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      Amy Wax and the Breakdown of America’s Intellectual Culture

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      Since October 2017, we have featured The Daily Devil’s Dictionary that appeared five times a week. In 2022, it will appear on a weekly basis on Wednesdays. We will shortly be announcing a new collaborative feature that extends our approach to deconstructing the language of the media.

      Besides the Eiffel Tower and foie gras, France is known for having produced an intellectual class that, over the centuries, from Diderot’s Encylopédie to Derrida’s critical theory, has successfully exported its products to the rest of the world.

      France’s intellectual history demonstrates that alongside traditional social classes, a nation may cultivate something called the intellectual class, a loose network of people who collectively produce ideas about society that are no longer restricted to the traditional categories of philosophy, science and literature. Prominent intellectuals merge all three in their quest to interpret the complexity of the world and human history.

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      French intellectuals are perceived as floating freely in the media landscape. American intellectuals, in contrast, tend to be tethered to universities or think tanks. They publish and sometimes appear in the media, but with a serious disadvantage, having to compete in shaping public discourse with far more influential media personalities such as Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson or even Tucker Carlson.

      A stale historical cliché compares Europe with ancient Greece and the US with the Roman Empire. Rome and the US both produced a vibrant and distinct popular culture, with a taste for gaudy spectacle and superficial entertainment. But in Roman times, plebeian culture co-existed with a patrician culture cultivated by Rome’s ruling class. Modern democracy roundly rejects the very idea of a ruling class. Commercialism has turned out to be the great equalizer. Everyone in America is expected to share the same culture of movies, TV and popular music. The same applies to popular ideas, whether political, scientific or economic.

      Amy Wax is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is not shy about expressing her ideas, notably her updated version of class differences. She is convinced that what she calls “bourgeois culture” replaced Rome’s patrician culture in the US but is in danger of extinction. Wax believes everyone in the US, including recent immigrants, should share that culture. Anyone who resists should be excluded. She also thinks that race and ethnicity are reliable indicators of the capacity of immigrants to conform.

      As a young woman, Wax paced the halls and absorbed the wisdom spouted in lectures at Yale, Oxford, Harvard and Columbia University. Along the way, she amassed the kind of elite educational experience that identifies her as a distinguished exemplar of the modern intellectual class. With such impeccable credentials, it is fair to assume that she is not only well-informed but has learned the fine art of responsible thinking, a quality the media attributes to such luminaries.

      Embed from Getty Images

      So could it have come about that such a distinguished thinker and ranking member of the intellectual class should now be accused of sharing the kind of white supremacist attitude Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale) famously attributed to the “basket of deplorables”? The intellectual class in the US uniformly and loudly rejects all forms of racism. If Wax expresses ideas that echo racist theses, it would indicate that she is betraying her own intellectual class. Appropriately, her university acknowledged her betrayal when it condemned her “xenophobic and white supremacist” discourse.

      In a podcast in late December, Wax went beyond her previously expressed belief that the US would “be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.” On that earlier occasion, she specifically targeted blacks, whom she categorizes as intellectually inferior. This time, she took aim at Asians, whose reputation for academic excellence and scientific achievement most people admire. She justified her attack in these terms: “As long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”

      When the host of the podcast, Professor Glenn Loury, questioned her logic, she evoked “the danger of the dominance of an Asian elite in this country” who may “change the culture.” Wax’s fear of domination by a foreign race and her defense of white civilization could hardly convince Loury, who is black. Loury countered that the Asians Wax wants to exclude are “creating value” and “enlivening the society.”

      “How do we lose from that?” he asks. In response, Wax offered her own rhetorical question: “Does the spirit of liberty beat in their breast?”

      This week’s Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Spirit of liberty:

      America’s supreme civic virtue that consists of pursuing self-interested goals and conducting aggressive assaults against whatever one finds annoying

      Contextual Note

      Wax offered her own definition of the spirit of liberty, which she identified as the virtue associated with “people who are mistrustful of centralized concentrations of authority who have a kind of ‘don’t tread on me’ attitude, who are focused … on our freedoms, on our liberties, on sort of small- scale personal responsibility who are non-conformist in good ways.”

      Apart from the fact that Wax is attributing a cultural attitude to “Asians” (more than half of humanity), her idea of liberty reflects feelings associated with aggressive, nationalistic historical memes (for example, “don’t tread on me”) rather than the kind of political concept we might expect from a serious intellectual. In his 1859 essay “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mill defined it as the “protection against the tyranny of political rulers,” analyzing it in terms of the individual’s relationship with authority, not as a “spirit” or attitude. But Mill was English and, unlike Americans, the English are disinclined to celebrate attitude.

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      Wax, who is Jewish, paradoxically complained that Jews “have a lot to answer for … numerically through their predominance.” She derides their “susceptibility to the idealistic, pie-in-the-sky socialist ideas.” When Loury accuses her of appealing to a stereotype, she objects that there’s nothing wrong with stereotyping when it is used correctly.” Just as Wax approves of non-conformity “in good ways” she condones “correct” stereotyping. She believes herself to be the arbiter of what’s good and correct.

      Historical Note

      Wax shares with Fox News host Tucker Carlson a sense of legitimate domination of what she calls “the tradition of the legacy population,” identified as the traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) majority. Wax aligns with cultural nationalists like Samuel Huntington, whose book “Who Are We: America’s Great Debate?” — following his famous “The Clash of Civilizations: And the Remaking of the World Order” — preached for the reaffirmation of the political and moral values transmitted by the WASP founders of American culture 400 years ago.

      The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs of Harvard University sums up the components of the Puritans’ culture: “the English language, Protestant values, individualism, religious commitment, and respect for law.” The culture’s admirers routinely forget that their respect for law might mean disrespecting the law of the indigenous populations of the land they chose to occupy. Enforcing that respect sometimes translated as genocidal campaigns conducted in the name of that law. It also embraced slavery based on racial criteria.

      Wax’s up-to-date WASP culture, which she prefers to call “bourgeois culture,” no longer requires genocide or slavery to prevail. Her defense of a largely imaginary legacy culture has nevertheless led her to embrace a racist view of humanity. While decrying the multicultural “wokism” that she believes now dominates academic culture, she appears to believe 19th-century France rather than the Yankee Revolution sets the standard to live up to.

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      Wax is right to lament the very real breakdown in America’s intellectual culture. The trendy woke moralizing so prevalent in American academia deserves the criticism she levels at it. Both her attitude and that of woke scholars derive from the same puritanical tradition that insists on imposing its understanding of morality on everyone else.

      Wax’s choice of “bourgeois culture” as the desirable alternative to wokism seems curious. Bourgeois culture is identified with the mores of a dominating urban upper-middle class that emerged in 19th century France that projected the image of a vulgar version of the aristocracy. It produced a culture specific to France, very different from the democratic culture of the United States at the time.

      This highlights another difference. Whereas the French intellectual class, even when indulging in its traditional disputes, tends to agree on the meaning of the terms it fabricates, American intellectuals routinely bandy about terms they never seek to define or understand and use them to punish their enemies. That is what Wax has done with bourgeois culture and, in so doing, she has declared multiple races and ethnicities her enemies. 

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary. After four years of daily appearances, Fair Observer’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary moves to a weekly format.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Five great reads: smart supermarkets, Biden’s first year and a gaming empire built by children

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      Five great reads: smart supermarkets, Biden’s first year and a gaming empire built by childrenGuardian Australia’s daily round-up of compelling reads as selected by lifestyle editor Alyx Gorman Grab a piece of fruit and a beverage of your preference and settle in for Five Great Reads: your morning tea wrap of great writing, curiosity and usefulness, lovingly selected by me – Alyx Gorman, Guardian Australia’s lifestyle editor (cold brew and blueberries, in case you’re wondering).If you’d rather be reading the news as it unfolds, hop over to our live blog; and if you just want a quick hit of something other than Covid, read about this badger that discovered a trove of 209 Roman coins in Spain.If you’re reading this on our website and fancy getting it in your inbox instead, you can sign up to receive Five Great Reads as an email by popping your address in the box above. Go on, do it!Now, on to the rest of the reads.1. Big-name writers on Biden’s first yearFour leading American authors – SA Cosby, Richard Ford, Margo Jefferson and Joyce Carol Oates – share their thoughts on Biden’s leadership through 12 months of political polarisation and the pandemic.Notable quote: “The other day, someone was talking about the DW Winnicott idea of the good enough mother,” writes Pulitzer-prize winning critic and author Margo Jefferson. “She’s not a saint, she has her own problems, but she’s good enough for the child to grow up reasonably well. With Joe Biden, it’s a case of the good enough president.”How long will it take me to read? About 10 minutes.2. The rise of the sentient supermarketWell, OK they’re not really sentient, but they’re smart. AI-powered shops in the UK, Scandinavia and the US could spell the end of the grocery store as we know it.The bit that’s good for you: You never have to queue again.The bit that’s good for the supermarket: These stores have no shoplifting (and very few staff).The bit that’s a Black Mirror episode: All this is achieved by thousands of cameras tracking shoppers’ every move, and sending the bill to their phone as they walk out.How long will it take me to read? About five minutes.3. A video game empire built on child labourRoblox – a platform which allows people to not only play games, but build and make money from them – is the most valuable video game company in the world. “It is an empire built on the sale of virtual boots and hats,” Simon Parkins writes. “And considering that almost half of its users are aged 13 or under, the creativity and labour of children.”Notable quote: “It began to have a negative effect on my mental health,” says Regan Green, who spent two years working as a developer on a Sonic the Hedgehog Roblox game. “I was constantly trying to find ways to improve the project, but [the game’s creator] always wanted more out of me and I became incredibly burned out.”Yeah, but everyone is burning out at the moment. Did I mention that he was working on the game between the ages of 12 and 14?Oh. Then: “The pressure caused me to break.”4. Hanya Yanagihara on her new novel and America’s brattinessThe A Little Life author’s new book To Paradise – a work of alternative history that spans three centuries – has already been called “as good as War and Peace” (by fellow author Edmund White). Here Yanagihara talks about the book and the American ideals it explores and critiques.Yanagihara on writing very big books, while holding down a very fancy job (as editor of T Magazine): “I’m not the smartest or hardest-working or most educated person, but I am the best at time management.”I guess I need to get better at time management then. Same.So how long will it take me to read this? Five well-managed minutes.5. Exercising with a heart conditionThe latest in our How to Move series tackles fitness with a difficult ticker.Notable quote: “The importance of exercise is to increase the efficiency of the muscles to de-load the heart,” says exercise physiologist Bridget Nash. “A strong muscle is an efficient muscle.”TopicsAustralia newsFive Great ReadsUS politicsGamesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      ‘It’s been a lot’: Joyce Carol Oates, SA Cosby, Richard Ford and Margo Jefferson on Biden’s first year

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      ‘It’s been a lot’: Joyce Carol Oates, SA Cosby, Richard Ford and Margo Jefferson on Biden’s first year Four leading American authors assess the Covid-battered first year of Joe Biden’s presidencyRichard Ford: ‘Something about Biden isn’t rubbing through’Richard Ford is a novelist and short story writer best known for his quartet of novels featuring the protagonist Frank Bascombe, a failed sportswriter turned novelist, which includes The Sportswriter, Independence Day and the Pulitzer prize-winning The Lay of the Land. Ford’s acclaimed memoir, Between Them: Remembering My Parents, was published in 2017 and the following year his 1990 novel, Wildlife, was made into a widely praised film starring Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal. His most recent short story collection is Sorry for Your TroubleMy wife and I, last week, were watching the NBC nightly news at 6.30 – a usually profitless exercise which, when Trump was president, often eventuated in both of us cursing and shouting execrations at the television and having to go pour ourselves stronger drink. This time, however, the reporting concerned Joseph R Biden, who is now president of the United States. The suggestion was that Biden’s presidency – a year old this month – has actually produced considerable good for our country and the world, despite poll numbers that indicate many Americans think he hasn’t gotten much done at all.The list of accomplishments might obviously surprise you. Serious, hard-won new infrastructure legislation; aggressive federal prosecutions of seditionists and white nationalists; spurting jobs numbers. And more, on the domestic front. On the international list, there’s the renewal of US membership in the Paris climate accords; efforts to reframe an Iran nuclear treaty – impulsively abandoned by Trump; a re-pledging of old Nato affiliations. This list is long as well.Still. Muddling over the dinner dishes and wondering aloud about why Mr Biden’s having a rough go getting credit for his accomplishments, my wife pointed out she really doesn’t know much about President Biden, whom we both voted for, campaigned for, contributed money to and lost a few old friends in behalf of. We knew the Biden saga – the tragically lost young wife and daughter; the folksy, pliable Catholic; all about riding the Amtrak home each weekend. The lost son. We know about Scranton and Wilmington, the pretty, savvy second wife with the PhD, the Senate years, Anita Hill, the go-to union constituency, the Barack sidekick of loyalty, mirth and patience; the pivotal South Carolina Black vote. The boilerplate stuff anybody knows about any politician.Yet it seems that something about Biden isn’t rubbing through so as to confer on him the credit due. One wonders – I wonder – if it’s his fault or ours.Americans at ground level – bobbing along in a political culture that prefers light-operatic campaigning to grinding out legislation, implementing it and delivering on promises – Americans seem to care much less about who’s in office than, incongruously, who’s kept out. It’s the Hillary syndrome. Winning, for both national parties, feels second best to making the other guy wear the scarlet “L”. Americans also don’t really see national politics and governance as a pressing home-front concern – more as an annoying obligation they’re happy to stay un- or misinformed about. If you live in Billings, Montana, Washington DC’s a long ways off. People here believe politicians there don’t know or much care what’s going on here. We may all consider ourselves good Americans – citizens, patriots – but we do so mostly only in emblematic and ceremonial ways. Our core geo-identity (after our racial and gender ones) originates in regions and states – even in cities. It’s true, as you have heard, politics really is local. Probably it’s the same in Thailand.And yet Joe Biden, where both these political conjecturings are concerned, suffers from being precisely an old-playbook, elderly white man committed to nationalised policies and delivery schemes; a patient, behind-the-scenes, self-deferring deal-maker with the plying mentality of a legislator – somebody who has to win and stay in office to get things done. Plus, for 36 years he was known to us, if at all, as the senator from Delaware – somebody we didn’t need to think much about if we didn’t live in Delaware (which almost no one does). On top of all that, being vice-president – for Americans, now an almost comical office – didn’t help the way you’d think it might, having a seat so close to power. Lyndon Johnson is the great countervailing case, of course – senator, VP, bodacious, arm-twisting chief executive. But Joe Biden, for better and for worse is no Lyndon Johnson, who unlike Biden governed with a historical, two-house congressional majority that couldn’t resist him.Succeeding Trump, of course – while lifesaving for our country – hasn’t been easy. The guy who follows along behind the elephants traditionally has a hard time being seen as part of the parade. Biden, in my view, has been pointedly successful in advancing much more than a reverse’n’repair un-Trump agenda – legions of federal judges seated, industrial production up 0.5% as of November 2021, aggressive Covid vaccine distribution and advocacy – along with just plain being willing to show up when citizens are in trouble – killed in Afghanistan, storm-ravaged and homeless in Kentucky, murdered in school rooms in Michigan. But Trump remains ludicrously popular among infatuated Republicans, 53% of whom think he actually won the 2020 election, and 42% of whom fear this fall’s midterm elections will not be fairly run, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Which means, treacherously, that both parties now fear our most vital democratic institution – our elections – has been de-legitimised. Twenty-three million Americans bought a gun last year. Not all of them are Republicans. But many are the same people who believe the Covid vaccine contains magnets that’ll cause a soup spoon to stick to your forehead if you touch it there. I mean… why would a majority of Americans bother to support earnest old Uncle Joe, when you have fun facts like that to take your mind off your miseries? When Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992 his campaign clarion call was: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Now you’d be better to exclaim: “It’s the people (stupid).”I’ll concede that for the past year it’s been a relief to feel merely “among the governed” rather than what citizenship felt like under Trump – a bizarre, civic death dance. This relief may have caused me and others to let our minds wander from how it was before Biden became president, and from what’s being done now to make that bad time not come back. This kind of vigilance – the kind that remembers and then acts – may not be native to our side. After all, our side has the high ground, doesn’t it?It’s been a hell of a year to be president of the United States if your portfolio says you’re here to restore sound government. Forget about trying to gain separation from the other guy. In 2021, we saw a violent attempt to overthrow our presidential election, a multiply-resurgent killer pandemic, a seditious chief executive, an impeachment, no fewer than 470 mass shootings that claimed 482 of our citizens. Thousands of lives have been lost to global climate calamity. Immigrants are massing at our southern border and aren’t going away. Meanwhile, the party in nominal power is fractured nearly beyond repair and can’t find a common vision of what’s good for the country. While the opposition remains smirkingly disloyal and often appears dislodged from its senses. It’s a lot. Race relations may be the best thing that’s happening. It must seem, sometimes, to Mr Biden that what unifies all sides of the political chasm is an urge to let the whole contraption of America collapse just to see what that’ll look like.The American presidency is an optic on to the state of the nation. The president’s job is to cause citizens to see that nation more clearly, more as a unity worth preserving, and then to show us how that preserving can be done. Donald Trump did it – in spades – by lying about most everything. But here at the beginning of year two of the Biden administration (so it seems to me, though I wish it didn’t) our citizens’ gaze doesn’t seem to linger on Mr Biden himself – even in the way it lingered on Donald Trump; but instead seems given to stray away – toward our fractious, individual rights, toward new sources of complaint, toward our irredeemable differences from the other side, even when the other side is our side; and then absent-mindedly to shove on to who will assume the presidency next. As if now didn’t matter.What I don’t know about Joe Biden maybe doesn’t matter as much as what he gets done in his four years. My wife tells the story of briefly believing that self-respecting American women would never vote for Donald Trump, only to find out that indeed they would – because they understood they’d never have to know the man. Yes, I’d feel better if I knew what made Joe Biden really angry, and beyond that could know who fears him. These are just my private metrics of what’s intrinsic about other humans. But whether we need to know him or not, it is Mr Biden’s peril and it will be our great loss if he fails to make us look truthfully at our country through him and through the prism of his beliefs. Today, it’s one down and three to go before we have to face up to our worser angels again. There’s still time, I think, to get it right.SA Cosby: ‘He’s the grownup in the room after four years of temper tantrums’SA Cosby is a mystery and thriller writer from Virginia whose breakthrough novel, Blacktop Wasteland, won an LA Times award in 2020 and topped the New York Times bestseller list. His latest book, Razorblade Tears, is a revenge thriller that confronts homophobia in the deep south. Film rights have been bought by Paramount PlayersTo properly assess the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency we have to take a look back at his predecessor’s tenure. For many Americans not indoctrinated into the cult of 45 the previous four years was like being in a house that was simultaneously on fire and also possessed by a demon that was trying to kill you while a sink hole was opening up in the basement. It was a nearly daily emotional rollercoaster that veered from embarrassment to rage to abject apathy like battle hardened survivors in some dystopian epic.Compared to that the Biden presidency is like being in a house with a leaky roof and a few faucets that drip and the kitchen could use a new coat of paint.It’s not perfect but it’s salvageable.I think the one thing Joe Biden brings to the office is something all Americans, even those that voted for his opponent, didn’t realise they needed.Stability.Whatever Joe’s issues, and he has a few, the one thing he exudes in spades is a sense of calmness. His is a sure hand on the wheel. Sure, it may tremble a bit but one never fears he will steer the ship into the rocks on purpose.There is a quaint anachronistic nature to President Biden’s managerial style that is a step or two behind the times. He still believes in the real art of the deal. In the quid pro quo that was the bedrock of the American legislative branch during his time as a representative and senator and even during his time as vice-president. The smoke-filled backroom or the wood-panelled office where the real business of government takes place.I fear that moment has passed in American politics. In some ways President Biden refuses to accept that notion. The Republican and Democrat parties are no longer just ideologically distinct. One party is fractured between a centrist pragmatic philosophy and an earnestly progressive one. The other party pretends that their followers didn’t attempt a coup on 6 January 2021. They count among their constituents white supremacists and fascists who live in an alternate universe where elections are only legitimate if they win and science is whatever causes you the least inconvenience.Given this monumental divide it’s difficult really to quantify the president’s job performance. He’s had some big wins. His bill to improve America’s roads, bridges and digital superhighways passed, although with a significantly smaller price tag that he originally envisioned. He has made vaccines a cornerstone in his fight against Covid-19. The fact that vaccines are free all across America is an achievement in itself. He has implemented policies to slash childhood poverty and medical inequality. His justice department is defending a woman’s right to choose while also holding police departments across the country accountable for corruption and violence.He’s also had some remarkable mistakes and defeats. His Build Back Better plan has been stymied by two senators in his own party for… reasons that seem at best vague and at worst nefarious. He has resisted the calls to use executive orders to erase student loan debt or extend Medicare for All or address voting rights.But for me most of those wins and losses don’t matter.In terms of my own politics, I would probably be classified as a liberal. I tend to vote the Democrat ticket, especially since the Republican party has seemingly lost its ever-loving mind. But philosophically I’m a pragmatist first and foremost. I fully see politics as theatre. All politics is a show upon a stage. And that’s where President Biden has impressed me the most.He knows this instinctively. He has a true politician’s gift for communication and artifice. Even his enemies don’t realise the performance he is giving is award-worthy. After four years of [Trump’s] buffoonery and brat king antics Joe Biden is most successful at acting like… an adult. Republicans like to mock his age and his speaking style, which was influenced by a stutter that he overcame as a young man, but even his most ardent critics can’t pierce the armour of his single-minded seriousness. He is the grownup in the room after four years of temper tantrums. During the worst pandemic of modern times and also one of the worst economic catastrophes in decades, President Joseph Robinette Biden has walked up to a podium and spoken to the people he leads in clear and concise tones that are measured and weighted by the gravitas of the moment.I haven’t always agreed with the president’s decisions but I’ve never once doubted he wanted what was best for the entire country. Even the folks that didn’t vote for him or are actively hostile to him don’t doubt that.That itself, in this age of bellicose strongmen and disingenuously self-effacing leaders and outright authoritarian autocrats, is a minor political miracle.Margo Jefferson: ‘There’s a lack of inventiveness – the great political movements were all imaginative’Award-winning writer and academic Margo Jefferson taught journalism and writing at New York university and Columbia university before joining the New York Times, initially as a book reviewer, where she went on to win the Pulitzer prize for criticism. Her 2006 book On Michael Jackson won widespread praise, as did her memoir, Negroland, which explored how her own experience intersected with politics, from the civil-rights movement to feminism, and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford prizeI had various levels of hopes for the Biden presidency – and in retrospect those hopes were mixed with fears. Like millions of people, I hoped that a halt would be put to the vehement processes of tyranny [that flourished under Trump], and that we might return to some kind of decent normality. After which, we wanted voting rights secured, and Build Back Better. We were terrified about the supreme court, and we had a right to be. We were hoping for an end to the avalanche of action and reaction, of propaganda, that in its own way is as violent as the literal attacks on 6 January were.The other day, someone was talking about the DW Winnicott idea of the good enough mother: she’s not a saint, she has her own problems, but she’s good enough for the child to grow up reasonably well. With Joe Biden, it’s a case of the good enough president, meaning: he has some good ideas and, as he’s shown over the years, he’s willing to work hard. But it would appear that, unless you are a tyrant, there aren’t enough powers to really work your will when an entire party, flanked by these strange supporters, are actively working against you and prepared to do anything to get their way.When the election was confirmed on 7 November 2020, I heard screams and cheers right outside my window in Greenwich Village. I peeked through and asked, “What’s going on?”, and people started yelling, “Biden won!” I ran outside and people were weeping, from happiness and sheer relief. Everybody was just giddy. There was an extra intensity to it, because of our terror.In the early days of Biden’s presidency, when he was outlining the policies and laying out the bills, and also responding to Covid, he was good, and I was encouraged. With Biden, he always has this ability to make a statement, at a certain point, that’s decent, honourable, even impressive. But then one has to see where it goes. I’m not blaming him for [the setbacks to] the Build Back Better plan, though a part of me wishes that he were more like Lyndon Johnson, who for the passage of the civil rights bill would take these recalcitrant guys aside and say, “I’ve got this dirt on you.”How has Biden done in his first year? I am still trying to decide. I can of course give you the predictable list of things that I’m beside myself about. Yes, I wanted him to work immediately and insistently to get the John Lewis Voting Rights Act passed. I don’t know what he could do about the supreme court, but I do want clean statements. I want to feel that Biden and the other Democrats are working all the time to strategise how to fight back, practically, but also rhetorically. The denunciation of the support of 6 January is all well and good, but please: a pattern, strategies, and resourcefulness. There’s also a lack of inventiveness. The great political movements – the labour movement in its early days, civil rights, feminism, LGBTQ – were imaginative. They find ways to work with, or against, bills. I see grassroots organisations figuring this out, but I don’t yet see the party doing it. Yes, Stacey Abrams is terrific, but she can’t do it all by herself.Biden has tried to do well, and he has done some decent things, but there’s a limit to what can be done within this institutional structure, the American body politic, when outlaw forces are not only fighting it strategically, but creating a kind of atmosphere of hysteria. There’s this spilling out of hatred, with a kind of glee as well as fury, that is terrifying. I see it in the attacks on voting rights, on critical race theory, on anti-immigrant legislation, I also see it in the language in the supreme court rulings on abortion. We were back to, implicitly and well-nigh explicitly: how dare you women think you have primary rights to your body? I’ve heard many black and brown people, and women, say, “My god they hate us so much.” It’s a kind of venom linked with a desire for vengeance on all of us for not just wanting these rights, but thinking we deserve them.It’s unfair to imagine that one man, even if he’s the president, could rein in all these forces. A friend of mine said during the Obama election, that if the structures aren’t in place and functioning properly, it almost doesn’t matter who’s president – although when Trump came in, it turned out that it mattered a whole lot. But Biden is, as Obama was, hemmed in by all kinds of systems and structures and power dynamics that make him more of a decoration. I think Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders would have presented a much more active, combative style, and that might have helped.I don’t know how the rest of Biden’s term will play out, but I am in a state of terror. If the Republicans snatch back power in the House and the Senate, which is highly possible, then all bets are off. It’s legitimate to be terrified, and angry, too. We sometimes don’t take account of the sheer shock value of the past year or two and all that that does to your senses, your responses. It’s like we’re multitasking emotionally and intellectually. We’ve got compromised nervous systems.Joyce Carol Oates: ‘Like battered spouses we’ve been grateful, simply, to have survived’Joyce Carol Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published 58 novels, numerous volumes of short stories, poetry and nonfiction plus a number of plays and novellas. Her novels Black Water, What I Lived For and Blonde were finalists for the Pulitzer prize as were two of her short story collections. She taught creative writing at Princeton University for 36 years until 2014, where her students included the novelist Jonathan Safran FoerFor a majority of Americans, Biden’s First Year has been most precious for what it wasn’t: Trump’s Fifth Year. Any discontent or disappointment with Joe Biden is immediately qualified by a gesture of resignation, a roll of the eyes – but at least he isn’t Trump!Like battered spouses in a combat zone of a household we’ve been grateful – simply – to have survived the traumatic Trump years. Any Democrat, indeed virtually anyone who was not Trump, including Senator Mitt Romney, even that scion of a largely discredited political family, Jeb Bush, would have been welcome as president. Never have I witnessed such desperation among friends, university colleagues, students and random strangers as in the weeks leading to the 2020 election – the feeling that, if Trump were re-elected, the United States would become uninhabitable, a white-nationalist state resembling South Africa with a corrupt rightwing ruling class tyrannising a large, diverse, but politically fragmented population.(Talk of leaving the country if Trump had been re-elected for – where, exactly? Ireland is most frequently cited, followed by New Zealand, Canada. So far as I know, no one has made even preliminary plans.)Unfortunately for Joe Biden, as for us all, Biden’s first year has overlapped with the second, protracted year of the Covid-19 pandemic, which stretches before us like a nightmare Sahara without a horizon, all shimmering mirage of fear if not outright terror. It has been the devious Republican strategy – cynical, malicious, in some quarters highly successful – to resist public health measures such as vaccine and masking mandates, in order to “make Biden look bad”, with the result that the pandemic prevails, like a rolling toxic mist over the country. Political energies that might be directed elsewhere are continually deflected toward Covid-19, an immense black hole sucking up the patience and good will of the electorate.Younger Americans, those who identify themselves as progressive, are increasingly critical of Biden for his bipartisanship and willingness to compromise with the opposition; their hearts lie still with Bernie Sanders, and they will not easily forget. (The young daughter of a friend of mine, a Bernie Sanders supporter, pressed her hands over her ears when I asked for opinions on Joe Biden’s first year as president – “If you keep talking about Biden, I’m going to run out of the room.”) Supporters of Trump are fierce in their belief in Trump’s “big lie” – that he’d won the 2020 election, not Biden – so determined to thwart Biden they are willing to risk death by refusing to be vaccinated or to take Covid precautions prescribed by public health officials. Indeed, resisting Biden even when it’s in the interests of their constituents has been a sort of loyalty oath for conservatives: far more Republicans are dying of Covid than Democrats, a testimony to the bizarre nature of rabidly polarised politics in the US.Many of us who’d voted for Biden had in fact preferred other Democrats – Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, to name just two – but were happy, indeed impassioned, to vote for the Democrat who’d seemed most likely to prevail against Trump: “beggars can’t be choosers” is an adage uniquely suited for the politics of expediency. Despite the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law (his chief achievement), as well as his handling of the Covid crisis and a rebooting of much-needed American involvement in global climate change reform, Joe Biden has been disadvantaged by being, in contrast to his predecessor, a low-key, non-self-dramatising personality. He has been hampered by his very nature: hoping to unify, not divide; hoping to “reach out” to all Americans with policies of generosity and inclusiveness; unexciting to the media, which crave agitation and unrest, and find mere competency, honesty, and empathy boring. On social media it’s outrage and misinformation that capture the attention of the crowd, not so much diligence, hard work, integrity. US journalism is guided by the cynical adage: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Consequently, mainstream media has been unkind to Biden virtually since the start of his presidency; cable news has been pitiless.However, Joe Biden will likely prevail, in his stubbornly idealistic if unsensational way, and come to be valued, like Jimmy Carter, Dwight Eisenhower, and Harry Truman, as presidents underestimated and undervalued in their time; taken for granted, even scorned, most appreciated and honoured in retrospect.TopicsBiden administrationThe ObserverJoe BidenUS politicsDemocratsDonald TrumpfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Unthinkable review: Jamie Raskin, his lost son and defending democracy from Trump

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      Unthinkable review: Jamie Raskin, his lost son and defending democracy from Trump The Maryland Democrat has written an extraordinary memoir of grief, the Capitol attack and the second impeachment

      David Blight: Trump has birthed a new Lost Cause myth
      Unthinkable is the perfect title for this extraordinary book, because it describes a superhuman feat.The Steal review: stethoscope for a democracy close to cardiac arrestRead moreJamie Raskin is a fine writer, a Democratic congressman, a constitutional scholar and a deeply loving father. When 2020 began, he had no inkling that just 12 months later his country and his family would face “two impossible traumas”.On 31 December, his beautiful, brilliant, charismatic 25-year-old son, Tommy, took his own life. Six days later, a vicious mob invaded Raskin’s workplace, the cradle of democracy, leaving several dead and injuring 140 police officers.Raskin suffered “a violent and comprehensive shock to the foundations”. Never had he felt “so equidistant … between the increasingly unrecognizable place called life and the suddenly intimate and expanding jurisdiction called death”.This is where the superhuman part came in. Instead of succumbing to unfathomable grief over the death of his son, Raskin seized a lifeline thrown by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and agreed to lead the effort to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the riot which might have derailed the peaceful transition of power.He found “salvation and sustenance … a pathway back to the land of the living”.“I’m not going to lose my son at the end of 2020 and lose my country and my republic in 2021,” he told CNN, less than three weeks after Tommy’s death.Raskin’s astonishing story of tragedy and redemption, of “despair and survival”, depended entirely on all the “good and compassionate people” like Tommy, “the non-narcissists, the feisty, life-size human beings who hate bullying and fascism naturally – people just the right size for a democracy … where we are all created equal”.Tommy Raskin was the fourth generation in a great liberal family. His maternal great grandfather was the first Jew elected to the Minnesota legislature. His father, Marcus Raskin, was one of the earliest opponents of the Vietnam war when he worked in the Kennedy White House. In 1968, Marcus Raskin was indicted with William Sloane Coffin, Dr Benjamin Spock and others for conspiracy to aid resistance to the draft. When Raskin was the only one acquitted, he famously demanded a retrial.Jamie Raskin taught constitutional law then ran for the Maryland Senate, with Tommy, then 10, his first campaign aide. In the state legislature, Raskin helped outlaw the death penalty and legalize same-sex marriage.Tommy was a second-year student at Harvard Law School when Covid began. Like so many others with clinical depression, the catastrophe deepened his symptoms. His father described his illness as “a kind of relentless torture in the brain … Despite very fine doctors and a loving family … the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last.”Congressman Jamie Raskin: ‘I’ll never forget the terrible sound of them trying to barrel into the chamber’Read moreThis is also a political memoir, of the Capitol attack and the second impeachment. Driving to the Capitol, Raskin spotted MAGA supporters heckling a young Black driver and a car with a bumper sticker reading: “If Guns Are Outlawed, How Am I Going To Shoot Liberals?”He realizes these “fascist bread crumbs throughout the city” should have activated “some kind of cultural alarm”. More chillingly, he reports the decision of some Democrats to cross their chamber after Congress was invaded, “because they thought a mass shooter who entered would be less likely to aim at the Republican side of the House”.But Raskin was never afraid: “The very worst thing that could ever have happened to us has already happened … and Tommy is with me somehow every step of the way. He is occupying my heart … He is showing me the way to some kind of safety … My wound has now become my shield of defense and my path to escape, and all I can think of is my son propelling me forward to fight.”The most powerful part of Raskin’s book, the heart-shattering part, is his love letter to Tommy, a “dazzling, precious, brilliant … moral visionary, a slam poet, an intellectual giant slayer, the king of Boggle, a natural-born comedian, a friend to all human beings but tyrants and bullies, a freedom fighter, a political essayist, a playwright, a jazz pianist, and a handsome, radical visitor from a distant future where war, mass hunger and the eating of animals are considered barbaric intolerable and absurd”.Raskin realized that for the last week of his life, his son had made an effort to impersonate someone in perfect mental health, so no one would intervene. These were his parting words: “Please forgive me. My illness won today. Please look after each other, the animals and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.”Raskin takes some solace remembering the story of Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie, who died of typhoid fever at the age of 12 in 1862, plunging his parents into depression.It had been a point of pride that Raskin responded to every constituent, but a deluge of condolences made that impossible. There was also a call from Joe Biden, three days after Tommy died. The president-elect promised “the day would come when Tommy’s name would bring a smile to my lip before tears to my eyes”.Congressman Jamie Raskin on the day democracy almost crumbled in the US: Politics Weekly podcastRead moreEventually Raskin was convinced to write one letter for everyone sending condolences, one for everyone who wrote about impeachment and a third for everyone who offered condolences and political solidarity. One actually wrote: “I was looking for a condolence card for the loss of your son which also said ‘and thanks for saving our country too’, but Hallmark apparently doesn’t make those.”Naturally, one of Raskin’s son’s heroes was Wittgenstein, who believed the truth of ethical propositions is determined by the courage with which you act to make them real.“On this standard,” Raskin writes, “there have never been truer ethical claims than the ones made by Tommy Raskin, because he was all courage and engagement with his moral convictions.”May this book and Tommy’s example inspire us all to rescue our gravely beleaguered democracy.
      Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy is published in the US by Harper
      TopicsBooksUS Capitol attackUS politicsDemocratsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesMarylandreviewsReuse this content More

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      Andres Serrano on his Capitol attack film: ‘I like that word, excruciating’

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      InterviewAndres Serrano on his Capitol attack film: ‘I like that word, excruciating’Janelle ZaraThe provocative artist has made a shocking new ‘immersive experience’ for the one year anniversary of the 6 January attack Andres Serrano is not known as an especially political artist. The 71-year-old’s photographs are more accurately described as transgressive, perennially summed up with a singular point of reference: Piss Christ, his 1987 photo of a crucifix submerged in his own orange-tinted urine, which has over the years sparked multiple instances of national outrage. In the photographic series that followed, including The Klan (1990), The Morgue (1992), Shit (2007), and Nudes (2009), Serrano’s work has remained as provocative as it is aptly named.“I like to make the kind of pictures where you don’t need much more than the title to tell you what you’re looking at,” the artist said over the phone. As for his perpetual association with a single, 34-year-old work of art, he doesn’t mind: “Piss Christ is a good soundbite – easy to remember and repeat.”‘I was there’: Democrat recalls horror and fury on day of Capitol attackRead moreSerrano’s latest work, Insurrection (2022), takes a decidedly more political tone, having debuted in CulturalDC’s Source Theatre in Washington this week, the one-year anniversary of the Capitol attack. As the artist’s first-ever film, Insurrection offers a grim portrait of the United States, stitched together from found footage of the 6 January riot. True to the transgressive nature of Serrano’s practice, it zooms well past the point where ordinary news media would cut away: we get extended cuts of the sheer spectacle of violence, the smashing of windows, the prolonged attempt of one adrenalized horde of men to force its way past another. The frenzy climaxes with an uncut, closeup sequence of Ashli Babbitt’s death, and her subsequent martyrdom in a eulogy by the former president. Much of Insurrection is nothing short of excruciating to watch.“I like that word, excruciating,” Serrano says. “What I intended to make was an immersive experience that takes you to Washington DC on January 6 in real time.”In close collaboration with the London-based organization a/political, Serrano began working on the film in April, feeling compelled to respond to the day’s events on multiple levels. He was appalled by the racial dynamics that played out on the Capitol steps, as white rioters who had broken into a federal building were gently escorted out: “Black people get killed for a lot less than storming the Capitol, and these white people got treated with kid gloves.”To him, the Capitol insurrection was also an extension of Donald Trump’s legacy of divisiveness and fraud, a subject the artist had begun to explore in his 2018 installation The Game: All Things Trump. The former president’s widely accepted version of events – that these were righteous citizens protesting a rigged election – represented not only a triumph of fake news, but his continued hold over the Republican party.“This guy has to be commended for having the charisma that Hitler had with the German people; there are Americans who don’t believe it really happened, and Republicans who say let’s forget about it and move on,” Serrano says. “I wanted to make a film that anyone would have a difficult time walking away from saying ‘We should forget about it.’”Spanning 75 minutes, Insurrection comprises news clips and smartphone footage culled from around the internet, alongside archival imagery dating back to the riots of the Great Depression. The score is a mix of American ballads that range from Bob Dylan’s You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere to a children’s rendition of the historic civil war song, Battle Hymn of the Republic. As rioters march toward the Capitol steps, the incessant repetition of “glory, glory hallelujah” emphasizes the role that Christianity, a recurring theme in Serrano’s practice, plays in validating violence in American mythology. “There are groups of people who believe they have the right interpretations of Christ, not only in how they should live their lives, but how the rest of us should live ours,” he says. “They’re going into battle like Crusaders in their holy war.”The musical interludes and title cards interspersed throughout – “D.J. Trump Presents Insurrection”; “The Killing of Ashli Babbitt” – were inspired by Birth of a Nation, a 1915 silent civil war film condemned for its heroic portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan. The inclusion of these historical references is a reminder, according to Serrano, that “history repeats itself in specific ways.” The insurrection was not a novel event, but another instance of division within a nation that never recovered from civil war, he adds, citing the widespread refusal to accept Biden’s presidency as a resonant parallel. “There are also a lot of people who’ll never accept that the north won, and who’d love to go back to the good ol’ days. Donald Trump was there to tell those people what they wanted to hear.”Despite the symbolic criticism embedded throughout the insurrection, Serrano is actually reluctant to speak poorly of Trump, whom he photographed in 2004 for his America series. “This guy is a massive showman; he’s incredible at it, and I could see why he’s gone this far in life. He did not wreak damage on America – America was damaged already.” As for the Capitol rioters, he refuses to condemn anyone, nor say that they belong in jail: “I tried to humanize this crowd, to show their faces and hear what they’re saying. That’s what gives a work of art power: when you let people speak for themselves.”Serrano makes an important distinction in his practice: while provocation is essential to bringing art to life, he is not in the business of political messaging, telling his viewers what or how to think: “A lot of times I look at work, particularly paintings or pictures on the wall, and I’m not particularly moved,” he says. “The one thing I always try to do, whether it’s photographs or with this film, is to give you something to react to. I’m not concerned too much about how you’re going to feel about it, good or bad, but the important thing is that you’re not indifferent. You can’t walk away from it, and say, ‘I didn’t feel nothing.’”TopicsFilmArtUS Capitol attackUS politicsinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Paranoia and the Perils of Misreading

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      In the summer of 2021, genocide scholar Dirk Moses published an article in the Swiss online journal Geschichte der Gegenwart (History of the Present) titled, “The German Catechism.” He argued that Germany’s sense of its special obligation to Jews after the Holocaust has become a debilitating blockage to thinking through some of the most pressing issues of the present.

      Practice and Practitioners of Holocaust Denial

      READ MORE

      In Moses’ words, the “catechism” consisted of five strands: 1) the Holocaust is unique because it was the unlimited extermination of Europe’s Jews for the sake of extermination, without the pragmatic considerations that characterize other genocides; 2) it was thus a Zivilisationsbruch (civilizational rupture) and the moral foundation of the nation; 3) Germany has a special responsibility to Jews in Germany and a special loyalty to Israel; 4) anti-Semitism is a distinct prejudice and a distinctly German one — it should not be confused with racism; 5) and anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

      Leading to Debate

      Moses’ claims, not least his use of the term “catechism” with all of its religious connotations, gave rise to considerable debate in Germany and beyond. (The key texts are now collated on the New Fascism Syllabus website.) Notably, many female scholars, especially women of color, engaged in this debate, which opened a space for a discussion of issues relating to German colonial history, postcolonial approaches to German history and the Holocaust.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But when the discussion took place in the feuilletons of distinguished German-language newspapers, the authors were mainly middle-aged white men. Here, the criticisms, now bound up with the belated German publication of Michael Rothberg’s 2009 book, “Multidirectional Memory,” tended to be more defensive of German memory culture and critical of Moses’ supposed intentions. Left-liberal historians such as Gotz Aly and Dan Diner, who had been instrumental in freeing the federal republic from its self-exculpatory and conservative-nationalist postwar culture, bringing the Holocaust into the center of the national discussion, seemed especially incensed; though this is hardly surprising since these were the very people Moses had in his sights, using an Arendt-inspired tone that seemed designed to enrage.

      The “catechism debate” has revealed some intriguing fault lines in the German politics of memory. Moses’ insistence that the terms of his catechism mean that what began as a progressive movement to make Holocaust memory central to the Berlin republic’s self-understanding has gradually become a conservative shutting down of critical voices who want to address German colonialism and current-day racism has touched a nerve. The responses can be read on the New Fascism Syllabus website, where many fair-minded respondents, such as historian Frank Biess, have attempted to grapple honestly with Moses’ claims and to set out what they think their limits are.

      Yet the debate is significant not just in its own right, but because it has spilled over into the reception of Moses’ new book, “The Problems of Genocide,” a reception that is itself inseparable from the debate over Rothberg’s book, which turned — contrary to Rothberg’s intention to facilitate open discussion — on the extent to which the Holocaust in German memory culture prevents discussion of German (or wider) colonial atrocities or modern-day racism.

      What Does He Say?

      What does Moses argue in his book? The clue lies in the subtitle, “Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression.” By this, he signals that his argument is less about the politics of Holocaust memory — though this features in the book — than the way in which the concept of genocide, contrary to the intentions of many lawyers, historians and political theorists, facilitates rather than hinders atrocities and human rights abuses across the world.

      Critics, especially Holocaust historians, have been quick to condemn what they regard as a conspiracy theory at the heart of the book, namely that Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” and campaigned all his life to have it incorporated into international law, was a Jewish exclusivist who worked with non-Jewish groups in a way that allowed him to get them to take his concept seriously, but who was only concerned with the fate of the Jews under Nazi rule.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Moses does indeed set out something like this argument, saying that to “mobilise action about Jews … it made strategic sense to link the fate of Jewish and non-Jewish victims of Nazis under a single conceptual umbrella. This is the task that Lemkin’s genocide concept was designed to perform. Far from unthinkingly eliding the differences between Jewish and non-Jewish victims as supposed by Lemkin’s critics decades later, uniting them was the point of the concept.” His conclusion is that “if anyone is to blame for the problems of genocide, it is Lemkin.” In response, Omer Bartov, exemplifying the critical reading of Moses’ book, claimed in an Einstein Forum debate that Moses was putting forward what sounds like a “Jewish–Zionist plot.”

      Moses’ reading is debatable. Putting it forward requires dismissing Lemkin’s own autobiographical claims that he was moved, as a child, by learning of the Ottoman Empire’s massacres of Armenians and, more importantly, asserting that Lemkin remained a Jewish Zionist-nationalist from the 1920s — an orientation well documented by James Loeffler — through to the wartime and postwar period. But this is a reading that, albeit contestable, is well within the norms of intellectual history.

      Revisionism is what historians do all the time, and there is nothing about Moses’ position that justifies reaching for one’s metaphorical gun. Besides, this is not the heart of the book, which has a far more expansive remit than Lemkin and Holocaust historiography, taking in a remarkable range of references in world history. He has set out his argument plainly and in detail on numerous occasions. (See, for example, his talk with Geoff Eley at the University of Michigan or his interview on the New Books in Genocide Studies website.)

      What Does This Mean?

      It seems that what is happening here exemplifies Moses’ argument that Holocaust studies is riven by paranoia. Why should seeing the Holocaust as exemplifying the “problems of genocide” — understood in Moses’ terms — mean that one is downplaying the Holocaust? The opposite is the case: The Holocaust should tell us something about the destructive potential of modern states, but it has been siloed in a way that reduces the force of its potential critique, permitting “business as usual” in the modern world. Why, to return to old debates in genocide studies, should placing the Holocaust in a comparative context diminish its significance?

      Embed from Getty Images

      If one were to compare the Holocaust with the Boston Tea Party or the Peterloo Massacre, the critics would be justified in objecting. But analyzing it alongside other horrific occurrences, such as the Armenian, Rwandan or Cambodian genocides or cases of genocide in settler-colonial contexts, not only allows one to understand genocide as a generic phenomenon, but it also throws into sharper relief what distinguishes the Holocaust from other genocides — since none are the same. One can be a responsible Holocaust historian and still subscribe to the idea that motivates genocide studies.

      This is a case of fighting the wrong enemy. In the same way that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) sometimes seems more concerned about which historians have signed the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism and reinforcing its own singular and narrow definition of anti-Semitism than about combating the radical right, especially as it seeps into mainstream politics in the United States and elsewhere, Moses’ critics have embarked on seeking to have him “canceled” in a kneejerk fear that his critical takedown of the “genocide” concept paves the way to anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

      What Dirk Moses is seeking to do is to show how the idea of genocide has had opposite effects to those intended, if not by Raphael Lemkin, then by his followers today. He is hardly proposing a world of anarchy or an opening the floodgates to scholarly anti-Semitism. One does not have to agree with everything that Moses says to accept that this is a serious book. Dismissing it as anti-Semitic is nothing more than paranoia in action.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Steal review: stethoscope for a democracy close to cardiac arrest

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      The Steal review: stethoscope for a democracy close to cardiac arrest Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague have produced an indispensable and alarming ground-level record of how Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election played out in precincts and ballot-counting centers in key statesIn their terrific new book, the veteran reporters Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague argue that the mob that invaded the Capitol in Washington almost exactly a year ago “had no more chance of overthrowing the US government than hippies in 1967 had trying to levitate the Pentagon”.From Peril to Betrayal: the year in books about Trump and other political animalsRead moreThe “real insurrection” was the one “led by Trump and his coterie of sycophants” in Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona. It “was only slightly better organized than the mob but considerably more calculated and dangerous”.That real insurrection is the subject of this timely and important volume. The authors have used a stethoscope to examine the minutia of the American election process. The result is a thrilling and suspenseful celebration of the survival of democracy.The attempted coup was led by Donald Trump. Its intended denouement, in which the vice-president, Mike Pence, would ignore the votes of the six states above plus Washington DC in order to swing the election to Trump, was outlined in an insane memo written by the lawyer John Eastman, described here as “surely the most seditious document to emerge from the White House in American history”.That final act, of course, never happened. Not even Pence, the most sycophantic vice-president of modern times, could bring himself to violate the constitution so blatantly to keep his boss in the White House.But the genuine heroes, brought to life here, were the “hundreds of obscure Americans from every walk of life, state and local officials, judges and election workers. Many of them were Republicans, some were Trump supporters. They refused to accept his slander of themselves, their communities and their workers, and they refused to betray their sworn duty to their office and their country. They were the real patriots.”Bowden and Teague – the latter a Guardian contributor – take us through six battles that lasted from the night of the election, 3 November 2020, until Joe Biden’s election was finally certified by Congress early on 7 January last year.Their book performs a vital service, demonstrating just how well our tattered democracy managed to function despite vicious partisanship and all the new challenges created by the pandemic. For the first time, I understood how brilliantly new machines used to count the votes performed, the intricacies of opening outer and inner envelopes, capturing the images of both then preserving the vital paper ballots inside, making it possible to confirm electronic results with a hand count in case of any failure in technology.In Arizona, the elections department conducted “the mandatory hand count of election day ballots from 2% of the vote centers and 1% of the early ballots as required by Arizona law and it yielded a 100% match to the results produced by the tabulation equipment”.Scott Jarrett was co-director of elections in the populous Maricopa county, and he is one of the crucial bureaucrats celebrated here: “A pale slender young man … dressed in a plain gray suit, the very picture of an earnest functionary, a man happily engaged in the actual machinery of government and quietly proud of his own unheralded importance and competence.”In a public hearing crowded with crazed conspiracy theorists, Jarrett carefully explained how only one of the two “encrypted memory cards (both with tamper-proof evidence seals)” was transported from various polling centers to the main counting location, “so that the results on one card could be double-checked against the other as well as the precinct ballot report they had generated. Backing up that memory were, of course, the actual ballots that had been run through the machines. The memory cards and the ballots were sealed and delivered by “two members of different parties”, escorted by county sheriffs.Clint Hickman, chairman of the Maricopa county board of supervisors, noted that if the eyes of some in the audience were glazing over, he just wanted “people that are watching this” to understand “we don’t glaze over”.The authors point out that Hickman was touching on a fundamental feature of The Steal, the factitious narrative concocted by Trump and his cronies: conspiracy theorists depend on ignorance.“They begin with distrust: only a sucker believes the official story. They then replace the often tedious, mundane details of an intricate process … with a simpler narrative”: theft.They invent colorful stories about a “deal struck with a late Venezuelan dictator to deliver tainted election machines, or a plot to preprint fake ballots in the dead of night”. This creates what cognitive scientists call “a community of knowledge”.The big problem that didn’t exist even 30 years ago is the speed with which such idiotic stories are spread through the internet and by the Twitter feed of a malevolent president like Trump, exploding the reach of such stories and their power to undermine democratic norms.March of the Trump memoirs: Mark Meadows and other Republican readsRead moreThe book reminds us that democracy itself depends on a modicum of trust. That is why Trump’s ability to persuade so many Americans of the truth of so many lies has had such a disastrous effect on our body politic.Bowden and Teague have performed a singular service by revealing the details that disprove Republicans’ unceasing inventions about voter fraud.The problem is that so many Republicans will continue to ignore the lessons of this book. American democracy could still be destroyed by the torrent of voter suppression laws already passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures, spurred by lies invented by Trump and amplified by insidious “journalists” like Maria Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson, whose perfidy is brilliantly dissected in these pages.If democracy does prevail, it will survive because of the ability of authors like Teague and Bowden to make the truth even more compelling than Fox News fictions.
      The Steal is published in the US by Atlantic Monthly Press
      TopicsBooksUS elections 2020US politicsUS domestic policyUS political financingDonald TrumpTrump administrationreviewsReuse this content More

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      Democracy Lives In Darkness review: how to take politics off the holiday dinner table

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      Democracy Lives In Darkness review: how to take politics off the holiday dinner tableEmily Van Duyn’s study of a group of liberal women in rural Texas is thought-provoking reading for the holiday period

      From Peril to Betrayal: the year in US politics books
      In 2015, Saturday Night Live spoofed the rancorous political arguments besieging American social life.‘It’s who they are’: gun-fetish photo a symbol of Republican abasement under TrumpRead moreCast members seated around a dining table to celebrate Thanksgiving passed the side dishes and threw invective. The verbal heat rose and rose until a young girl pressed play on a cassette player and the Adele song Hello washed over the room. The combatants instantly ceased fire and began lip-synching the lyrics. Their rapture escalated until they physically entered a re-creation of the music video.A Thanksgiving Miracle aired before the Trump presidency and its violent subversive conclusion. This holiday season, it’s hard to think of a song capable of transporting Americans into a state of blissful unity. Masks and vaccines have become an issue and assault weapons have cropped up as accessories on congressional Christmas cards. But there is an alternative to mutually assured bad-mouthing. Americans can meet clandestinely among the like-minded, not just to commiserate but also to plan and participate in election campaigns.Emily Van Duyn, a political communications scholar, embedded with one such group in Texas in 2017. Her book chronicles the journey of 136 liberal women living in a rural and thus predominantly conservative Texas town who, determined to resist Trump, organized themselves into what Van Duyn anonymizes as the Community Women’s Group (CWG).They were middle-aged and senior white women (save one who was Black), afraid to speak their minds and put up yard signs. The author interviewed 24 of them multiple times, attended their monthly meetings on a dozen occasions, and examined meeting minutes from November 2016, when they were in tears and shock, until December 2020, at which point their politicking had yielded higher vote totals for Democrats in the previous month’s election, though not enough to prevail anywhere on the ballot.Van Duyn also conducted a national and statewide survey in 2018, from which she concluded that more than one in five American adults felt the need to hide their politics, and just under one in 10 operated in similarly self-obscured conversational settings.The study explains how social, geographic and political causes shaped the communication practices of the CWG.“[T]he growing animosity between and within parties, the uncertainty about truth, the growing intersectional animosity around ideology, race, class, and gender, made for a political context that was not only unpleasant but risky.”Trump palpably threatened their sense of security as women. Locally, they feared ostracization, loss of business (especially the real estate agents), defacement of property and being run off the road by men in trucks with guns who noticed liberal bumper-stickers, as happened at least once and was talked about often.Van Duyn excels at detailing the evolution of CWG’s communications practices, a mix of private and public facing activities conducted through physical as well as digital channels. Many members had grown up deferring to men about matters political. But a week after Trump’s victory one of them sent an email to eight neighbors: “I would like to suggest that we get together for support and see where that takes us.”That got forwarded, and 50 showed up at the first meeting. In a remote location, with the blinds closed, they wrote a mission statement and formed committees by issue to educate themselves. That super-structure soon fell by the wayside. Their formalized confidentiality agreement held, however. Between meetings they relied on a listserv to communicate among themselves with a brief detour into a secret Facebook group.In their darkened space (the book title inverts the slogan of the Washington Post) they opened each meeting with talk about their fears. A few started sending letters to the editor of the local newspaper using their individual identity, often to register dissent with and fact-check other letter writers. Over the two years of the study, about half emerged as open Democrats. They worked on mobilizing other Democrats (even though not all were registered or comfortable with the party), leaving the heavy labor of persuasion to formal campaigns. Their work shored up the party in their county: they ran phone banks, filled district chairs, updated voter files and raised money. The group had served as a safe harbor to develop political skills and confidence.CWG falls into several political traditions, including the voluntary associations that De Tocqueville valorized, the hidden minorities who have suffered the weights of oppression and, for that matter, the collectives of oppressors and cultists.Women are a demographic majority in America, and the political positions of CWG would fit in the national mainstream. But these women were neither in the contexts of their lives. Even so, by the end of the period Van Duyn examines, their politicking mirrored that of more open demographic counterparts such as the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County, a group that helped first-time candidate Abigail Spanberger turn a central Virginia seat Democratic in 2018 – one that she now has to decamp for a newly re-drawn district.Some Republicans at holiday gatherings this year will continue to relish the opportunity to bait liberals (a practice that goes both ways). They may emulate Trump’s style of discourse, centered on a barrage of lies, exaggerations, accusations and taunts. Or they may not do any of these things; as Trump said about southern border-crossers in 2015 “some, I assume, are good people”. Indeed, some Republicans may feel intimidated by progressive majorities in workplaces and on campuses.All told, the risks of escalated, energy draining crossfire between America’s political tribes have risen and intensified. So this holiday season is no time for engaging others in political matters, for disputing the veracity of their claims and integrity of their motives. Far better to smile wanly, deflect provocations, change the subject, and then join or form a political support group. As Van Duyn’s book shows, good things can follow from going underground.
      Democracy Lives in Darkness: How and Why People Keep Their Politics a Secret is published in the US by Oxford University Press
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