Innehållsförteckning för March 19/26, 2018 från The Nation

@thenation.com Heartbreaking Foresight How prescient was Patricia J. Williams in her column “Shooting Students” [Feb. 26]? Or perhaps it wasn’t a matter of prescience, given the mind-numbing, soul-crushing frequency of school shootings and the legislative stasis caused by the GOP’s NRA-backed obstructionism. In the current atmosphere, it wasn’t even surprising to hear Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, after the Parkland massacre, tell conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that states “clearly have the opportunity and the option” to allow teachers to carry guns on campus. As Williams points out, this notion is the quintessence of lunacy. The GOP fulminates, hypocritically, about burdening the nation’s children and grandchildren with debt, yet it seems content not only to watch today’s youth be shattered physically and spiritually by gun violence, but then also to leave…

Fifteen years ago, on February 15, 2003, the world said “No to War”: Some 10 million to 15 million people, in hundreds of cities and dozens of countries all over the world, embraced the same slogan, made the same demand, in scores of different languages. A war against Iraq was looming, with Washington and London standing virtually alone in their false claims that Baghdad had amassed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. As we look at the consequences of that war today— Iraq still in flames, wars raging across the region—we need to remember. COMMENT Throughout 2002 and into 2003, while George W. Bush’s “Global War on Terror” raged across Afghanistan, Washington continued to build support for a war against Iraq. We need to remember how the mainstream media obediently…

A Brooklyn teen’s assertion that she was raped by two NYPD detectives after being taken into custody has spurred New York State lawmakers to close a legal loophole that allows cops to claim consent in cases of sexual assault. According to BuzzFeed News, an 18-year-old woman and her two male friends were stopped last September by Detectives Eddie Martins, 37, and Richard Hall, 33. When the detectives discovered marijuana in the woman’s vehicle, they proceeded to handcuff her but released the two men. After that, the woman alleges, the detectives took her to an unmarked police van and raped her. While New York State law prohibits sex between inmates and prison guards, that doesn’t apply to police and the people they arrest. The two detectives, who were charged in October…

The Parkland shooting unfolded with a grim familiarity. News alerts that shots had been fired at a Florida high school quickly gave way to reports of multiple casualties and then a final, horrible number: 17 dead, students and teachers. Republicans offered their thoughts and prayers as ambulances pulled away from the school, and they also warned against any “knee-jerk” reactions to the killings, in the words of House Speaker Paul Ryan. But then something rare happened: The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High got angry and declared war on inaction. “Every single person up here today, all these people, should be at home grieving. But instead we are up here standing together, because if all our government and president can do is send ‘thoughts and prayers,’ then it’s time for…

On the morning of February 14, shares of American Outdoor Brands, the holding company for the gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson, were selling at $10.13. By the next morning, the stock price had surged 10 percent. In the intervening hours, Nikolas Cruz had shot 17 people dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The gun that Cruz used in the rampage was a .223-caliber Smith & Wesson M&P 15, an AR-15-style rifle similar to those used in massacres at a concert in Las Vegas, a nightclub in Orlando, a church in Texas, and an elementary school in Connecticut. The stock prices of gun manufacturers usually rise after mass shootings. One explanation: Shareholders know that gun owners, fearing stricter gun-control laws, will purchase more weapons in the following…

AMONG THE DISAPPEARED IN DONALD TRUMP’S FISCAL-YEAR 2018 budget was something most of us didn’t notice at first: the dissolution of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Take that away and virtually all federal support for public libraries disappears. While the institute doesn’t represent a massive amount of money—by one accounting, its $230 million was 0.006 percent of the federal budget in 2016—it has been crucial for sustaining libraries, especially those in struggling urban neighborhoods and rural areas. I was living in one of those hardscrabble outposts—Johnsburg, New York—when the monthly bookmobile ceased to operate. The nearest library was at least an hour away, and that was when the roads were clear. Books, already a limited resource, became even scarcer. But when the town board proposed a small tax…

$1.27M Median price for an existing single- family home in the San Jose, California, region—a record for metro areas in the United States 89% Percentage of Bay Area counties with homeless populations that are more unsheltered than sheltered 80% Increase in Bay Area commute times between 2010 and 2016 1 The Bay Area’s ranking among US regions with the highest percentage of “megacommuters,” defined as those whose one-way commute takes 90 minutes or longer 4.3 Average number of months spent sitting in traffic for drivers in San Francisco over the course of a 40-year career…

I was all set to write a column about the paralysis of progressives around guns: how even the ghastliest school shootings rouse few of us to more than hand-wringing and despair. After each massacre, I was planning to say, we go through the motions, writing letters to the editor, making donations to gun-control groups and politicians who promise to fight to stem the tide, but, except for the most dedicated activists, our involvement is pretty small-bore and low-key. The Million Mom March was the last major national mobilization, and that was back in 2000. A majority of Americans support gun control, but the passion—and the money, and Congress—is with the National Rifle Association. The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, aren’t having any of that. Survivors…

There is a learned hopelessness about mass shootings in America that creates the foundations for an emotionally hollow, politically impotent, media-saturated response. Conservatives offer prayers for those who have died and oppose any action that will prevent more deaths. Liberals offer outrage at the carnage and demand that something must be done, but then go on to do relatively little. (Gun owners are almost twice as likely as non–gun owners to have contacted a public official about gun policy, and almost three times as likely to have donated to a group that takes a position on the issue.) The rest of the world looks on aghast that an ostensibly mature democracy could witness such a tragedy and decide to do nothing to prevent it from happening again. Cable-news channels screen…

FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE ANNIVERSARY OF DONALD TRUMP’S inauguration, voters in western Wisconsin sent a devastating message to the president’s party. In a State Senate district that Trump won by a landslide in 2016, voters replaced a conservative Republican with a progressive Democrat. The district had been electing Republicans for the better part of two decades, and their nominee, Adam Jarchow, was a prominent member of the State House who had won previous elections in parts of the district. Republicans poured money into the contest. But in the end, it wasn’t even close. St. Croix County medical examiner Patty Schachtner won some 55 percent of the vote, swinging the district to the Democrats by almost 18 points. It was a stunning setback for Governor Scott Walker and a state Republican…

Did Gustave Flaubert really say, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi”? So it’s said, though I’ve never been able to track down the source. Still, Tennessee Williams must have believed it, to some degree at least, since he took over the formulation himself: “Blanche DuBois, c’est moi.” But then that, too, is one of those untraceable quotations. Maybe this kind of identification between author and character is just a sort of urban legend. Or maybe, on the contrary, it’s so inevitable that it ought to go without saying: An artist can’t create anything without putting something of him- or herself into it. Not so much the imagery but the title of Daniel Joseph Martinez’s recent exhibition at the Roberts & Tilton gallery (newly renamed Roberts Projects) in Culver City, California, led me…

the neighbors who begged it built are astonished they can no longer see the rivertaste it sweeten it for the fevered child Where the wall meets the riverthe neighbors cease to be neighbors they can no longer see beyond themselvestheir hands in front of their own faces Where the river meets the wallthe river doesn’t care goes on being river thrusting itself againstall obstacles carrying whatever needs carrying When the general gall threatens to leakinto my hoarded throat I remind myself the bitterness is on the public tonguethe salt sown into some other earth not mine…

ACROSS 1 Mixture made from tonic ingredients, in various proportions (10) 6 Eisenhower almost backed up religious leader (4) 10 Without force, battled an obligation (5) 11 Evaluates program increases (9) 12 Contrived bird design (7) 13 Drink in mountain paradise without the leads in Lost Horizon (7) 14 Best of three units (6,2,4) 19 Bits of tacos are all you need to get all over the country (5,2,5) 22 In secrecy, clerics use a composting bin, perhaps (7) 24 Lose hope when changing diapers (7) 25 Meddle and creatively reinvent wheel’s hub (9) 26 Force British politician to wear garland backward (5) 27 The ultimate in typography: one pica, flush right (4) 28 Crazy May’s gotten together with Perry—for the most part, that’s irregular (10) DOWN 1 Rough and…