacred music, or They Might Be Giants (8) 15 Not in motion during 49er timeout (5) 17 Eva Peron’s inauguration: give a speech and vanish into thin air (9) 19 Lawmaker playing, uh, marimba? (9) 21 Darkness near the middle of daytime (5) 23 I see a limitation and turn sharply, coming back to get soup (8) 25 Earth without gravity is spherical (5) 27 After hours, dissolute priest becomes someone who is with it (7) 28 Hack allowed introduction to virtual…

53.4% Voters in England who chose “Leave” 52.5% Voters in Wales who chose “Leave” 62% Voters in Scotland who chose “Remain” 55.8% Voters in Northern Ireland who chose “Remain” “You’re not laughing now, are you?” Nigel Farage, far-right leader of the UK Independence Party, addressing the European Parliament after the Brexit vote. A warmer welcome was given to the representatives of Scotland, which voted to stay. There is likely to be a second referendum on Scottish independence, given the country’s widespread support for remaining in the EU.…

On June 27, the Supreme Court struck down, in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, parts of a draconian Texas law, HB2, that would have decimated the state’s reproductive-health-care infrastructure. The law, which required that doctors have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and that clinics meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers, resulted in the immediate closure of many facilities and would have left Texas with some 10 clinics clustered in only four major metropolitan areas. The Court’s 5 – 3 decision, the most decisive statement on reproductive rights since 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, ruled that states could not place a “substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability abortion,” which would “constitute an undue burden…and thus violate the Constitution.” Since the passage of HB2 in 2013, pro-choice…

Senate Republicans have refused to accept President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, holding out hope for the election of a Republican president in November. However, even without a ninth justice, the Court announced ground-breaking decisions on June 27 that delivered victories for women in two significant cases. Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt Vote: 5–3 The Supreme Court struck down two regulations contained in the Texas abortion law known as HB2. The law restricted women’s access to abortions by forcing clinics to meet the strict requirements applied to surgical centers, and by requiring those performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. When HB2 was enacted, it forced half of the clinics in Texas to close, leaving only 20 of the original 40. Voisine…

Of the top 10 localities hardest hit by austerity in the UK, eight voted to leave the European Union. Downward mobility has left many British people insecure: 33 percent fell below the poverty line at some point between 2010 and ’13, amid serious cuts to the welfare benefits supplied by the British government. Tragically, voting to leave the European Union in an attempt to improve their circumstances may cost poor families up to £5,542 per year in EU-administered benefits. Blackpool £914: Annual loss in welfare benefits per working-age adult per year between 2013 and ’15 67.5%: Voted to leave Westminster £821: Annual loss 31%: Voted to leave Knowsley £797: Annual loss 51.6%: Voted to leave Merthyr Tydfil £722: Annual loss 56.4%: Voted to leave Middlesbrough £717: Annual loss 65.5%: Voted…

WHEN CERTAINTIES CRUMBLE, IT’S OFTEN ON THE STREETS THAT THE MOST COHERENT narratives emerge. One crumbling certainty is that Americans don’t elect fascists. That’s a 1930s European thing, we have long thought. This certainty seems to have prevented Trump’s GOP rivals from calling him out with the “F-word” while they still had a chance to block his rise, even as he asked supporters to swear a personal loyalty oath to him at rallies, retweeted Mussolini quotes, curried favor with white-nationalist groups, showed profound contempt for the separation of powers that defines the American democratic process, and repeatedly injected a the language of violence into his speeches. That same certainty also stopped Republicans, until it was far too late to be effective, from explicitly denouncing Trump’s racism and demagoguery—even as he…