newyorker--2020-01-06--Douglas Stuart on Growing Up Queer Before the Internet

Your story “ Found Wanting , ” which takes place in the early nineteen-nineties , is about a seventeen-year-old Glaswegian boy who has placed a lonely-hearts ad in a magazine .
When did you start thinking about writing a story with a personal ad at its heart ?
These types of personal ads were my first connection with a gay community when I was a young man .
On the housing scheme where I grew up , there was a real stigma to being gay ; it was a hard working-man ’ s world , and it was unimaginable for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When I stumbled across these ads , at the age of fifteen or so , it was incredibly exciting—it made me feel less alone , less “ wrong.
” Back then , personal ads and phone chat lines were a lifeline for young queer people—in a way , they were precursors to the dating apps we see now .
But compared to how people connect on the Internet today—and how quickly it becomes about sexual bartering—these personals were such an innocent space .
I described “ Found Wanting ” to a young @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the late aughts and he could not even wrap his head around the idea of corresponding like this .
It takes a lot of effort to write a letter , let alone make yourself sound not only interesting but desirable .
To write something intimate to a stranger is a perilous act—it ’ s a little ironic because it ’ s a bit like novel writing , where you ’ re sharing these personal things and you have no idea how the other person will receive it ; both take a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the letter exchange was usually the best part—when you did finally meet the other boy , he was often not as interesting as he was in writing .
Your first novel , “ Shuggie Bain , ” which traces the life of a young boy and his alcoholic mother in Glasgow , comes out in February , and I believe this is the first story you ’ ve published .
How long have you been writing ?
Did you always know you wanted to publish a novel ?
My first writing commission @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ghostwriter for my mother ’ s autobiography .
My father left when I was a boy , and she used to love to settle down with a half-dozen cans of lager , and she would dictate as I scribbled away .
She never , not even once , got past the dedication : “ To Elizabeth Taylor , who thinks she does , but knows nothing about the cruelties of love.
” She would have made a better poet !
I grew up in a house with no books , but I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as I can remember .
From the time I was six years old , everything about me felt like a fiction ; it became a matter of pretending in order to fit in .
I was always hiding myself from the other kids around me , and , when I was bullied , I would go home and lie to my family and pretend everything was fine .
I hid the facts of my home life from the outside world .
You just told yourself stories in order to cope .
I wanted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was persuaded against it , as “ not a thing boys from my background do.
” So I trained and had a career in the textiles trade and began secretly writing “ Shuggie Bain ” about twelve years ago .
At the time , I worked primarily as a menswear designer in the fashion industry , so I had to steal all the time I could to write—early mornings and every sick day .
I was so involved with my career that I wrote “ Shuggie Bain ” only for myself and never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Writing with no pressure was a lucky space to be in and a pure pleasure .
It ’ s rare that we get to create something that is private and not heavy with expectation—I mean , people can ’ t even have dinner now without feeling compelled to photograph it and share it with the world .
How important was it for you to capture Glasgow itself in your work ?
Where we come from always informs the people we become , no matter if you move far away from home , like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relationship with my home town—but there ’ s no place I love more .
I hope “ Shuggie Bain ” is a love story to Glasgow , not a fawning love story but one that sees the city clearly .
It ’ s very Scottish to be direct about difficult things , so there ’ s no point in pretending it wasn ’ t a hard place to live .
The city is a place of contrasts ; in all its devastation and deprivation , the people still remain strong and fiercely proud @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who is warmer , kinder , and more blackly funny then Glaswegians .
Shuggie , the novel ’ s protagonist , has a similar biography to the narrator of this story .
Are the two characters related in your mind ?
Is this a slightly older Shuggie ?
Both pieces are informed by my own experiences and draw from different stages of my life .
In “ Shuggie Bain , ” we leave Shuggie at fifteen , and “ Found Wanting ” is about what happens when a boy like Shuggie comes into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suppose they could be a match .
But Shuggie is a portrait , whereas the narrator of “ Found Wanting ” is a sketch—purposefully so , like the glimpse of a person you get from a lonely-heart letter .
In the story , an older man , a solicitor , has responded to the narrator ’ s ad .
When you started working on the story , did you know how the date would unfold , or did the events take shape as you were writing ?
I didn ’ t know how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I knew it wouldn ’ t quite be the romantic ideal of how somebody loses their virginity .
I ’ ve read so many liberal , enlightened , supportive , reciprocal queer love stories in recent years—and I think that ’ s a really positive reflection of our times now—but that doesn ’ t capture the truth of how it goes for many of us .
In the Glasgow of the early nineties , everyone lived in the closet , and self-searching sexual experimentation didn ’ t always end up as safe or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When it comes to sex , I feel like no one ever asks a man if he is O.K.
, if he is happy , if he is enjoying it—it ’ s sort of just assumed that he is .
It was important for that tentativeness to be on the page , and I didn ’ t want the reader to have a sense of where this night was going , because the narrator certainly has no clue .
The Solicitor , as the narrator refers to him , is in charge of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think your narrator understands him over the course of the evening ?
How conflicted is he between the desire to stay and the desire to flee ?
Fleeing isn ’ t really an option for the narrator—he could run from the man , but he can ’ t run from himself .
He is seeing more of himself and the world than he has seen in all the time leading up to this moment , and it ’ s exciting as much as it ’ s unsettling .
The narrator never really understands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ driven mainly by class rather than sexuality .
The Solicitor is entirely in possession of himself ( and perhaps even several other boys ) .
Most of the things the narrator is puzzled by are the small trappings of the man ’ s life and the ease with which he glides through the world .
It ’ s the difference in social class that creates the real power imbalance , as much as their difference in age .
The narrator is unsure of his own worth so that he , and the reader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s plan is for him .
It adds to the sense of confusion when the Solicitor forces the narrator to penetrate him .
This boy would never picture himself in any kind of dominant position , even sexually .
The Solicitor takes him to an apartment on a housing estate where a group of young men and women are watching television .
They ’ re kids who ’ ve turned to prostitution , it appears , but this is a night when they ’ re relaxing together .
Is there any danger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind of life ?
How aware is he of the line that might divide his future from theirs ?
There are countless dangers that might befall the narrator—not necessarily just prostitution .
The Glasgow I grew up in was rife with drink , drugs , and gang violence .
Margaret Thatcher and her remote Tory government closed all the heavy industry in the city within a generation ; ships , steel , coal—all gone .
This had a terrible knock-on effect on all employment , and working families had nowhere to turn ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of work , with no hope , and it ushered in some of the worst addiction and health crises in western Europe , some of which the city is still struggling with today .
I was raised amongst men and women who were capable of the most extraordinary personal sacrifices in order to manage and put food on the table .
When you are in that situation , you have to just sort of get on with it .
The story takes places in a time when there was hardly any work for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were queer and poor on top of that , you could easily slip through the cracks of society .
But I love the young men and women in this story .
I love that they are clustered together as a family .
I wanted this to be what the narrator saw , the community and closeness ; it wasn ’ t necessarily about the prostitution—that was just how the Solicitor comes to know them .
It has to be said that , despite the dangers that lie ahead of the narrator , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Scotland is an incredible country because the Scottish people , through their government , provide access to the finest higher education to every citizen , regardless of social class or ability to pay—or at least they did when I was a young man .
After they leave the housing estate , the Solicitor takes the narrator back to his house , and they sleep together .
It ’ s the narrator ’ s first experience of sex—he ’ d imagined it would be like something out of “ Dynasty , ” but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decades later , it ’ s hard to imagine a seventeen-year-old being as innocent .
What is it like to return to that era in the story ?
I don ’ t think of the narrator as innocent as much as I think of him as isolated .
When I talk to my younger gay friends , they are incredulous at the narrator ’ s naïveté , but I think we have forgotten what it ’ s like to live without information and community always at our fingertips .
There was no virtual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were forced to confront the physical world and reconcile it with your fantasy world .
Porn is so pervasive now , and , for good or bad , you can find anything and anyone on the Internet .
The Internet is probably a great way for young queer people to connect and to learn about themselves , but it ’ s something my generation didn ’ t have .
When I was seventeen , I had all these puzzle pieces and no way of fitting them all together .
It was the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ least they had parents to ( hopefully ) guide them and peer groups to support them .
Being gay and coming of age at that time meant everything was about filling in the blanks .
The little that I knew about gay sex felt collaged from random sources .
I gleaned tidbits from here and there , and the gaps could be terrifying , but they could also be hilarious .
You sort of had to go it alone—armed with only a Jean Genet novel and a couple of pages torn from your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enlightenment .
I wanted to convey how exciting but also terrifying it could feel to have gay sex for the first time , especially if it was with someone like the Solicitor , who was only interested in getting what he wanted from the situation .
No doubt that it would have been a totally different story if the narrator would have replied to Gregor , the crofter ’ s son , first , and they could have stumbled onward together .
Maybe I ’ ll write about that one day when I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end of “ Found Wanting , ” the narrator ’ s back at school , hiding out from everyone in the art department .
In many ways , the events of the past twelve hours could have destroyed any dreams of romance that he might have had—yet the story takes a surprisingly optimistic turn at the end .
Why did you want to do this ?
The narrator is profoundly lonely , so he ’ s searching for kindred souls , for a wee bit of love .
It ’ s the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I know from experience that the only thing you can do to beat this type of loneliness is to be hopeful and keep reaching out , keep making an effort .
He has to keep going—what else can he do ?
He ’ s gay , that can not be changed , so he has to push on ; he has to keep trying to find connection and do this searching alone ( hopefully for just a little while longer ) .

Photograph by Clive Smith
Your story “Found Wanting,” which takes place in the early nineteen-nineties, is about a seventeen-year-old Glaswegian boy who has placed a lonely-hearts ad in a magazine. When did you start thinking about writing a story with a personal ad at its heart?
These types of personal ads were my first connection with a gay community when I was a young man. On the housing scheme where I grew up, there was a real stigma to being gay; it was a hard working-man’s world, and it was unimaginable for anyone to consider themselves out and proud. When I stumbled across these ads, at the age of fifteen or so, it was incredibly exciting—it made me feel less alone, less “wrong.” Back then, personal ads and phone chat lines were a lifeline for young queer people—in a way, they were precursors to the dating apps we see now. But compared to how people connect on the Internet today—and how quickly it becomes about sexual bartering—these personals were such an innocent space. I described “Found Wanting” to a young gay friend of mine who grew up in the late aughts and he could not even wrap his head around the idea of corresponding like this.
It takes a lot of effort to write a letter, let alone make yourself sound not only interesting but desirable. To write something intimate to a stranger is a perilous act—it’s a little ironic because it’s a bit like novel writing, where you’re sharing these personal things and you have no idea how the other person will receive it; both take a lot of faith and hope! In reality, the letter exchange was usually the best part—when you did finally meet the other boy, he was often not as interesting as he was in writing.
Your first novel, “Shuggie Bain,” which traces the life of a young boy and his alcoholic mother in Glasgow, comes out in February, and I believe this is the first story you’ve published. How long have you been writing? Did you always know you wanted to publish a novel?
My first writing commission was at age seven, as a ghostwriter for my mother’s autobiography. My father left when I was a boy, and she used to love to settle down with a half-dozen cans of lager, and she would dictate as I scribbled away. She never, not even once, got past the dedication: “To Elizabeth Taylor, who thinks she does, but knows nothing about the cruelties of love.” She would have made a better poet!
I grew up in a house with no books, but I’ve been telling stories for as long as I can remember. From the time I was six years old, everything about me felt like a fiction; it became a matter of pretending in order to fit in. I was always hiding myself from the other kids around me, and, when I was bullied, I would go home and lie to my family and pretend everything was fine. I hid the facts of my home life from the outside world. You just told yourself stories in order to cope. I wanted to study English literature at college but was persuaded against it, as “not a thing boys from my background do.” So I trained and had a career in the textiles trade and began secretly writing “Shuggie Bain” about twelve years ago. At the time, I worked primarily as a menswear designer in the fashion industry, so I had to steal all the time I could to write—early mornings and every sick day. I was so involved with my career that I wrote “Shuggie Bain” only for myself and never dared to imagine it being published. Writing with no pressure was a lucky space to be in and a pure pleasure. It’s rare that we get to create something that is private and not heavy with expectation—I mean, people can’t even have dinner now without feeling compelled to photograph it and share it with the world.
How important was it for you to capture Glasgow itself in your work?
Where we come from always informs the people we become, no matter if you move far away from home, like I did. I have a complicated relationship with my home town—but there’s no place I love more. I hope “Shuggie Bain” is a love story to Glasgow, not a fawning love story but one that sees the city clearly. It’s very Scottish to be direct about difficult things, so there’s no point in pretending it wasn’t a hard place to live. The city is a place of contrasts; in all its devastation and deprivation, the people still remain strong and fiercely proud, and I know of no one who is warmer, kinder, and more blackly funny then Glaswegians.
Shuggie, the novel’s protagonist, has a similar biography to the narrator of this story. Are the two characters related in your mind? Is this a slightly older Shuggie?
Both pieces are informed by my own experiences and draw from different stages of my life. In “Shuggie Bain,” we leave Shuggie at fifteen, and “Found Wanting” is about what happens when a boy like Shuggie comes into his sexual maturity, so chronologically I suppose they could be a match. But Shuggie is a portrait, whereas the narrator of “Found Wanting” is a sketch—purposefully so, like the glimpse of a person you get from a lonely-heart letter.
In the story, an older man, a solicitor, has responded to the narrator’s ad. When you started working on the story, did you know how the date would unfold, or did the events take shape as you were writing?
I didn’t know how the actual date would unfold, but I knew it wouldn’t quite be the romantic ideal of how somebody loses their virginity. I’ve read so many liberal, enlightened, supportive, reciprocal queer love stories in recent years—and I think that’s a really positive reflection of our times now—but that doesn’t capture the truth of how it goes for many of us. In the Glasgow of the early nineties, everyone lived in the closet, and self-searching sexual experimentation didn’t always end up as safe or as lovely as it should be. When it comes to sex, I feel like no one ever asks a man if he is O.K., if he is happy, if he is enjoying it—it’s sort of just assumed that he is. It was important for that tentativeness to be on the page, and I didn’t want the reader to have a sense of where this night was going, because the narrator certainly has no clue.


newyorker--2020-01-06--Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Zed , by Joanna Kavenna ( Doubleday ) .
This speculative novel depicts a society in which citizens live and die by the auguries of predictive algorithms developed by a mega-corporation called Beetle .
The orderly , preordained world that Beetle insures is upended when seemingly random events caused by human folly—instances known as Zed—overwhelm the company ’ s machinery , rendering its predictions futile .
As those in power race to stop Zed , a news editor investigating the phenomenon , which he assumed came from a dim , inscrutable corner of the human psyche , finds that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was being swept onward , downward , ushered entirely !
” Return to the Enchanted Island , by Johary Ravaloson , translated from the French by Allison M. Charette ( Amazon Crossing ) .
When we meet Ietsy Razak , the protagonist of this delicate and captivating novel , he is a sleepless husband and father whose comforts are provided for “ in advance and in abundance ” by inherited family wealth .
The story soon flashes back to his rebellious youth and subsequent banishment from Madagascar to France , where he is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finds little in common with other people of color .
Ietsy feels bound to greatness by his given name , which he shares with a hero of Malagasy mythology , yet this character study highlights the hazards of leading an entitled life , in which he only “ slowly became aware that other wills existed besides his own.
” Music : A Subversive History , by Ted Gioia ( Basic ) .
A song is sung by a person of ill repute : a huckster , a herder , a whore .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ within a generation , someone else—a rock star , a rich man , a writer of symphonies—has made her song famous , and the world sounds different .
Arguing that assimilation is “ the engine room of music history , ” Gioia treks from the cult songs of Mesopotamia to the melody factories of modern times , finding lost music along the way .
Sound , “ as a source of discipline and as a gateway to transcendence , ” can be powerfully disruptive , but we hear only the sanitized version .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ the most important part of the story has been left out.
” Supreme Ambition , by Ruth Marcus ( Simon & Schuster ) .
The week before Marcus published her account of the confirmation battle over Brett Kavanaugh , President Trump took to Twitter , calling the book “ a badly written & reseached disaster.
” In fact , with meticulous reporting , Marcus reveals the high-level plotting that preceded Trump ’ s politically fraught pick and probes the drama that followed it .
She bolsters the claims of Christine Blasey Ford @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of sexual assault , with the account of a Yale classmate who witnessed Kavanaugh exposing himself in college .
In what Marcus calls “ an inexcusable lapse , ” the F.B.I .
declined to interview the classmate .
Marcus deftly shows that disregard for the truth in service of partisan gain is not just a Trump trademark .
It has infected the Senate , the Justice Department , and , with Kavanaugh ’ s confirmation , the highest court in the land .

Zed, by Joanna Kavenna (Doubleday). This speculative novel depicts a society in which citizens live and die by the auguries of predictive algorithms developed by a mega-corporation called Beetle. The orderly, preordained world that Beetle insures is upended when seemingly random events caused by human folly—instances known as Zed—overwhelm the company’s machinery, rendering its predictions futile. As those in power race to stop Zed, a news editor investigating the phenomenon, which he assumed came from a dim, inscrutable corner of the human psyche, finds that “infinite Zed was around him. He was being swept onward, downward, ushered entirely!”
Return to the Enchanted Island, by Johary Ravaloson, translated from the French by Allison M. Charette (Amazon Crossing). When we meet Ietsy Razak, the protagonist of this delicate and captivating novel, he is a sleepless husband and father whose comforts are provided for “in advance and in abundance” by inherited family wealth. The story soon flashes back to his rebellious youth and subsequent banishment from Madagascar to France, where he is surprised by the presence of racism but finds little in common with other people of color. Ietsy feels bound to greatness by his given name, which he shares with a hero of Malagasy mythology, yet this character study highlights the hazards of leading an entitled life, in which he only “slowly became aware that other wills existed besides his own.”
Music: A Subversive History, by Ted Gioia (Basic). A song is sung by a person of ill repute: a huckster, a herder, a whore. She’s soon forgotten, but, within a generation, someone else—a rock star, a rich man, a writer of symphonies—has made her song famous, and the world sounds different. Arguing that assimilation is “the engine room of music history,” Gioia treks from the cult songs of Mesopotamia to the melody factories of modern times, finding lost music along the way. Sound, “as a source of discipline and as a gateway to transcendence,” can be powerfully disruptive, but we hear only the sanitized version. In this radical history, that means “the most important part of the story has been left out.”
Supreme Ambition, by Ruth Marcus (Simon & Schuster). The week before Marcus published her account of the confirmation battle over Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump took to Twitter, calling the book “a badly written & reseached disaster.” In fact, with meticulous reporting, Marcus reveals the high-level plotting that preceded Trump’s politically fraught pick and probes the drama that followed it. She bolsters the claims of Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, who accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault, with the account of a Yale classmate who witnessed Kavanaugh exposing himself in college. In what Marcus calls “an inexcusable lapse,” the F.B.I. declined to interview the classmate. Marcus deftly shows that disregard for the truth in service of partisan gain is not just a Trump trademark. It has infected the Senate, the Justice Department, and, with Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the highest court in the land.


newyorker--2020-01-06--Want Snow on Your Palm Trees? Easy.

Want Snow on Your Palm Trees? Easy.

It was a sweltering L.A. day in 1945 when Mel Tormé and Robert Wells cranked out the line “ Chestnuts roasting on an open fire , Jack Frost nipping at your nose.
” On a recent holiday Saturday , the sun was shining as a crew of men in waterproof gear filed up a driveway in Studio City to build a sledding hill .
The team , led by a former magician named Adam Williams , had brought shovels , fir trees , a dumpster-size ice crusher , and twenty-two tons ’ worth of ice blocks .
Williams , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a blinding smile , gives off the self-assured vibe of a yoga instructor .
But he seemed anxious as one of the giant trucks filled with ice backed up noisily , skirting an expensively manicured lawn .
“ Sometimes half the work is just getting into position , ” he said , gesturing toward the twisting gated driveway .
Williams ’ s company , MagicSnow , arranges “ interactive snow experiences ” in such high-S.P.F .
locales as Malaysia , Brazil , Barbados , Hawaii , and Southern California .
( In November @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Santa Monica Pier . )
When the producers of “ The Bachelor ” need a blizzard , or if John Legend wants flurries onstage at a concert , they call Williams , whose fee ranges from ten thousand to a hundred thousand dollars .
“ It ’ s the goal of the magician to create something out of nothing , ” he said .
Business is highly seasonal .
“ That ’ s the struggle at the moment , ” he added .
“ We do a year ’ s worth of work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Williams had six gigs .
At a house in the Hollywood Hills , his trucks hadn ’ t been able to fit in the entranceway , so his crew had had to shovel the snow into wheelbarrows and then wheel it up to the property .
The host of the sledding party was a sitcom producer .
In his driveway , a big metal ramp , like a fairground super slide , stood next to the pool , waiting for its blanket of pulverized ice .
Workers scurried around , hanging lights and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a doughnut machine , a hot-chocolate dispenser , and a tent for “ aura portraiture.
” The MagicSnow crew switched on the crusher ’ s tractor engine and fed ice blocks the size of photocopiers down a chute into the machine ’ s metal maw .
On a past gig , a pair of giant ice tongs fell into the machine and jammed up the gears .
A backup crusher ( Williams owns four ) was rushed over .
Once the crusher was full , it was time to make snow .
An @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fellow crew member , named Jake Montiel , gripped a long black hose as a surge of white streamed out in a fifteen-foot plume toward the sledding ramp .
The hose shook violently and Montiel struggled to keep it steady .
At one point , a chunk clogged the flow .
“ This always happens , ” Williams said , as Montiel pummelled the hose with a sledgehammer , breaking down the blockage .
Jessica Goldklang , a party planner , crouched nearby and recorded the spectacle on her phone , while icy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In forty-five minutes , the twenty-two tons of ice coated the driveway and the ramp , a modest spread of white .
Williams admitted to being disappointed that the client had opted for a static snow scene rather than also ask for the company ’ s signature snowfall effect .
( This involves a secret “ water-and-foam-based method.
” ) The crew began to carve sledding lanes into the hill .
Then they brought in the fir trees , scattered pinecones around , and got to work on two snowmen .
Instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a snowball along the ground to make a larger and larger sphere , they packed snow into plastic molds , producing pristine , stackable globes of white .
“ Adam doesn ’ t like them too perfect , ” Montiel said , giving one of them a few dings .
He fashioned eyes and a mouth with shards of spray-painted lava rock that he had in his pocket , and popped on a nose .
( “ We prefer a natural carrot to a more uniform one , ” Williams said . )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Real snow !
” a little girl cried , stepping onto the ramp .
As the adults drank cocktails on the lawn , kids took runs down the hill .
“ Is it safe ?
” one child asked , positioning herself on a metal sled .
“ Eww !
It ’ s wet.
” A snowball fight began , and soon a little boy ran to his mother in furious tears .
One of the MagicSnow guys shook his head and said , “ That ’ s the kind of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get another kid in trouble.
” On Monday , a crew would scrape off the ramp and truck it away .
The snow gets left behind .
Eventually , in a simple disappearing act , it melts .
♦

It was a sweltering L.A. day in 1945 when Mel Tormé and Robert Wells cranked out the line “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose.” On a recent holiday Saturday, the sun was shining as a crew of men in waterproof gear filed up a driveway in Studio City to build a sledding hill. The team, led by a former magician named Adam Williams, had brought shovels, fir trees, a dumpster-size ice crusher, and twenty-two tons’ worth of ice blocks. Williams, who is forty-three, with brown hair and a blinding smile, gives off the self-assured vibe of a yoga instructor. But he seemed anxious as one of the giant trucks filled with ice backed up noisily, skirting an expensively manicured lawn. “Sometimes half the work is just getting into position,” he said, gesturing toward the twisting gated driveway.
Williams’s company, MagicSnow, arranges “interactive snow experiences” in such high-S.P.F. locales as Malaysia, Brazil, Barbados, Hawaii, and Southern California. (In November, he made it snow over the Santa Monica Pier.) When the producers of “The Bachelor” need a blizzard, or if John Legend wants flurries onstage at a concert, they call Williams, whose fee ranges from ten thousand to a hundred thousand dollars.
“It’s the goal of the magician to create something out of nothing,” he said. Business is highly seasonal. “That’s the struggle at the moment,” he added. “We do a year’s worth of work in six weeks.” That day, Williams had six gigs. At a house in the Hollywood Hills, his trucks hadn’t been able to fit in the entranceway, so his crew had had to shovel the snow into wheelbarrows and then wheel it up to the property.
The host of the sledding party was a sitcom producer. In his driveway, a big metal ramp, like a fairground super slide, stood next to the pool, waiting for its blanket of pulverized ice. Workers scurried around, hanging lights and setting up a d.j. booth, a doughnut machine, a hot-chocolate dispenser, and a tent for “aura portraiture.” The MagicSnow crew switched on the crusher’s tractor engine and fed ice blocks the size of photocopiers down a chute into the machine’s metal maw. On a past gig, a pair of giant ice tongs fell into the machine and jammed up the gears. A backup crusher (Williams owns four) was rushed over.
“Wow! From up here you can see everything.” Cartoon by Lonnie Millsap Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Once the crusher was full, it was time to make snow. An employee pressed a button, and a fellow crew member, named Jake Montiel, gripped a long black hose as a surge of white streamed out in a fifteen-foot plume toward the sledding ramp. The hose shook violently and Montiel struggled to keep it steady. At one point, a chunk clogged the flow. “This always happens,” Williams said, as Montiel pummelled the hose with a sledgehammer, breaking down the blockage. Jessica Goldklang, a party planner, crouched nearby and recorded the spectacle on her phone, while icy spray grazed some carefully potted citrus trees. In forty-five minutes, the twenty-two tons of ice coated the driveway and the ramp, a modest spread of white. Williams admitted to being disappointed that the client had opted for a static snow scene rather than also ask for the company’s signature snowfall effect. (This involves a secret “water-and-foam-based method.”)
The crew began to carve sledding lanes into the hill. Then they brought in the fir trees, scattered pinecones around, and got to work on two snowmen. Instead of employing the classic method of rolling a snowball along the ground to make a larger and larger sphere, they packed snow into plastic molds, producing pristine, stackable globes of white. “Adam doesn’t like them too perfect,” Montiel said, giving one of them a few dings. He fashioned eyes and a mouth with shards of spray-painted lava rock that he had in his pocket, and popped on a nose. (“We prefer a natural carrot to a more uniform one,” Williams said.)
An hour later, guests started arriving. “Real snow!” a little girl cried, stepping onto the ramp. As the adults drank cocktails on the lawn, kids took runs down the hill. “Is it safe?” one child asked, positioning herself on a metal sled. “Eww! It’s wet.” A snowball fight began, and soon a little boy ran to his mother in furious tears. One of the MagicSnow guys shook his head and said, “That’s the kind of crying you do when you wanna get another kid in trouble.”
On Monday, a crew would scrape off the ramp and truck it away. The snow gets left behind. Eventually, in a simple disappearing act, it melts. ♦


The Mail

Dexter Filkins ’ s searing , unflinching piece about India under Narendra Modi should be read by all Indians ( “ Blood and Soil in India , ” December 9th ) .
The country that Filkins describes bears little resemblance to the one I grew up in .
As I was reading , I noticed that the horrific incidents of lynching , mob violence , and state complicity in federal machinations detailed in the article occurred primarily in the north of the country .
These stories seem to suggest that Modi ’ s vision of a Hindu-nationalist state has less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ results show something similar : during the 2019 national election , the B.J.P.
, Modi ’ s political party , won a majority of seats in only one of the five South Indian states .
South India is just as diverse as the north , or even more so .
But , though South India faces its own challenges , it has proved remarkably resistant to the B.J.P.
’ s Hindu-nationalist narrative .
Preserving the extraordinary diversity of the Indian subcontinent requires a commitment to secular , democratic values .
At one time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to such values .
Now they are routinely decried as prescribed by a Western élite and a complacent Congress Party .
The challenge for citizens seeking to build a counter-narrative to the B.J.P .
is how to do so without demonizing minority groups .
Exploring how South Indian politicians and activists have managed to stem the tide of the B.J.P.
’ s exclusionary agenda could help save my country from the future that it is hurtling toward .
Filkins ’ s reporting on Modi ’ s troubling background and policies is characteristically excellent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ odd that a piece centered on Hindu-Muslim tensions made no mention of the 2006 Islamic-terrorist train bombing in Mumbai and the bombings that took place in Bangalore , Ahmedabad , and Mumbai in 2008 .
These attacks collectively killed hundreds of Indians and likely stoked the fear and hatred that gave rise to Modi and his virulent brand of Hindu nationalism .
I ache seeing how easily and quickly the toxic brew of bigotry , corruption , and majoritarianism can diminish a democracy .
I was brought up in a Hindu Brahmin family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and I witnessed the prejudices concealed beneath our superficially civil interactions with Muslims .
My mother , who was cordial to Muslims in conversation , would nevertheless wash any kitchen utensils touched by a Muslim before using them herself .
Modi , like Donald Trump , has shown that latent bigotry is a deep resource , more easily mined and exploited by a demagogue than polite society ever allowed itself to believe .
Filkins leaves the reader petrified when he suggests that the muckraking journalist Rana Ayyub should leave India for good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Indian democracy is currently facing enormous challenges , people living on the subcontinent have long espoused tolerance and religious pluralism ; furthermore , India is still an experiment in democracy .
For centuries , the country has been a melting pot of policies , ideologies , leaders , and practices .
Modi ’ s government represents a grim reality for people from a variety of religions , cultures , and ethnicities—but , if history is to be believed , this , too , shall pass .
Letters should be sent with the writer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ daytime phone number via e-mail to themail @ newyorker.com .
Letters may be edited for length and clarity , and may be published in any medium .
We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we can not reply to every letter .

A Democracy in Crisis
Dexter Filkins’s searing, unflinching piece about India under Narendra Modi should be read by all Indians (“Blood and Soil in India,” December 9th). The country that Filkins describes bears little resemblance to the one I grew up in. As I was reading, I noticed that the horrific incidents of lynching, mob violence, and state complicity in federal machinations detailed in the article occurred primarily in the north of the country. These stories seem to suggest that Modi’s vision of a Hindu-nationalist state has less traction in South India. Recent election results show something similar: during the 2019 national election, the B.J.P., Modi’s political party, won a majority of seats in only one of the five South Indian states. South India is just as diverse as the north, or even more so. But, though South India faces its own challenges, it has proved remarkably resistant to the B.J.P.’s Hindu-nationalist narrative.
Preserving the extraordinary diversity of the Indian subcontinent requires a commitment to secular, democratic values. At one time, being a patriot meant being committed to such values. Now they are routinely decried as prescribed by a Western élite and a complacent Congress Party. The challenge for citizens seeking to build a counter-narrative to the B.J.P. is how to do so without demonizing minority groups. Exploring how South Indian politicians and activists have managed to stem the tide of the B.J.P.’s exclusionary agenda could help save my country from the future that it is hurtling toward.
Sadhana Sanjay
The Hague, the Netherlands
Filkins’s reporting on Modi’s troubling background and policies is characteristically excellent. However, it struck me as odd that a piece centered on Hindu-Muslim tensions made no mention of the 2006 Islamic-terrorist train bombing in Mumbai and the bombings that took place in Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and Mumbai in 2008. These attacks collectively killed hundreds of Indians and likely stoked the fear and hatred that gave rise to Modi and his virulent brand of Hindu nationalism.
Greg Schwed
New York City
I ache seeing how easily and quickly the toxic brew of bigotry, corruption, and majoritarianism can diminish a democracy. I was brought up in a Hindu Brahmin family in India during the nineteen-seventies and eighties, and I witnessed the prejudices concealed beneath our superficially civil interactions with Muslims. My mother, who was cordial to Muslims in conversation, would nevertheless wash any kitchen utensils touched by a Muslim before using them herself. Modi, like Donald Trump, has shown that latent bigotry is a deep resource, more easily mined and exploited by a demagogue than polite society ever allowed itself to believe.
Harish Sethu
Ardmore, Pa.
Filkins leaves the reader petrified when he suggests that the muckraking journalist Rana Ayyub should leave India for good. Although it is undeniably true that Indian democracy is currently facing enormous challenges, people living on the subcontinent have long espoused tolerance and religious pluralism; furthermore, India is still an experiment in democracy. For centuries, the country has been a melting pot of policies, ideologies, leaders, and practices. Modi’s government represents a grim reality for people from a variety of religions, cultures, and ethnicities—but, if history is to be believed, this, too, shall pass.
Cyril Cherian
Kottayam, India
•
Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.


newyorker--2020-01-06--Sideline Interview with Sisyphus

Sideline Interview with Sisyphus

REPORTER : So this is it , the big event , something you ’ ve worked toward , well , not just for your entire career but for eternity .
How do you feel ?
REPORTER : Now , you ’ re the underdog in this matchup .
How are you planning on turning things around ?
SISYPHUS : Well , I need to go out there and give a hundred and ten per cent .
If I stay within myself , I ’ ll take it to the next level .
REPORTER : Any thoughts on the conditions ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
SISYPHUS : Well , it is the underworld .
SISYPHUS : I like to think that the heat gives me an advantage : firmer footing .
REPORTER : Well , best of luck .
SISYPHUS : Thanks , Bob !
I ’ m not gon na stop till I reach the top !
Yeah !
REPORTER : Now let ’ s go to the booth for our live coverage of this exciting matchup .
Ted and Pythagoras ?
REPORTER : So that was clearly not the result you were hoping for today @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was not .
But you try not to get too low from the losses or too high from the wins .
REPORTER : You have no wins .
SISYPHUS : Exactly , but I ’ m still feeling good about where I ’ m at .
I feel like if just a couple of things had gone differently I could ’ ve come out on top .
SISYPHUS : Well , like if I had been able to keep that rock on top of the hill .
REPORTER : Right .
Any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
SISYPHUS : I just have to give the rock credit for what it did out there .
In all of our matchups , it ’ s used a similar strategy , and , I have to admit , it ’ s working .
SISYPHUS : Exactly , Bob .
And I feel like maybe the rock just wanted it more ?
A rock that big , you really have to bring your A game to roll it up the hill and get it to stay there .
REPORTER : Which you haven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Ever .
SISYPHUS : That ’ s right .
But I ’ m not gon na stop till I reach the top !
Yeah !
REPORTER : Let ’ s go back up to the booth .
Ted and Pythagoras ?
REPORTER : So that was .
.
.
rough .
A crushing defeat .
Literally .
SISYPHUS : Yes , Bob , it was .
REPORTER : Has it rolled over you like that on the way down before ?
SISYPHUS : No , and there ’ s a part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rest of me is saying , “ Go out there and do it !
” SISYPHUS : Yes .
If I keep playing my game , that rock doesn ’ t stand a chance !
It might as well be getting its mail forwarded to the top of that hill , because that ’ s where it ’ s going to stay !
REPORTER : I admire your fighting spirit—as well as the anachronistic analogy—but aren ’ t you even a little bit discouraged ?
SISYPHUS : I am not , because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in “ fail , ” Bob .
REPORTER : Actually , there is .
REPORTER : So you don ’ t do anagrams .
REPORTER : So , from the replay , it looks like the rock rolled over you , then was delayed by some brush while you slid down the hill , and then it crushed you again .
And again and again .
Is that right ?
SISYPHUS : Yes , Bob .
And I won ’ t lie—this one hurts .
But it ’ s all mental , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on .
We just watched your body being repeatedly pulverized by a huge boulder .
SISYPHUS : You got ta give credit to my opponent .
It had a solid game plan today and executed it well .
SISYPHUS : Exactly , Bob .
I just need to get back to my basics , and , boom—I ’ ll be taking it to the next level .
REPORTER : Do you ever wonder what you did to be stuck at this level ?
Because I do .
SISYPHUS : It ’ s just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is gon na make me stronger .
REPORTER : I keep thinking over my life , wondering what I did to anger the gods .
SISYPHUS : The gods are on my side , and I ’ d like to take this opportunity to thank them for my success , because I ’ m just one man out here .
REPORTER : You have had absolutely no success .
All right , it ’ s time for you to get crushed by the big rock again .
SISYPHUS : Not this time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you a believer , Bob !
REPORTER : Please , someone make this stop .
REPORTER 2 : How do you feel ?
REPORTER 2 : Uh , it ’ s Bill .
Bob ran onto the course during that last round and into the oncoming rock .
SISYPHUS : Geez , that ’ s rough .
It ’ s a tough game , but you hate to see that happen to anyone .
Bob , we ’ re rooting for a speedy recovery , buddy !
SISYPHUS : Well , my sympathies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stop till I reach the top !
SISYPHUS : As soon as they clean up that mess .
♦

(On the sidelines.)
REPORTER: So this is it, the big event, something you’ve worked toward, well, not just for your entire career but for eternity. How do you feel?
SISYPHUS: Really good, Bob.
REPORTER: Now, you’re the underdog in this matchup. How are you planning on turning things around?
SISYPHUS: Well, I need to go out there and give a hundred and ten per cent. If I stay within myself, I’ll take it to the next level.
REPORTER: Any thoughts on the conditions? It’s pretty hot out there.
SISYPHUS: Well, it is the underworld.
REPORTER: Right.
SISYPHUS: I like to think that the heat gives me an advantage: firmer footing.
REPORTER: Well, best of luck.
SISYPHUS: Thanks, Bob! I’m not gonna stop till I reach the top! Yeah!
REPORTER: Now let’s go to the booth for our live coverage of this exciting matchup. Ted and Pythagoras?
(Minutes later.)
REPORTER: So that was clearly not the result you were hoping for today.
SISYPHUS: No, Bob, it was not. But you try not to get too low from the losses or too high from the wins.
REPORTER: You have no wins.
SISYPHUS: Exactly, but I’m still feeling good about where I’m at. I feel like if just a couple of things had gone differently I could’ve come out on top.
REPORTER: What things?
SISYPHUS: Well, like if I had been able to keep that rock on top of the hill.
REPORTER: Right. Any thoughts on your opponent’s performance?
SISYPHUS: I just have to give the rock credit for what it did out there. In all of our matchups, it’s used a similar strategy, and, I have to admit, it’s working.
REPORTER: Gravity?
SISYPHUS: Exactly, Bob. And I feel like maybe the rock just wanted it more? A rock that big, you really have to bring your A game to roll it up the hill and get it to stay there.
REPORTER: Which you haven’t been able to do yet. Ever.
SISYPHUS: That’s right. But I’m not gonna stop till I reach the top! Yeah!
REPORTER: Let’s go back up to the booth. Ted and Pythagoras?
(Minutes later.)
REPORTER: So that was . . . rough. A crushing defeat. Literally.
SISYPHUS: Yes, Bob, it was.
REPORTER: Has it rolled over you like that on the way down before?
SISYPHUS: No, and there’s a part of me that’s disappointed. But the rest of me is saying, “Go out there and do it!”
REPORTER: Seriously?
SISYPHUS: Yes. If I keep playing my game, that rock doesn’t stand a chance! It might as well be getting its mail forwarded to the top of that hill, because that’s where it’s going to stay!
REPORTER: I admire your fighting spirit—as well as the anachronistic analogy—but aren’t you even a little bit discouraged?
SISYPHUS: I am not, because there’s no “I” in “fail,” Bob.
REPORTER: Actually, there is.
SISYPHUS: There’s no “sissy” in “Sisyphus.”
REPORTER: So you don’t do anagrams.
SISYPHUS: There’s nothing I can’t do!
REPORTER: Back to the booth.
(Minutes later.)
REPORTER: So, from the replay, it looks like the rock rolled over you, then was delayed by some brush while you slid down the hill, and then it crushed you again. And again and again. Is that right?
SISYPHUS: Yes, Bob. And I won’t lie—this one hurts. But it’s all mental, and if . . .
REPORTER: Hold on. We just watched your body being repeatedly pulverized by a huge boulder.
SISYPHUS: You gotta give credit to my opponent. It had a solid game plan today and executed it well.
REPORTER: Rolling over you repeatedly?
SISYPHUS: Exactly, Bob. I just need to get back to my basics, and, boom—I’ll be taking it to the next level.
REPORTER: Do you ever wonder what you did to be stuck at this level? Because I do.
SISYPHUS: It’s just character-building adversity that, in the end, is gonna make me stronger.
REPORTER: I keep thinking over my life, wondering what I did to anger the gods.
SISYPHUS: The gods are on my side, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for my success, because I’m just one man out here.
REPORTER: You have had absolutely no success. All right, it’s time for you to get crushed by the big rock again.
SISYPHUS: Not this time! I’m gonna make you a believer, Bob!
REPORTER: Please, someone make this stop.
(Minutes later.)
REPORTER 2: How do you feel?
SISYPHUS: Really good, Bob.
REPORTER 2: Uh, it’s Bill. Bob ran onto the course during that last round and into the oncoming rock.
SISYPHUS: Geez, that’s rough. It’s a tough game, but you hate to see that happen to anyone. Bob, we’re rooting for a speedy recovery, buddy!
REPORTER 2: Bob’s dead.
SISYPHUS: Well, my sympathies. I’m not gonna stop till I reach the top!
(They watch the grounds crew working at the bottom of the hill.)
SISYPHUS: As soon as they clean up that mess. ♦


The Equality Conundrum

Michael and Angela have just turned fifty-five .
They know two people who have died in the past few years—one from cancer , another in a car accident .
It occurs to them that they should make a plan for their kids .
They have some money in the bank .
Suppose they were both killed in a plane crash—what would happen to it ?
They have four children , who range in age from their late teens to their late twenties .
Chloe , the oldest , is a math wiz with a coding job at Google ; she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Will , who has a degree in social work , is paying off his student debt while working at a halfway house for recovering addicts .
The twins , James and Alexis , are both in college .
James , a perpetually stoned underachiever , is convinced that he can make it as a YouTuber .
( He ’ s already been suspended twice , for on-campus pranks . )
Alexis , who hopes to become a poet , has a congenital condition that could leave her blind by middle age .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to divide their money equally .
Then they start to think about it .
Chloe is on the fast track to remunerative Silicon Valley success ; Will is burdened by debt in his quest to help the vulnerable .
If James were to come into an inheritance , he ’ d likely grow even lazier , spending it on streetwear and edibles ; Alexis , with her medical situation , might need help later in life .
Maybe , Michael and Angela think , it doesn ’ t make sense to divide the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Something more sophisticated might be required .
What matters to them is that their children flourish equally , and this might mean giving the kids unequal amounts—an unappealing prospect .
The philosopher Ronald Dworkin considered this type of parental conundrum in an essay called “ What Is Equality ?
, ” from 1981 .
The parents in such a family , he wrote , confront a trade-off between two worthy egalitarian goals .
One goal , “ equality of resources , ” might be achieved by dividing the inheritance evenly , but it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ important differences among the parties involved .
Another goal , “ equality of welfare , ” tries to take account of those differences by means of twisty calculations .
Take the first path , and you willfully ignore meaningful facts about your children .
Take the second , and you risk dividing the inheritance both unevenly and incorrectly .
In 2014 , the Pew Research Center asked Americans to rank the “ greatest dangers in the world.
” A plurality put inequality first , ahead of “ religious and ethnic hatred , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And yet people don ’ t agree about what , exactly , “ equality ” means .
In the past year , for example , New York City residents have found themselves in a debate over the city ’ s élite public high schools , such as Stuyvesant and Bronx Science .
Some ethnicities are vastly overrepresented at the schools , while others are dramatically underrepresented .
What to do ?
One side argues that the city should guarantee procedural equality : it should insure that all students and families are equally informed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entrance exam .
The other side argues for a more direct , representation-based form of equality : it would jettison the exam , adopting a new admissions system designed to produce student bodies reflective of the city ’ s demography .
Both groups pursue worthy egalitarian goals , but each approach runs against the other .
Because people and their circumstances differ , there is , Dworkin writes , a trade-off between treating people equally and treating them “ as equals.
” The complexities of egalitarianism are especially frustrating because inequalities are so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ average , make almost three hundred times what their employees make ; billionaire donors shape our politics ; automation favors owners over workers ; urban economies grow while rural areas stagnate ; the best health care goes to the richest .
Across the political spectrum , we grieve the loss of what Alexis de Tocqueville called the “ general equality of conditions , ” which , with the grievous exception of slavery , once shaped American society .
It ’ s not just about money .
Tocqueville , writing in 1835 , noted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” were egalitarian , too : we behaved as if there weren ’ t many differences among us .
Today , there are “ premiere ” lines for popcorn at the movies and five tiers of Uber ; we still struggle to address obvious inequalities of all kinds based on race , gender , sexual orientation , and other aspects of identity .
Inequality is everywhere , and unignorable .
We ’ ve diagnosed the disease .
Why can ’ t we agree on a cure ?
In January of 2015 , Jeremy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York University ’ s School of Law , delivered a series of lectures at the University of Edinburgh on the fundamental nature of human equality .
He began by provoking his audience .
“ Look around you , ” he said , “ and look at the differences between you.
” The crowd included the old and the young , men and women , the beautiful and the ugly , the rich and the poor , the healthy and the infirm , the high-status and the low .
In theory , Waldron said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as well as civilians , fugitives and convicts as well as law-abiding citizens , homeless people as well as property owners ” —even “ bankrupts , infants , lunatics , ” all with different legal rights .
In a book based on those lectures , “ One Another ’ s Equals : The Basis of Human Equality , ” Waldron points out that people are also marked by differences of skill , experience , creativity , and virtue .
Given such consequential differences , he asks , in what sense are people “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fundamental equality ; as a philosopher , however , he wants to know why he believes in it .
According to the Declaration of Independence , it is “ self-evident ” that all men are created equal .
But , from a certain perspective , it ’ s our inequality that ’ s self-evident .
A decade ago , the writer Deborah Solomon asked Donald Trump what he thought of the idea that “ all men are created equal.
” “ It ’ s not true , ” Trump reportedly said .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Some people are born not so smart .
Some people are born very beautiful , and some people are not , so you can ’ t say they ’ re all created equal.
” Trump acknowledged that everyone is entitled to equal treatment under the law but concluded that “ All men are created equal ” is “ a very confusing phrase to a lot of people.
” More than twenty per cent of Americans , according to a 2015 poll , agree : they believe that the statement “ All men are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Waldron ’ s view , though , it ’ s not a binary choice ; it ’ s possible to see people as equal and unequal simultaneously .
A society can sort its members into various categories—lawful and criminal , brilliant and not—while also allowing some principle of basic equality to circumscribe its judgments and , in some contexts , override them .
Egalitarians like Dworkin and Waldron call this principle “ deep equality.
” It ’ s because of deep equality that even those people who acquire additional , justified worth through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still be considered fundamentally no better than anyone else .
By the same token , Waldron says , deep equality insures that even the most heinous murderer can be seen as a member of the human race , “ with all the worth and status that this implies.
” Deep equality—among other principles—ought to tell us that it ’ s wrong to sequester the small children of migrants in squalid prisons , whatever their legal status .
Waldron wants to find its source .
“ She doesn ’ t want to see you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his search , he explores centuries of intellectual history .
Many thinkers , from Cicero to Locke , have argued that our ability to reason is what makes us equals .
( But isn ’ t this ability itself unequally distributed ? )
Other thinkers , including Immanuel Kant , have cited our moral sense .
( But doesn ’ t this restrict equality to the virtuous ? )
Some philosophers , such as Jeremy Bentham , have suggested that it ’ s our capacity to suffer that equalizes us .
( But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
Others have nominated our capacity to love .
( But what about selfish , hard-hearted people ? )
It would be helpful , on a practical level , if there were a well-defined basis for our deep equality .
Such a basis might guide our thinking .
If deep equality turned out to be based on our ability to suffer , for example , then Michael and Angela might feel better about giving their daughter Alexis , who risks blindness , more money than her siblings .
But Waldron finds none @ @ @ @ @ @ @ various religious traditions , he observes , equality flows not just from broad assurances that we are all made in God ’ s image but from some sense that everyone is the protagonist in a saga of error , realization , and redemption : we ’ re equal because God cares about how things turn out for each of us .
He notes that atheists , too , might locate our equality in the idea that we each have our own story .
Waldron himself is taken by Hannah Arendt ’ s related @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notion that what each of us share is having been born as a “ newcomer , ” entering into history with “ the capacity of beginning something anew , that is , of acting.
” And yet Arendt herself was pessimistic about the quest for a proof of equality ; in her view , the Holocaust had revealed that there was “ nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human.
” If that ’ s true , then equality may be not a self-evident fact about human beings but a human-made social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into practice .
In the end , Waldron concludes that there is no “ small polished unitary soul-like substance ” that makes us equal ; there ’ s only a patchwork of arguments for our deep equality , collectively compelling but individually limited .
Equality is a composite idea—a nexus of complementary and competing intuitions .
The blurry nature of equality makes it hard to solve egalitarian dilemmas from first principles .
In each situation , we must feel our way forward , reconciling our conflicting intuitions about what “ equal ” means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea—it tells us , among other things , that discrimination and bigotry are wrong .
But it isn ’ t , in itself , fine-grained enough to answer thorny questions about how a community should divide up what it has .
To answer those questions , it must be augmented by other , narrower tenets .
The communities that have the easiest time doing that tend to have some clearly defined , shared purpose .
Sprinters competing in a hundred-metre dash have varied endowments and train in different conditions ; from a certain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unfair .
( How can you compete with someone who has better genes ? )
But runners form an egalitarian community with a common goal—finding out who ’ s fastest—and so they have invented rules and procedures ( qualifying heats , drug bans ) that allow them to consider a race valid as long as no one jumps the gun .
By embracing an agreed-upon theory of equality before the race , the sprinters can find collective meaning in the ranked inequalities that emerge when it ends .
A hospital , similarly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the necessary work of giving some patients priority over others , perhaps by adopting a theory of equality that ignores certain kinds of differences ( some patients are rich , others poor ) while acknowledging others ( some patients are in urgent trouble , others less so ) .
What matters , above all , is that the scheme makes sense to those involved .
Because maintaining such agreements takes constant work , egalitarian communities are always in danger of disintegrating .
Nevertheless , the egalitarian landscape is dotted with islands of agreement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ competitions in which a shared theory of equality is used for some practical purpose .
An individual family might divide up its chores by agreeing on a theory of equality that balances quick , unpleasant tasks , such as bathroom-cleaning , with slower , more enjoyable ones , such as dog-walking .
This sort of artisanal egalitarianism is comparatively easy to arrange .
Mass-producing it is what ’ s hard .
A whole society can ’ t get together in a room to hash things out .
Instead , consensus must coalesce slowly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is perfect ; each contains hidden dangers that emerge with time .
Many people , in contemplating the division of goods , invoke the principle of necessity : the idea that our first priority should be the equal fulfillment of fundamental needs .
The hidden danger here becomes apparent once we go past a certain point of subsistence .
When Fyodor Dostoyevsky went to military school , he wrote home to ask his land-owning but cash-strapped father , Mikhail Andreevich , for new boots and other furnishings , arguing that , without them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Andreevich recognized his son ’ s changed needs and granted his request ; he died soon afterward , under mysterious circumstances , and Dostoyevsky came to believe that he had been murdered by the serfs he had overworked .
The episode , which helped inspire “ The Brothers Karamazov , ” also illustrates a core problem that bedevils egalitarianism—what philosophers call “ the problem of expensive tastes.
” The problem—what feels like a necessity to one person seems like a luxury to another—is familiar to anyone who ’ s argued with a foodie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It applies not just to material goods but to societal ones .
To an environmentalist , protecting the spotted owl is a necessity ; to a logger who stands to lose his job , it ’ s a luxury .
The problem is so insistent that a whole body of political philosophy— “ prioritarianism ” —is devoted to the challenge of sorting people with needs from people with wants .
It ’ s difficult in part because the line shifts as the years pass .
Medical procedures that seem optional today become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ once unusual , such as college degrees , become increasingly indispensable with time .
In a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research , four economists evaluated the success of President Lyndon Johnson ’ s War on Poverty .
They found that , judging by a modernized version of the definition of “ poverty ” which Johnson used , the poverty rate in America fell from 19.5 per cent in 1963 to 2.3 per cent in 2017 .
Still , they note in their paper , “ expectations for minimum living standards @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the social safety net that the War on Poverty put in place—food stamps , Medicaid , and so on—is itself a sign of poverty .
A new , more robust safety net—free college , Medicare for All—becomes , for some , an egalitarian necessity .
Some thinkers try to tame the problem of expensive tastes by asking what a “ normal ” or “ typical ” person might find necessary .
But it ’ s easy to define “ typical ” too narrowly , letting unfair assumptions influence our judgments .
In an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Point of Equality ?
, ” the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson pointed out an odd feature of our social contract : if you ’ re fired from your job , unemployment benefits help keep you afloat , while if you stop working to have a child you must deal with the loss of income yourself .
This contradiction , she writes , reveals an assumption that “ the desire to procreate is just another expensive taste ” ; it reflects , she argues , the sexist presumption that “ atomistic egoism and self-sufficiency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ word “ necessity ” suggests the idea of a bare minimum .
In fact , it sets a high bar .
Clearing it may require rethinking how society functions .
Perhaps because necessity is so demanding , our egalitarian commitments tend to rest on a different principle : luck .
The philosopher Richard Arneson explained the idea a couple of decades ago : “ Some people are blessed with good luck , some are cursed with bad luck , and it is the responsibility of society—all of us regarded collectively—to alter the distribution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the jumble of lotteries that constitutes human life as we know it.
” Anderson , in an influential coinage , calls this outlook “ luck egalitarianism.
” Instead of dividing things up by asking what people need , a luck-egalitarian system tries to equalize the distribution of misfortune .
If you ’ re born on the wrong side of the tracks , or if your house is destroyed in an unpredictable natural disaster , luck egalitarianism suggests that you deserve help .
If you screw up—by squandering your savings , launching a failed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on your own .
It ’ s to luck egalitarianism that we owe the metaphors of the “ level playing field ” and the “ social safety net.
” The first equalizes the bad luck we ’ re born with ; the second , the bad luck that finds us as adults .
As Americans , we are charged with recognizing two conflicting values : individualism and egalitarianism .
By smoothing out the unlucky differences while accepting those for which people are responsible , luck egalitarianism promises to help us be individualists and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and others have argued , doing this is harder than it sounds .
One problem , Anderson writes , is that luck egalitarianism condescends to those it helps : by seeing them as hapless victims of circumstance , it denies them the “ equal respect ” they ’ re due as citizens of a democracy .
( It ’ s perhaps for this reason that the people who might benefit from the extension of government programs so often vote against them . )
Another problem , which the political theorist Yascha Mounk explores @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Luck , Choice , and the Welfare State , ” is that the distinction between choice and luck is hard to sustain .
If you sleep in instead of coming to work every day and then get fired , you ’ re clearly making bad choices .
But what if you ’ re born into a family with an income just north of the poverty line , then drop out of high school to get a dead-end job ?
In all likelihood , you ’ ve suffered from bad luck and made bad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ place at your state university to take a job at the auto plant where your parents work , and the plant then closes .
The closing of the plant was out of your control , but the decision to work there rather than go to college was yours to make .
If you ’ d acquired more skills , would you be more employable ?
Or would the forces of globalization that led to the closure of the plant have narrowed your job prospects no matter your training ?
You might lie awake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ settling on answers ; it ’ s absurd , Mounk writes , to expect “ a real-world state bureaucracy to answer such intricate hypothetical questions about millions of citizens.
” The distinction between choice and luck , he argues , is a matter not of fact but of perspective .
Explanations of human behavior have traditionally been divided into two groups : those which focus on the forces that push us around and those which emphasize how , as individuals , we can choose to resist them .
The same phenomenon can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ structure-agency distinction .
For most of the twentieth century , Mounk writes , criminologists looked at crime from a structural perspective : they urged politicians to fight it by reducing poverty—its root cause .
Later , however , they changed tack : they began examining the motivations of individual criminals and asking how potential wrongdoers , as “ agents , ” might be dissuaded from committing crimes .
The criminologists weren ’ t repudiating their prior insights about poverty , Mounk says ; they were just looking at crime from a different perspective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to police officers , who couldn ’ t lift a neighborhood out of poverty but could change the way they patrolled it .
Mounk thinks that most people understand , intuitively , that the distinction between structure and agency is—like the distinction between “ nature ” and “ nurture ” —an artifact of explanation , not a part of reality .
All explanations are limited , we know , and tell only part of the story .
This , he writes , is why we are so ambivalent about luck egalitarianism and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lens .
Conservatives , hoping to constrain the size of the welfare state , overstate how much control people have over their lives ; liberals , hoping to expand it , overstate our powerlessness .
But both positions are unconvincing .
“ While voters are receptive to the idea that it is deeply unjust for some public schools to have better funding than others , they balk when they are told that students who do well in school are merely lucky , ” Mounk writes .
“ And while they recognize that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ average people lies in larger structural transformations of the world economy , they are skeptical when they are told that the choices of specific individuals don ’ t play any role in determining their particular economic fate.
” There ’ s a problem with finding problems with egalitarianism .
The head fights the gut ; complexities can ’ t drown out the moral law within .
Reading Waldron , Anderson , Mounk , and other thinkers on egalitarianism , I found myself remembering a time that started when I was eleven or twelve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and rarely spoke ; I went to three middle schools in three years , one bad , one middling , one good .
The bad school was near my mother ’ s house , where we lived in the basement , having rented out the main floor .
The good school was in a wealthy suburb .
I attended it by claiming to live at the address of a family friend who had a small apartment , above a commercial space , on its edge .
( So-called enrollment fraud is common across @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rich and poor school districts border each other . )
For a while , I took the bus home to the apartment , hanging out there until late in the evening .
When this arrangement grew untenable , my mother devised a plan .
She ’ d struck up a conversation with a cabdriver and taken his card ; she called him and asked if , for a flat monthly fee , he ’ d pick me up at school each day and drop me at my father ’ s house , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t many fares at two-thirty in the afternoon in the Maryland suburbs , and he said yes .
Peter , the cabdriver , began picking me up from a hidden spot past the soccer fields , under some trees .
He was from West Africa , with an accent I sometimes struggled with .
We talked about his home town , his girlfriend , the books I was reading—Stephen King , for the most part—in which he sweetly expressed an interest .
Eventually , two of my friends , who were also picked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spot and joined me there .
As Peter and I drove away , everyone waved .
One day , Peter was agitated when he arrived .
“ I have to make a detour , O.K .
?
” he said .
“ Don ’ t tell your mom.
” He didn ’ t wave to my friends , and we took a left instead of a right , eventually entering a neighborhood of small , unkempt row houses .
As we drove , Peter told me how the taxi business worked .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he rented it from the cab company , in a rent-to-own arrangement .
If he missed his monthly payment , the company took the cab back .
The payment was extremely high .
“ I drive and I drive and I drive , ” he said .
“ But I can ’ t make it .
I can ’ t make it !
” As we pulled up in front of his cousin ’ s house , he sobbed .
I watched from the back seat as he returned to the cab , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hand .
“ Some are born to meet , some achieve meetings , and some have meetings thrust upon them.
” I wasn ’ t a sheltered kid ; I knew about economic hardship .
A few times that year , my mother had fallen behind on our bills , and our power had been cut off ; we ’ d showered and eaten dinner in the dark .
She ’ d hidden her despair , but Peter had shared his .
For him , the bottom could fall out faster and more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in a Dickensian coincidence , Peter , who was still driving cabs , picked my father up from the airport and gave him a business card .
Peter started driving him , too ; that year , on a trip with my dad and his family , Peter and I were reunited , to our great delight .
But not long afterward he died .
He suffered from diabetes and hypertension , and had no health insurance ; he went too long before seeking treatment for an infection in his toe .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ he died of septic shock .
Injustice isn ’ t cerebral .
Peter and I were two equal people on the same earth .
What ’ s so complicated about that ?
The gap between intuition and argument—between outrage and the best response to that outrage—is the subject of Robert Tsai ’ s “ Practical Equality : Forging Justice in a Divided Nation.
” Tsai , a law professor at American University , places great weight on the intuition that we are “ one another ’ s equals ” —and yet , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ in a diverse democracy , people will disagree about what equality means.
” Hashing out questions of equality , he concludes , can be so fraught , so confusing , that the wisest course is sometimes to circumvent them .
Inequality can be resisted , and equality pursued , by other , less tangled means .
Tsai , a constitutional litigator , is intimately familiar with how arguments about equality have unfolded in the courts .
Often , he writes , the moral magnetism of equality backfires .
To crusade for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of justice , and so there is no choice but to accuse those obstructing it of being racists , misogynists , élitists , or oppressors .
Tsai tells the story of City of Cleburne , Texas v. Cleburne Living Center , Inc. , a Supreme Court case from 1985 .
A private company proposed opening a group home for thirteen intellectually disabled residents in the small city of Cleburne ; it was thwarted by a local ordinance that required a permit for the opening of facilities for the “ feeble-minded.
” City officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of concerns : the preservation of the neighborhood ’ s “ serenity , ” the danger to nearby elderly people , the possibility that bullies from a nearby junior high school would torment their new neighbors .
Advocates for it pointed out that the ordinance ’ s origins lay in the country ’ s eugenicist past .
( In 1927 , a Supreme Court decision permitted the sterilization of the intellectually disabled “ for the protection and health of the state.
” ) When the case reached the Supreme Court , the arguments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terms of equality .
Some people likened it to an apartheid law : it was no different , they argued , from a rule barring the construction of hospitals for people of a particular religion or ethnicity .
The Reagan Administration , defending the law , argued that , since the disabled did have “ distinctive needs and abilities , ” treating them differently need not reflect “ invidious and derogatory aims.
” The table was set for an intractable egalitarian debate .
A morally charged yet abstract question had been raised about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society committed to equality ; the answer would concretely affect millions of disabled people .
And that discussion , in turn , had been connected to the accusation that those who objected to the home were closed-minded bigots—a charge sure to rally many of their fellow-citizens to their defense .
The likelihood of the Court coming to a universally convincing conclusion seemed remote .
In the end , Tsai writes , the Justices decided to avoid thinking in terms of equality .
Instead , they applied the “ rule of reason , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any rational basis , and concluding that they did not .
By taking this approach , the Court avoided entirely the question of whether the citizens who objected to the home were motivated by bigotry ; it also skirted the Waldronesque question of what it might mean to treat intellectually disabled people equally .
And yet , Tsai writes , the Court still created a basically egalitarian outcome , and “ placed discriminatory action based on damaging cultural stereotypes off-limits.
” The Court used the same approach in other equality-enhancing decisions .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a female high-school student filed a complaint against the Virginia Military Institute ( the so-called West Point of the South ) , which excluded women .
The arguments on her behalf , which leaned heavily on equality , soon got bogged down in the question of what it might mean for the Institute to treat male and female cadets equally .
Instead of weighing in on that issue , the Court ruled that there was no rational basis for denying women admission .
These cases and many others , Tsai believes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ practical to pursue “ equality by other means ” than to sail into the crosscurrents of egalitarian debate .
Reasonableness , or rationality , is one test to which we can subject inegalitarian systems or rules .
One can also ask whether they are fair , whether their specific consequences are cruel , whether all relevant voices have been heard .
Answering these questions isn ’ t always easy , but it ’ s easier than generating consensus about what “ equal ” means .
We make more progress , Tsai argues , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moral outrage.
” Language itself may be misleading us .
Appalled by inequality , our minds turn immediately to its opposite .
Sidestepping that impulse , as Tsai advocates , requires giving up a satisfying rhetorical clarity , but it may bring us closer to our moral common sense .
The philosopher David Schmidtz explains why in a 2006 book titled “ Elements of Justice.
” Schmidtz begins by asking us to contemplate what makes a neighborhood a good place to live : a thriving community might have a grocery store , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ playground .
Similarly , a system of justice must have a few different structures to be livable .
It ’ s easy to imagine justice as a unitary thing—a single , imposing building , a Supreme Court .
But it ’ s more like a collection of buildings , each with its own function .
In the neighborhood of justice , Schmidtz identifies four structures : equality , desert , reciprocity , and need .
We consult these in different contexts , to solve different kinds of problems .
Citizens are owed equality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contrast , should be compensated differently , depending on what they have accomplished .
In relationships with our partners , we favor reciprocity .
In trying to do right by our children , we ask what they need .
( Michael and Angela , in considering their will , might focus on necessity more than the other concepts : instead of asking “ What do they deserve ?
” or “ What have they done for us lately ?
, ” they might ask , “ What do our kids need ?
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enough to serve in every situation ; in fact , they are often in tension with one another .
And they can be used inappropriately .
No one wants a merit-based marriage .
A workplace that operates by reciprocity is a dysfunctional one .
In real life , therefore , we amble around the neighborhood of justice .
A coach doesn ’ t run her team on egalitarian principles alone ; to win , she must field the best players more often .
But she doesn ’ t run a ruthless meritocracy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ players get the help they need , they assist one another reciprocally , they ’ re rewarded for their individual accomplishments , and they are treated similarly enough that they feel connected in a common enterprise .
The frustrations and complexities of egalitarianism reflect the hidden complexity of equality .
It looks simple and self-evident , as though one could proclaim it into existence .
But achieving it requires a willingness to recognize , and to shift among , many different conceptions of what ’ s right—a kind of moral egalitarianism .
Even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is insufficient .
No one version of the good can rule the rest .
♦

The distinction between choice and luck, he argues, is a matter not of fact but of perspective. Explanations of human behavior have traditionally been divided into two groups: those which focus on the forces that push us around and those which emphasize how, as individuals, we can choose to resist them. The same phenomenon can be viewed from either side of the so-called structure-agency distinction. For most of the twentieth century, Mounk writes, criminologists looked at crime from a structural perspective: they urged politicians to fight it by reducing poverty—its root cause. Later, however, they changed tack: they began examining the motivations of individual criminals and asking how potential wrongdoers, as “agents,” might be dissuaded from committing crimes. The criminologists weren’t repudiating their prior insights about poverty, Mounk says; they were just looking at crime from a different perspective. The agent-based perspective was more useful to police officers, who couldn’t lift a neighborhood out of poverty but could change the way they patrolled it.
Mounk thinks that most people understand, intuitively, that the distinction between structure and agency is—like the distinction between “nature” and “nurture”—an artifact of explanation, not a part of reality. All explanations are limited, we know, and tell only part of the story. This, he writes, is why we are so ambivalent about luck egalitarianism and the politicians who see the world through its lens. Conservatives, hoping to constrain the size of the welfare state, overstate how much control people have over their lives; liberals, hoping to expand it, overstate our powerlessness. But both positions are unconvincing. “While voters are receptive to the idea that it is deeply unjust for some public schools to have better funding than others, they balk when they are told that students who do well in school are merely lucky,” Mounk writes. “And while they recognize that the explanation for the stagnating living standards of average people lies in larger structural transformations of the world economy, they are skeptical when they are told that the choices of specific individuals don’t play any role in determining their particular economic fate.”
There’s a problem with finding problems with egalitarianism. The head fights the gut; complexities can’t drown out the moral law within. Reading Waldron, Anderson, Mounk, and other thinkers on egalitarianism, I found myself remembering a time that started when I was eleven or twelve years old. My parents were divorced and rarely spoke; I went to three middle schools in three years, one bad, one middling, one good. The bad school was near my mother’s house, where we lived in the basement, having rented out the main floor. The good school was in a wealthy suburb. I attended it by claiming to live at the address of a family friend who had a small apartment, above a commercial space, on its edge. (So-called enrollment fraud is common across the country, especially in places where rich and poor school districts border each other.)
For a while, I took the bus home to the apartment, hanging out there until late in the evening. When this arrangement grew untenable, my mother devised a plan. She’d struck up a conversation with a cabdriver and taken his card; she called him and asked if, for a flat monthly fee, he’d pick me up at school each day and drop me at my father’s house, a short drive away. There weren’t many fares at two-thirty in the afternoon in the Maryland suburbs, and he said yes.
Peter, the cabdriver, began picking me up from a hidden spot past the soccer fields, under some trees. He was from West Africa, with an accent I sometimes struggled with. We talked about his home town, his girlfriend, the books I was reading—Stephen King, for the most part—in which he sweetly expressed an interest. Eventually, two of my friends, who were also picked up after school, discovered my secret spot and joined me there. As Peter and I drove away, everyone waved.
One day, Peter was agitated when he arrived. “I have to make a detour, O.K.?” he said. “Don’t tell your mom.” He didn’t wave to my friends, and we took a left instead of a right, eventually entering a neighborhood of small, unkempt row houses. As we drove, Peter told me how the taxi business worked. He didn’t own his cab; he rented it from the cab company, in a rent-to-own arrangement. If he missed his monthly payment, the company took the cab back. The payment was extremely high. “I drive and I drive and I drive,” he said. “But I can’t make it. I can’t make it!” As we pulled up in front of his cousin’s house, he sobbed. I watched from the back seat as he returned to the cab, weeping, with borrowed cash in his hand.
“Some are born to meet, some achieve meetings, and some have meetings thrust upon them.” Cartoon by Avi Steinberg Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
I wasn’t a sheltered kid; I knew about economic hardship. A few times that year, my mother had fallen behind on our bills, and our power had been cut off; we’d showered and eaten dinner in the dark. She’d hidden her despair, but Peter had shared his. For him, the bottom could fall out faster and more completely. More than a decade later, in a Dickensian coincidence, Peter, who was still driving cabs, picked my father up from the airport and gave him a business card. Peter started driving him, too; that year, on a trip with my dad and his family, Peter and I were reunited, to our great delight. But not long afterward he died. He suffered from diabetes and hypertension, and had no health insurance; he went too long before seeking treatment for an infection in his toe. It got into his bloodstream, and he died of septic shock.
Injustice isn’t cerebral. Peter and I were two equal people on the same earth. What’s so complicated about that?
The gap between intuition and argument—between outrage and the best response to that outrage—is the subject of Robert Tsai’s “Practical Equality: Forging Justice in a Divided Nation.” Tsai, a law professor at American University, places great weight on the intuition that we are “one another’s equals”—and yet, he writes, it’s inevitable that, “in a diverse democracy, people will disagree about what equality means.” Hashing out questions of equality, he concludes, can be so fraught, so confusing, that the wisest course is sometimes to circumvent them. Inequality can be resisted, and equality pursued, by other, less tangled means.
Tsai, a constitutional litigator, is intimately familiar with how arguments about equality have unfolded in the courts. Often, he writes, the moral magnetism of equality backfires. To crusade for it is to be on the side of justice, and so there is no choice but to accuse those obstructing it of being racists, misogynists, élitists, or oppressors. Tsai tells the story of City of Cleburne, Texas v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., a Supreme Court case from 1985. A private company proposed opening a group home for thirteen intellectually disabled residents in the small city of Cleburne; it was thwarted by a local ordinance that required a permit for the opening of facilities for the “feeble-minded.” City officials opposed to the home cited a variety of concerns: the preservation of the neighborhood’s “serenity,” the danger to nearby elderly people, the possibility that bullies from a nearby junior high school would torment their new neighbors. Advocates for it pointed out that the ordinance’s origins lay in the country’s eugenicist past. (In 1927, a Supreme Court decision permitted the sterilization of the intellectually disabled “for the protection and health of the state.”)
When the case reached the Supreme Court, the arguments against the ordinance were mostly framed in terms of equality. Some people likened it to an apartheid law: it was no different, they argued, from a rule barring the construction of hospitals for people of a particular religion or ethnicity. The Reagan Administration, defending the law, argued that, since the disabled did have “distinctive needs and abilities,” treating them differently need not reflect “invidious and derogatory aims.” The table was set for an intractable egalitarian debate. A morally charged yet abstract question had been raised about the place of intellectual disabilities within a society committed to equality; the answer would concretely affect millions of disabled people. And that discussion, in turn, had been connected to the accusation that those who objected to the home were closed-minded bigots—a charge sure to rally many of their fellow-citizens to their defense. The likelihood of the Court coming to a universally convincing conclusion seemed remote.
In the end, Tsai writes, the Justices decided to avoid thinking in terms of equality. Instead, they applied the “rule of reason,” asking whether the citizens’ concerns had any rational basis, and concluding that they did not. By taking this approach, the Court avoided entirely the question of whether the citizens who objected to the home were motivated by bigotry; it also skirted the Waldronesque question of what it might mean to treat intellectually disabled people equally. And yet, Tsai writes, the Court still created a basically egalitarian outcome, and “placed discriminatory action based on damaging cultural stereotypes off-limits.”
The Court used the same approach in other equality-enhancing decisions. In United States v. Virginia, from 1996, a female high-school student filed a complaint against the Virginia Military Institute (the so-called West Point of the South), which excluded women. The arguments on her behalf, which leaned heavily on equality, soon got bogged down in the question of what it might mean for the Institute to treat male and female cadets equally. Instead of weighing in on that issue, the Court ruled that there was no rational basis for denying women admission.
These cases and many others, Tsai believes, show that it’s often more practical to pursue “equality by other means” than to sail into the crosscurrents of egalitarian debate. Reasonableness, or rationality, is one test to which we can subject inegalitarian systems or rules. One can also ask whether they are fair, whether their specific consequences are cruel, whether all relevant voices have been heard. Answering these questions isn’t always easy, but it’s easier than generating consensus about what “equal” means. We make more progress, Tsai argues, when we “shift the focus of moral outrage.”
Language itself may be misleading us. Appalled by inequality, our minds turn immediately to its opposite. Sidestepping that impulse, as Tsai advocates, requires giving up a satisfying rhetorical clarity, but it may bring us closer to our moral common sense. The philosopher David Schmidtz explains why in a 2006 book titled “Elements of Justice.” Schmidtz begins by asking us to contemplate what makes a neighborhood a good place to live: a thriving community might have a grocery store, a fire station, a library, a playground. Similarly, a system of justice must have a few different structures to be livable. It’s easy to imagine justice as a unitary thing—a single, imposing building, a Supreme Court. But it’s more like a collection of buildings, each with its own function.
In the neighborhood of justice, Schmidtz identifies four structures: equality, desert, reciprocity, and need. We consult these in different contexts, to solve different kinds of problems. Citizens are owed equality before the law. Workers, by contrast, should be compensated differently, depending on what they have accomplished. In relationships with our partners, we favor reciprocity. In trying to do right by our children, we ask what they need. (Michael and Angela, in considering their will, might focus on necessity more than the other concepts: instead of asking “What do they deserve?” or “What have they done for us lately?,” they might ask, “What do our kids need?”) None of these principles are capacious enough to serve in every situation; in fact, they are often in tension with one another. And they can be used inappropriately. No one wants a merit-based marriage. A workplace that operates by reciprocity is a dysfunctional one.
In real life, therefore, we amble around the neighborhood of justice. A coach doesn’t run her team on egalitarian principles alone; to win, she must field the best players more often. But she doesn’t run a ruthless meritocracy, either. On a good team, players get the help they need, they assist one another reciprocally, they’re rewarded for their individual accomplishments, and they are treated similarly enough that they feel connected in a common enterprise.
The frustrations and complexities of egalitarianism reflect the hidden complexity of equality. It looks simple and self-evident, as though one could proclaim it into existence. But achieving it requires a willingness to recognize, and to shift among, many different conceptions of what’s right—a kind of moral egalitarianism. Even equality itself, as an ideal, is insufficient. No one version of the good can rule the rest. ♦


newyorker--2020-01-06--Slide Show: New Yorker Cartoons January 13, 2020

“ You ’ re here and you don ’ t have to be .
That tells me a lot about @ @ @

“You’re here and you don’t have to be. That tells me a lot about you.”
Cartoon by Michael Maslin