Innehållsförteckning för January 10/17, 2022 från The Nation

The united states has just passed a grim milestone of 800,000 official deaths from Covid-19, more than in any other country, with the actual death toll likely much higher. As the nation has faced over 100 days in which more than 100 people have died and now faces the prospect of a more infectious variant that may weaken vaccine efficacy, it must be asked: How exactly did the richest country in the world get here? There are a number of reasons, but the primary one is that the United States does not have a free, universal health care system. The lack of a national health insurance program affects everything from vaccine hesitancy to the ability to get a test to how we manage the virus going forward. In the US,…

“Climate change has destabilized the earth’s Poles,” said a Washington Post headline on December 15, and it served as a reminder. The ice is breaking up. The waters are rising. The allencompassing political question today is climate catastrophe. How can the nations and people of the world mobilize the social energy necessary to slow the process? This danger won’t be cut off by defunding, by fostering mindfulness and new sensitivities, or even by penalizing the jocular skepticism and quack science that tell us climate change is a hoax. The problem is with human nature: the way we are constituted—the most selfless as well as the greediest individuals. Many of us know this; we feel it as a nagging reproach. We push away the anxiety, from bewilderment but also from a…

Republicans, along with some prominent rightwing Democrats, have been hammering the Biden administration over rising food and gas prices for months. In November, when the Labor Department announced that consumer prices had risen 6.2 percent from October 2020 to October 2021, the Republican National Committee tweeted, “Bidenflation is hurting working Americans all over the country.” Corporate media outlets are boosting this line of attack, from a viral CNN segment about a family that buys 12 gallons of milk a week to the downright false claims that inflation is being driven by the Covid-19 stimulus package that passed in March or by rising wages for the working class. White House officials and party leaders have been scrambling to respond to the price scare, worried that it could cost them their congressional…

In july 2016, hillary clinton’s presidential campaign released an ad titled “Role Models.” It starts off with what appear to be exterior shots of a single-family home in the rural Midwest and then of an inner-city rowhouse. Next we see children, representing numerous target demographics, watching TV inside dimly lit living rooms as candidate Donald Trump’s voice emanates from a bright screen. Some of his greatest hits ensue: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters, OK? It’s like incredible!” and “Blood coming out of her… wherever.” As the children’s innocent faces are illuminated by the on-screen Trump mid-sound-bite, we are meant to be aghast, worried about their moral development (and maybe also their eyesight). However, by the time “You can…

ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE NEW YEAR, ERIC ADAMS will be sworn in as the 110th mayor of New York City. The former police captain, state senator, and borough president has, in one sense, taken an entirely conventional path to one of the most celebrated offices in America. He painstakingly scaled the ladders of city and state government, working corporate boardrooms and Democratic club dinners, forging alliances with outer borough pastors and Manhattan finance titans alike. Adams, however, is anything but conventional. The largest city in the United States is about to enter an uncertain and unpredictable era, with a new mayor who is not quite like any who have come before him. On any given day, Adams can be a populist, a plutocrat, an ascetic, or a bon…

According to a poll published in september, a staggering 83 percent of parents support the teaching of “critical race theory” in schools. Or to be more specific—because they are never granted modifier-free descriptors, as their white peers are—83 percent of Black parents are in favor of CRT in their children’s schools. In a USA Today/Ipsos poll, 71 percent of Asian parents and roughly 60 percent of Hispanic parents said CRT should be part of the curriculum in their children’s schools. A Fox News survey conducted in Virginia—the state that is home to the Loudoun County School District, where some of the most visible battles over CRT have taken place—revealed that among Black parents with more than a passing familiarity with CRT, more than twice as many approved of it as…

638K Number of people displaced by violence within Myanmar 1,343 Minimum number of people who have been killed by the Myanmar military since it seized control of the government in February 2021 11K Number of people arrested by the junta since the coup 2K Estimated number of soldiers who have defected from the military 60% Amount that the kyat, Myanmar’s currency, has lost in value since the coup 25M Number of people living below the national poverty line, or about half the country’s population 14.4M Number of people in Myanmar who will need emergency aid in 2022, including more than 5 million children, according to UN estimates…

In the first full year of the covid pandemic, elon musk’s wealth skyrocketed from $25 billion to $150 billion. Jeff Bezos became the first person on the planet to possess a fortune of more than $200 billion. The Financial Times has been fretting all of this past year about a crisis in superyacht production, and lately it’s been reporting on another crisis afflicting the rich. Flexjet and NetJets, two of the most well-known private-jet charter companies operating in the United States, recently stopped accepting new clients because they simply can’t acquire enough jets to accommodate the explosive growth of the billionaire class. Not only is this eye-popping wealth not being hidden; it’s being flaunted. After being propelled by his Blue Origin rocket for fewer minutes than the lifetime of a…

after Wanda Coleman June We die. June Soon we die in March, April, May June Mother may I? Yes you may. June Mother, your back is turned. Ah, there’s your face. June We march. June January Arbery March Taylor May June August Remember October December December June We march. Everyone is a world to someone. June If another person uses “knee on the neck” as a metaphor I will scream. June I teach myself how to run. Run. Walk. Run. Walk. June I pay quarterly taxes to the government of the United States of America. June Two friends miscarry. L’s father succumbs to pancreatic cancer. J’s mom is killed in a car crash. June I turn off the news because I can turn the news off. June I name the…

AUGUST 15, 2021, IS A DAY AFGHANISTAN WILL never forget. It’s the day the former president, Ashraf Ghani, ran away as Taliban forces were barreling toward Kabul, the city that had become the hub of IEDs and targeted killings over the previous year. Ghani had spent the preceding 11 days in silence, never once mentioning a single province that had fallen to the Taliban. After he jetted off to safety, he didn’t bother to issue an apology until several weeks had passed. Even now, his administration—full of ministers, ambassadors, and generals who had long been dogged by accusations of corruption, sexual harassment, fraud, incompetence, and war crimes—has never had to face questioning in Afghanistan. Those officials are now in Dubai, Istanbul, and New Delhi. While Ghani was making his escape,…

IN LATE NOVEMBER 2021, THE WRITER and venture capital investor Li Jin tweeted, “DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) represent the next step forward in the labor movement.” In her 20-tweet thread, Jin gave a brief history of the American labor movement, including issues with declining membership, bureaucracy, and bloat, before pivoting to DAOs as a new paradigm for worker ownership: “Versus unions, transparency of DAOs’ governance and on-chain flows of capital lessens risk of embezzlement and corruption, since there is visibility into how funds are flowing into & out of the treasury. And open rules for member admission mitigate institutional discrimination.” The response from many leftists on Twitter was swift and negative, reacting to the perceived implication that technology—cryptocurrency especially—could be a substitute for political and social change. Black Socialists in…

The year 2021 demanded every bit as much from progressives as the difficult years that preceded it. Joe Biden replaced Donald Trump only after the outgoing president urged on a coup attempt and was impeached for the second time. In the face of an ongoing pandemic and the economic uncertainty extending from it, Biden found himself struggling not just with Republicans but also with corporate-aligned “centrist” Democrats who were disinclined to govern boldly. That set the stage for a year that saw progress come slowly and presidential approval ratings decline. Progressives had to fight to keep the administration from missing historic opportunities, while at the same time they championed an urgent racial justice agenda that faced a growing backlash, defended abortion rights, and struggled to save the planet. It wasn’t…

IN APRIL 1950, THREE MONTHS BEFORE JULIUS AND ETHEL Rosenberg were arrested as Soviet atomic spies, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover began chasing a bigger fish: the physics wunderkind Theodore Alvin Hall. Hired at 18 as a Harvard junior by the Manhattan Project, Hall arrived at Los Alamos on January 28, 1944, and learned he’d be helping to create an atomic bomb. Although the project was a response to fears that Germany might develop nuclear weapons, by that summer, with the German army in retreat, Hall grew concerned that the bomb’s real target would be the USSR, America’s wartime ally. While still at Harvard and unaware what he was being recruited for, Hall and his friend and roommate Saville Sax (the only person he told about his new job) shared…

Authors on the left are prevalent in academia, while liberals and centrists are dominant in much of the national media—apart from Fox News and its imitators, of course. But conservatives have long been adept at producing best-selling books that shape public opinion and even galvanize movements. Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, educated two generations on the right about the alleged virtues of untrammeled capitalism; the Austrian-born economist’s disciples included the likes of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher. Goldwater did not actually write The Conscience of a Conservative, the slim paperback issued under his name in 1960 (it was ghost-written by L. Brent Bozell Jr.). But the manifesto, which made the Arizona senator’s fervent case against the moderate liberalism then prevailing in both parties, quickly…

Russiagate Redux? Re “The ‘Havana Syndrome’ Versus the Secrecy System,” by Peter Kornbluh [Nov. 29/Dec. 6]: Coming so close upon the debunking of the Steele dossier and the Russiagate narrative, one would expect a greater degree of skepticism on the part of Kornbluh and his editors. But no, Kornbluh even suggests that the most likely culprit in this case is (you guessed it) Russia. And what solid evidence does he present to support that hypothesis? Unsurprisingly, he presents none whatsoever. We are still in the Russia-bashing fun house of journalism. ROBERT GOLDSTEIN Hope for Defund It was heartening to read Bryce Covert’s “‘Defund’ Isn’t Dead” [Nov. 29/Dec. 6] and learn that the movement to defund the police is indeed not dead around the country. However, as a New York City…