Draft file opened 2024-10-02 12:17 PM. I expected to have very
little time to work on this, and that's proved accurate. Now trying
to wrap this up Monday afternoon, while I have a bit of a breather.
But I already got distracted, and spent the last hour posting a
dinner plate to
Facebook, and writing further notes in the notebook. Nero wasn't
the only one ever to fiddle while their country burns.
Wound up after 2AM, arbitrarily deciding I've done enough. Maybe
I'll add more while working on Music Week, but I should get back to
working on house. Good news, though, is that working on blog is less
painful than the house work has been.
When I got up this morning, I started reading the third chapter in
Ned Blackhawk's The Rediscovery of America, it occurred to me
that the following bit, while written about Champlain in the early
1600s, is most relevant today (pp. 81-82):
While violence was an essential institution of colonialism, it was
never enough to achieve permanent goals of empire. As political
theorists have long maintained, violence fails to create stability. It
destroys relationships -- between individuals, communities, and
nations -- and does so unpredictably. Once it is initiated, none can
predict its ultimate course. While threats upon a population do over
time result in compliance, more enduring stability requires shared
understandings of power and of the legitimate use of violence. . . .
Nor could violence ever be completely monopolized. As in New Spain,
Native peoples across North America quickly adopted the advantages
that Europeans brought. Raiders took weapons as spoils of war and
plundered Indians who were allied with Europeans or had traded with
them. They stole their metals, cloths and, if possible,
guns. Increasingly, they took captives to trade in colonial slave
markets.
Apologists and propagandists for Israel really hate it when you
describe Israel as a settler-colonial movement/nation. They resent
the implicit moral derision -- every such society has been founded
on racist violence, which we increasingly view as unjust -- but
they also must suspect that it implies eventual failure: the cases
where settler-colonialism was most successful are far in the past
(especially in America, where the Indian wars ended by 1890, and
full citizenship was accorded to Indians in 1924). But perhaps most
troubling of all is the recognition that many others have started
down this same road, and found that only a few approaches can work
(or at least have worked), and only in limited circumstances.
Top story threads:
Israel: One year ago today, some Palestinians
from Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- street gangs left free to operate in
Gaza because Israel and the US refused to allow any form of political
freedom and democratic self-governance in a narrow strip of desert with
more than 2 million people, isolated from all norms of human discourse --
staged a jail break, breaching Israel's walls, and, as brutalized
prisoners tend to do, celebrating their temporary freedom with a
heinous crime spree.[*]
Most of the people in Gaza were refugees from
Israel's "war of independence," known to Palestinians as "Nakba"
for the mass expulsions of Palestinians. From 1948-67, Egypt had
occupied Gaza. In 1967, Israel attacked Egypt, and occupied Gaza,
placing it under military rule. The situation there became even
more desperate after 2006, when Israel dismantled its settlements
in the territory, locked down the borders, left local control to
Hamas, and begun a series of increasingly devastating punitive
sieges they rationalized as "mowing the grass."
As the situation in Gaza grew more desperate, Israeli politics
drifted ever more intensely to the right, to the point where some
parties advanced genocidal responses to the Gaza revolt, while
even large segments of the nominal opposition concurred. Meanwhile,
especially under Trump, the US has become a mere rubber stamp for
whatever Israel wants. And what "Israel wants" is not just to
extirpate Hamas and punish Gaza but to take out their fury on
Palestinians in the West Bank, to complete the annexation of
Palestinian land, and to export war all the way to Iran.
[*] Per Wikipedia, the
2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel lasted two days (October 7-8),
during which 1180 Israelis (379 security forces, 797 civilians)
were killed, and 251 Israelis were taken captive, while Israeli
forces killed 1609 "militants" and captured 200 more. At the end
of those two days, Israel had secured its border with Gaza, and
had gone on the offense against the people and infrastructure of
Gaza. Israel's subsequent slaughter and destruction has been so
indiscriminate, and so systematically destructive of resources
necessary for sustaining life, that it is fairly characterized
as genocide -- a judgment that is consistent with the clearly
stated intentions of many Israeli political leaders. Moreover,
the genocide in Gaza, has provided cover allowing Israelis --
including vigilante settler-mobs protected by IDF forces -- to
attack Palestinians in the West Bank, and Israeli aggression has
now has spilled over into Lebanon.
[10-07]
Day 367: Israel orders new evacuations in Gaza, expands bombing in
Lebanon: "The Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon
continues to face stiff resistance along the border one week on,
while the Israeli army has renewed its assault on northern Gaza,
laying siege to Jabalia refugee camp for the sixth time since
October 7."
The ongoing violence has created a cycle of anxiety and trauma in
the besieged Strip, leaving young people particularly devastated.
Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health,
spoke to Anadolu about the mental health crisis in Gaza.
The amount of anxiety and the exposure to trauma, as well as the
level of anticipation of violence, is very abnormal
Mofokeng said, emphasizing the persistent threat of violence
as a major contributor to the psychological distress.
She highlighted that 50 per cent of Gazans were already suffering
from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) before the relentless
violence they experienced since 7 October, 2023. "We have to talk
about it as a deliberate infliction of mental trauma," she added.
The psychological impacts, manifesting as anxiety, nightmares,
depression and memory loss, are compounded by the absence of
adequate mental health resources.
Yet, some scars remain invisible, Mofokeng pointed out, as many
suffer in silence, with distress escalating into PTSD, eventually
leading to complex mental health issues. These only intensify for
children who have lost their entire family. She further noted that
the lack of proper mourning and dignified funerals is "very
detrimental," robbing families and communities of the chance to
heal and opening wounds that may take a lifetime to mend.
The absence of healthcare and therapy has exacerbated the
situation. "The situation is much worse," she stressed.
Tareq S Hajjaj: [10-07]
After October 7, my home became a bag I carry with me: "I have
lived through my own Nakba and understand why thousands of Palestinians
fled their homes in 1948. I made the most difficult decision of my
life and left Gaza, not knowing that what I carried might be all I
will ever possess of my homeland."
[10-07]
Israel's year of war on the West Bank: "While Israel has been
carrying out a genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, its
military and settlers have been waging another campaign of ethnic
cleansing in the West Bank, moving ever closer towards Israel's
goals of annexation." This is an often neglected but increasingly
important part of the story. This makes it clear that the root
problem is not Hamas or Palestinian "national ambitions" but the
fundamental, all-pervasive injustice of the apartheid regime. I
was hoping in early days that the powers could separate Gaza and
the West Bank, deal with the former by cutting it loose, and save
the more entangled West Bank occupation to later, at which point
cooler heads might prevail. But hotter heads made sure peace was
never given a chance, because they saw the cover of war as useful
for promoting their real goals.
Abdaljawad Omar: [10-03]
Israel's forever war and what comes next: "In Gaza and Lebanon,
Israel is projecting its force while burrowing itself deeper into a
quagmire. While it may achieve brief operational successes, it fails
to extinguish the spirit of the resistance or coerce it into
submission."
America's Israel (and Israel's America):
Spencer Ackerman: [10-03]
The year after October 7th was shaped by the 23 years after
September 11th (director's cut): "9/11 gave Israel and the US
a template to follow -- one that turned grief into rage into
dehumanization into mass death. What have we learned from the
War on Terror?" Unfortunately, "this post is for paying subscribers
only," so I don't know how he relates the US reaction to 9/11 to
the previous year's demolition of the Oslo Accords and the breakout
of the Shaul Moffaz Intifada (more commonly called "Al-Aqsa," but
Moffaz was the instigator).
[10-03]
The Shift: US preemptively backs Israel after Iran attack:
"Joe Biden said he opposes Netanyahu hitting Iran's nuclear sites,
but why should anyone trust him? The administration backed Israel's
invasion of Lebanon while he was publicly calling for a ceasefire.
Will we see a similar contradiction on Iran?"
Matthew Duss: [10-07]
Joe Biden chose this catastrophic path every step of the way:
"What's happening in the Middle East was enabled by a president with
ideological priors, aides who failed to push back, and a cheerleading
media establishment."
There's a 23-year-old quote from Benjamin Netanyahu
in The New York Times that I've been thinking a lot about
lately. Reached on the evening of September 11, 2001, the then-former
prime minister was asked what the terrorist attacks that brought down
the Twin Towers and killed almost 3,000 people meant for relations
between the United States and Israel. "It's very good," he said. Then
he quickly edited himself: "Well, not very good, but it will generate
immediate sympathy."
He may have been rude and insensitive, but he was also being
uncharacteristically honest. Like any demagogue, Netanyahu knew
instinctively that enormous pain could be easily transformed into
permission.
In addition to providing Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon a freer hand in crushing the second intifada, Netanyahu
also saw America's trauma as an opportunity to achieve a wider
set of regional security goals. As Congress was considering the
Iraq invasion, he came to the United States to lend his support.
"If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that
it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region," he
assured a congressional committee in September 2002.
James Robins: [10-07]
Israel is trapped by its own war machine: link title, actual,
with sub: "The missed moral lesson of October 7: Hamas's attack
should have triggered not military retaliation but the immediate
resumption of negotiations for a just peace." Of course, it didn't,
because Israel has never considered justice a consideration in its
very rare and never serious efforts at negotiation -- they look
for leverage, and play for time. But I do recall making the same
point on 9/11: I thought it should be viewed as a wake-up call,
as a time when the first thing you ask yourself, have I failed?
Netanyahu (and Bush) couldn't ask that question, much less answer
it. But if you just give it a few minutes of thought, you'll
realize that every war is consequential to a series of mistakes.
The least you can do is to learn from such mistakes, but the
people who yearn to fight wars never take the effort to learn.
Yousef Munayyer: [10-07]
A year that has brought us to the breaking point: "Alongside
the mass graves and beneath the tons of rubble, there may lie
another victim: the very possibility of a jointly imagined
coexistence."
Trita Parsi: [10-01]
Iran bombs Israel, but buck stops with Biden: "If Israel's response
sucks us into war, it will be on the administration's hands. Here's
why." People really need to get a better idea of motivations, costs,
and imagined rewards.
Biden's strategy has been to put enormous effort into deterring Iran
and its partners from retaliating against Israel, while doing virtually
nothing to discourage Israel from escalating in the first place. This
lopsided approach has in fact been a recipe for escalation, repeatedly
proving to Netanyahu that Washington has no intention of bringing
pressure to bear on Israel, no matter its actions.
The situation is actually worse than this, because Israel sees
nothing but positives from provoking a war that pits Iran and the
US. For starters, it keeps the US preoccupied with external threats
when the real enemy of peace is Israel itself. And if Americans get
hurt in the fracas, Netanyahu understands that will only make the
Americans more determined to fight Iran, just as he knows that his
periodic attacks on Iran and its friends only make them more determined
to strike back, even if just ineffectively, at Israel.
Mitchell Plitnick: [10-05]
The United States and Israel set out to remake the Middle East,
again: "The mood in Washington today is similar to 2003 when the
neocons of the Bush administration sought to remake the Middle East.
This time, a joint vision shared by Israel and the Biden administration
seeks to remake the region in the West's vision."
The images coming out of Lebanon and Gaza are horrifying. As I write
this, well over a million Lebanese civilians are displaced as the
Israeli military carries out punishing bombing raids across nearly
the entire country, and over 2,000 have been killed. We've watched
them drop so-called "bunker buster" bombs on residential blocks in
Lebanon's capital, Beirut, in an attempt to kill the leadership of
Hezbollah, never mind the civilians who may be in the way. Like in
Gaza, Israel is targeting hospitals and schools, border crossings,
and infrastructure. That the international community is allowing
this to go on is nothing short of a calamity.
Responsible Statecraft: [10-03]
Symposium: Will US-Israel relations survive the last year? "We
asked if the post-Oct. 7 war has permanently altered Washington's
80-year commitment to the Jewish state." Collects statements from:
Geoff Aronson, Andrew Bacevich, Daniel Bessner, Dan DePetris, Robert
Hunter, Shireen Hunter, Daniel Levy, Rajan Menon, Paul Pillar, Annelle
Sheline, Steve Simon, Barbara Slavin, Hadar Suskind, Stephen Walt,
Sarah Leah Whitson, James Zogby. While several are critics, it is
pretty obvious that the "special relationship" has held fast, with
the Biden administration providing unstinting support despite
reservations that they are unable or unwilling to act on, with most
of Congress even more emphatically in thrall.
Jonathan Guyer: [10-04]
The price of power: "America's chief humanitarian official rose
to fame by speaking out against atrocities. Now she's trapped by
one." Welcome to hell, Samantha Power.
Jeffrey D Sachs: [09-30]
Israel's ideology of genocide must be confronted and stopped:
"Israel's violent extremists now in control of its government
believe that Israel has a Biblical license, indeed a religious
mandate, to destroy the Palestinian people."
VP Debate
Zack Beauchamp: [10-01]
The only moment from the VP debate that mattered: "Vance's
'damning non-answer' on the 2020 election exposed the true stakes
for democracy in 2024." I'm a bit chagrined that the one Vance lie
that Walz chose to push back hard on was the "fate of democracy."
It's not that I don't appreciate the threat, but to understand it,
you need some context. To borrow Grover Norquist's metaphor, the
program of the right since the 1970s -- cite Potter Stewart if you
like -- has been to shrink democracy "down to the size where we
can drown it in the bathtub." We've barely noticed the shrinkage,
but only started to panic now that we can identify Trump as the
one threatening to finish the job. So right, it matters, a lot
even, but it's a bit like waiting until a hurricane or flood or
fire to discover that something is screwy with the climate --
another comparable oops!
Gabriel Debenedetti: [10-02]
How Tim Walz saved himself: "At first, he looked overmatched by
JD Vance. Then came abortion, health care, and above all, January 6.
In a Times/Siena College poll last month, 55 percent of respondents
said Trump was respected by foreign leaders while 47 percent said
that of Harris.
The ad claims Harris is not tough enough to deal with China,
Russia, Iran or Hamas. It features actors playing Vladimir Putin,
Hamas fighters and a tea-sipping ayatollah watching videos of the
candidate who wants to be the first woman president. It ends with
four clips of Kamala dancing -- a lot better than Trump does --
and a clip of Trump walking on a tarmac with a military officer
and a Secret Service agent. The tag line is: "America doesn't need
another TikTok performer. We need the strength that will protect
us."
Even though Trump lives in a miasma of self-pity and his businesses
often ended up in bankruptcy, somehow his fans mistake his swagger and
sneers for machismo. What a joke. Trump is the one who caves, a foreign
policy weakling and stooge of Putin. . . .
In a Trumpworld that thrives on mendacity, demonizing and dividing,
sympathy is weakness.
Debate watchers said, 48% to 35%, that Walz is more in touch than Vance
with the needs and problems of people like them, and by a similar margin,
48% to 39%, that Walz, rather than Vance, more closely shares their
vision for America.
M Gessen: [10-03]
The real loser of the VP debate: "It's our politics." And: "In
this audio essay, Gessen argues that when we put Trump and his acolytes
on the same platform as regular politicians and treat them equally,
'that normalization degrades our political life and degrades our
understanding of politics.'"
Andrew Prokop/Dylan Scott/Abdullah Fayyad/Christian Paz: [10-02]
3 winners and 2 losers from the Walz-Vance debate:
W: JD Vance's code switching abilities;
L: The narrative that Tim Walz is a media phenomenon;
W: Obamacare;
L: The moderators;
W: A surprising amount of decency. The bottom line is that Vance lied
outrageously (but smoothly) in his attempt to make Trump out as a
reasoned, skillful public servant, while Walz somewhat awkwardly
dialed his own criticism back. From point two:
It was not exactly a masterful showing, though. Walz seemed uncomfortable
in the format compared to the smooth-talking Vance, he didn't really seem
to have one overarching message that he kept returning to, and he often
missed opportunities to call out Vance's lies and misrepresentations.
On the moderators:
From the start, Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan, the CBS news
moderators, made it clear they did not think it was their job to
keep the candidates grounded in reality. . . . The questions
themselves were either not probing enough or poorly framed.
Jeffrey St Clair: [10-04]
Notes from a phony campaign: the great un-debate: "This week's
vice-presidential debate, one of the most tedious and dull in US
history, was praised by the punditocracy for its civility. Is civility
in politics what we need when the current government is arming a
genocide and the rival campaign wants to arrest 15 million people
and deport them?" Also: "Why did Walz try to humanize a jerk who
claims Haitians are BBQing pets?"
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [10-01]
VP debate: preemptive strike on Iran now? "This was the only
foreign question of the night, which made it easier for everyone,
apparently." The question was horrible, even to suggest such a
thing. The obvious answer was: no, never, wars should be ended,
not started when there is any chance of avoiding one. The answers --
unlike John McCain's "bomb bomb bomb Iran" refrain -- at least were
evasive, but in failing to address the question, allowed it to hang
in the air, as if the idea is something a sane person might consider.
It wasn't, and should have been flagged as such.
Election notes:
Ed Kilgore: [10-07]
Harris and Trump are deploying party defectors very differently:
They may be calculating differently, but the dominant issue is the
same. Trump is using Gabbard and Kennedy as testimony that he's the
lesser world war threat, without him having to soften his tough guy
image. Harris, on the other hand, is attracting some Republicans
with extreme neocon credentials, like the Cheneys -- not primarily
to show that she's the hawk in the contest, but their support does
reassure the neocons that she's likely to stick with the conventional
wisdom on foreign policy (which is decidedly neocon, despite their
disastrous track record).
Kevin T Dugan: [10-04]
Trump Media has major new problems: "A whistleblower alleges that
CEO Devin Nunes is running the struggling Donald Trump-owned company
into the ground."
[10-05]
Vance says Trump shooting inevitable: "Speaking in the town where
Trump was nearly assassinated, Vance laid blame for the shooting on
Democrats."
David Daley: [10-04]
Two men have re-engineered the US electoral system in favor of
Republicans: "If the right strews constitutional chaos over
the certification of this presidential election, two people will
have cleared the path." Leonard Leo (who packed the Supreme Court)
and Chris Jankowski (who refined the art of gerrymandering).
I don't mean to pick on Margaret Sullivan. I think the fact that even
she can't find the words to explain what's so horrifying about this
suggests that maybe there aren't any words -- or to be more precise,
maybe there aren't words that can convey what's so horrifying about
this to people who've watched Trump for the past nine years and still
aren't horrified.
Calling a political opponent "mentally impaired" and "mentally
disabled" ought to be a very bad look for any candidate, and it should
be self-evidently bad for reasons Joe Scarborough noted this morning:
"If [Harris] were so quote stupid, if she were so quote mentally
impaired, if she were quote so mentally disabled, why did she destroy
him in a debate for 90 minutes, humiliate him, and beat him so badly
that he refuses to even debate her on Fox News?"
"That's question number one," he continued. "And if she's had this
mental condition from birth, then why did he give her thousands of
dollars in 2014 for her political campaign when she was running for
the United States Senate?"
But it's unsuitable language for any candidate to use -- except it
isn't anymore, because talk radio and Fox News coarsened the political
culture, in lockstep with Republican politicians from Newt Gingrich on,
and now there's a large percentage of the voting population for whom
there's nothing a Republican can say that will lead to a
withdrawal of support, except perhaps a kind word about a Democrat. . . .
Trump can't be discredited any more than he already has been. Our
only recourse is a large turnout by people who are neither impressed
by his rhetoric nor numbed by it.
If you're Vance, the only reason you agree to take Trump on as a client
is the hope that he will pay your seven-figure fees before you, yourself,
end up in jail.
Alas, as the history of broken dreams isn't one of the subjects
taught at Yale Law School, Vance seems to be missing the point that
most of his predecessors -- Michael Cohen, Sidney Powell, Kenneth
Cheseboro, Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliana, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark,
and Alina Habba (to list only a few Trump attorneys who are drifting
up the river) -- never got paid and will probably end up in jail long
before Trump himself is fitted with an oversized orange necktie.
Nicholas Wu/Madison Fernandez: [10-04]
House Democrats' new bogeyman: Project 2025: "The party is making
a concerted effort to go on the attack using the controversial set of
conservative policy proposals." It's about time. Similar plots have
been circulating for decades, but this year's edition exposes the
threats exceptionally tangible form. Moreover, it's never been easier
to imagine Republican apparatchiki blindly following whatever master
plan they're given. Project 2025 makes clear and comprehensible how
pervasive rotten ideas are throughout the Republican Party.
Jonathan Chait: [10-03]
Kamala Harris is right to get endorsements from bad Republicans:
Like Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales. Of course, Chait loves this
because it gives him another excuse to take digs at Sanders and AOC,
who also, like Chait, support Harris. Different people have different
reasons for who they vote for, and these particulars aren't totally
deluded in thinking a public announcement might help, and probably
won't hurt. What bothers me is the suggestion that they see Harris
as more in tune with their neocon warmongering legacy, and that
their endorsements can be taken as evidence that Harris is more
war-prone than Trump.
Michael Kruse: [10-04]
The woman who made Kamala Harris -- and modern America: "Shyamala
Gopalan's immigrant story explains the roots of a multiethnic society
that has defined the country in the 21st century -- and also become a
political flashpoint."
Elie Honig: [10-03]
Jack Smith's October Surprise: That's the title on the index
page. The title on the page itself is "Jack Smith's October cheap
shot." Honig's complaining that Smith's "proactive filing" was too
long, disclosing many more details of his case than was necessary,
and that filing it ahead of the election was "prejudicial." Honig
goes to great lengths here to parade his disapproval. In charging
Smith with playing politics to get at Trump, he never considers
the possibility that politics is what has kept this case from
going to trial, and that the only way to break that logjam might
be to do what Smith has done, and remind the public what evidence
says, and why it is all the more relevant before the election.
The way the court system is rigged, it's unlikely that Trump will
ever "face justice," at least on federal charges, but the people
deserve to know what he did, before they risk giving him the
chance to do it again.
Li Zhou: [09-26]
The Eric Adams indictment, explained: "Fancy plane tickets, donations,
and political favors: what to know about the charges." I hadn't noted
the New York City mayor, which seems like the sort of run-of-the-mill
corruption that occasionally traps unwary Democrats, yet Republicans --
despite being ideologically committed to furthering corruption -- are
rarely held accountable for. That plus it's a local issue, but in a
locale that generates a lot of political media, so we're getting
a cluster of stories.
Jeffery C Mays/Stefanos Chen: [10-05]
Big business saw an ally in Eric Adams, and overlooked his issues:
"New York's business community threw its support behind Adams, and
continued backing him even as his legal problems began to threaten
the governance of the city."
Intelligencer Staff: [10-07]
Hurricane Milton intensifies to category 5, Florida prepares: live
updates. The storm formed in a hot spot in the Gulf of Mexico,
heading northeast. Projection is that it will hit Tampa, with 175
mph winds and a 15-foot storm surge, on Wednesday, cross Florida,
and continue heading east into the Atlantic. More Milton:
Li Zhou: [10-03]
Get used to more absurdly hot Octobers: "This year's unrelenting
heat, explained." Last few days here in Wichita have been in the
mid-90s, which is what I expect for first two weeks of September,
but hard to remember anything this hot this late in the year.
Dylan Scott: [10-02]
Why is US health care like this? "America unintentionally built
a health care system that is hard to fix." Short article, but covers
the basics. It's not a system. It wasn't designed. It was created
as opportunities to profit were relentlessly exploited, resulting
in various gaps and inequities, which have been partly compensated
for with a patchwork of fixes designed mostly to preserve previous
profit centers. And each of those profit centers has its own lobby,
which is to say clout within the American political "system."
Mark Mazzetti/Adam Entous: [10-05]
Behind Trump's views on Ukraine: Putin's gambit and a political
grudge: "The roots of Donald Trump's animus toward Ukraine --
an issue with profound consequences should he be elected again --
can be found in a yearlong series of events spanning 2016 and
2017."
Constant Méheut: [10-05]
Ukraine's Donbas strategy: Retreat slowly and maximize Russia's
losses: "The idea is to use rope-a-dope tactics, letting Russian
forces pound away until they have exhausted themselves. It's far
from clear if the Ukrainian strategy will succeed." Maybe that's
because "rope-a-dope" is a strategy that favors the one with the
greater reserves of strength, which isn't Ukraine.
Elsewhere in the world and/or/in spite of America's empire:
Richard Slotkin: [10-05]
To understand Trump vs. Harris, you must know these American myths:
The author has mapped out the entire history of American mythmaking
in his book
A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Struggle for America,
so applying his methodology to one more election is pretty easy.
I've read his book, and previously cited various reviews. I've
long placed great importance on the notion of myth -- paradigmatic
stories that are widely believed, transcending fact and fiction --
so I'm very used to this form of critique. Still, there is a risk
that his categories have become too pat, and forcing new facts to
fit them tends to lose your grip on anything new. For instance, it's
easy enough to see Trump playing off the "lost cause playbook," but
those of us who grew up in what was still the Jim Crow era should
be struck by how much weirder it seems this time around. On the
other hand, when Democrats (like Obama/Clinton) embrace "American
exceptionalism," they look naive and foolish, and easily loose
track of the reforms they understand we need.
Jennifer Szalai: [09-29]
Ta-Nehisi Coates returns to the political fray, calling out
injustice:
"The
Message marks his re-entry as a public intellectual determined
to wield his moral authority, especially regarding Israel and the
occupied territories." More on the book below, but first a good
introduction is a bit of
CBS Mornings interview with Coates. A quick sampling of reviews.
(I have a copy of the book, but haven't cracked it open yet.)
Jay Caspian Kang: [10-04]
Why Ta-Nehisi Coates writes: "In The Message, Coates urges
young writers to aspire to 'nothing less than doing their part to
save the world,' but his latest work reveals the limits of his own
advice."
Peter Beinart: [10-01]
this first question: would you support a preemptive strike on Iran
rather than how would you stop this regional war pretty much encapsulates
what is wrong with US media coverage of this conflict
Local tags (these can be linked to directly):
music.
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