Innehållsförteckning för January 1/8, 2018 från The Nation

@thenation.com What Happened—and What Didn’t When I read Elizabeth Drew’s uncritical endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s claim, in her new book What Happened, that Bernie Sanders’s support was “grudging all the way” throughout the general election [“If Only...,” Nov. 13], I remembered the afternoon of October 4, 2016, when I sat in the upper reaches of the University of Minnesota’s biggest auditorium and heard Sanders give an impassioned speech. He urged his youthful audience not just to vote but “to do everything you can to make sure that Hillary Clinton is the next president.” Later that day, Sanders did the same at the university’s Duluth campus. For her part, Clinton never campaigned in the state after getting the nomination and just barely won here. Minnesota might have been another Wisconsin if…

Blasted by 80-mile-an-hour winds that turned palm trees into giant torches, the blazes that ravaged Southern California beginning December 4 were the worst that veteran local firefighters could recall. “This is kind of the new normal,” California Governor Jerry Brown told reporters. Severe drought driven by global warming had left vegetation tinder-dry—with more drought projected in the years ahead. “We’re experiencing what it’s going to look like on a very regular basis,” Brown added. COMMENT We are running out of time faster all the time when it comes to climate change. In one of those ironies so glaringly obvious that Fate seems to be commanding that humans pay attention, one of the properties scorched belongs to Rupert Murdoch. As the founder of Fox News, a lavish donor to Republican politicians,…

It’s déjà vu all over again. Every column I write in the Trump era somehow needs to begin with some version of the question “Can this really be happening?” It’s only the “this” that keeps changing. One minute, it’s collusion with Putin to undermine the integrity of our election; the next, it’s being cool with child molestation; after that, it’s taxing grad students to pay for private jets. It’s hard to tell if we’re living in a science-fiction movie or a nightmare reality show. Even so, I thought we were at least done with coddling Nazis. And yet there is the already infamous New York Times profile of one Tony Hovater, which seeks to illustrate the point that Nazis are people, too. They eat boneless wings, wear T-shirts, register for…

On a sunny morning in september, representative vicky Hartzler, a Missouri Republican, held a press conference with four of her congressional colleagues to announce their support for Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker. The conservative Christian and “cake artist” had been found in violation of Colorado’s antidiscrimination law when he refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Phillips is now the plaintiff in one of the most closely watched cases on the Supreme Court’s docket this term, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission; the Court heard oral arguments in the case on December 5. Hartzler had spent a good part of her summer pressing for a ban on transgender people in the military because she believes they constitute a “domestic threat.” She was one of 86…

Never have I seen such majestic shins. He is pensive, frock coat unbuttoned, larger than once planned, and if he were to stand his head would nearly scrape the ceiling. What if that is Robert E. Lee’s face, sculpted into the waves of hair? No telling of the Union without the telling of the Confederacy. No stranger a feat than infusing Alabama marble with paraffin, to better let the sky’s light in. The sculptor took these hands from a May, 1860 cast, before he had signed any proclamations or called 75,000 volunteers to an army. In May 1860, he was only a Republican nominee. Leonard Volk came to Illinois, and as he prepared the plaster he asked Abraham Lincoln for two gestures: one hand a fist, and in the other,…

ACROSS 1 Merlot, fish, and escargot: extremely honorific treatment (3,6) 6 Elevate Rex (alt-right requirement) (5) 9 Heavy rainfall before long (after Monday) (7) 10 Historic steps in Georgia decision to imprison head of Teamsters (7) 11 Interpreter’s mother eaten by fiery beast (8) 12 5 retreats in Buenos Aires and another South American capital (6) 14 Operator to talk back? Fine (4) 15 Laugh at tax collectors trimming back of president’s coiffure (9) 17 Miscreant rode? (9) 19 Mötley Crüe’s 1D (4) 21 In retrospect, felt tense grasping prickly plant (6) 22 Reduce speed, pulling in immediately at center of Aspen! (8) 24 Say, “To get old is ordinary” (7) 25 Heavenly body rejecting a drug (7) 26 Brilliant success when white powder and ecstasy make a comeback (5)…

Every dark cloud has a silver lining. The torrent of complex problems that Donald Trump has unleashed by his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will plague US policy and Middle East peacemaking for many years. You cannot unrecognize a capital once you have recognized it. Whatever caveats he may offer, Trump has effectively accepted Israel’s annexation of vast swaths of the occupied West Bank into Greater Jerusalem and its declaration of this entire zone as the country’s “eternal undivided capital.” He has denied Palestinians any national or political rights there, and he has nailed the US flag to a position that antagonizes virtually every Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim, as well as the overwhelming majority of peoples and governments around the world. But in plunging the Middle East into what…

Dear Liza, How should a feminist mom deal with an 11-year-old daughter who wants to dress as if headed to an audition for an early scene in Pretty Woman? — Worried Mom Dear Worried, I feel quite sympathetic to everyone involved. It is a delight to dress in a slutty manner at all ages, but your daughter is still a little young. She likely wants to do this partly because she has fun fantasies about grown-up life. Many of us remember this. Susie Bright, feminist “sexpert” and co-author, with her daughter, of Mother/Daughter Sex Advice, recalls being eager to be alone in the house so she could raid her mom’s closet and try on her heels, loving the idea of “having everyone be entranced by me, being alluring.” Bright urges…

In December 2016, President-elect Donald Trump first tweeted the words “fake news,” denouncing media reports that he would stay on as an executive producer of The Celebrity Apprentice. Over the next year, Trump would post the phrase more than 150 times, but “fake news” is not limited to the president’s Twitter feed. Autocrats or state media in at least 15 countries have adopted the expression to undercut their own critics. Here are some of the most dangerous invocations of “fake news” around the world: Libya After CNN accounts of the Libyan slave trade prompted global outrage and an official investigation by the country’s authorities, a Libyan news outlet challenged CNN’s credibility—seemingly citing Trump’s social-media tirades. Myanmar In response to the international condemnation surrounding Myanmar’s brutal treatment of the Rohingya ethnic…

BEYOND HOLLYWOOD BY JANE FONDA WOMEN IN EVERY SECTOR OF THE ENTERTAINment industry are working to transform Hollywood in the wake of the Weinstein revelations. The determination is palpable: We will not stop until laws and policies are put in place that guarantee a safe work environment and equality in the industry. Women are finally being heard only because most of the brave actresses coming forward to blow the whistle on Weinstein have been white and famous. But it was African-American women who pioneered the fight against sexual harassment, engaging in landmark legal battles as early as 1975. Anita Hill endured humiliation while bringing sexual harassment to light in 1991. In 2007, Tarana Burke, a black activist, started the first “Me Too” campaign against sexual assault. Too often, these women…

In November, the Pentagon announced that it would reverse a 2008 policy prohibiting the use of cluster bombs, which release deadly submunitions that scatter indiscriminately across a target area. 119 Number of countries that have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a global ban on the weapons’ use; the United States is not among them 270M Approximate number of submunitions dropped by the US on Laos during the Vietnam War; about 80 million remain unexploded 20,000 Estimated number of civilians killed or maimed by unexploded ordnance since the end of the Vietnam War 44 Civilians killed the last time the US used cluster bombs, in a 2009 cruise-missile strike in Yemen…

The GOP tax bill would take a huge bite out of public-school budgets by eliminating the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. The prospect has sent states scrambling to offset the projected increase in federal taxes paid by their constituents. States are responsible for over 90 percent of elementary- and secondary-school funding, and according to the National Education Association, they could lose $370 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. That could put an estimated 370,000 educator jobs at risk. But gutting the SALT deduction isn’t the only threat to public schools that could end up in the final version of the Republican tax bill. Currently, the tax-exempt funds known as 529 plans can only be used to pay for college, but the proposed Senate bill would also allow…

In an eyebrow-raising interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, the soon-to-be-defeated Alabama senatorial candidate Roy Moore—accused of molesting a 14-year-old when he was in his 30s, and of pursuing and harassing at least eight other teenagers while a district attorney—stated that he couldn’t remember dating teenagers at all… but that if he had, he would certainly have asked their parents first. The allegations were greeted with a collective ho hum by many Alabamians. “It was different back then,” some have shrugged, as though that made it more acceptable. But this is patently not true: Let us not forget that in the 1950s, America and the world condemned Jerry Lee Lewis, then 22 and divorced twice, when he married his 13-year-old cousin. It was wrong then, and it is just…