newyorker--2020-11-10--Joe Biden Must Be a President for America’s Workers

On Monday , Joe Biden , the President-elect , unveiled the members of his coronavirus task force and warned of a “ dark winter ” ahead .
Even as encouraging news emerged about a potential vaccine , case numbers have continued to climb in alarming fashion .
The flip side of the virus ’ s rapid spread is heightened concern about the economy .
Last Friday ’ s job figures showed the unemployment rate falling to 6.9 per cent in October , a welcome reminder that , since a historic slump earlier this year , hiring has rebounded more rapidly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than eleven million Americans are still out of work .
And , with further restrictions on economic activity likely , the outlook is potentially grim—especially given that Congress failed to pass a new stimulus package before the election .
With a vaccine unlikely to be widely available until well into 2021 , there is an urgent need to bolster the economy between now and then , and to insure a strong recovery beyond that horizon .
The pandemic presents a huge challenge to Biden .
Yet it also provides an opportunity for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which often got lost—or distorted—in an election that was essentially a referendum on Trump .
Speaking in Warm Springs , Georgia , a week before the election , Biden invoked F.D.R.
, who kept a vacation retreat there : “ We ’ ll act to pass my economic plan that will finally reward work , not wealth , in this country , ” he said .
“ We ’ ll act to pass my health-care plan to provide affordable , accessible health care for every American , and drug prices that are dramatically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pass the Biden climate plan , meeting the challenges of a climate crisis while creating millions of good-paying , high-paying labor jobs .
We ’ ll act to address systemic racism in our country , and we ’ ll act to give working people a fair shot again in this country.
” Obviously , Biden gave that speech before it became clear that he might well have to deal with a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate .
The outcome of the two runoff elections in Georgia , scheduled for early January , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hope to achieve through legislation—a fact he knows from his experience in the Obama Administration .
( If not for the Republican Scott Brown ’ s victory in a January , 2010 , special election in Massachusetts , which was prompted by the death of Ted Kennedy , Obamacare might well have a public option already . )
But , even if the G.O.P .
ends up with a narrow majority in the Senate , the goal of the Biden Administration must be the same as the one he invoked in Georgia : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that prioritizes work over wealth and sets the country on a new course , just as F.D.R.
’ s New Deal did in the nineteen-thirties .
In a time of intense polarization and divided government , that ’ s a tall order , to be sure .
If 2020 has demonstrated anything , though , it has been the need to rebalance the economy to the benefit of working-class Americans .
First came the pandemic , which the working class has been disproportionately affected by—just as , in the preceding generation , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , technological change , and a sustained effort to reduce the power of labor unions .
Then came the election , in which an alarmingly large number of American workers voted , once again , for a race-baiting , plutocratic right-wing populist .
Biden isn ’ t someone with strong ideological views or a fixed approach to economics .
He sees himself as a problem solver , which , in this instance , may be an advantage .
His job is to fashion a concrete economic agenda and use the coalition-building skills that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at least some of it enacted .
He should begin with the pandemic and build outward from there , pushing policies designed to increase the bargaining power of workers , and to restore the link between productivity growth and wage growth .
In the decades after the Second World War , this link produced a more equitable U.S. economy , but , under the impact of globalization , technological innovation , and conservative policies , it has been sundered .
The immediate task is to help the millions of Americans who have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some of whom are facing the possibility of losing their jobless benefits entirely .
The CARES Act , which Congress passed in March , provided funding for states to extend benefits from twenty-six weeks to thirty-nine weeks , but this provision is due to expire at the end of December .
Many states have also pledged to extend benefits on their own , but they need more federal support to make good on this promise .
A spending package that deals with this and other aspects of the pandemic , such as insuring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is the first priority .
But it is only the first .
When the 117th Congress gathers in January , Biden must push for a comprehensive stimulus package , which would include funding for such measures as a national child-care program , expanded tax credits for workers on low wages , and incentives for green investment .
Haggling with Senate Republicans over money is only part of the task ahead , however .
In looking to create an environment that is more favorable to workers and families on modest incomes , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t hinge on obtaining budget approval .
Such policies include raising the national minimum wage from its paltry level of $ 7.25 an hour .
Ideally , the target should be fifteen dollars , but any raise would require Senate approval .
Even without legislation , though , a Biden Administration could create a fifteen-dollar minimum wage for people who do contract work for the federal government—there are about four million of them .
Studies show that higher minimum wages don ’ t impact just the lowest paid : they ripple upward without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ top priority of labor unions is enacting the PRO Act , which would make labor organizing easier , and which the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed earlier this year .
But , even if Senate Republicans block this legislation , a Biden Administration can insure some progress by appointing a Labor Secretary who prioritizes labor rights and by revitalizing the National Labor Relations Board , which is supposed to enforce existing labor laws and rules .
In many parts of the economy , particularly those that employ a lot of immigrants and minority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , employers routinely flout these regulations .
There are other areas where the new Administration will have the capacity to move ahead without Republican approval .
On its own accord , it can protect the interests of workers in future trade agreements ; provide some student-loan relief for heavily indebted people on modest incomes ; appoint financial regulators who are serious about rooting out wrongdoing and abusive behavior ; and use antitrust policy to tackle the monopoly power that enables many large corporations to gouge their customers .
( For-profit hospital chains and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The new Administration will also have the power to appoint policymakers to the Federal Reserve who are committed to keeping unemployment at a very low level .
Recent experience confirms the ancient wisdom that a tight labor market is a crucial component of raising wages .
Republicans are already claiming that Biden hasn ’ t won a mandate , but his election platform included virtually all these proposals .
And , despite the mixed results of the election , there is no reason to doubt that most of them would be highly popular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demonstrated that progressive , pro-worker policies are not just good economics , but also can be electoral winners , ” Thea M. Lee , the president of the Economic Policy Institute , a progressive think tank , pointed out last week .
“ By overwhelming margins , Florida residents voted to raise the state ’ s minimum wage to $ 15 an hour , and Colorado residents voted for a 12-week paid family and medical leave program.
” Proposals like these make economic sense , and they are also vital to the health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more Americans of modest means from falling under the sway of Trumpism , it is imperative to deliver them some tangible benefits .
Accounts of why so many Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley voted for a President who vilified Hispanic immigrants point to , among other things , the stimulus checks that bore his name .
Presidential politics isn ’ t entirely transactional , but voters do respond to leaders and parties that they believe have their back .
From Day One , Biden and his appointees must make perfectly clear which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ About the 2020 Election • Trump has survived impeachment , twenty-six sexual-misconduct accusations , and thousands of lawsuits .
His luck may well end now that Joe Biden will be the next President .
• What happens if Trump fights the election results ?
• Here is what you can do if Trump stages a coup .
• For the G.O.P.
, the future may look like Florida , which is becoming less white but not much less conservative .
Can Republicans become a multiracial working-class party ?
• Sign up for our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our reporters and columnists .

On Monday, Joe Biden, the President-elect, unveiled the members of his coronavirus task force and warned of a “dark winter” ahead. Even as encouraging news emerged about a potential vaccine, case numbers have continued to climb in alarming fashion. The flip side of the virus’s rapid spread is heightened concern about the economy. Last Friday’s job figures showed the unemployment rate falling to 6.9 per cent in October, a welcome reminder that, since a historic slump earlier this year, hiring has rebounded more rapidly than many experts expected. However, more than eleven million Americans are still out of work. And, with further restrictions on economic activity likely, the outlook is potentially grim—especially given that Congress failed to pass a new stimulus package before the election. With a vaccine unlikely to be widely available until well into 2021, there is an urgent need to bolster the economy between now and then, and to insure a strong recovery beyond that horizon.
The pandemic presents a huge challenge to Biden. Yet it also provides an opportunity for him to frame his policy agenda, which often got lost—or distorted—in an election that was essentially a referendum on Trump. Speaking in Warm Springs, Georgia, a week before the election, Biden invoked F.D.R., who kept a vacation retreat there: “We’ll act to pass my economic plan that will finally reward work, not wealth, in this country,” he said. “We’ll act to pass my health-care plan to provide affordable, accessible health care for every American, and drug prices that are dramatically lowered. We’ll act to pass the Biden climate plan, meeting the challenges of a climate crisis while creating millions of good-paying, high-paying labor jobs. We’ll act to address systemic racism in our country, and we’ll act to give working people a fair shot again in this country.”
Obviously, Biden gave that speech before it became clear that he might well have to deal with a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate. The outcome of the two runoff elections in Georgia, scheduled for early January, will determine what the President-elect can realistically hope to achieve through legislation—a fact he knows from his experience in the Obama Administration. (If not for the Republican Scott Brown’s victory in a January, 2010, special election in Massachusetts, which was prompted by the death of Ted Kennedy, Obamacare might well have a public option already.) But, even if the G.O.P. ends up with a narrow majority in the Senate, the goal of the Biden Administration must be the same as the one he invoked in Georgia: the creation of a new social contract that prioritizes work over wealth and sets the country on a new course, just as F.D.R.’s New Deal did in the nineteen-thirties.
In a time of intense polarization and divided government, that’s a tall order, to be sure. If 2020 has demonstrated anything, though, it has been the need to rebalance the economy to the benefit of working-class Americans. First came the pandemic, which the working class has been disproportionately affected by—just as, in the preceding generation, it was at the short end of globalization, technological change, and a sustained effort to reduce the power of labor unions. Then came the election, in which an alarmingly large number of American workers voted, once again, for a race-baiting, plutocratic right-wing populist.
Biden isn’t someone with strong ideological views or a fixed approach to economics. He sees himself as a problem solver, which, in this instance, may be an advantage. His job is to fashion a concrete economic agenda and use the coalition-building skills that he demonstrated during the campaign to get at least some of it enacted. He should begin with the pandemic and build outward from there, pushing policies designed to increase the bargaining power of workers, and to restore the link between productivity growth and wage growth. In the decades after the Second World War, this link produced a more equitable U.S. economy, but, under the impact of globalization, technological innovation, and conservative policies, it has been sundered.
The immediate task is to help the millions of Americans who have been out of work for many months, some of whom are facing the possibility of losing their jobless benefits entirely. The CARES Act, which Congress passed in March, provided funding for states to extend benefits from twenty-six weeks to thirty-nine weeks, but this provision is due to expire at the end of December. Many states have also pledged to extend benefits on their own, but they need more federal support to make good on this promise. A spending package that deals with this and other aspects of the pandemic, such as insuring the ready availability and distribution of vaccines, is the first priority. But it is only the first.
When the 117th Congress gathers in January, Biden must push for a comprehensive stimulus package, which would include funding for such measures as a national child-care program, expanded tax credits for workers on low wages, and incentives for green investment. Haggling with Senate Republicans over money is only part of the task ahead, however. In looking to create an environment that is more favorable to workers and families on modest incomes, there are plenty of proposals that don’t hinge on obtaining budget approval.
Such policies include raising the national minimum wage from its paltry level of $7.25 an hour. Ideally, the target should be fifteen dollars, but any raise would require Senate approval. Even without legislation, though, a Biden Administration could create a fifteen-dollar minimum wage for people who do contract work for the federal government—there are about four million of them. Studies show that higher minimum wages don’t impact just the lowest paid: they ripple upward without any discernible increase in layoffs.
The top priority of labor unions is enacting the PRO Act, which would make labor organizing easier, and which the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed earlier this year. But, even if Senate Republicans block this legislation, a Biden Administration can insure some progress by appointing a Labor Secretary who prioritizes labor rights and by revitalizing the National Labor Relations Board, which is supposed to enforce existing labor laws and rules. In many parts of the economy, particularly those that employ a lot of immigrants and minority workers, such as agriculture and caregiving, employers routinely flout these regulations.
There are other areas where the new Administration will have the capacity to move ahead without Republican approval. On its own accord, it can protect the interests of workers in future trade agreements; provide some student-loan relief for heavily indebted people on modest incomes; appoint financial regulators who are serious about rooting out wrongdoing and abusive behavior; and use antitrust policy to tackle the monopoly power that enables many large corporations to gouge their customers. (For-profit hospital chains and broadband providers are two examples.) The new Administration will also have the power to appoint policymakers to the Federal Reserve who are committed to keeping unemployment at a very low level. Recent experience confirms the ancient wisdom that a tight labor market is a crucial component of raising wages.
Republicans are already claiming that Biden hasn’t won a mandate, but his election platform included virtually all these proposals. And, despite the mixed results of the election, there is no reason to doubt that most of them would be highly popular. “Many elections across the country demonstrated that progressive, pro-worker policies are not just good economics, but also can be electoral winners,” Thea M. Lee, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, pointed out last week. “By overwhelming margins, Florida residents voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, and Colorado residents voted for a 12-week paid family and medical leave program.”
Proposals like these make economic sense, and they are also vital to the health of our democracy. To prevent even more Americans of modest means from falling under the sway of Trumpism, it is imperative to deliver them some tangible benefits. Accounts of why so many Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley voted for a President who vilified Hispanic immigrants point to, among other things, the stimulus checks that bore his name. Presidential politics isn’t entirely transactional, but voters do respond to leaders and parties that they believe have their back. From Day One, Biden and his appointees must make perfectly clear which side they are on.
Read More About the 2020 Election


newyorker--2020-11-10--Why America Needs a Reckoning with the Trump Era

Biden is poised to take office following the most divisive and destructive Presidency in memory .
Speaking to his supporters ’ collective desire to leave behind the nightmare of the past four years , he promised to end “ this grim era of demonization.
” He stressed that , in choosing him , a majority of Americans opted to “ marshal the forces of decency and the forces of fairness .
To marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope ” —the forces of everything good , reliable , and familiar that can help us shake the feeling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dark reality .
Biden promised to “ restore the soul of America.
” The soul of America has been battered by a hateful and lying President , by a government intent on destroying itself , and , when the COVID-19 pandemic struck , by a government that demonstratively rejected the value of human life .
The Trump Administration taught Americans that no one will take care of us , our parents , and our children , because our lives are worthless , disposable .
It has taught Americans that this country is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us that we are at risk of being murdered by illegal aliens or overrun by violent protesters—while our lived experience showed us that we are forever on the brink of disaster and that no one will protect us , whether from illness or economic hardship .
Even now , Trump , in refusing to accept electoral defeat , has continued to try to bully reality into submission .
How can the soul of a country be healed after this kind of trauma ?
We are certainly not the first society to face this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other places , our trauma of the past four years looks small .
This time of living with a cruel , ignorant leader was blessedly brief .
Other countries have had to recover from tyranny and totalitarianism , from gulags , disappearances , and genocide—and the United States has its own unaddressed legacies of enslavement and colonization that ultimately overshadow Trumpism .
Our current transition is no ordinary transfer of power : in reversing Trump ’ s autocratic attempt , voters have chosen between two fundamentally different political futures .
The broad lessons @ @ @ @ @ @ @ apply to us .
In general , these societies have had to choose between two paths : the path of reckoning and the path of forgetting .
The arguments in favor of forgetting are always at our fingertips .
They were intelligible in Biden ’ s and Harris ’ s victory speeches .
“ To make progress , we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy , ” Biden said .
The fear of divisiveness—and the sheer exhaustion that divisive politics breeds—easily translates into the desire to let sleeping dogs lie .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russian constitutional court of the post-Soviet era scrambled a planned public trial of the Communist Party , and many of the country ’ s leaders called on the people to let bygones be bygones .
Their motivation was largely pragmatic .
A real reckoning would have swept up everyone who had any government experience , leaving the bureaucracy understaffed ; it also would have cut through families and communities , exposing past sins .
Finally , a reckoning , whether in the courts or in the media , was bound to sap energy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government wanted to show a better way , one that would have rendered the past irrelevant .
That plan didn ’ t work .
Within a few years , as old divisions turned into unbridgeable chasms , the history of Soviet totalitarianism , left unexamined , gave way to all-encompassing nostalgia .
America ’ s crimes against itself are not on par with Russia ’ s , but the arguments that are already taking shape are similar : we should focus on the future , not dwell in the past ; we shouldn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of his conspiracy-minded followers ’ persecution narrative ; we long for a news cycle liberated from Trumpism .
In the past half century—starting with Gerald Ford ’ s pardon of Richard Nixon , continuing through Al Gore ’ s ceding of the Presidential election to George W. Bush , and up to , for now , Barack Obama ’ s decision not to investigate the crimes of the Bush Administration—American political culture turned forgiving and forgetting first into a virtue and then into a fetish .
A reckoning would require a future Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A reckoning may take different forms—investigations , hearings , trials , public assemblies—but it must be a national project , not the heroic quest of a lone federal prosecutor , state attorney general , or investigative reporter .
The Administration would have to lead it , and would have to accept that its policies and actions need to share the front pages , for some time , with an examination of Trump ’ s four years in office .
Consider the consequences of choosing against a reckoning—what we would leave in place by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawmakers who enabled Trump , some of whom are refusing to recognize the results of the election , will likely continue to hold and win office .
Executive-branch employees will continue to publish tell-all memoirs and secure appointments at think tanks and colleges as they await the next Republican Administration .
In other words , they will continue to be members in good-enough standing of the political élite , demonstrating that political power in the U.S. confers a lasting immunity from prosecution and public reproach .
Or , as Trump once memorably put @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a star , they let you do it .
You can do anything.
” As for the rest of us , if we choose to move forward without a reckoning , we move into the future lugging the trauma : the trauma of four years of seeing and hearing a President who makes us feel ashamed of looking and listening ; the trauma , for many immigrants , of fearing for themselves and their children , and , for nonimmigrants , of being complicit in the war on immigrants ; the trauma of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use the government as an annex to its own private enterprise ; the trauma of seeing friends and family get sick and die in a pandemic , the effects of which could have been ameliorated ; the trauma of half the country , led by the President , denying the existence of a deadly disease and refusing to protect themselves and others ; the trauma of seeing American troops used against protesters ; the trauma of hearing a President address calls for a reckoning with structural racism by fanning racist hatred ; the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The election does not wash away this pain , anger , fear , and helplessness , especially because this election was by no means a landslide : looking at the percentages of the popular vote cast for each candidate , one could conclude that this was just a normal electoral contest .
It was not .
For all the trauma that humanity has managed to inflict upon itself , we know remarkably little about recovering from it .
Psychologists and psychiatrists who specialize in collective , rather than individual , trauma are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people who study collective trauma favor is called narrative therapy .
A few years ago , when I was researching a book on totalitarian trauma in Russia , I spent time with some of the originators of this approach , at the Dulwich Centre , in Adelaide , Australia .
Their work , which has included indigenous communities in Australia , has been applied all over the world .
The approach involves a number of methods , including storytelling , letter-writing and rituals .
People may tell what they did and what was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their stories repeatedly in specific settings and formats , and they may produce a record of the telling .
This approach accomplishes several goals .
By creating new rituals , it gives voice to people who have not been heard in public .
By focussing on the acts of telling and listening , it may challenge assumptions about justice as the act of meting out punishment .
By involving a larger public , some of the people who work on collective trauma seek to address the issue of moral injury .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been inflicted on society as a whole , not only on the victims but also on the perpetrators and the bystanders—not in the same way , to be sure , and not in equal measure , but it is all of society that has been injured .
The goal of reckoning is moral restoration .
Anticipating the end of the Trump Presidency , some people have suggested that we should create truth-and-reconciliation commissions to deal with its legacy .
My colleague Jill Lepore , writing in the Washington Post , called this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the Trump Administration ’ s “ wrongdoing—a litany that includes corruption , fomenting insurrection , separating parents and children at the border , and violently suppressing political dissent—should be investigated by journalists , chronicled by historians and , in some instances , tried in ordinary courts.
” In other words , she argued , American democracy would be best served by treating the Trump Presidency as a bad version of an ordinary political occurrence—a President unseated by voters and evaluated by regular institutions .
( Lepore favors truth-and-reconciliation commissions for dealing with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , such as the legacies of enslavement and colonization . )
Responding to Lepore , in The Nation , Elie Mystal argued that existing institutions can not be entrusted entirely with the task of reckoning , because all of these institutions have “ in some way failed ” over the past four years ; their complicity would have to be part of the reckoning .
Some of the failures of the Trump Administration , Mystal wrote , such as the negligence that caused the deaths of tens of thousands from COVID-19 , exceed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prosecuted through regular channels .
Past decisions to move on , to stay the hand of vengeance—such as the Obama Administration ’ s decision not to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate illegal detentions during the George W. Bush Administration—were mistakes that are partly responsible for our current predicament .
I think that Lepore and Mystal are both right .
Part of what distinguishes our current situation is that the institutions of state have not been entirely corrupted , and the people who have suffered grave injury have not been rendered entirely voiceless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invent an entirely new set of rituals , because some existing institutions provide them .
A reckoning may include congressional hearings , special-counsel investigations , court proceedings , town halls , journalistic projects , truth-and-reconciliation commissions , and some yet-to-be-invented formats .
All of these are ritualized ways to acknowledge and document the injury , to tell stories—and to tell these stories not in the company of your closest friends and family , who have heard them before , but in public , before an audience of people , some of whom are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of speaking across differences is what makes such processes political .
It is also what gives them their healing potential .
The question is whether we , as a nation , opt for a reckoning with Trumpism , and whether a future Biden Administration assumes the responsibility of guiding the nation through it .
Public rituals of telling the stories of the Trump era would be healing because they would insure that people are heard .
They would create accountability and transparency , not necessarily by handing out criminal punishment but by exacting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who lied for Trump away from prestigious fellowships , and people who worked with Trump and broke the law out of government and think tanks .
Most important , they would force us to ask the question of what made the Trump Presidency possible .
In a brief talk that was recorded this summer , the New York psychologist Jack Saul , who studies collective trauma , made what he called “ a moral proposal ” for national healing .
He proposed a sequence of rituals : the rituals of remembrance , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of protest to assert our basic values , and rituals of envisioning the future that we would like to attain and what we must become in order to inhabit the new world.
” Put more simply , we have to talk about what happened and about how we go on living in such a way that it doesn ’ t happen again .
Of course , this process can ’ t succeed as long as nearly equal numbers of Americans live in two non-intersecting realities .
But such a process is also our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When you have a deep , festering wound , you do not heal it by pretending there was no injury : you clean it out , and then you stitch it up .
Read More About the 2020 Election • Trump has survived impeachment , twenty-six sexual-misconduct accusations , and thousands of lawsuits .
His luck may well end now that Joe Biden will be the next President .
• What happens if Trump fights the election results ?
• Here is what you can do if Trump stages a coup .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ may look like Florida , which is becoming less white but not much less conservative .
Can Republicans become a multiracial working-class party ?
• Sign up for our daily newsletter for insight and analysis from our reporters and columnists .

On Saturday evening, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris gave their victory speeches, reminding Americans and the world what a political leader can sound like: thoughtful rather than ignorant, authoritative rather than arrogant, empathetic rather than callous. They promised healing and spoke of unity. The allure of normalcy was immense.
Biden is poised to take office following the most divisive and destructive Presidency in memory. Speaking to his supporters’ collective desire to leave behind the nightmare of the past four years, he promised to end “this grim era of demonization.” He stressed that, in choosing him, a majority of Americans opted to “marshal the forces of decency and the forces of fairness. To marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope”—the forces of everything good, reliable, and familiar that can help us shake the feeling of living in an unstable and unrelentingly dark reality. Biden promised to “restore the soul of America.”
The soul of America has been battered by a hateful and lying President, by a government intent on destroying itself, and, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, by a government that demonstratively rejected the value of human life. The Trump Administration taught Americans that no one will take care of us, our parents, and our children, because our lives are worthless, disposable. It has taught Americans that this country is a dangerous place. The President kept telling us that we are at risk of being murdered by illegal aliens or overrun by violent protesters—while our lived experience showed us that we are forever on the brink of disaster and that no one will protect us, whether from illness or economic hardship. Even now, Trump, in refusing to accept electoral defeat, has continued to try to bully reality into submission.
How can the soul of a country be healed after this kind of trauma? We are certainly not the first society to face this question. Relative to other times and other places, our trauma of the past four years looks small. This time of living with a cruel, ignorant leader was blessedly brief. Other countries have had to recover from tyranny and totalitarianism, from gulags, disappearances, and genocide—and the United States has its own unaddressed legacies of enslavement and colonization that ultimately overshadow Trumpism. Our current transition is no ordinary transfer of power: in reversing Trump’s autocratic attempt, voters have chosen between two fundamentally different political futures. The broad lessons of societies that have undergone major transitions apply to us. In general, these societies have had to choose between two paths: the path of reckoning and the path of forgetting.
The arguments in favor of forgetting are always at our fingertips. They were intelligible in Biden’s and Harris’s victory speeches. “To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy,” Biden said. The fear of divisiveness—and the sheer exhaustion that divisive politics breeds—easily translates into the desire to let sleeping dogs lie. In the early nineteen-nineties, the first Russian constitutional court of the post-Soviet era scrambled a planned public trial of the Communist Party, and many of the country’s leaders called on the people to let bygones be bygones. Their motivation was largely pragmatic. A real reckoning would have swept up everyone who had any government experience, leaving the bureaucracy understaffed; it also would have cut through families and communities, exposing past sins. Finally, a reckoning, whether in the courts or in the media, was bound to sap energy and attention; Boris Yeltsin’s government wanted to show a better way, one that would have rendered the past irrelevant. That plan didn’t work. Within a few years, as old divisions turned into unbridgeable chasms, the history of Soviet totalitarianism, left unexamined, gave way to all-encompassing nostalgia.
America’s crimes against itself are not on par with Russia’s, but the arguments that are already taking shape are similar: we should focus on the future, not dwell in the past; we shouldn’t play into Trump and some of his conspiracy-minded followers’ persecution narrative; we long for a news cycle liberated from Trumpism. In the past half century—starting with Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, continuing through Al Gore’s ceding of the Presidential election to George W. Bush, and up to, for now, Barack Obama’s decision not to investigate the crimes of the Bush Administration—American political culture turned forgiving and forgetting first into a virtue and then into a fetish. A reckoning would require a future Biden Administration to dispense with this tradition. A reckoning may take different forms—investigations, hearings, trials, public assemblies—but it must be a national project, not the heroic quest of a lone federal prosecutor, state attorney general, or investigative reporter. The Administration would have to lead it, and would have to accept that its policies and actions need to share the front pages, for some time, with an examination of Trump’s four years in office.
Consider the consequences of choosing against a reckoning—what we would leave in place by choosing not to look back. Republican lawmakers who enabled Trump, some of whom are refusing to recognize the results of the election, will likely continue to hold and win office. Executive-branch employees will continue to publish tell-all memoirs and secure appointments at think tanks and colleges as they await the next Republican Administration. In other words, they will continue to be members in good-enough standing of the political élite, demonstrating that political power in the U.S. confers a lasting immunity from prosecution and public reproach. Or, as Trump once memorably put it, “And when you are a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
As for the rest of us, if we choose to move forward without a reckoning, we move into the future lugging the trauma: the trauma of four years of seeing and hearing a President who makes us feel ashamed of looking and listening; the trauma, for many immigrants, of fearing for themselves and their children, and, for nonimmigrants, of being complicit in the war on immigrants; the trauma of observing a First Family that appears to use the government as an annex to its own private enterprise; the trauma of seeing friends and family get sick and die in a pandemic, the effects of which could have been ameliorated; the trauma of half the country, led by the President, denying the existence of a deadly disease and refusing to protect themselves and others; the trauma of seeing American troops used against protesters; the trauma of hearing a President address calls for a reckoning with structural racism by fanning racist hatred; the trauma of feeling helpless in our outrage. The election does not wash away this pain, anger, fear, and helplessness, especially because this election was by no means a landslide: looking at the percentages of the popular vote cast for each candidate, one could conclude that this was just a normal electoral contest. It was not.
For all the trauma that humanity has managed to inflict upon itself, we know remarkably little about recovering from it. Psychologists and psychiatrists who specialize in collective, rather than individual, trauma are rare birds. But one approach that people who study collective trauma favor is called narrative therapy. A few years ago, when I was researching a book on totalitarian trauma in Russia, I spent time with some of the originators of this approach, at the Dulwich Centre, in Adelaide, Australia. Their work, which has included indigenous communities in Australia, has been applied all over the world. The approach involves a number of methods, including storytelling, letter-writing and rituals. People may tell what they did and what was done to them, they may tell their stories repeatedly in specific settings and formats, and they may produce a record of the telling. This approach accomplishes several goals. By creating new rituals, it gives voice to people who have not been heard in public. By focussing on the acts of telling and listening, it may challenge assumptions about justice as the act of meting out punishment. By involving a larger public, some of the people who work on collective trauma seek to address the issue of moral injury. In the framework of collective trauma, moral injury has been inflicted on society as a whole, not only on the victims but also on the perpetrators and the bystanders—not in the same way, to be sure, and not in equal measure, but it is all of society that has been injured. The goal of reckoning is moral restoration.
Anticipating the end of the Trump Presidency, some people have suggested that we should create truth-and-reconciliation commissions to deal with its legacy. My colleague Jill Lepore, writing in the Washington Post, called this “a terrible idea.” She argued that the Trump Administration’s “wrongdoing—a litany that includes corruption, fomenting insurrection, separating parents and children at the border, and violently suppressing political dissent—should be investigated by journalists, chronicled by historians and, in some instances, tried in ordinary courts.” In other words, she argued, American democracy would be best served by treating the Trump Presidency as a bad version of an ordinary political occurrence—a President unseated by voters and evaluated by regular institutions. (Lepore favors truth-and-reconciliation commissions for dealing with longer and deeper traumas of American society, such as the legacies of enslavement and colonization.) Responding to Lepore, in The Nation, Elie Mystal argued that existing institutions cannot be entrusted entirely with the task of reckoning, because all of these institutions have “in some way failed” over the past four years; their complicity would have to be part of the reckoning. Some of the failures of the Trump Administration, Mystal wrote, such as the negligence that caused the deaths of tens of thousands from COVID-19, exceed the scale of malfeasance that can be prosecuted through regular channels. Past decisions to move on, to stay the hand of vengeance—such as the Obama Administration’s decision not to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate illegal detentions during the George W. Bush Administration—were mistakes that are partly responsible for our current predicament.
I think that Lepore and Mystal are both right. Part of what distinguishes our current situation is that the institutions of state have not been entirely corrupted, and the people who have suffered grave injury have not been rendered entirely voiceless. We don’t need to invent an entirely new set of rituals, because some existing institutions provide them. A reckoning may include congressional hearings, special-counsel investigations, court proceedings, town halls, journalistic projects, truth-and-reconciliation commissions, and some yet-to-be-invented formats. All of these are ritualized ways to acknowledge and document the injury, to tell stories—and to tell these stories not in the company of your closest friends and family, who have heard them before, but in public, before an audience of people, some of whom are very different from you. The act of speaking across differences is what makes such processes political. It is also what gives them their healing potential. The question is whether we, as a nation, opt for a reckoning with Trumpism, and whether a future Biden Administration assumes the responsibility of guiding the nation through it.


newyorker--2020-11-10--Fox News Obtains Damning Video of Biden Talking to Scientists

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —In what the network described as “ the bombshell of the century , ” Fox News Channel has obtained a damning video of President-elect Joe Biden talking to scientists .
The video , which the Fox host Tucker Carlson warned viewers was “ almost too disturbing to air , ” was reportedly taped on Monday , during a video conference with the President-elect .
“ If authentic , this video could be grounds for Biden ’ s impeachment , ” Carlson said .
“ Talking to scientists , most legal scholars would agree , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States Constitution.
” To buttress his assertion , Carlson singled out the appearance on the video of an epidemiologist from the University of Minnesota .
“ You can read the Constitution backward and forward , and you will not find the word ‘ epidemiologist , ’ ” Carlson said .
Stating that Biden has “ a lot of explaining to do , ” the Fox host said that the video could be “ the last nail in the coffin of the Biden Presidency.
” “ I am not easily shocked , but this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s laptop , ” he said .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what the network described as “the bombshell of the century,” Fox News Channel has obtained a damning video of President-elect Joe Biden talking to scientists.
The video, which the Fox host Tucker Carlson warned viewers was “almost too disturbing to air,” was reportedly taped on Monday, during a video conference with the President-elect.
“If authentic, this video could be grounds for Biden’s impeachment,” Carlson said. “Talking to scientists, most legal scholars would agree, is a high crime under the United States Constitution.”
To buttress his assertion, Carlson singled out the appearance on the video of an epidemiologist from the University of Minnesota. “You can read the Constitution backward and forward, and you will not find the word ‘epidemiologist,’ ” Carlson said.
Stating that Biden has “a lot of explaining to do,” the Fox host said that the video could be “the last nail in the coffin of the Biden Presidency.”
“I am not easily shocked, but this is far worse than anything on Hunter’s laptop,” he said.


newyorker--2020-11-10--Two Thriving String Quartets

Two Thriving String Quartets

String quartets are among the hardiest and most adaptable of musical organisms .
As mobile as rock bands , in some ways even more so , they can appear , do their thing , and slip away into the night .
Small wonder that quartets have been especially visible and active during the COVID-19 pandemic .
If orchestras and opera houses appear to be the dinosaurs of the musical kingdom , reeling from an asteroid blast , quartets and other chamber ensembles might be compared to the birds that survived the Cretaceous period .
To be sure , mobility is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concerts are taking place and few people are willing to pay to see events online .
For the moment , smaller nonprofit groups have been able to apply to foundations and the federal government for relief .
No group has been busier than the JACK Quartet , which , shutdown notwithstanding , has maintained a rigorous schedule of rehearsing , recording , coaching , and online performance .
Since March , the members of the JACK—Christopher Otto , Austin Wulliman , John Pickford Richards , and Jay Campbell—have also made five in-person performances @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Morristown , New Jersey , as part of the Lot of Strings festival , and the others in a canyon and along the Colorado River in Utah , as part of the Moab Music Festival , which regularly stages concerts in acoustically favorable natural spaces .
In recent years , the JACK has specialized in the wide-open soundscapes of John Luther Adams , and its programs in Utah aptly included Adams ’ s piece “ The Wind in High Places.
” In September , the Cold Blue label released the JACK ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Lines Made by Walking ” and “ untouched ” —hypnotic lessons in the building-out of large musical structures from economical means .
The Adams disk was recorded before the pandemic began ; so were albums devoted to Cenk Ergün , Clara Iannotta , Scott Lee , and Roger Reynolds , all of which were released this year .
But a sixth new album , devoted to the wild , hallucinatory music of the Chinese-American composer Du Yun , was made in June , just after the quartet emerged from quarantine .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Tarantella , ” for speaker and string quartet , in which Du Yun recites—in both English and Chinese—her own story about an insect who longs to be human .
This inversion of Kafka ’ s “ Metamorphosis ” may seem an unappetizing proposition for people who have spent an inordinate amount of time cooped up in confined spaces , but Du Yun builds a surprising degree of sympathy for her cockroach heroine , who is touchingly naïve about the nobility of human existence : Du Yun ’ s music spans a vast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strains to scratching , scraping string timbres .
The transitions from one extreme to another occur with organic ease , and the music is seamlessly woven around Du Yun ’ s speaking voice , which is a mesmerizing instrument in itself .
If any chamber group can rival the JACK ’ s quarantine frenzy , it is the Spektral Quartet , a wide-ranging ensemble based in Chicago .
The members of the Spektral—Clara Lyon , Maeve Feinberg , Doyle Armbrust , and Russell Rolen—have kept themselves occupied by launching two absorbing live-stream programs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Help Desk , which mix music and discussion .
The group has also made several appearances in the virtual realm .
As part of a streaming series hosted by Cal Performances , in Berkeley , the Spektral joined the Haitian-American composer , vocalist , and flutist Nathalie Joachim to reprise material from Joachim ’ s entrancing album “ Fanm d ’ Ayiti ” ( New Amsterdam ) , which mixes arrangements of Haitian folk songs with Joachim ’ s original compositions inspired by songs in Kreyòl .
During a tense season , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sensibility may have the effect of palpably lowering your blood pressure .
The group will soon celebrate its tenth anniversary with a virtual gala titled Keep Spektral Weird .
The Spektral ’ s major project of the benighted year 2020 , though , has been an album titled “ Experiments in Living , ” which is certain to appear on my year-end list of notable recordings .
It is a tour-de-force survey of repertory , classic and modern , demonstrating in almost textbook fashion how nineteenth-century Romanticism evolved into twentieth-century modernism and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If you listen to the album in the given order , you will begin with Brahms ’ s Quartet in C Minor , from 1873 , in which the traditional process of thematic development is pursued with a kind of microscopic intensity that presages the breakdown of conventional harmonic structures .
That breakdown is achieved in Schoenberg ’ s Third String Quartet ( 1927 ) , even as the exposition and development of musical ideas obey classical rigor .
A further breakdown takes place in Ruth Crawford Seeger ’ s String Quartet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American modernism ; in its Andante , discrete thematic ideas dissolve into a continuously undulating texture .
From there , the path is open to a group of latter-day American composers : Sam Pluta , Anthony Cheung , Charmaine Lee , and George Lewis .
Yet the Spektral players encourage their listeners to break from proceeding in a straight-ahead chronological fashion .
They propose that the tracks be shuffled , but not in the sense of the shuffle feature in Apple Music , which randomizes tracks on a playlist .
Rather , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” comes with a deck of tarot-style illustrated cards , one for each track on the album .
The listener is invited to shuffle the cards , lay them out on the table , and determine the track order by flipping them .
A set of smaller cards are printed with adjectives— “ labyrinthine , ” “ relentless , ” “ frisky , ” “ deviant , ” and so on—which listeners can use to tease out connections among the various pieces .
You choose one to identify continuities on the playlist .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ adjectives professionally , I made sparing use of the smaller cards , but I enjoyed the physicality of the shuffling .
The cards have a lovely touch of the occult about them , as if a fortune-teller were pointing up secret connections .
And , indeed , resemblances crop up all over , especially when one of the historical composers butts against a living one .
Rapidly skittering figures in Pluta ’ s “ binary/momentary logics : flow state/joy state ” pick up from Crawford Seeger ’ s mercurial textures .
A delicate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s “ The Real Book of Fake Tunes , ” for flute and string quartet—Claire Chase joins the Spektral players on the recording—is akin to the contrapuntal games of the Schoenberg .
To hear the fractured vocalizations of Lee ’ s “ Spinals ” after the Brahms ’ s vigorous finale risks whiplash , yet the transition from one to the other had the revelatory shock of a masterly cinematic cut .
At the end of the “ official ” sequence comes Lewis ’ s “ Experiments in Living , ” from which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lewis found the phrase in John Stuart Mill ’ s “ On Liberty , ” in a passage discussing the freedom of individuals to express themselves within a harmonious social whole .
The composer writes , “ I ’ m looking for listeners to experience the volatility of memory , resistance , and hope.
” This is the heftiest of the contemporary pieces , and , in it , various strands from the older works seem to come into play , as if the composer were making a grand synthesis of string-quartet tradition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the post-1945 avant-garde .
I felt a peculiar sense of connection between Lewis and Brahms , although I had difficulty pinpointing just what it was .
Eventually , I realized that the players ’ application in the Brahms of the seemingly old-fashioned gesture of portamento , sliding lushly from note to note , forms an unexpected link to Lewis ’ s thoroughgoing use of glissando .
In the end , the Spektral ’ s ingenious presentation is simply to invite active and repeated listening—to move the music from the background to the foreground @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The album also invites repeat encounters because it is sensationally well played .
The account of the Brahms is a feast of rhythmic clarity and lyrical thrust .
The Schoenberg , so often cluttered and frantic-sounding in performance , has flow and dance .
Extreme precision of intonation and articulation highlights the fact that the Crawford Seeger is an essentially perfect score , every note charged with purpose .
The same meticulousness governs the group ’ s approach to the contemporary pieces , yet fury comes to the fore when called for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ service of obliterating the dividing line between past and present , tradition and avant-garde ; chronological barriers collapse , and the sounds roam free .

String quartets are among the hardiest and most adaptable of musical organisms. As mobile as rock bands, in some ways even more so, they can appear, do their thing, and slip away into the night. Small wonder that quartets have been especially visible and active during the COVID-19 pandemic. If orchestras and opera houses appear to be the dinosaurs of the musical kingdom, reeling from an asteroid blast, quartets and other chamber ensembles might be compared to the birds that survived the Cretaceous period. To be sure, mobility is of little advantage when almost no in-person concerts are taking place and few people are willing to pay to see events online. For the moment, smaller nonprofit groups have been able to apply to foundations and the federal government for relief.
No group has been busier than the JACK Quartet, which, shutdown notwithstanding, has maintained a rigorous schedule of rehearsing, recording, coaching, and online performance. Since March, the members of the JACK—Christopher Otto, Austin Wulliman, John Pickford Richards, and Jay Campbell—have also made five in-person performances: one in a parking lot in Morristown, New Jersey, as part of the Lot of Strings festival, and the others in a canyon and along the Colorado River in Utah, as part of the Moab Music Festival, which regularly stages concerts in acoustically favorable natural spaces. In recent years, the JACK has specialized in the wide-open soundscapes of John Luther Adams, and its programs in Utah aptly included Adams’s piece “The Wind in High Places.” In September, the Cold Blue label released the JACK’s recording of two other Adams pieces, “Lines Made by Walking” and “untouched”—hypnotic lessons in the building-out of large musical structures from economical means.
The Adams disk was recorded before the pandemic began; so were albums devoted to Cenk Ergün, Clara Iannotta, Scott Lee, and Roger Reynolds, all of which were released this year. But a sixth new album, devoted to the wild, hallucinatory music of the Chinese-American composer Du Yun, was made in June, just after the quartet emerged from quarantine. The principal work is “A Cockroach’s Tarantella,” for speaker and string quartet, in which Du Yun recites—in both English and Chinese—her own story about an insect who longs to be human. This inversion of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” may seem an unappetizing proposition for people who have spent an inordinate amount of time cooped up in confined spaces, but Du Yun builds a surprising degree of sympathy for her cockroach heroine, who is touchingly naïve about the nobility of human existence:
I want to love someone. I want to be loved. I want to live in a community where people—huh, please please let me be one of them—love each other, need each other and, well, are not easily being killed by humans. I’m sure they don’t have enemies themselves. What would be wiser than a human? I have heard that humans are the wisest thing among all the living forms. And because we are not wise you see, we are killed by the humans.
Du Yun’s music spans a vast stylistic spectrum, from ancient-sounding, hymnal strains to scratching, scraping string timbres. The transitions from one extreme to another occur with organic ease, and the music is seamlessly woven around Du Yun’s speaking voice, which is a mesmerizing instrument in itself.
If any chamber group can rival the JACK’s quarantine frenzy, it is the Spektral Quartet, a wide-ranging ensemble based in Chicago. The members of the Spektral—Clara Lyon, Maeve Feinberg, Doyle Armbrust, and Russell Rolen—have kept themselves occupied by launching two absorbing live-stream programs, the Floating Lounge and New Music Help Desk, which mix music and discussion. The group has also made several appearances in the virtual realm. As part of a streaming series hosted by Cal Performances, in Berkeley, the Spektral joined the Haitian-American composer, vocalist, and flutist Nathalie Joachim to reprise material from Joachim’s entrancing album “Fanm d’Ayiti” (New Amsterdam), which mixes arrangements of Haitian folk songs with Joachim’s original compositions inspired by songs in Kreyòl. During a tense season, the complex radiance of Joachim’s musical sensibility may have the effect of palpably lowering your blood pressure. The group will soon celebrate its tenth anniversary with a virtual gala titled Keep Spektral Weird.
The Spektral’s major project of the benighted year 2020, though, has been an album titled “Experiments in Living,” which is certain to appear on my year-end list of notable recordings. It is a tour-de-force survey of repertory, classic and modern, demonstrating in almost textbook fashion how nineteenth-century Romanticism evolved into twentieth-century modernism and then into the all-devouring experimentalism of recent decades. If you listen to the album in the given order, you will begin with Brahms’s Quartet in C Minor, from 1873, in which the traditional process of thematic development is pursued with a kind of microscopic intensity that presages the breakdown of conventional harmonic structures. That breakdown is achieved in Schoenberg’s Third String Quartet (1927), even as the exposition and development of musical ideas obey classical rigor. A further breakdown takes place in Ruth Crawford Seeger’s String Quartet (1931), a monument of American modernism; in its Andante, discrete thematic ideas dissolve into a continuously undulating texture. From there, the path is open to a group of latter-day American composers: Sam Pluta, Anthony Cheung, Charmaine Lee, and George Lewis.
Yet the Spektral players encourage their listeners to break from proceeding in a straight-ahead chronological fashion. They propose that the tracks be shuffled, but not in the sense of the shuffle feature in Apple Music, which randomizes tracks on a playlist. Rather, the physical packing for “Experiments in Living” comes with a deck of tarot-style illustrated cards, one for each track on the album. The listener is invited to shuffle the cards, lay them out on the table, and determine the track order by flipping them. A set of smaller cards are printed with adjectives—“labyrinthine,” “relentless,” “frisky,” “deviant,” and so on—which listeners can use to tease out connections among the various pieces. You choose one to identify continuities on the playlist.
As one who relies too much on adjectives professionally, I made sparing use of the smaller cards, but I enjoyed the physicality of the shuffling. The cards have a lovely touch of the occult about them, as if a fortune-teller were pointing up secret connections. And, indeed, resemblances crop up all over, especially when one of the historical composers butts against a living one. Rapidly skittering figures in Pluta’s “binary/momentary logics: flow state/joy state” pick up from Crawford Seeger’s mercurial textures. A delicate interplay of short motives in Cheung’s “The Real Book of Fake Tunes,” for flute and string quartet—Claire Chase joins the Spektral players on the recording—is akin to the contrapuntal games of the Schoenberg. To hear the fractured vocalizations of Lee’s “Spinals” after the Brahms’s vigorous finale risks whiplash, yet the transition from one to the other had the revelatory shock of a masterly cinematic cut.
At the end of the “official” sequence comes Lewis’s “Experiments in Living,” from which the album’s title comes. Lewis found the phrase in John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty,” in a passage discussing the freedom of individuals to express themselves within a harmonious social whole. The composer writes, “I’m looking for listeners to experience the volatility of memory, resistance, and hope.” This is the heftiest of the contemporary pieces, and, in it, various strands from the older works seem to come into play, as if the composer were making a grand synthesis of string-quartet tradition even as he unleashed the devices of the post-1945 avant-garde. I felt a peculiar sense of connection between Lewis and Brahms, although I had difficulty pinpointing just what it was. Eventually, I realized that the players’ application in the Brahms of the seemingly old-fashioned gesture of portamento, sliding lushly from note to note, forms an unexpected link to Lewis’s thoroughgoing use of glissando.
In the end, the Spektral’s ingenious presentation is simply to invite active and repeated listening—to move the music from the background to the foreground, to read it like a book. The album also invites repeat encounters because it is sensationally well played. The account of the Brahms is a feast of rhythmic clarity and lyrical thrust. The Schoenberg, so often cluttered and frantic-sounding in performance, has flow and dance. Extreme precision of intonation and articulation highlights the fact that the Crawford Seeger is an essentially perfect score, every note charged with purpose. The same meticulousness governs the group’s approach to the contemporary pieces, yet fury comes to the fore when called for. The Spektral has accomplished the signal service of obliterating the dividing line between past and present, tradition and avant-garde; chronological barriers collapse, and the sounds roam free.


newyorker--2020-11-11--We’re in the Park

We’re in the Park

Hey , we ’ re here .
Just found a great spot !
Text me back if you ’ re having trouble finding us , but if you ’ re coming in near the arch just head straight and then left past that giant maple tree—you know the one I ’ m talking about .
Not sure it ’ s a maple , but it ’ s big and it ’ s on the south side of the east entrance .
We ’ re down the hill from that—not the big-big hill , but the biggish one with the slightly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the hill , look for the groups of runners who ’ ve just finished a 5K for breast-cancer awareness—not the American Cancer Society one , the Breast Cancer Research Foundation one .
Once you pass them , head away from the reggae music and toward the other reggae music .
Keep walking for a few minutes , then start counting quinceañeras .
If you pass your fourth one , you ’ ve gone too far .
Take a hard left at the third one , the one with the pink dresses .
Soon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some people playing Frisbee .
We ’ re not far from them .
Make sure it ’ s the group with the guy who looks a little like a young Ernie Els , the golfer who came in second at the Masters in 2000 and again in 2004—just Google “ Ernie Els Masters ” so you have a mental image .
Take a right past them , and you should see a guy with a bloody nose doing Tai Chi .
On our way in , we saw him get into a little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kept beaning him during his katas .
Tai Chi is not one of the fighting arts , F.Y.I .
You know where those built-in grills are , near the picnic house ?
We ’ re nowhere near there .
If you walk in the direction of the sun , after a few minutes , you ’ ll cross a little bridge that leads into a side meadow .
I forget if you were at that little get-together with my sister , last summer , in that area near the duck pond ?
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to us from there , but the easiest is to rent a paddleboat and go due west toward the little-league fields .
Where the algae bloom begins to thin out , you ’ ll see a few muddy landing areas—choose the one in the middle , with the one-eyed mallard perched on it .
Once you ’ re back on foot , follow the less skunky of the marijuana wafts , and you ’ ll pass a handful of people doing workouts with their trainers .
Make sure that the trainer shouting “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on your left and the one shouting “ Boom !
” is on your right .
Remember : blam—left ; boom—right .
Soon , you ’ ll see a big mommy-group up ahead—you can ’ t miss them , since they ’ re sitting in a huge circle .
One of their kids is named Velcro , like the fastener .
He ’ s a real piece of work , so listen for the mom screaming his name a lot .
Velcro this , Velcro that—she ’ s all over him .
Pass @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and take the path to the right when you see a sad guy playing guitar .
Not far from him , there ’ s a guy playing guitar who isn ’ t nearly as sad—don ’ t turn there .
Make sure it ’ s the sadder guy .
If you ’ re having trouble telling who ’ s who , turn at the one with the fuller beard and the larger Goldendoodle .
We ’ re just up the way from there .
Your best bet for navigating the final stretch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I marked up and am about to text to you as a guide—there are a bunch of kites up there today , so I tried to boil it down to the simplest sequence to get you to the classic diamond-shaped one that ’ s hovering above us right now .
Once you spot it , look down , and we ’ ll be right there , with our picnic setup and balloons .
I just noticed that everyone around us also has balloons , so I ’ m going to pop ours to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We ’ ll be the only people without balloons .
If you don ’ t see us right away , there ’ s a couple just two blankets from us who are really going at it .
They might be having actual intercourse—it ’ s tough to tell , but their balloons are going crazy .
If you don ’ t see them , look for the tot-soccer game right next to them , and then you ’ ll definitely spot us .
We ’ re not in a yoga class , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , so it might look like we are , if that helps .
Honestly , not sure how much longer we ’ re going to last , because a few of us have to pee already and someone just downward-dogged our hummus all over our blanket .
So , if we don ’ t see you guys , we should totally do this again soon !
The park is so great .

Hey, we’re here. Just found a great spot! Text me back if you’re having trouble finding us, but if you’re coming in near the arch just head straight and then left past that giant maple tree—you know the one I’m talking about. Not sure it’s a maple, but it’s big and it’s on the south side of the east entrance. We’re down the hill from that—not the big-big hill, but the biggish one with the slightly steeper slope. Once you get down the hill, look for the groups of runners who’ve just finished a 5K for breast-cancer awareness—not the American Cancer Society one, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation one. Once you pass them, head away from the reggae music and toward the other reggae music. Keep walking for a few minutes, then start counting quinceañeras. If you pass your fourth one, you’ve gone too far. Take a hard left at the third one, the one with the pink dresses. Soon after, you should end up near some people playing Frisbee. We’re not far from them. Make sure it’s the group with the guy who looks a little like a young Ernie Els, the golfer who came in second at the Masters in 2000 and again in 2004—just Google “Ernie Els Masters” so you have a mental image. Take a right past them, and you should see a guy with a bloody nose doing Tai Chi. On our way in, we saw him get into a little tussle with the Frisbee crew because they kept beaning him during his katas. Tai Chi is not one of the fighting arts, F.Y.I. You know where those built-in grills are, near the picnic house? We’re nowhere near there. If you walk in the direction of the sun, after a few minutes, you’ll cross a little bridge that leads into a side meadow. I forget if you were at that little get-together with my sister, last summer, in that area near the duck pond? There are a couple of ways to get to us from there, but the easiest is to rent a paddleboat and go due west toward the little-league fields. Where the algae bloom begins to thin out, you’ll see a few muddy landing areas—choose the one in the middle, with the one-eyed mallard perched on it. Once you’re back on foot, follow the less skunky of the marijuana wafts, and you’ll pass a handful of people doing workouts with their trainers. Make sure that the trainer shouting “Blam!” after each rep is on your left and the one shouting “Boom!” is on your right. Remember: blam—left; boom—right. Soon, you’ll see a big mommy-group up ahead—you can’t miss them, since they’re sitting in a huge circle. One of their kids is named Velcro, like the fastener. He’s a real piece of work, so listen for the mom screaming his name a lot. Velcro this, Velcro that—she’s all over him. Pass them and then walk a few minutes, and take the path to the right when you see a sad guy playing guitar. Not far from him, there’s a guy playing guitar who isn’t nearly as sad—don’t turn there. Make sure it’s the sadder guy. If you’re having trouble telling who’s who, turn at the one with the fuller beard and the larger Goldendoodle. We’re just up the way from there. Your best bet for navigating the final stretch is to use the kite photos that I marked up and am about to text to you as a guide—there are a bunch of kites up there today, so I tried to boil it down to the simplest sequence to get you to the classic diamond-shaped one that’s hovering above us right now. Once you spot it, look down, and we’ll be right there, with our picnic setup and balloons. I just noticed that everyone around us also has balloons, so I’m going to pop ours to make it easier to find us. We’ll be the only people without balloons. If you don’t see us right away, there’s a couple just two blankets from us who are really going at it. They might be having actual intercourse—it’s tough to tell, but their balloons are going crazy. If you don’t see them, look for the tot-soccer game right next to them, and then you’ll definitely spot us. We’re not in a yoga class, but one just kind of formed around us, so it might look like we are, if that helps. Honestly, not sure how much longer we’re going to last, because a few of us have to pee already and someone just downward-dogged our hummus all over our blanket. So, if we don’t see you guys, we should totally do this again soon! The park is so great.


newyorker--2020-11-12--If There’s Something Valuable Under the Soil, Life Aboveground Can Be Hard

In a remarkable Twitter thread last week , just before the endless vote-counting , Latif Nasser , a co-host of WNYC ’ s “ Radiolab , ” recounted the history of a stretch of territory that runs through Mississippi , Alabama , Georgia , and into the Carolinas .
Every election , it votes Democratic , a slash of blue across the red rural south .
At the height of the Cretaceous era , a hundred million years ago , this land was covered by saltwater—a great sea of plankton , which , as it died , dropped to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eventually became the belt of incredibly rich soil that made growing cotton so fantastically profitable .
As Booker T. Washington wrote , “ The part of the country possessing this thick , dark , and naturally rich soil was , of course , the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable , and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers.
” The descendants of those enslaved people have—since they won the vote in the nineteen-sixties—turned out for Democrats .
It is a regular reminder of the centuries of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ d been thinking of that phenomenon this week , because Tuesday marked twenty-five years since the execution by hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa , the Nigerian novelist and playwright who was a leader of the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta , a place cursed by the pools of oil beneath the ground .
Those pools of oil attracted the interest of outside companies , notably Shell , who turned the region into a nightmare landscape of polluted rivers , contaminated soil , and leaking pipelines .
Though oil production has mostly ceased @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remains .
A Friends of the Earth report from last year states , “ We meet Chief Saint Emma Pii who confirms that oil spills in 2008 and 2009 ‘ totally destroyed the environment for agriculture and fishing .
The whole ecosystem was destroyed.
’ He takes us to the river banks , where abandoned wooden fishing boats are slowly sinking into the oily mud .
‘ This place was our livelihood , we fished and traded from here .
This was a living place.
’ He gestures to the horizon .
‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were mangroves , living mangroves .
Before the spills , animals were living here : lizards , even lions and elephants.
’ ” Saro-Wiwa dared to protest this kind of destruction .
The Nigerian government hanged him ( and eight compatriots ) in 1995 , with the alleged complicity of Shell , the largest economic force in the country .
He ’ d won the Goldman Prize and the Right Livelihood Award , sometimes called the alternative Nobel , for his work defending Ogoni territory against environmental despoliation , but the honors were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supposed witnesses to his crimes ( he was charged with the murder of Ogoni chiefs ) later recanted , saying at an international court in the Hague that they ’ d been promised money and jobs , with Shell representatives in the room .
In 2009 , the company offered millions of dollars to his family , but no admission of guilt : the money was for “ reconciliation.
” Every commodity of value—cotton , rubber , sugar , gold , diamonds , cobalt—has brought with it great human suffering , as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impose the inevitable costs on others .
Coal , gas , and oil have simply added to that horror by also wrecking the atmosphere of our one , shared planet .
Earlier this month , a communications staffer at Shell sent out a Twitter challenge : “ What are you willing to change to help reduce emissions ?
” Designed , one supposes , to produce confessions about driving too much , or turning the thermostat too high , the tweet instead provoked an outpouring of fury .
A group of English youth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ We ’ re willing to shut you down before you murder any more environmentalists who get in the way of you extracting oil.
” As we contemplate a country whose health and economy have been ruined by the inept response to COVID-19 , and whose political life desperately needs to be restored to something resembling normalcy , it seemed a good week to talk with Sandra Goldmark .
She is a professor at Barnard College and its director of campus sustainability and climate action , and the author of a new book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stuff Without Breaking the Planet.
” Since 2013 , she has operated Fixup , a pop-up repair shop that employs local theatre artists , stagehands , and technicians to repair broken household items—so far it has diverted more than ten thousand pounds of goods from landfills .
When you do go out to buy something new , how do you figure out if it ’ s going to be good for the long haul ?
When buying new goods ( which for me is very , very rare ) , I check first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Is the item made of durable materials , like real wood instead of particleboard ?
Are those materials sustainably and ethically sourced and manufactured ?
This part can be tricky , since there are no international standards and relatively few certifications for durability , quality materials , fair wages , and repairability .
You can look for the certifications that do exist , like U.S.A. Fair Trade , F.S.C.-certified lumber , Greenguard , or iFixit ’ s Repairability Scorecards , to name a few .
But usually there is no indication of what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is made .
In that case , you can look at the product itself .
Does it have joints or stress points made out of plastic ?
Can it be opened easily for repair , or is everything all glued shut ?
Finally , price is sometimes—though not always—an indicator .
If something is too cheap to be believed , don ’ t believe it .
It ’ s much better to get a higher-quality item secondhand whenever possible .
Does the mind-set of repair help us get in a different attitude @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well ask , while the planet is burning , why we should bother to fix our toasters or chairs or lamps .
After seven years spent running pop-up repair shops , I realized that repair is about much more than reducing waste or emissions from manufacturing , though those are , of course , benefits .
Repair is about really understanding what we have , how it is designed , who makes it , and under what conditions .
In short , it ’ s about rethinking what we value .
We live @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of all kinds , from repairing toasters to maintaining subways to caring for children .
In the U.S. , care workers , who are predominantly women and people of color , typically earn at least ten dollars less than the average hourly wage .
The pandemic has made the costs of this mentality all the more evident .
So , yes , fixing stuff is actually part of a much larger and much-needed shift towards really seeing and caring for the incredible blessings all around us , from toasters to each other all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When you think about new appliances that save a bunch of energy ( induction cooktops , say ) , how do you make the call ?
This is an important question .
Manufacturers and government agencies encourage us to think in terms of savings on our utility bills , but we also need to consider the embodied energy of the appliance—that ’ s the energy that went into extracting and processing the raw materials , manufacturing , and transporting it .
For example , a new refrigerator might embody energy equivalent to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much energy as it consumes in two and a half years of normal operation .
A new , more efficient appliance should pay for itself over time , but first it needs to break even in terms of embodied energy .
And that means that a lot depends on how often you use it .
A fridge , running twenty-four hours a day , might recoup its embodied energy in a year ; an induction cooktop at a couple hours per day might take four to six years ; a washing machine at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ twelve years .
So , yes , when it ’ s time to replace an appliance , energy efficient designs are much , much better , but that doesn ’ t mean we should all rush out and replace all of our appliances for the latest model : it ’ s worth considering the total impact of the item .
Young activists in Norway are suing to try and prevent the country from continuing to grant new oil-exploration licenses .
They argue that , by continuing to back new fossil-fuel development , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ insure a clean environment .

The election is over, and I’ve given my thanks to all who fought so hard—we’ll spend the next months, and the next four years, understanding what it all means. But it’s also worth remembering that we’re a part of a larger world, united by certain commonalities. That includes the fact that it’s usually a curse to be born in a place with something valuable beneath the surface.
In a remarkable Twitter thread last week, just before the endless vote-counting, Latif Nasser, a co-host of WNYC’s “Radiolab,” recounted the history of a stretch of territory that runs through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and into the Carolinas. Every election, it votes Democratic, a slash of blue across the red rural south. At the height of the Cretaceous era, a hundred million years ago, this land was covered by saltwater—a great sea of plankton, which, as it died, dropped to the bottom and formed the basis for what eventually became the belt of incredibly rich soil that made growing cotton so fantastically profitable. As Booker T. Washington wrote, “The part of the country possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers.” The descendants of those enslaved people have—since they won the vote in the nineteen-sixties—turned out for Democrats. It is a regular reminder of the centuries of misery that rich land produced.
I’d been thinking of that phenomenon this week, because Tuesday marked twenty-five years since the execution by hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nigerian novelist and playwright who was a leader of the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta, a place cursed by the pools of oil beneath the ground. Those pools of oil attracted the interest of outside companies, notably Shell, who turned the region into a nightmare landscape of polluted rivers, contaminated soil, and leaking pipelines. Though oil production has mostly ceased in recent years, the blighted land remains. A Friends of the Earth report from last year states, “We meet Chief Saint Emma Pii who confirms that oil spills in 2008 and 2009 ‘totally destroyed the environment for agriculture and fishing. The whole ecosystem was destroyed.’ He takes us to the river banks, where abandoned wooden fishing boats are slowly sinking into the oily mud. ‘This place was our livelihood, we fished and traded from here. This was a living place.’ He gestures to the horizon. ‘All of these? What you see were mangroves, living mangroves. Before the spills, animals were living here: lizards, even lions and elephants.’ ”
Saro-Wiwa dared to protest this kind of destruction. The Nigerian government hanged him (and eight compatriots) in 1995, with the alleged complicity of Shell, the largest economic force in the country. He’d won the Goldman Prize and the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the alternative Nobel, for his work defending Ogoni territory against environmental despoliation, but the honors were not enough to protect him: two supposed witnesses to his crimes (he was charged with the murder of Ogoni chiefs) later recanted, saying at an international court in the Hague that they’d been promised money and jobs, with Shell representatives in the room. In 2009, the company offered millions of dollars to his family, but no admission of guilt: the money was for “reconciliation.”
Every commodity of value—cotton, rubber, sugar, gold, diamonds, cobalt—has brought with it great human suffering, as a few attempted to grab the profits and impose the inevitable costs on others. Coal, gas, and oil have simply added to that horror by also wrecking the atmosphere of our one, shared planet. Earlier this month, a communications staffer at Shell sent out a Twitter challenge: “What are you willing to change to help reduce emissions?” Designed, one supposes, to produce confessions about driving too much, or turning the thermostat too high, the tweet instead provoked an outpouring of fury. A group of English youth in the Extinction Rebellion movement replied, “We’re willing to shut you down before you murder any more environmentalists who get in the way of you extracting oil.”
Passing the Mic
As we contemplate a country whose health and economy have been ruined by the inept response to COVID-19, and whose political life desperately needs to be restored to something resembling normalcy, it seemed a good week to talk with Sandra Goldmark. She is a professor at Barnard College and its director of campus sustainability and climate action, and the author of a new book, “Fixation: How to Have Stuff Without Breaking the Planet.” Since 2013, she has operated Fixup, a pop-up repair shop that employs local theatre artists, stagehands, and technicians to repair broken household items—so far it has diverted more than ten thousand pounds of goods from landfills.
When you do go out to buy something new, how do you figure out if it’s going to be good for the long haul?
When buying new goods (which for me is very, very rare), I check first for good materials and good design. Is the item made of durable materials, like real wood instead of particleboard? Are those materials sustainably and ethically sourced and manufactured? This part can be tricky, since there are no international standards and relatively few certifications for durability, quality materials, fair wages, and repairability. You can look for the certifications that do exist, like U.S.A. Fair Trade, F.S.C.-certified lumber, Greenguard, or iFixit’s Repairability Scorecards, to name a few. But usually there is no indication of what goes into a product, or how it is made. In that case, you can look at the product itself. Does it have joints or stress points made out of plastic? Can it be opened easily for repair, or is everything all glued shut? Finally, price is sometimes—though not always—an indicator. If something is too cheap to be believed, don’t believe it. It’s much better to get a higher-quality item secondhand whenever possible.
Does the mind-set of repair help us get in a different attitude about the planet itself?
You might well ask, while the planet is burning, why we should bother to fix our toasters or chairs or lamps. After seven years spent running pop-up repair shops, I realized that repair is about much more than reducing waste or emissions from manufacturing, though those are, of course, benefits. Repair is about really understanding what we have, how it is designed, who makes it, and under what conditions. In short, it’s about rethinking what we value. We live in a society that drastically undervalues care of all kinds, from repairing toasters to maintaining subways to caring for children. In the U.S., care workers, who are predominantly women and people of color, typically earn at least ten dollars less than the average hourly wage. The pandemic has made the costs of this mentality all the more evident. So, yes, fixing stuff is actually part of a much larger and much-needed shift towards really seeing and caring for the incredible blessings all around us, from toasters to each other all the way up to our shared planet.


newyorker--2020-11-11--The Price of Performance, in “Character”

Mark Metcalf is not a household name , but in his acting career he has gone some way toward defining a household archetype : the indignant and anguished authority figure .
In the filmmaker Vera Brunner-Sung ’ s documentary short “ Character , ” which you can view above , Metcalf describes this type as the kind of man—a white man , always—who “ woke up in the morning with a mind-set that the world should be a certain way , and if it wasn ’ t he could crush it or discipline it.
” Metcalf , who is now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , playing Doug Neidermeyer , the R.O.T.C .
antagonist in “ National Lampoon ’ s Animal House.
” Within a year , his prowess for gazing down upon confused cadets in olive-drab dress and declaring them “ worthless and weak ” resulted in his agent receiving a call from a casting director for “ a Mark Metcalf type.
” Turns out he meant it literally : Metcalf was sitting in his agent ’ s office during the call but didn ’ t get the job .
“ At least I ’ d become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He solidified this genre of repressed , angry males in subsequent roles : Master , an undead tyrant , on “ Buffy the Vampire Slayer ” ; a classical-music conductor and Tuscan-villa aficionado who insists on being called only the Maestro , on “ Seinfeld ” ; obstructionist adult killjoys in Twisted Sister music videos , scowling and growling “ What do you want to do with your life ?
” at teens who just wan na rock .
The niche earned Metcalf a career , but it took a toll , too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cast doing the same thing over and over again , being this one type .
It ’ s something about the limitations of our imaginations in the industry but also maybe collectively , because the industry always thinks it ’ s doing what people want to see , ” Brunner-Sung , a film professor at Ohio State University , said .
“ And we do delight in certain kinds of characters and certain kinds of roles , so how much are we perpetuating that by our consumption ?
” While working on her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brunner-Sung ’ s documentary roots compelled her to think about actors ’ experiences and their relationships to their roles .
When a mutual friend introduced her to Metcalf , she had a subject through which to explore the question of how performance can define an actor ’ s identity .
She interviewed Metcalf several times in the course of a year and a half , in conversations that dictated the form and tone of “ Character ” and resulted in Metcalf ’ s voice-overs for the film .
It was an apt time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the power structures that hold them up .
“ The Brett Kavanaugh hearings were happening while we were doing our interviews , ” Brunner-Sung , who is forty-one , said .
“ And , you know , people were talking a lot about ‘ Animal House.
’ ” In a poignant sequence in “ Character , ” which premièred at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year , Metcalf appears in military uniform , in a business suit , a tuxedo—the trappings of the types of powerful figures that brought him renown .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ their self-satisfaction , seems to come easily to him , but so does the recognition of their interior hollowness .
“ A lot of the characters I play are fools , ” he says .
“ This way of acting towards the world , this way of conceiving of the world—morally , it ’ s a crime , I think .
It ’ s criminal to try to dictate to another person what they should be or could be.
” The man in the suit studies his cigar .
The man in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one behaves as an actor is “ for the benefit of other people , ” Metcalf says .
“ And , if you get aggressive about that , you start manufacturing yourself for other people.
” In the end , Metcalf grew tired of maintaining what he had built .
“ There were many , many moments of deep despair , ” he says , and the work “ didn ’ t ask of me what I felt I had to give.
” He retired in 2000 , in order to devote himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ son Julius , who had been diagnosed with Asperger ’ s .
“ I tried to guide him towards empathy , ” Metcalf says .
In doing so , he was guiding his son away from the types of men he had spent so many years portraying .
Early in the documentary , we see Metcalf ’ s face in the dark , as he speaks , in voice-over , about the actors of his generation who made it big : Pacino , De Niro , Hoffman , Redford .
With each mention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s face is projected onto Metcalf ’ s , each feature lined up to match exactly .
In those moments , Metcalf is playing the characters of the actors who , for whatever reason , were better able to define their own destinies in show business .
The images are eerie—one face transposed over another—but they also point to something arbitrary about the nature of fame , of the curious balance between the choices that get made for you and those you make for yourself .

The socks are still thick and plush, even if they’re worn through in the soles. They’re gray, as are the pants above them, and the T-shirt above those. The hair of the man wearing them is starting to gray, too. “He’s the guy who’s been stifled. He’s been imprisoned. He’s been not allowed to be himself,” the man says, in the clear, deep voice of a performer. He’s talking about himself and the other men he’s been asked to be.
Mark Metcalf is not a household name, but in his acting career he has gone some way toward defining a household archetype: the indignant and anguished authority figure. In the filmmaker Vera Brunner-Sung’s documentary short “Character,” which you can view above, Metcalf describes this type as the kind of man—a white man, always—who “woke up in the morning with a mind-set that the world should be a certain way, and if it wasn’t he could crush it or discipline it.”
Metcalf, who is now seventy-four, launched his career in 1978, playing Doug Neidermeyer, the R.O.T.C. antagonist in “National Lampoon’s Animal House.” Within a year, his prowess for gazing down upon confused cadets in olive-drab dress and declaring them “worthless and weak” resulted in his agent receiving a call from a casting director for “a Mark Metcalf type.” Turns out he meant it literally: Metcalf was sitting in his agent’s office during the call but didn’t get the job. “At least I’d become a type,” he says. He solidified this genre of repressed, angry males in subsequent roles: Master, an undead tyrant, on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”; a classical-music conductor and Tuscan-villa aficionado who insists on being called only the Maestro, on “Seinfeld”; obstructionist adult killjoys in Twisted Sister music videos, scowling and growling “What do you want to do with your life?” at teens who just wanna rock.
The niche earned Metcalf a career, but it took a toll, too. “We have someone like Mark cast doing the same thing over and over again, being this one type. It’s something about the limitations of our imaginations in the industry but also maybe collectively, because the industry always thinks it’s doing what people want to see,” Brunner-Sung, a film professor at Ohio State University, said. “And we do delight in certain kinds of characters and certain kinds of roles, so how much are we perpetuating that by our consumption?”
While working on her second feature film, in 2018, Brunner-Sung’s documentary roots compelled her to think about actors’ experiences and their relationships to their roles. When a mutual friend introduced her to Metcalf, she had a subject through which to explore the question of how performance can define an actor’s identity. She interviewed Metcalf several times in the course of a year and a half, in conversations that dictated the form and tone of “Character” and resulted in Metcalf’s voice-overs for the film. It was an apt time to be meditating on authority figures and the power structures that hold them up. “The Brett Kavanaugh hearings were happening while we were doing our interviews,” Brunner-Sung, who is forty-one, said. “And, you know, people were talking a lot about ‘Animal House.’ ”
In a poignant sequence in “Character,” which premièred at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Metcalf appears in military uniform, in a business suit, a tuxedo—the trappings of the types of powerful figures that brought him renown. The physical manifestation of their narcissism, their self-satisfaction, seems to come easily to him, but so does the recognition of their interior hollowness. “A lot of the characters I play are fools,” he says. “This way of acting towards the world, this way of conceiving of the world—morally, it’s a crime, I think. It’s criminal to try to dictate to another person what they should be or could be.” The man in the suit studies his cigar. The man in the tuxedo picks at his nose. How one behaves as an actor is “for the benefit of other people,” Metcalf says. “And, if you get aggressive about that, you start manufacturing yourself for other people.”
In the end, Metcalf grew tired of maintaining what he had built. “There were many, many moments of deep despair,” he says, and the work “didn’t ask of me what I felt I had to give.” He retired in 2000, in order to devote himself to something of his own: his son Julius, who had been diagnosed with Asperger’s. “I tried to guide him towards empathy,” Metcalf says. In doing so, he was guiding his son away from the types of men he had spent so many years portraying.
Early in the documentary, we see Metcalf’s face in the dark, as he speaks, in voice-over, about the actors of his generation who made it big: Pacino, De Niro, Hoffman, Redford. With each mention, an image of that actor’s face is projected onto Metcalf’s, each feature lined up to match exactly. In those moments, Metcalf is playing the characters of the actors who, for whatever reason, were better able to define their own destinies in show business. The images are eerie—one face transposed over another—but they also point to something arbitrary about the nature of fame, of the curious balance between the choices that get made for you and those you make for yourself.