Culture

Subterms

    More stories

    • 188 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Tom Morello: ‘We came within a baby’s breath of a fascist coup in the US’

      by

      Rage Against the MachineInterviewTom Morello: ‘We came within a baby’s breath of a fascist coup in the US’Alexis Petridis Lockdown and ‘looking after the grandmas’ may have kept the Rage Against the Machine guitarist away from recent protests – but he refuses to be silencedSat 9 Oct 2021 09.00 EDTTom Morello has made more than 20 albums, as a founding member of Rage Against the Machine – the political rap-rock band who have sold 16m records, and whose 1992 track Killing in the Name has become a perennial protest anthem – and of the bands Audioslave and Prophets of Rage. He also plays solo under the name the Nightwatchman, and has toured with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. His unique approach to the guitar, which he has self-deprecatingly described as “making R2-D2 noises”, has led to him regularly being voted as one of the greatest guitar players of all time. His latest album, The Atlas Underground Fire (released on 15 October), features a series of collaborations recorded in lockdown – with Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Damian Marley and Bring Me the Horizon, among others. He is a celebrated “nonsectarian socialist” political activist, famed for performing at demonstrations – he played at Occupy events across the US and Europe – and a co-founder of the nonprofit “social justice” organisation Axis of Justice.You recorded your new album in lockdown. Did the pandemic also mean you missed out on the ongoing protests in the US?Not only was there a global plague to contend with, there was the US political situation and the white supremacy comeuppance, all happening at a time when I was locked down with my 97-year-old mom, my 90-year-old mother-in-law, and two kids going crazy trying to learn remotely. I was unable to be on the literal frontlines for the first time in my adult life, because I’m trying to keep the grandmas alive, you know. So in the middle of the George Floyd protests I recorded a song called Stand Up, with Imagine Dragons, the great trans soul singer Shea Diamond and Bloody Beetroots as well. I was trying, from the bunker, to contribute in any way I could. But you’re absolutely right: that’s my bread and butter. I’m at the front of that march for 30 years, and now, you know, there’s a plumbing problem, or one of my kids broke a window with a basketball, so that’s my dayEven though you weren’t physically present, Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name was chanted at the Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, but it was also chanted by pro-Trump supporters in Philadelphia. How did that feel?First of all, there’s no accounting for stupidity. There’s a long list of radical left anthems that are misunderstood by bozos who sing them at events like that, from Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land to Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA to John Lennon’s Imagine – those people have really no idea what the hell they’re singing about. The one thing that I speak to in all of those instances is that there’s a power to the music that casts a wide net, and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. In that net, there will be the far-right bozos, but there will also be people that have never considered the ideas put forward in those songs and are forced to consider those ideas because the rock’n’roll is great. You can either put a beat to a Noam Chomsky lecture – no one wants that, but there’s going to be no mistaking what the content is – or you can make music that’s compelling.So you don’t try to serve people with a cease-and-desist order when they misuse your music?When they were using Rage songs for torture in Guantánamo, we sued the state department, but no. My take is: “Go enjoy the rock’n’roll. You look like fools, but go enjoy the rock’n’roll.”How did you feel about the events of 6 January?We came within a baby’s breath of a fascist coup in this country. Interestingly, one of my dreams has always been to storm the Capitol, but not with a bunch of all-white, rightwing terrorists, you know? The ugliest part about it is how they have co-opted the idea of standing against the Man, at least in the US. There can be no nuanced thinking, like: “Yes, big pharma is horrible, but getting a vaccine to save your grandma is good.” It’s a dumbed-down version of resistance. But I grew up in Trump country [in suburban Illinois], I know people from there. They’re decent people. It’s not their fault for being fucked over by the oligarchy for decades. Now what do we do to find a way to really resist the stuff that is destroying the planet, that’s causing working people’s lives to be worse than their parents’ were? Poverty and hunger kill more people than anything else on the planet and they are human-made problems. Those are the things that we need to be digging into, rather than being sidetracked by this carnival barker bullshit.The opening track of your new album is called Harlem Hellfighters. You were born in Harlem – isn’t there a story that one of your ancestors helped found the New York mafia?The Harlem Hellfighters were an African-American military unit in both world wars. They were known for their bravery and then coming home and getting done over by racist Americans – their story is very compelling. But there was a Giuseppe Morello who was known as the Clutch Hand, who came from Sicily. He was one of the founders of one of the “five families”, and apparently not a pleasant chap. There may be some cousin-like links between me and him. He was short, had one hand that was really messed up and he got the job done by murdering people.He eventually met the end that a lot of people met in that line of work.The new album also features Eddie Vedder and Bruce Springsteen singing AC/DC’s Highway to Hell. How did that come about?We have history with that song, from when I toured with Bruce and the E Street Band. We were in Perth, [near] the home of [late AC/DC frontman] Bon Scott. One night, I went to pay my respects to his grave. I came back to the hotel and saw Bruce in the bar. Over the next couple of days, we started rehearsing Highway to Hell at soundchecks. We found ourselves in a Melbourne football stadium, playing to 80,000 people. Eddie happened to be in town. A lightbulb went off. I knocked on the dressing room door and said: “Bruce, we’re in Australia – Highway to Hell is like the unofficial national anthem. What if we open the show with it, with Eddie?” It was an apex moment in rock’n’roll history. If you think you’ve seen people go apeshit, you haven’t because you weren’t there that night.You recently appealed for help in getting a group of girls out of Afghanistan. What happened?Lanny Cordola, who was a member of the 80s metal band Giuffria, found the religion of love and moved to Afghanistan to help street kids. He took in these orphans and girls who had had tremendous trauma in their lives and started a school where they used music as a rehabilitation tool. He reached out to me and asked if I wanted to do a song with them, so we did a cover of Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). I played the guitar solo. We became video friends – the girls would send birthday greetings, we’d send hellos. And then their world turned upside down. They’re marked. They were playing western music taught by an American teacher. Their school is destroyed. They’re in hiding right now. We were not able to get them out in the initial push, and now it’s just a matter of keeping them safe. There’s a lot of people who want to help, but as of right now, they’re still there. But they’re safe.During lockdown, you taught your son Roman to play guitar and he ended up collaborating with the 11-year-old drummer and internet sensation Nandi Bushell. How did that come about?They wrote the song, I produced it. Nandi is spectacular – an effervescent soul of joy that the world needs now more than ever. She called up and asked if I wanted to do a song, and I said: “I’d love to, but I’ve got a kid here who’s your age who really can take it from here!” So I said to Roman: “Throw some riffs at me, man”, and he came up with a couple of hot riffs. I put an arrangement together and sent it to Nandi, and asked her what she thought. She said: “It sounds epic!” like she does. And she wrote the lyrics and played the drums on it – she just murdered it, she’s so great. One of the best drummers in the world happens to be 11 years old! It was a reminder of why you started, you know? It was pure joy, pure excellence, pure rock’n’roll.You mentioned your mum earlier. You’ve said before that she’s the most radical member of your family …Yeah, it’s funny – in our discussions at the table, she’s taking positions that I’m just like: “Mom, really?” But that’s always been my household. When I went out into the world, I realised that not every household has these kind of internationalist ideas, the thought of always, always standing up for the person on the lowest rung of the ladder. We were in a middle-class, conservative, ethnically homogenous suburb. She was a teacher at the high school and she taught the kids about Cesar Chavez and the Grape Boycott, Malcolm X, anti-colonialist African studies. I assumed everybody’s mom was like that.She also set up the anti-censorship group Parents for Rock and Rap in the late 80s …Yeah! It was really where the rubber hit the road. She was in a conservative suburb that was trying to censor heavy metal and hip-hop, so that’s where you fight the fight. This was before Rage Against the Machine – nobody knew my name. She was always on some radio show with Ice-T.You’ve said in past interviews that there is a section of your fans who would prefer to deny that you’re Black. Why do you think it bothers them?That would be a better question for them than me, but it bothers them – oh, let me tell you, it does bother them. I think it’s cos it upsets the false narrative they have that music that sounds like mine can only be made by people who look like them. And then me and Slash pop up to say: “No!”Quick GuideSaturday magazine ShowThis article comes from Saturday, the new print magazine from the Guardian which combines the best features, culture, lifestyle and travel writing in one beautiful package. Available now in the UK and ROI.Photograph: GNMYou were criticised recently for your friendship with the rightwing rock star Ted Nugent. What on earth do you two talk about?I got asked to make a video for his 60th birthday. At that point, Ted had become this rightwing caricature, but I really loved his records back in the 70s, so I said yes. I took two tacks: “Things adolescent Tom Morello learned about the birds and the bees from Ted Nugent”, and “things you might be surprised to find Tom and Ted have in common” – like free speech and rock’n’roll. Anyway, he called me up afterwards and we had a discussion about it. People go fucking nuts when you say you’re friends with someone who has his views. I’m very happy to go toe-to-toe with Ted when he gets on his racist stuff, his misogynist stuff, his Trump stuff. I don’t know how often people cause Ted to abandon his opinions these days, but I believe that’s been the case on more than one occasion.The Atlas Underground Fire is released on 15 October on Mom + Pop records.TopicsRage Against the MachineMetalPop and rockUS Capitol attackUS politicsinterviewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      I’ll Take Your Questions Now review: Stephanie Grisham’s tawdry Trump tell-all

      by

      BooksI’ll Take Your Questions Now review: Stephanie Grisham’s tawdry Trump tell-allThe press secretary who wouldn’t brief the press wants to talk. Like all else to do with Donald and Melania, truth is a casualty Lloyd GreenSun 3 Oct 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 3 Oct 2021 02.02 EDTIn 2015, Donald Trump boasted that his administration would be filled with only “the best and most serious people … top-of-the-line professionals”.Stephanie Grisham: Trump turncoat who may be most damaging yetRead moreMeet Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s third press secretary and sixth communications director, Melania Trump’s first spokeswoman and second chief of staff. All that in less than four years.Before Trump, Grisham reportedly lost one job for padding expense reports and another over plagiarism and was twice cited for driving under the influence. As White House press secretary, she never delivered a formal briefing. Instead, she ladled out interviews to Fox News and OAN.Grisham even went so far as to issue a statement proclaiming that John Kelly, a retired four-star general and past chief of staff, “was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president”. As Grisham recounts, MSNBC said that statement, which she says was dictated by Trump, had “a decidedly North Korean tone”. It had a point.Finally, on 6 January 2021, Grisham resigned. The insurrectionists who attacked the US Capitol had claimed an unintended scalp. On the page, Grisham lets it be known that the election was not stolen, that she urged the first lady to denounce the storming of the Capitol, and that Melania demurred because she was more concerned with setting up a photo shoot for a rug. That, Grisham writes, was when she decided enough was finally enough.Like most things Trump, reality is a casualty. Text messages obtained by Politico indicate that Grisham was fine with challenging election results – until she wasn’t.Grisham follows into print Michael Cohen, Trump’s ex-lawyer; Omarosa, former Apprentice contestant and Trump White House refugee; Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, former friend and aide to Melania and rival to Grisham; and Stormy Daniels, adult film star and alleged recipient of $130,000 in Trump hush-money.To know Trump is to blab. As Grisham frames things, working near and for the first couple was akin to being in a “Hunger Games-style environment” and Melania morphed into a modern-day Marie Antoinette: “Dismissive. Defeated. Detached.”Grisham’s book is salacious and score-settling – but not entertaining. Yes, Grisham discusses the state of Trump’s “junk” and shares the first couple’s reactions when Daniels immortalized “Mushroom Mario”. Even so, her tone is mirthless.“Not in two million years had I ever thought I’d have a conversation with the president of the United States about his penis,” she writes. Perhaps she forgot Bill Clinton.She also portrays Rudy Giuliani as off-putting and not-quite-right. The New York mayor turned Trump lawyer “gave off weird vibes when he was around the president”, she writes. Being in a meeting with Giuliani was tantamount to “being cross-examined about it later by some committee”. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, criminally charged Giuliani associates, would surely agree.Grisham has other targets. Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, is presented as a treacherous boot-licker, instrumental in driving Grisham from her job as White House press secretary and back to the sole employ of Melania. Lindsey Graham was a two-faced leech, “Senator Freeloader” as the author has it. Both Meadows and Graham, she writes, helped undercut Mick Mulvaney as chief of staff.Where are they now? Giuliani is suspended from the bar and reportedly in prosecutors’ crosshairs. Meadows is facing a congressional subpoena over his role on 6 January. Graham is in Trump’s doghouse again.The spotlight on Melania is unsparing. Grisham says the first lady was unofficially called “Rapunzel” by the Secret Service, for her reluctance to leave her personal quarters. Unlike Michelle Obama and Laura Bush, Melania seldom ventured near her East Wing office. Some agents sought to be assigned to Melania, Grisham says, because her “limited movements and travel meant that they could spend more time at home with their families”. But Melania did care deeply about the White House Easter egg roll. We all have our priorities.In Grisham’s telling, Melania was taken aback by racial animus voiced in Charlottesville in August 2017 by white supremacists, and deplored racism herself. Intentionally or otherwise, Grisham omits the fact her former boss was a “birther” who helped her husband stoke the lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.Yet Grisham reserves her harshest takes for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the “interns”, as Grisham says they came to be known. As she saw it, the pair repeatedly conflated being born on third base with wisdom, aesthetic grace with entitlement to whatever they wanted.Grisham describes how the pair attempted to shoehorn themselves into a meeting with the Queen, how Jared offered opinions on the Mexican border and on combating Covid. Grisham appears to relish recounting Kushner’s difficulties in obtaining a security clearance and the fact he needed Trump to get it done.Still, Kushner was de facto chief of staff and no one who crossed him could hope to survive. Sure, Steve Bannon eked out a last-minute pardon, just like Charlie Kushner, Jared’s dad. But Bannon was gone from the White House in months.Wildland review: Evan Osnos on the America Trump exploitedRead moreGrisham has written a tell-all but it is also an exercise in self-pity. She tags an unnamed boyfriend for assorted bad behavior. She suspects there was another woman and regrets her choice of men. The profile matches that of Max Miller, a White House staffer now Trump’s pick for an Ohio congressional seat.Miller reportedly pushed Grisham against a wall and slapped her, allegations he denies. In 2007, he was charged with assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and fleeing from the cops. He pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges before the case was dismissed.Trump reportedly assaulted his first wife, Ivana, and faces a defamation lawsuit in connection with the alleged sexual assault of the writer E Jean Carroll. He too denies all allegations. So it goes.Grisham laments the state of the Republican party, lauds Liz Cheney and argues that the GOP is “not one man”. Reasonable people can differ. A recent poll shows most Republicans want Trump to continue as their leader.
      I’ll Take Your Questions Now is published by Harper Collins
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsRepublicansPolitics booksreviewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Barack Obama on how uncovering his past helped him plan his future

      by

      How I wroteBarack Obama on how uncovering his past helped him plan his futureThe former president of the United States was at a crossroads in his life when he wrote his first book, Dreams from My Father Barack ObamaSat 2 Oct 2021 06.00 EDTI was in my early 30s when I wrote Dreams from My Father. At the time, I was a few years out of law school. Michelle and I were newly married and just beginning to think about having kids. My mother was still alive. And I was not yet a politician.I look back now and understand that I was at an important crossroads then, thinking hard about who I wanted to be in the world and what sort of contribution I could make. I was passionate about civil rights, curious about public service, full of loose ideas, and entirely uncertain about which path I should take. I had more questions than answers. Was it possible to create more trust between people and lessen our divides? How much did small steps toward progress matter – improving conditions at a school, say, or registering more people to vote – when our larger systems seemed so broken? Would I accomplish more by working inside existing institutions or outside of them?Behind all of this floated something more personal, a deeper set of unresolved questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? How do I belong?That’s what compelled me to start writing this book.A Promised Land by Barack Obama review – an impressive but incomplete memoirRead moreI’ve always believed that the best way to meet the future involves making an earnest attempt at understanding the past. It’s why I enjoy reading different accounts of history and why I value the insights of those who’ve been on this earth longer than I have. Some folks might see history as something we put behind us, a bunch of words and dates carved in stone, a set of dusty artefacts best stored in a vault. But for me, history is alive the same way an old-growth forest is alive, deep and rich, rooted and branching off in unexpected directions, full of shadows and light. What matters most is how we carry ourselves through that forest – the perspectives we bring, the assumptions we make, and our willingness to keep returning to it, to ask the harder questions about what’s been ignored, whose voices have been erased.These pages represent my early, earnest attempt to walk through my own past, to examine the strands of my heritage as I considered my future. In writing it, I was able to dwell inside the lives of my parents and grandparents, the landscapes, cultures and histories they carried, the values and judgments that shaped them – and that in turn, shaped me. What I learned through this process helped to ground me. It became the basis for how I moved forward, giving me the confidence to know I could be a good father to my children and the courage to know I was ready to step forward as a leader.The act of writing is exactly that powerful. It’s a chance to be inquisitive with yourself, to observe the world, confront your limits, walk in the shoes of others, and try on new ideas. Writing is difficult, but that’s kind of the point. You might spend hours pushing yourself to remember what an old classroom smelled like, or the timbre of your father’s voice, or the precise colour of some shells you saw once on a beach. This work can anchor you, and fortify you, and surprise you. In finding the right words, in putting in that time, you may not always hit upon specific answers to life’s big questions, but you will understand yourself better. That’s how it works for me, anyway.The young man you meet in these pages is flawed and full of yearning, asking questions of himself and the world around him, learning as he goes. I know now, of course, that this was just the beginning for him. If you’re lucky, life provides you with a good long arc. I hope that my story will encourage you to think about telling your story, and to value the stories of others around you. The journey is always worth taking. Your answers will come.TopicsHow I wroteAutobiography and memoirUS politicsHistory booksfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa review – the bloated body politic

      by

      Book of the dayPolitics booksPeril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa review – the bloated body politic The Washington Post journalists pick apart the transfer of power from Trump to Biden in an F-bomb-peppered account of the corporeal and divine in US governmentPeter ConradTue 28 Sep 2021 02.00 EDTExcept for Donald Trump, who believes only in himself, American politicians are inveterate God-botherers, sure that they were elected by their creator, not just by their constituents. While re-traversing the transfer of power between Trump and Joe Biden, Bob Woodward and his Washington Post colleague Robert Costa often pause as the wheelers and dealers they are tracking pray, text scriptural citations or glance sanctimoniously skywards. Biden fingers his rosary beads before debating Trump, and when Mike Pence performs his constitutional duty by ratifying the outcome of the presidential election, an aide congratulates him for fighting the good fight and keeping the faith. Later, Nancy Pelosi summarises her scheme for raising the minimum wage as “the gospel of Matthew”.Yet despite such homages to the soul, what truly matters in the showdowns and face-offs that Peril documents is the chunky body and its thuggish heft. Among Trump’s enforcers, only the anti-immigrant ideologue Stephen Miller, whose skinny frame and slick fitted suits are noted by Woodward and Costa, has a lean and hungry look. Otherwise, power is exhibited by a swollen paunch. Bill Barr becomes attorney general because Melania thinks his “extraordinarily large belly” is a guarantee of gravitas. Mike Pompeo is “heavy and gregarious”, which implies that he has “little tolerance for liberals”. Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager, qualifies for his job because “at six foot eight and bearded, he looked like a professional wrestler”. Given this huddle of heavyweights, it amused me to learn that Biden’s entourage includes a “gut check” – no, not a dietician but a crony who offers a second opinion when the new president wants to act on instinct.Physical quirks and kinks such as these matter because they demonstrate that, in the populist era, politics is about instantly gratifying appetite, not making pondered, judicious decisions. Woodward and Costa give a revealing account of a lunch at which Trump receives the homage of Kevin McCarthy, minority leader in the House of Representatives. Trump orders his customary cheeseburger, fries and ice-cream, solipsistically assuming that his guest will have the same; he is startled when McCarthy foregoes the fries, bins the bun, and requests fresh fruit rather than a gooey dessert. “That really works?” sneers Trump, gobbling grease. What Pelosi calls his “fat butt”, on display to be kissed by McCarthy, advertises his immense self-satisfaction.After the insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January, General Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, kept anxious watch on the nuclear chain of command because he feared that Trump “had gone into a serious mental decline”. But Trump could hardly regress, since he never advanced into rational adulthood. In Peril, he is indistinguishable from the Trump Baby, the diapered balloon that bobbed above Westminster during his state visit. As he suborns Pence to discount electoral results and nullify Biden’s win, his wheedling suggests dialogue overheard in a primary school playground. “Wouldn’t it be almost cool to have that power?” he asks, as if tempting the vice-president with some shiny new electronic toy. When Pence resists, Trump’s recourse is sulky petulance: “I don’t want to be your friend any more,” he whines.Milley worries that Trump, berserk after his electoral loss, might reach a “trigger point” and order a diversionary attack China or Iran. Adam Smith, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, is less alarmist. Smith agrees that Trump is a “mentally unstable narcissistic psychopath”, but argues that he’s incapable of starting a war because “he’s a coward, he doesn’t want that level of responsibility”. We were saved by Trump’s laziness and an inability to concentrate that Woodward and Costa blame on his addictive television-watching. To the consternation of advisers, he switches subjects capriciously; with a zapper where his brain should be, he can’t help flicking through the channels to see what’s happening elsewhere. On his way out of office, he drops only F-bombs, “spewing expletives” and screaming at cabinet colleagues: “I don’t care a fuck. You’re all fucked up. You’re all fucked.”That versatile little word peppers the narrative of Peril, and turns out to be indispensable in the discourse of Washington DC. It gives Rex Tillerson legal deniability: he gets away with insisting that he didn’t call Trump a “moron” because he actually called him a “fucking moron”. When Biden resorts to curses while securing votes for his economic stimulus, “the number of ‘fucks’ he uttered seemed to multiply as the story went from senator to senator”. Partisanship likewise signs its oaths in urine, so that Mitch McConnell declares his support for a Trump nominee to the supreme court by vowing: “I feel stronger about Kavanaugh than mule piss.” In Kentucky, which McConnell represents in the Senate, the micturition of mules appears to be proof positive of sincerity. It all sounds harmlessly infantile or at best adolescent until you realise that these men determine the fate of a nation and perhaps the future of our planet.Their pretence of godliness founders when Steve Bannon, so zealously Catholic, decides to out-Herod Herod by suggesting that a campaign of lies about the election result will “kill the Biden presidency in the crib”. Yes, politics is murder by other means, and the deity, having long since retreated in despair or disgust, is not about to rescue us. The last fatalistic word should go to Biden, on an occasion when his rosary stayed in his pocket. Wrangling over the exit from Afghanistan, he tells his secretary of state: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.” I’m unsure whether he meant Trump or the devil, but is there any difference?TopicsPolitics booksBook of the dayUS politicsDonald TrumpJoe BidenBob WoodwardJournalism booksreviewsReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      The Cause: a history of the American revolution for our own troubled time

      by

      BooksThe Cause: a history of the American revolution for our own troubled timeIn his new work on 1776 and all that, Joseph Ellis sees the roots of anti-government intransigence and conspiracy theories John S GardnerSat 25 Sep 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 25 Sep 2021 01.01 EDTA word to know: semiquincentennial, which will appear with increasing frequency as the 250th anniversary of American independence approaches. Joseph Ellis, author of well-regarded biographies of America’s founders, is out early with a history of the revolution.Travels with George review: Washington, America’s original sin … and its divided presentRead moreOr, as he terms it, the “American Evolution”. For generations, treatments of the revolution have reflected the interests and prejudices of their times. Ellis provides numerous analogies to the politics of the moment, notably bitter opposition to a strong national government, the dangers of debt and misplaced hubris.The work covers some familiar ground from his other works with a focus on “bottom-up” politics. Ellis terms the story “The Cause”, because the patriots used it as “the operative term from the summer of 1775 to the summer of ’76”. Leaving aside the actual cause of the split (briefly, “power, not money” and George III’s policy after the peace of 1763), Ellis’ emphasis is the uncomfortable nature of its legacy and its impact on politics. The revolutionary “cause” contained the seeds of others.That the promises of the revolution and Jefferson’s “unalienable rights” failed, not least on slavery and Native Americans, is a shameful blight on the founding. But as Ellis writes, “not all revolutions end in gulags and guillotines”. Compromise was indispensible to uniting 13 colonies to achieve victory.Was that compromise the essence of the revolution or a painful cost of it, laying a deposit or “promissory note” of freedom? On that question hangs the meaning of the revolution, both for greater understanding of the past and applying its lessons in the present.Ellis succeeds more on the first, noting many founders’ discomfort with the compromises they made.On politics, Ellis takes the division back to the war itself, when conspiracy-minded “True Whigs” asserted that those who favoured strong national government were seeking to replicate George III’s power, even as the continental army went unpaid and Washington prevented a military coup against Congress, shaming those who would “overturn the liberties of our country and open the flood gates of civil discord”. The conspiratorial mindset found a home early in American politics.History is by definition selective, and what is selected reflects the historian’s perspective as well as the zeitgeist. This is a relatively short history for the general reader, reflecting contemporary concerns, including relative brevity. There are some curious omissions, notably the Boston Massacre, in which Crispus Attucks, a Black and Native American patriot, was probably the first killed. Ellis cites three, not all four, of the 1774 Coercive Acts. Writing about the British North America (Quebec) Act would have enabled him to address religious prejudice in American history. More prosaically, Emerson, not Longfellow, wrote of the “shot heard round the world”.Much of the book concerns military history.Vietnam/Iraq analogies to British policy and warfare serve a purpose but become tiresome. Ellis argues that “Great Britain never had a realistic chance to win … American victory was not a miracle; it was foreordained”.That seems wrong. A failed crossing of the Delaware, an annihilation of American forces on Long Island (where even Ellis admits “the fate of the war … would have become uncertain”), Cornwallis escaping at Yorktown, the French fleet not arriving in time, Americans tiring of war – there are many points at which the military outcome could have been different, despite repeated failings of British leadership. Here, the “triumphalist” perspective (which Washington endorsed, calling victory a “standing miracle”) seems justified: the world turned upside down. Valley Forge really was as terrible as popular myth holds, Washington’s leadership preserving the army in impossible circumstances was equally strong.There is an urgent need for history for the general reader. Ellis’s story is generally told well. British perspectives receive sensitive attention, continuing a tradition exemplified by the great Bernard Bailyn.Ellis ends with an emotional recounting of Washington’s resignation of his commission in 1783 but also on a sour, pessimistic note, describing an “antinational”, even “antigovernment” feeling seeing “an American nation-state as a preposterous distortion of The Cause”. He identifies two legacies from the revolution: “Any robust expression of government power … was placed on the permanent defensive; second, conspiracy theories that might otherwise have been dismissed as preposterous shouts from the lunatic fringe enjoyed a supportive environment because of their hallowed association with The Cause”.This is presumably description, not endorsement. But then why not add a chapter taking the history to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, to show the victory of the nationalist view Washington espoused? Ellis has written this before.Shining a bright light on terrible moments in American history and expanding the understanding of the founding to include other voices is necessary and wise. Contemporary Americans should understand that “The Cause contained a double-barreled legacy: government was ‘Them’ and government was ‘Us’” – a debate that continues sharply today.Forget the Alamo review: dark truths of the US south and its ‘secular Mecca’Read moreThe danger, though, is that Ellis’ approach merely becomes history for an age of debunking history, which contains its own dangers – not least when others try to offer “alternative” history for their own, for conspiratorial agendas.. Ellis tries to defend history against both “presentistic” and conspiratorial views but may not succeed as well as he hopes.“Like the deepest meaning of The Cause itself,” he writes, “if you had not lived it, no one could explain it to you”. That’s what historians are supposed to do – explain. Ellis eschews triumphalism, yet on occasion even he gets caught up in the wonder of it all: “There was something almost elegiac about ordinary farmers, accustomed to gather in order to pass regulations about roaming cows or pigs, meeting now to debate the fate of America’s role in the British Empire.”Despite the revolution’s serious “discontents” and compromises, perhaps one need not force a choice between triumphalism and skepticism. Perhaps one may even consider the place of idealism, permitting Americans to be inspired once again by the Declaration of Independence and Valley Forge – and to redeem their implicit promises of union, freedom and justice for all.
      The Cause is published by Liveright
      TopicsBooksHistory booksUS politicsreviewsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump may be gone, but Covid has not seen off populism

      by

      Politics booksTrump may be gone, but Covid has not seen off populism It is liberal fantasy to imagine that poor handing of the pandemic has lessened the allure of Modi and Bolsonaro. They are learning fast how to subvert votingJan-Werner MüllerMon 20 Sep 2021 05.00 EDTWhen the pandemic struck, newspaper opinion pages were full of pieces predicting the end of authoritarian populism. Surely Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Jair Bolsonaro couldn’t survive their mishandling of Covid-19? Finally, people were waking up to the reality of what these leaders represented.Trump may not have lasted, but the expectation that the pandemic might see off populism is mistaken. Liberal observers have long assumed that populists are by definition incompetent demagogues. But populism is not all about promising simplistic solutions in a complex world and, contrary to a complacent liberal narrative, populist leaders are not incapable of correcting failed policies. The threat of authoritarian populism is compounded by the fact that these leaders are learning from each other – though what they are copying are not more effective strategies to combat the pandemic, but techniques for disabling democracy.When despairing about the rise of populism, liberals have been eager to identify underlying causes. And indeed, there are striking similarities in the way far-right populist leaders govern in different parts of the globe: Bolsonaro, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Jarosław Kaczyński, Viktor Orbán, Modi, and, as a hopefully historical example, Trump. But similar outcomes do not prove similar causes. Rather, the reason for the emergence of what we might as well call a far-right populist art of governance is that leaders can copy each other’s best (or worst) practices. They are busy perfecting the art of faking democracy: ballot boxes are not stuffed on election day, but between them we see voting rules manipulated, media outlets taken over by business leaders friendly to the government, and civil society systematically intimidated and therefore election outcomes are rarely in doubt. Liberals, meanwhile, are drastically underestimating their adversaries.Populist leaders are not all nearly as incompetent and irresponsible as Trump and Bolsonaro’s handling of Covid would suggest. Their core characteristic is not that they criticise elites or are angry with the establishment. Rather, what distinguishes them is the claim that they, and only they, represent what they often refer to as the “real people” or also the “silent majority”.At first sight, this might not sound particularly nefarious. And yet this claim has two consequences deeply damaging for democracy: rather obviously, populists assert that all other contenders for office are fundamentally illegitimate. This is never just a matter of disputes about policy, or even about values. Rather, populists allege that their rivals are simply corrupt, or “crooked” characters. More insidiously, the suggestion that there exists a “real people” implies that there are some who are not quite real – figures who just pretend to belong, who might undermine the polity in some form, or who are at best second-rate citizens.Obvious examples are minorities and, in particular, recent immigrants, who are suspected of not being truly loyal to the polity. Think of Modi’s policy of creating a register of genuine citizens. Ostensibly, this is about identifying illegal immigrants; but especially in combination with new refugee policies that effectively discriminate against Muslims, its actual message is all too clear to Hindu nationalists. Or think of Trumpists who would never really engage in argument with critics, but simply denounce the latter as “un-American”.Populists reduce political issues to questions of belonging, and then attack those who are said not to belong. That is not a matter of mere rhetoric. Sooner or later, the appeal to the real people – and the exclusion of supposedly fake people – will have effects on streets and squares: Trump rallies have been associated with a local increase in assaults. The concept of “trickle-down aggression” – coined by the feminist philosopher Kate Manne – captures this dynamic.Populist leaders present themselves as the great champions of empowering the people, and yet always exclude particular people. The shameless attempts by US Republicans to suppress the vote (and subvert election outcomes) are playing on the sense that the “real America” is white and Christian – and that black and brown people should not really be participating in politics in the first place. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro is gearing up to repeat Trump-style claims about a stolen election, should he lose the vote next year; he will have learned that, beyond casting doubt on the legitimacy of those not casting a ballot for you, bringing at least parts of the military to your side might be decisive.In Hungary, Orbán has long provided a model from which others can learn how to stretch laws to the limit in order to create pliable courts and media organisations. They can also study subtle tactics of how to mislead the EU and the Council of Europe long enough to entrench partisan advantages.When Poland’s Law and Justice Party returned to power in 2015, it could reach for Orbán’s manual of how to build an autocracy under the eyes of the EU. Like the Hungarian leader, it learned the lesson that, during its first time in office, it had wasted political capital on culture wars, instead of capturing independent institutions. To keep oneself in power, one must control the judiciary, the election system and TV in particular – once that has happened, one can wage culture wars and incite hatred against minorities to one’s heart’s content.None of this is to say that the new authoritarian systems are invincible, but we need to better understand their innovative techniques. Some are so dangerous because they are getting technologically more sophisticated: Pegasus spyware, the use of private companies to spread misinformation, or the extensive use of social media by leaders such as Modi (the world’s most tech-savvy populist) are only the most obvious instances. Still more dangerous than digital autocracy, though, is the ability of authoritarians to disable democracy, while at the same time advancing democratic-sounding justifications for their actions.What is happening in the US and the UK is a prime example. The push by the Johnson government to make the presentation of voter ID mandatory can look reasonable on paper: nobody is against the prevention of voter fraud. Northern Ireland already has such measures in place, as do countries on the continent. But, as we should have appreciated by now, legal measures can be deployed to, in effect, shrink the demos, the political body, for partisan purposes: minorities, the unemployed and especially the poor – lacking drivers’ licences and passports for travel abroad – are most likely not to have the time and resources to secure the required forms of ID. We have also learned the hard way that the staffing of election commissions is not some bureaucratic trifle (as Tom Stoppard observed long ago, “It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting”), but can make the difference between keeping and losing democracy.‘We the people’: the battle to define populismRead moreWhy do populists so often get away with these kinds of measures? We have not grasped the extent to which they have succeeded in imposing their distorted understanding of basic democratic practices. The vast majority of those identifying as Republicans regard voting as a “privilege” tied to responsibilities, while Democrats respect it as an unconditional right.It is not true that masses of people are longing for strongmen and are turning away from democracy. But it has become easier to fake democracy. That is partly because defenders of democracy have not argued for its basic principles well, and partly because they keep underestimating their adversaries.TopicsPolitics booksUS politicsViktor OrbánCoronavirusPolandHungaryBrazilfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Wildland review: Evan Osnos on the America Trump exploited

      by

      BooksWildland review: Evan Osnos on the America Trump exploited The New Yorker writer delivers a sweeping and brilliant portrait of a people subjected to 50 years of rightwing aggression

      Interview: Evan Osnos on the US 20 years after 9/11
      Charles KaiserSun 19 Sep 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 19 Sep 2021 02.01 EDTEver since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, bookstores have been flooded with volumes attempting to explain America’s unraveling.George Packer’s Last Best Hope, published earlier this year, provided one of the best diagnoses. But this new volume by New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos offers the most personal and the most powerful description yet of a country “so far out of balance that it [has] lost its center of gravity”.Peril review: Bob Woodward Trump trilogy ends on note of dire warningRead moreTo tell a story bookended by the attacks of 9/11 and the assault on the US Capitol on 6 January this year, Osnos travels to three places in which he has lived: Greenwich, Connecticut; Chicago; Clarksburg, West Virginia. His subjects range from the decline of local newspapers and the opioid crisis to the tremendous hidden costs of idiotic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.But the leitmotif of the book is best captured by a phrase he cites from the great liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who described “one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful” quests: “The search for a truly superior moral justification for selfishness.”Osnos’ book is replete with ghastly statistics. The three men – Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos – who have “more wealth than the entire bottom half of the US population combined”. The CEO salaries which spiraled from 20 times as much as a frontline worker in 1965 to 278 times in 2019. The fewer than 200 companies with Washington lobbyists in 1971 to the 2,500 that had them just 11 years later.But what makes the book come alive are the personal stories. Billionaires, coal miners and soldiers who suffer from post-traumatic stress, and all the evidence Osnos offers of failure to control excess at the top or provide meaningful help at the bottom.Above all this is a story of how mega-rich Americans have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to give themselves the power to pillage the earth, destroy the air and corrupt democracy in a thousand ways without ever being held to account.Lee Hanley is a perfect example. A Yale graduate and Greenwich resident, in 1980 he dumped George HW Bush for Ronald Reagan. Osnos’ keen eye provides a crucial detail about how Hanley’s wife, Allie, pinpointed Regan’s greatest flaw before presenting him to the Connecticut gentry: “He had on a brown tie and it was ghastly. When you go to a different part of the country, the most important thing you need to do is dress like they do. So I ran to Bloomingdale’s and bought four ties.”Reagan “wore them in all the posters after that”.Hanley spent millions more than his wife. In alliance with Richard Scaife, Robert Mercer and the Koch brothers, he trained “a generation of Republicans to adhere to ideological orthodoxy” with “a string of historic political investments”.“He saved the conservative publisher Regnery with an infusion of cash, he founded a Connecticut affiliate of a network of think tanks to advocate for low taxes and small government, and he became the principal backer of a political consulting firm formed by Roger Stone, Charlie Black and Paul Manafort, whose early clients included Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump.”Rarely has a handful of clever investments done more damage to more people.In West Virginia, where Osnos once worked for the Exponent Telegram of Clarksburg, he offers a nuanced history of a state’s transformation from hardcore Democratic to reliably Republican. A West Virginia think tank funded partly by the Kochs made a moving argument against mine-safety regulations – “Improved safety conditions result in lower money wages for workers” – then asked, “Are workers really better off being safer but making less income?”Then-governor Joe Manchin asked the author of the study to brief his cabinet and a joint session of the state legislature finance committees.Juxtaposed with the lobbyists’ many successes are heartbreaking tales of ecological catastrophe spawned by coal companies removing mountain tops. Osnos also reminds us of Manchin’s first big contribution to the national political discussion, when he ran for Senate in 2010: an ad in which he fired bullets through climate-change legislation.“For decades candidates had been photographed with guns,” Osnos writes, “but this was the first time anyone had assassinated a piece of proposed legislation on film.”Four years later, an Arizona Republican “upped the stakes” by shooting the Affordable Care Act with “a handgun, a rifle and a semiautomatic”.There is so much more in this book, including the horrific fact that America has now accumulated 310m private firearms, the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world.“The second highest,” Osnos writes, “was Yemen, which had barely half the rate.”Joe Biden by Evan Osnos review – a story of survivalRead moreThe story of the electoral backlashes, when Democrats took the House in 2018 and the White House and Senate in 2020, is one of Osnos’ only hopeful sections. The right has spent so much money to end government regulation and purchase elections, especially since the disastrous supreme court decision of Citizens United, it is astonishing American democracy has survived at all.America’s richest “launched a set of financial philanthropic and political projects that changed American ideas about government, taxes and the legitimacy of the liberal state,” Osnos writes.“In every element of his commercial and political persona, Trump was a consummation of that project … Most of all, of course, he stood for a belief in unbridled self-enrichment, and on that basis some of his most genteel supporters were willing to overlook” every other disgusting thing about him.Osnos says the assault on the Capitol reminded him of an observation by Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Seward: “There was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare.”My hope is that everyone who reads this great book will be enraged enough to redouble their efforts to undo the damage the greedy have wrought, and to take back America for its decent citizens, once and for all.
      Wildland is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
      TopicsBooksUS politicsUS domestic policyreviewsReuse this content More