Innehållsförteckning för October 5-12, 2020 från The Nation

AS YOU CAN SEE, THE NATION HAS MADE SOME CHANGES. WHEN E.L. GODKIN AND his fellow editors put Volume 1, Number 1, of The Nation to bed in July 1865, they noted, “It has been a week singularly barren of exciting events.” That is not a claim any of us would make today. Change has been a constant in the magazine’s history—and one of the keys to our longevity. In 1865, Godkin sent John Richard Dennett on horseback to report on “The South as It Is,” a searing account of defeat and devastation that also conveys, forcefully enough to still shock readers today, the recalcitrance, resentment, and deeply rooted racism that persisted after the close of the Civil War. Nowadays Nation correspondents seldom travel on horseback. But in the past…

I CAN’T KEEP UP WITH ALL THE DIFFERENT ways Donald Trump is trying to steal the upcoming presidential election. And I can’t keep track of all the ways he is trying to undermine faith in the election so that he can declare himself the winner even if he loses. As of this writing, Trump’s proposed election-rigging schemes have ranged from delaying the election because of Covid-19 (which he can’t do) to declaring a winner by the end of election night, even if votes remain to be counted (which he also can’t do). He has insisted that mail-in voting increases the likelihood of fraud (which it does not), and he, along with his partner in corruption Bill Barr, have told Trump voters to vote twice (which is fraud). Meanwhile, Postmaster General…

1 “Office of Intelligence and Analysis” I&A is one of the array of government organizations that make up the intelligence community, a consortium of elite spy agencies including the CIA and National Security Agency. As a subagency in the DHS, I&A monitors domestic terrorism threats. 2 “Threats to the 2020 Election Season” President Trump has repeatedly and falsely alleged massive voter fraud in the 2016 election, and he continues to do so ahead of the 2020 election. The Transition Integrity Project, a bipartisan election monitoring group, recently conducted a series of “war games” simulating the 2020 election. The exercises anticipated possible street violence, especially in the event of a contested outcome. “The potential for violent conflict is high,” the organization concluded. 3 “FOUO” An abbreviation of “for official use only,”…

Postcards for Democracy is a collective art project to support the 225-year-old United States Postal Service and the right to vote. In light of the threat to our beloved (yet neglected) Postal Service—at a time that could jeopardize our democracy—the two of us have joined forces for this artful demonstration. The aim of this campaign is to encourage as many people as possible to support the USPS (at this critical time), our right to vote, and democracy as a whole via the power of art. We’re asking you to buy USPS stamps, make your own postcard, and mail it to 8760W Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA 90069. The postcards will then become part of a collective art piece presented in both a physical gallery and a virtual space—art directed by…

To understand the planetary importance of this autumn’s presidential election, check the calendar. Voting ends on November 3—and by a fluke of timing, on the morning of November 4 the United States is scheduled to pull out of the Paris Agreement. President Trump announced that we would abrogate our Paris commitments during a Rose Garden speech in 2017. But under the terms of the accords, it takes three years to formalize the withdrawal. So on Election Day it won’t be just Americans watching: The people of the world will see whether the country that has poured more carbon into the atmosphere than any other over the course of history will become the only country that refuses to cooperate in the one international effort to do something about the climate crisis.…

Readers who came of age during the current television multiverse may find themselves struggling to grasp the cultural dominance once enjoyed by The Tonight Show on NBC. One of the many pleasures of The Sit-In, a new documentary inspired by Joan Walsh’s reporting in The Nation and available on NBC’s Peacock streaming service, is the film’s account of how, during a week in February 1968, Americans came to have a national conversation on race, injustice, and the Vietnam War—organized and orchestrated by Harry Belafonte. A chart-topping recording artist, acclaimed actor, and committed activist, he initially turned down an offer to fill in for host Johnny Carson, changing his mind only after being promised control over his guest list. The result was history making: Belafonte’s interview with his dear friend Martin…

IMAGINE HATING YOURSELF ENOUGH TO watch a presidential debate featuring Donald Trump. What reason would you possibly have? To make sure he’s a lying sociopath? To see if he’s a worse choice than Joe Biden? To gain useful insights into American politics? In truth, there is no point, especially in a format that will involve remote participation because of the pandemic. Nothing will be revealed that we don’t already know and know so thoroughly that we can barely stand to hear it again. We could cancel the upcoming debates and lose nothing. Hell, we’d gain precious minutes of our lives we might otherwise be tempted to waste. But the problem with general-election presidential debates is larger than Trump or 2020. They are an anachronism of a bygone media era. We…

You made me crudebecause you were afraidand too easily in awe— but I also loved thatabout you, the sincerityof your love, the centrality of your worry.Had I intervenedto privilege one over the other,it would have been allyou remembered. All you thought about,that entrance.Even as it was, you said I visited,but those divas and reformersweren’t me— they spoke for meonly in the literal sensein which every radius of a wheel is temptedto believe that it,in its rigidity, alone was chosento support the wholemiracle of motion. In fact, I cast no spellsand called no witnesses.I let you find your own. I let you discover thatthose growing painsare the thing you are.…

WE AMERICANS LIVE IN A DEBASED VERSION OF DEMOCRACY in which basic parts of the federal government betray, by design, the principle of majority rule. Wyoming elects the same number of senators as California does, although Wyoming’s entire population is not much larger than the city of Fresno’s. When voting as a bloc, five members of the Supreme Court can negate any act passed by Congress; barring an unlikely impeachment, every justice, once confirmed by the Senate, remains on the bench until she or he retires or dies. To alter the framework of the Supreme Court or the Senate would require a constitutional amendment that the legislatures of as few as 13 states could prevent from being ratified. Yet neither is the greatest insult to popular sovereignty. That would be…

I USED TO FEEL SORRY FOR MELANIA TRUMP. ALL SHE wanted, I imagined, was to be one of those rich private-school moms who spend their life getting spa treatments and lunching with their girlfriends at chic little Upper East Side restaurants. Instead, she ended up trapped with a sociopath in a tower full of gold toilets. People put too much stock in the concept of agency, I would say. Sometimes you make a mistake and you can’t get out of it. And because she’s a woman, she gets double the blame, like Marie Antoinette. These days, she gets more grief than her husband, Louis XVI, the king of France. I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Every time a photo appeared of Melania frowning next to her husband…

4.6M Acres burning across 10 states, as of September 14—an area the size of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined 529 Highest recorded measure of fine inhalable particles in Portland’s Air Quality Index, on September 12; levels over 100 are deemed unhealthy 4.5M Homes built in areas at risk of wildfire in the US 20% Share of California fire camp crews made up of incarcerated people 900% Increase in area burned by wildfires across the western US since 1984 80% Likelihood of a megadrought hitting the southwestern US by 2100 62% Increase in annual global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels since 1990…

THE WEEK AFTER JULY 4, RARE SIGHTINGS OF A STRANGE CREATURE from the East began to be reported across Kentucky. When he visits the state he’s represented in the Senate since 1985, Mitch McConnell, the jowly old swamp monster from Washington, D.C., doesn’t typically roam far from the tony Louisville neighborhood where he maintains a residence. As an elder Democrat told me last summer at Fancy Farm, the state’s annual political picnic, “If you see that buzzard popping up all around Kentucky all of a sudden, you can damn well be sure of one thing: He must be up for reelection.” Sure enough, as he pursues his seventh term in the Senate, McConnell was popping up in all kinds of unlikely places during Congress’s traditional two-week July 4 recess. The…

I can’t get away from it.Felted-up reenactors shoving a great fake crate of itinto the Harbor and jeering.After the tour group leaves, they fish itback out and towel it off,unbutton their waistcoats to smoke.At the nearby counter-service place, there are twojars next to the register, and dropping billsinto one or the other is howwe affirm our commitments—why should we everpay decently, unless it occursin this fever of rivalry that passes for fun?What are our choices and might I suggestLESS IS MORE against MORE IS MORE?Or IT COULD HAPPEN ANY TIME against IT HAPPENSALL THE TIME? Or how about THIS VIOLENCEFOREVER UNDOES A PERSONagainst THAT CONTENTION CAN ONLYBE ROOTED IN THE RETROGRADEVIEW THAT A WOMAN IS EITHER INTACT OR SHE’SNOT? I always thought I’d madepeace with THIS PLANET, and yet here…

Neoliberalism Isn’t Working Re “The 7,383-Seat Strategy Is Working” by Joan Walsh [September 7/14]: There is not one word in this article about why the Democrats lost nearly 1,000 state races during Barack Obama’s presidency. Mainly it was because of the party’s neoliberal policies, which work against its traditional constituencies of the working and middle classes. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were both proponents of these policies, and the effects at the state level were disastrous for the party. Democrats are picking up seats now because of Donald Trump’s unpopularity and his incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. But as long as the Democratic establishment shuns its progressive base (as dramatically illustrated by its choice of speakers at the party’s national convention), this up-tick will be temporary and may be…