Innehållsförteckning för June 27/July 4, 2022 från The Nation

HOPELESSNESS IS THE MOST POWERFUL TOOL IN THE ARSENAL OF A HEARTLESS GUN industry and the National Rifle Association, which implements its deadly agenda. If Americans believe nothing can be done to save lives, then even the most well-intentioned citizens “move on” after each new massacre at a school, supermarket, hospital, or church. The NRA’s political puppets have mastered the art of muttering “thoughts and prayers” and then changing the subject before anyone objects. So, of course Texas Governor Greg Abbott was shocked when former El Paso congressman Beto O’Rourke interrupted a press conference at which the cynical Republican was making excuses for failing to take steps to prevent an 18-year-old gunman from slaughtering 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde. “You are doing nothing,” O’Rourke…

THERE HAVE BEEN AT LEAST 30 MASS SHOOTINGS. since 19 children and two teachers were murdered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., on May 24. While Americans contend with their collective grief, national gun-control organizations have called for a wave of lobbying and peaceful protest, embracing the Tinkerbell theory of political action. Confronted by lockstep Republican and anti-majoritarian obstructionism that makes legislative roads a dead end, Democrats keep “clapping for Tinkerbell”—insisting that, like the fairy in Peter Pan, progressive policy can stay alive as long as everyone demonstrates that they still believe. Whether the issue is gun violence, abortion, or climate change, Democrats and mainstream progressive organizations continue to retread futile legislative paths, often while admonishing activists for adopting more confrontational approaches. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has embraced and…

IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE TRAGIC, non-sensical, and all-too-familiar massacre of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., we’ve heard the same weak script from politicians: empty “thoughts and prayers” messaging alongside the misguided demand to increase police presence and militarization in schools—while they’ve taken no legislative action to prevent subsequent mass shootings. When Senator Ted Cruz said, “We know from past experience that the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus,” he ignored the well-researched reality students experience: Increased policing in schools is a threat to young people, not the solution. Police officers didn’t prevent the shooter from entering Robb Elementary; they refused to enter the school as he attacked. Elected officials should not use this tragedy…

BY NOW, IT SHOULD BE ABUNDANTLY CLEAR THAT OUR ANTIQUATED Constitution, written over two centuries ago by white men to govern a small, slave-dependent republic huddled along the Eastern Seaboard, does not meet the needs of the sprawling, multiethnic, and complicated country that we have become. For anyone who doubts this proposition, consider the following facts. In two out of the last six presidential elections, a candidate became president even though he lost the popular vote. Virtually all of the money and attention in presidential elections are devoted to a tiny number of swing states that determine the outcome. The Constitution vests in state legislatures the power to appoint presidential electors whether or not they are chosen by a popular majority—a power that Donald Trump tried to take advantage of…

STEWART BRAND IS NOT A SCIENTIST. He’s not an artist, an engineer, or a programmer. Nor is he much of a writer or editor, though as the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, that’s what he’s best known for. Brand, 83, is a huckster—one of the great hucksters in a time and place full of them. Over the course of his long life, Brand’s salesmanship has been so outstanding that scholars of the American 20th century have secured his place as a historical figure, picking out the blond son of Stanford from among his peers and seating him with inventors, activists, and politicians at the table of men to be remembered. But remembered for what, exactly? Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand is the first full biographical consideration…

Woman licks gold onto paper. Woman canalso draw blood, but only if called to by a ricochet of sunlight (I am a ricochet ofsunlight but who cares). Woman tilts her heart towards the center of the earth.Woman sees herself or doesn’t. Woman learns to kiss by avoiding (I am floatingjust beyond) the edge of the cliff. Woman is where the edge of the cliff (A snowcappedmountain, a guess of a person) meets dead air (I). Woman is an eagle circling (Ifight to be spoken of). Woman is a radio wave leaking voidlight (I). Woman fights tospeak (I hide inside). Woman fights. (I…

IN MARCH 1983, LARRY KRAMER PUBLISHED A PIECE in the New York Native titled “1,112 and Counting”—a call to arms about a new virus circulating among gay men in the United States. One thousand one hundred and twelve was the number of cases of this new disease, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Larry’s piece is a classic of what would remain his over-the-top style from the AIDS epidemic right up until a few months before his death in the midst of another plague, Covid-19. He took aim at everyone who might be implicated in the spread of the new disease, from New York’s City Hall to the National Institutes of Health, Congress, and the White House—and then gay men themselves for sitting on their hands, ignoring the crisis, underplaying the risk of…

THE BASIC DEFINITION OF A HOMICIDE IS THE DEATH. of one human because of the actions of another. By that definition, Clarence Thomas attempted homicide via the majority opinion he wrote in the Supreme Court case Shinn v. Ramirez on May 23. I do not say that merely because Thomas denied the appeal of two people on death row. Supreme Court justices deny final appeals from people condemned to die all the time, and while those denials have the effect of killing people, I wouldn’t call every denial a homicide. I call Thomas’s opinion a homicide because his reason for denying the appeal was so twisted and evil that his intent to kill was discernible through the legal jargon. He even added a footnote wherein he callously explained that he…

$2M Damages awarded to Amber Heard in a defamation trial over her 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post $15M Damages awarded to Johnny Depp in the same trial 23% Portion of college students who, upon reporting some sort of abuse, were threatened with a defamation suit 11B Number of views the hashtag #JusticeforJohnnyDepp received on TikTok as of mid-May 41M Number of views the hashtag #JusticeforAmberHeard received 20 Number of people per minute who are physically abused by a partner in the US 1 in 3 Number of women who have experienced some kind of intimate partner violence 53% Portion of domestic violence cases in the US that go unreported…

Lviv, Ukraine HERE IN THE CULTURAL CAPITAL OF UKRAINE, THE STATUES HAVE BEEN wrapped in plastic. The windows and facades of the neoclassical buildings that have led many a writer to describe this city as a “jewel box” have also been covered. This may be enough to protect them from the shrapnel from Russian bombs and shells, but it won’t be enough to shield them from a direct hit. Taken as a metaphor, these veiled figures convey a message: Art and culture are under wraps, at least until the invasion of Ukraine is over. In early May, Lviv’s opera house, a Beaux-Arts wedding-cake building that inhabits both the physical and cultural heart of the town, hosted a ballet, the first public performance there since the war began. The ballet—Giselle, a…

IN 1991, KENNETH COLBY, A PSYCHIATRIST AT UCLA, released a software program that he hoped would relieve the burden on the nation’s overloaded psychiatric system. Overcoming Depression promised to make patients “experts in their own depression” through a program they could run on their new personal computers. It was a promising time for an initiative that aimed to cross-fertilize the desktop computing craze and the early-’90s rise in diagnoses of depression—encompassing 25 percent of the nation’s adults, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a number that Colby considered an underestimate. But for all its promise, Overcoming Depression landed with a thud, another failed dream of the 1990s. The challenge of moving from a prototype to a functioning software system that could plausibly replace a human clinician proved…

The Experience of Evidence David A. Bell’s review of Joan Wallach Scott’s On the Judgment of History threatens to reignite an old—and valueless—quarrel between advocates of two progressive paths: welcome reform and radical transformation [“Distant Moments,” May 16/23]. Both writers are accomplished historians who study past moments marked by these kinds of contradictions. But we know that the social democracy that Bell wishes to be better appreciated, having done its work of avoiding bloody revolutions like those at the end of World War I, was repaid with as much welfare as could be pried out of the capitalist framework. It is everywhere in the West now a bureaucratic hulk with limited voter loyalty. Like the French Socialist Party, Western social democracy has moved from elegant headquarters in the power center…

FORTY YEARS, AND THE MEMORY IS AS VIVID AS EVER. It was a beautiful spring day. The United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament was about to get underway, and we were determined to be heard. The arms race had to stop, we said; nuclear weapons had to be abolished—and instead of endlessly pouring extravagant amounts of money into military budgets, it was time to put our national treasury to use meeting the needs of our communities. Ronald Reagan was president. His administration was planning to place new short-range nuclear missiles in Europe, just minutes from the Soviet Union. Massive marches opposing these plans had already been held in capital cities throughout the continent. It was time for the US peace movement to step up. For 18 months, the June…

HERE’S MY SOLUTION TO THE FORMULA SHORTAGE: MEN should breastfeed. Sure, it will take dedication and hard work, also industrial-strength estrogen and other meds, a doctor, a lactation consultant, and I don’t know what else; but if a handful of trans women can do it, I’m sure regular old cis men can figure it out. Headline: “Breast Hero Dad: ‘I Begged Her Not to Use Formula, but She Wouldn’t Listen!’” Apparently, some women can restart lactation after breastfeeding has ceased, so mothers who breastfed their babies and want to shame formula users to justify their own exhaustion, sore nipples, mastitis, lost work, restricted diets, and forgone medications can also step in. Breastfeeding isn’t just about milk, after all. It’s also about making other women feel like guilty failures. All babies…

SHANEL SOUCY SEEMS LIKE SHE WOULD BE A CHAMPION OF WHAT’S come to be known as “comprehensive sexuality education” (CSE): the teaching of basic anatomy and reproduction, plus all the complications and joy that go along with sexuality. Soucy is a 40-year-old biracial woman, with one Black and one white parent. She’s an electrician and a storied local barber in Worcester, Mass. She became a mother at 14, lived in and out of shelters—and briefly out of her car—until she got her first apartment at 19. She raised three boys, “mostly” on her own, she said. I felt a connection with Soucy during our hour-long phone conversation, even though I had tracked her down because she’d run for a seat on the Worcester School Committee last fall in a polarizing…

IN THE WANING DECADES OF THE 20TH CENTURY, THE documented changes that systematically disem-American labor force experienced myriad, well powered workers across all economic sectors. Long-standing unions were either busted or saw their membership radically decline; wages stagnated even as the GDP grew at a steady clip; and politicians waged successful campaigns to cut taxes on capital gains. Income and wealth inequality skyrocketed, and higher profits emboldened employers to exploit workers even further. If workers had became alienated from the products of their labor during the Industrial Revolution, by the dawn of the 21st century they had became psychologically alienated from the labor itself, as its only ostensible purpose is self-perpetuation. “Living to work” instead of “working to live” became the modus operandi for many, especially after upward mobility had…

RM: How is structural racism taking a toll not just on Black people but also on “the health of our nation”? LV: It’s about what’s happening in the country compared to other countries. We have among the highest infant mortality rates compared to other wealthy countries. We have among the lowest life expectancy compared to other wealthy countries. And in between, we are the only wealthy country in which the maternal mortality rate is rising. So then it’s like, well, why are we still thinking of this as a Black problem? This is a problem of the whole country. RM: What is it about being Black in this country that is, as you write, bad for the body and the baby? LV: Arline Geronimus coined the term “weathering.” Geronimus started…