Innehållsförteckning för March 25, 2019 från The Nation

The Dangers of Amnesia In his cover story “Who Is Matt Duss and Can He Take On ‘The Blob’?” [Feb. 25/March 4], David Klion misleadingly describes Barack Obama’s adviser Ben Rhodes as a critic of the “interventionist consensus” of the US foreign-policy establishment. Actually, as Rhodes explains quite clearly in his 2018 memoir The World As It Is, his worldview was shaped by books like Samantha Power’s A Problem From Hell, in which she calls for intervention against genocide. Rhodes was also deeply influenced by the Clinton administration’s failure to intervene in Rwanda, and he approved of the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 and supported the very costly but totally futile Obama surge in Afghanistan. Moreover, Rhodes joined Power in pushing for action against Moammar Gadhafi…

After President Trump walked out of his talks with Kim Jong-un in Hanoi over North Korea’s demand for an end to “sanctions in their entirety,” Democratic leaders were ecstatic. “I’m glad,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters. “They wanted lifting sanctions without denuclearization.” In a giddy aside, Pelosi added that Trump had finally realized that Kim “is not on the level.” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer chimed in, declaring on Twitter that Kim’s deal “would have only made North Korea stronger & the world less safe.” Their response was quite a shift for a party that questions Trump on practically every front, from immigration to health care to Russia. But this was about North Korea, and Democrats have been cynical about Trump’s talks with Kim and the inter-Korean peace process…

Did you know that you’re supposed to give women flowers on March 8, International Women’s Day? Teleflora is on it. What a comedown for a holiday started by socialists in 1909. Then again, every celebration of women, no matter how radical its beginnings—Mother’s Day began as a pacifist holiday—eventually devolves into an occasion for faintly guilt-ridden offerings from men and children. It’s as if they know there’s something seriously amiss, but can’t quite figure out what it is—so please, take these flowers and put them in a vase… and while you’re in the kitchen, do we have any of that nice cheese left in the fridge? So what do women have to celebrate this year? Let’s have the good news first: Voters repealed Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion and cleared…

The Library BookBy Susan OrleanSimon & Schuster. 336 pp. $28 In the Russian novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, the Devil comes to 1930s Moscow and wreaks havoc on the lives of the city’s literati. A talented writer, known as “the Master,” feels trapped in a world of ideologically pure but talentless hacks and throws his manuscript into a fire. Bulgakov had done just that in 1930: Believing it impossible to exist as a writer under Stalin’s repressive regime, he burned the first draft of the novel. Later in the story, the Master is visited by the Devil, who returns the book, undamaged. “Manuscripts don’t burn,” he tells the Master. In many ways, this sentiment—a belief in the resilience of stories to survive anything, even physical destruction—underpins Susan…

In the most damning testimony by a close associate of a sitting president since former White House counsel John Dean turned against Richard Nixon, Michael Cohen used his appearance before the House Oversight and Reform Committee to paint a devastating portrait of Donald Trump as a “con man,” “racist,” and “cheat.” The former personal counsel to the president confirmed much of what Trump’s critics already knew. But his primary contribution was a sense of clarity regarding just how much trouble his former boss is in. We now have a dramatically clearer view of how this lawless president will be held to account. For those who have focused exclusively on the probe by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Cohen’s testimony may have been something of a revelation—one…

On February 13, Maria Ressa—the founder of one of the Philippines’ most successful news sites, Rappler—was arrested in Manila on cyberlibel charges over a story about official corruption. The authorities arrived at her office too late for her to post bail, forcing her to spend the night in custody. Rappler reporters live-streamed the arrest, sparking an international uproar over the state-sponsored attack against her and her publication. I spoke with Ressa about the culture of violence in the Philippines and the role of independent media there. —Noah Flora NF: Could you talk a bit about your arrest? MR: I was charged with cyberlibel. The actual case comes from a story that was published by Rappler in 2012. The irony, of course, is that that story was published before the cyberlibel…

ON A THURSDAY NIGHT LATE LAST YEAR, A DOZEN OR SO PEOPLE GATHERED IN THE WOMEN’s Building, a community center in San Francisco’s Mission District, to attend an employment-law seminar hosted by the Tech Workers Coalition (TWC). The group, founded five years ago, helps organize workers and trains them to ask for better conditions, treatment, and pay across the booming technology industry. This particular gathering drew an Uber driver, a contractor with Apple, a former Google employee, and two people from Square, the mobile-payments system. Beth Ross, one of the Bay Area’s fiercest pro-labor attorneys, and Veena Dubal, a labor-law scholar at UC Hastings, held court before the small crowd. “There’s a lot of solidarity to be built here,” said Dubal, who was dressed in business-casual. “A worker is a…

BY THE TIME STEVEN MITCHELL MADE IT—BY FOOT—TO THE Churches Joint Council on Human Needs food pantry in Benton, Arkansas, on a cold November day, his two hernias had him limping in pain. A few weeks before, he had received a letter from the state’s Department of Human Services informing him that his Medicaid health coverage had been cut off. This was the first that Mitchell had heard of the state’s new work requirement for Medicaid recipients, which as of June 2018 required many enrollees to spend 80 hours each month working, in school, or volunteering and to log those hours online in order to maintain their health benefits. Getting that letter “messed me up a lot,” Mitchell said, in a gravelly voice deeper than his young face would indicate.…

You feared that you would love my brother more.But terribly, you would loveeach new child as you love me, as you lovehim, with proprioceptiveselfishness; you could growa new child each year like a new tenderlimb budding from your body. Love does notspread thin; it is not time,to be allotted, not food, to be shareduntil the plate is empty. That dreamin which your house grows extra roomsto hold the books you have never written?That is love; and like the dreamyou cannot choose when it comes; you are a tangleof ganglions and you will fire.You are as boring as dawn:we knew with precision thatthe sun would rise at 6:44 amand that your childwould be to you another limb,capable of pleasure, strength, pain.So the morning sky was clear; so my eyesfor the moment…

ACROSS 1 19th-century novelist spewing hot air galore (7,5) 9 Shift imprecise red states’ boundaries (5)  10 Bill and I emptied our cheeks (9) 11 Draw tired spouse (9)  12 Lead in Titanic after Ocean’s 10 (4) 14 Unproductive, endless enjoyment with something you use to 3 (6) 15 Nation’s carbon-free stuff is brown (8) 17 10 in genuine counterargument (8) 19 Prepare for birth without an initial legacy (6)  22 Blue beam gets around the speed of light (4)  23 Lie in beds and smile mysteriously (9) 26 Oversee appeal involving skeezy individual lives (9) 27 Nocturnal goddess returns to encompass unknown void (5) 28 Bicycle parts for each boy’s official representative (12) DOWN 1 Makes haste to obtain first of decorated skins (5) 2 Pair of rebels raised…

279K Number of unaccompanied minors apprehended at the US-Mexico border since 2014 2,737 Minimum estimated number of children separated from their parents at the border since 2017 4,556 Number of reports made to the Office of Refugee Resettlement alleging the sexual abuse of immigrant minors while in US custody since November 2014 105.1˚F Highest temperature recorded in 2018 in Tornillo, Texas, the site of the nation’s largest tent city for detained immigrant youth 0 Number of staffers at the Tornillo detention facility (out of 2,100) who underwent FBI background checks after the Trump administration waived the requirement…

As usual, participants at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference spent their time railing against the socialist menace. But the focus of this year’s red-baiting was bizarre even by CPAC standards. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) told the audience that he hopes “to see PETA supporting the Republican Party now that the Democrats want to kill all the cows.” And Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC) quipped, “With this Green New Deal, they’re trying to get rid of all the cows. But I’ve got good news—Chick-fil-A’s stock will go way up because we’re gon’ be eating more chicken!” Meanwhile, Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump White House official, warned: “They want to take away your hamburgers! This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved!” This was all in reference to a leaked FAQ…

SHERROD BROWN MIGHT RUN FOR PRESIdent. If the three-term senator from Ohio enters the race for the Democratic nomination, he’ll do so as a progressive populist with a record of winning in the industrial heartland that handed Donald Trump the presidency in 2016. But Brown is a much more nuanced political actor than his critics and some of his supporters recognize. He’s an expert on trade policy who is also an expert on voting rights; a Yale-educated author of distinguished books about the inner workings of Congress who has also been described by historian Michael Kazin as “perhaps the most class-conscious Democrat in Washington.” I’ve been covering Brown for decades, and we’ve often agreed (for example, on media reform, stopping wars, and the vital importance of upending corporate models for…

Gigged The End of the Job and the Future of WorkBy Sarah KesslerSt. Martin’s Press. 304 pp. $25.99 I grew up in Silicon Valley, but I was young enough that I don’t have many memories of the first Internet bubble. There was the logoed duffel in my closet that long outlived Fogdog, an early online sporting-goods store acquired by eBay, and the classmate in fourth or fifth grade whose mom worked for Webvan, the online grocer, and one day struck it rich. (That day was probably November 5, 1999, when the company’s stock closed 65 percent above its initial offering.) I didn’t understand how a person working at a job could suddenly get rich in the course of a single day, but I didn’t want to look dumb, so I decided…