newyorker--2020-09-25--The Case for Ending the Supreme Court as We Know It

Last week , Donald Trump was confronted with a new accusation of sexual assault ( Trump , as always , denied it ) , and then delivered a bizarre speech at the National Archives , demanding ideological conformity in public-school curricula through what he described as “ patriotic education ” that “ celebrates the truth about our nation ’ s great history.
” Instead of facing scrutiny or scorn for these latest outrages , he has been awarded yet another opportunity to select a Justice to serve on the Supreme Court .
Trump barely concealed his delight at the chance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tweeting at the Republican Party , the morning after Ginsburg ’ s death , “ We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us , the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices .
We have this obligation , without delay !
” It is simply unconscionable that Trump—who lost the popular election by millions of votes ; who was impeached last December , for abuse of power ; and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and sexist ideas , while also encouraging political violence against his perceived opponents—will , with voting in the Presidential election already under way , select a third candidate for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court .
Of course , no one has forgotten that , after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February , 2016 , the Republican Senate Majority Leader , Mitch McConnell , refused to hold a Senate hearing for President Obama ’ s nominee to the Court , Merrick Garland , effectively blocking Obama from choosing Scalia ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in power , there is little doubt that the Senate will hold a confirmation hearing for Trump ’ s candidate .
Not only does the likelihood of another Trump appointment shred the illusion that the Supreme Court stands above the political rancor of the executive and legislative branches ; it weaponizes the Court , by gifting Trump one more opportunity to limit the political rights of the minority populations that he disparages and despises .
Trump ’ s influence on American jurisprudence has been the quietest and most successful part of his destructive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two hundred judges to federal courts , surpassing almost any other recent President at this point in their tenure .
He has also made sure that the judges he has selected for these lifetime appointments are among the youngest ever—on average , forty-eight years old—insuring the longevity of their impact .
And , with eighty-five per cent of his appointees being white , he has cemented the gross mismatch between the federal judiciary and the public .
This latest development should certainly call into question the haphazard rules and procedural tricks that allot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scales of justice in his favor .
Pressed further , one might also ask : Why should the Supreme Court , an unelected body that is richer , whiter , and more male than the United States is , continue to have such outsized power in the lives of ordinary people ?
The insistence that the Supreme Court is not a political body is a principle of high folly in American politics .
Just last fall , Chief Justice John Roberts lamented the perception that the Court was politicized , saying , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ environment , people tend to see everything in those terms .
That ’ s not how we at the Court function , and the results in our cases do not suggest otherwise.
” In reality , appointments to the nation ’ s highest court reflect the current balance or imbalance of political power , making it impossible to neatly untie them from the political bodies that determine who sits on the Court and who does not .
Anyone who doubts this need look no further than the partisan rage displayed by Justice Brett @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in late 2018 .
From blaming an inquiry into his personal history on “ revenge on behalf of the Clintons ” to proclaiming “ What goes around , comes around ” to Senate Democrats , the future Justice arrogantly flexed raw Republican power .
Moreover , as the branch of government that is least accountable to the American public , the Supreme Court has tended , for most of its history , toward a fundamental conservatism , siding with tradition over more expansive visions of human rights .
Indeed , at the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Court reflected the most reactionary elements of the culture in its efforts to abridge , degrade , or simply eliminate the rights of African-Americans .
In 1857 , it famously ruled , in Dred Scott v. Sandford , that African-Americans were not and could not be citizens of the United States ; Chief Justice Roger Taney concluded that African-Americans were “ so far inferior , that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.
” It took a civil war and its revolutionary upending of American society to reverse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 , which guaranteed to all , including the formerly enslaved , the same rights that are “ enjoyed by white citizens.
” The Fourteenth Amendment , guaranteeing birthright citizenship to all and creating the legal principle of equal protection before the law , was built on the foundation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 .
In combination with the Thirteenth Amendment , which abolished slavery , and the Fifteenth Amendment , which prohibited racial discrimination as an obstacle to voting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to elevate African-Americans into the role of citizens , equal before the law and empowered by the ballot to shape the world in which they lived .
But , within a generation of the passage of this historic legislation , the Supreme Court slowly and assuredly denuded that legislation ’ s most potent power : constructing the personhood of those who were once property .
The Court ’ s decisions in the aftermath of Reconstruction reduced the amendments to their most literal meanings , ignoring their expansive conceptions as means to protect the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them—indeed , all people born in the United States—the privileges and protections of U.S. citizenship .
In 1883 , the Supreme Court heard a group of cases that had been bound together to test the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 , which prohibited discrimination in hotels , trains , and other public accommodations and “ places of public amusement.
” In an 8–1 decision , the Court ruled that it was legally permissible to ban African-Americans from public accommodations and decried African-American demands to participate in the public sphere as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were not entitled .
Though the stench of slavery still polluted the air , the Court offered willfully ignorant proclamations of color blindness .
In response to African-Americans ’ demands for equality , the majority opined , “ There must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen , and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws , and when his rights as a citizen or a man are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ other men ” had not been enslaved , nor subjected to savage acts of violence and harassment , nor banished from public life as an affront to their claims of citizenship .

On the eve of the twentieth century, the Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson transformed the regional injustice of Jim Crow into the national lie that separate could be equal, codifying the racial apartheid of the South as the law of the land. For decades, freed African-Americans had worked arduously to define the meaning of Black citizenship; the retrograde Court worked quickly to foreclose it. In doing so, it eviscerated, for millions of African-Americans, any notion that justice is blind, compelling one observer to describe the Court as the “grave of liberty.”
The accomplishments of the Court while led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, from 1953 to 1969, stand out as exceptions in the body’s long history of regression. But even the decisions from this period that we now laud for upholding or defending freedom were made within a larger climate of social unrest or revolt, and were often aimed at reversing damage that the Court had done in the first place. The Court is celebrated for its historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954, which banned segregation in public education, but it was merely undoing policies and practices that it had set in motion with Plessy. It was also responding to the broader dynamics of the emerging civil-rights movement, which threatened to embarrass the United States on the global stage just as the country was attempting to project itself, during the Cold War, as a beacon of democracy. In 1952, the Truman Administration submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court encouraging it to rule against segregation. As the brief noted, “The United States is trying to prove to the people of the world of every nationality, race and color, that a free democracy is the most civilized and most secure form of government yet devised by man. . . . The existence of discrimination against minority groups in the United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills.” The Brown decision was a public indicator of progress, but its decree was quickly undermined when, the following year, the Court prescribed that school desegregation be undertaken with “all deliberate speed.” Without a directive that the ruling should take effect immediately, the South was provided legal cover to drag its feet, as the racist “massive resistance” to school integration began to take hold.
At other moments, the coercive power of a mass social movement compelled the Court to act in proactive, even radical, ways. Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., a landmark case addressing housing discrimination, was decided in June of 1968, just months after a series of uprisings catalyzed by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The decision surpassed the Fair Housing Act, which was signed that April and set to be phased in over a two-year period, by making racial discrimination in the buying, selling, renting, or financing of housing illegal, effective immediately. The majority’s ruling looked to the Thirteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and declared that housing discrimination, regardless of whether the source was public or private, was a “badge and incident” of slavery. Justice Potter Stewart, writing for the majority, compared racial discrimination in housing to the “Black Codes” enacted at the end of the Civil War, saying that “when racial discrimination herds men into ghettos and makes their ability to buy property turn on the color of their skin, then it too is a relic of slavery.”
But, just six years after the Jones decision, the Court, led by a new Chief Justice, Warren Burger, stymied the progress of civil rights. In Milliken v. Bradley, the Court was asked to decide if Detroit suburbs were required to include Black children from the city in a metropolitan-area-wide school-desegregation plan. With the Black movement in retreat, and the political winds moving decidedly to the right—characterized by then President Richard Nixon’s description, in 1971, of “fair housing” as “forced integration”—the Court came to a remarkably different conclusion than it did in 1968. Burger, writing for the majority, claimed that racial segregation in Detroit was “caused by unknown and perhaps unknowable factors,” and concluded that there was no evidence that “governmental activity” had played any role in the “residential patterns within Detroit.” The Court had not forgotten its Jones ruling, in which it plainly described the existence of segregation and linked its origins to state action and private discrimination. Instead, the changing political climate cast similar facts in a different light. It was also a different Court. By the end of his disgraced Presidency, Nixon had appointed four Justices, conjuring a conservative majority that stemmed the momentum from the “rights revolution” for decades.
The Court retains this penchant to shape politics, even with issues seemingly settled by law. Take voting rights. African-Americans in the South finally secured unobstructed access to the ballot box with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was intended to end the shameful legacy of race-based voter suppression in the region. But, in fact, the question was not settled. In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion for the landmark reversal in Shelby County v. Holder, which ended the act’s key enforcement provisions. Just three weeks before George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin, compelling Alicia Garza to utter the phrase “Black lives matter” for the first time, Roberts argued that these civil-rights protections were no longer necessary because “our country has changed.” Predictably, states across the South began to implement new voting restrictions that overwhelmingly affected African-Americans. Alabama announced that it would require voters to present photo identification, and then, in Black-majority counties, proceeded to close Department of Motor Vehicles offices.
Even when the Court has ruled in ways that appear to be in the interest of minorities or socially and economically marginalized populations, its decisions can be ephemeral, susceptible to partisan shifts, while creating the dangerous illusion of permanence. The Roe v. Wade decision, in 1973, was made in the midst of the women’s-liberation movement, in which reproductive freedom and access to abortion were central demands. In subsequent decades, the changing political climate, including the strategic decisions of liberal feminist organizations to focus their resources and organizing on electoral politics, and not on the street-level mobilizations that won the right to abortion in the first place, has contributed to the erosion of support for abortion rights. The idea that sympathetic politicians were the key to maintaining access to abortion missed the historical lesson that pressure generated by social movements has the greatest potential to overcome the inherently conservative bent of the Court. We now live with the reality that a man accused of sexual assault by multiple women will have the power to make life-altering decisions about our lives, including whether we will retain the right to a legal abortion. The fluidity with which rights can be bequeathed and taken away, in fact, reduces rights to privileges. In a truly democratic society, civil rights should not be contingent on a fortuitous combination of Supreme Court Justices.
The events of this tumultuous and tragic year, from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic to the fresh uprisings against racist police violence, have compelled a national reckoning like no other, opening new public, mainstream conversations about how we might remake this country more equitably. Those discussions have been most pointed when trained on the destructive role of police in Black and brown communities. Activists have advanced an unpopular but compelling argument to “defund the police” and redistribute law-enforcement budgets to programs that might more effectively respond to social and economic crises in poor and working-class communities. We have also seen a growing demand for some form of universal or guaranteed health care, reflecting deepening frustrations with a health-care system in which access is largely contingent on employment and, even then, is deeply constrained by costs. For-profit health care was unpopular before, but now, as millions have lost their jobs because of the contracting pandemic-era economy, it seems as cruel as it is unjust. One measure of the mounting discontent with the rapacious inequality that defines American society is the number of people who have warmed to the ideas of socialism and the redistributive economics at their core. In a Pew Research poll conducted last year, forty-two per cent of Americans had a positive view of socialism. Months later, Gallup found that young adults’ attitude toward socialism is even rosier, with nearly half viewing it positively. In moments of acute crisis, people question the norms and institutions of a social order that gestated the problems in the first place.
Trump’s constitutional power to manipulate the Court in his favor has compelled mainstream elected officials to make dramatic demands that the Supreme Court change. The former Attorney General Eric Holder recently described the conservative majority as “illegitimate,” because of the Senate’s refusal to confirm Merrick Garland, and said that, if Republicans move forward with confirming Ginsburg’s replacement, and Democrats win the Presidency, “we need to think about court reform. And, at a minimum, as part of that reform package, I think additional Justices need to be placed on the Supreme Court.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have not ruled out Court-packing, should the Republicans succeed at filling Ginsburg’s seat before the election. They have also said, in Pelosi’s words, that they will “use every arrow in our quiver” to block Trump’s nominee. But neither Schumer nor Pelosi has said what exactly that means. Joe Biden, for his part, called on Republicans in the Senate to “follow your conscience” as regards the Court. “Don’t vote to confirm anyone nominated under the circumstances President Trump and Senator McConnell have created,” he continued. “Don’t go there.” But, sure enough, Mitt Romney—the lone Republican who voted to remove Trump from office, for corruption, during the Senate impeachment trial—pledged to vote to hold a Senate hearing for the President’s nominee, all but assuring the candidate’s ascension to the Supreme Court. Clearly, there is no honor among thieves, and the most troubling part is that Biden thought there was.
The Republican Party’s provocation to rapidly replace Ginsburg has already been met with thousands of people assembling at the steps of the Supreme Court. In a sharp rebuke to Trump, at least one Times and Siena poll—of residents in North Carolina, Arizona, and Maine, taken before Ginsburg’s death—found that fifty-three per cent of those asked think that Biden should pick the next Justice. A nationwide Reuters and Ipsos poll conducted after Ginsburg’s death found that sixty-two per cent of those asked think the winner of the November election should pick the new Justice. There is popular recognition that Republicans are attempting to preserve the political influences of a disgraced President. But, for those who oppose a Trump nominee, the equivocating and fractured Democratic Party is an unreliable ally in what will be a bitter struggle. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that Democrats in Congress must “commit to using every procedural tool available to us” to insure that the vacancy is filled by the next President, including impeaching Trump or Attorney General William Barr, but many of her colleagues would likely oppose such tactics. Senator Tim Kaine, of Virginia, argued that it would be “foolish” to consider impeaching Trump or Barr, and went on to say that he was asking “Republicans to be true to their word,” apparently holding out hope that they would relinquish the opportunity to reshape the Court in their own image.
Those with the most to lose from a reactionary Trump Court have the least access to the levers of power that could slow this fast-moving process. But they can still attempt to interrupt it with popular protest and resistance. Even if popular resistance is not successful in stopping Trump’s nominee, it will be crucial in the long, ongoing struggle to expand the rights of the people of the United States. As the historian and writer Howard Zinn, whom Donald Trump disparaged in his speech at the National Archives, once wrote,
Knowing the nature of the political and judicial system of this country, its inherent bias against the poor, against people of color, against dissidents, we cannot become dependent on the courts, or on our political leadership. Our culture—the media, the educational system—tries to crowd out of our political consciousness everything except who will be elected President and who will be on the Supreme Court, as if these are the most important decisions we make. They are not. They deflect us from the most important job citizens have, which is to bring democracy alive by organizing, protesting, engaging in acts of civil disobedience that shake up the system.
This doesn’t mean that it is unimportant who wins the Presidency or who is appointed to the Supreme Court. What it does mean is that ordinary people are not powerless to challenge the political and economic élite who have such disproportionate authority over our lives. But our power is often located outside of the institutions of tradition and influence. It is through acts of solidarity and struggle that we have been able to secure our rights and liberties in the United States, and, from the shape of things to come, that is how those rights and liberties will have to be defended. This means building movements to pressure an increasingly right-wing Supreme Court, making it more difficult for that body to further usurp the rights of regular people. It also means calling into question the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the Court. If Trump is successful in adding another right-wing Justice, he will only continue to erode the Court’s legitimacy, adding further evidence that it can be brazenly used to achieve what could not be accomplished through legislative means. The multiplying failures of our existing society have led many of us to reconsider institutions, policies, and practices that have continued to reproduce racial and economic inequalities. In this moment of exalting uprisings and reëmergent social movements, we cannot overlook the disturbing history of the Supreme Court and its regressive role in American society.
What do we do about the Court? There is an obvious and pressing need now to do whatever is politically permissible in stopping Trump from further distorting its composition. But, beyond that, there is also a need to make it part of our national reckoning with the history and traditions of racism in the United States. It is long overdue to end the Court’s undemocratic role in U.S. society.


newyorker--2020-09-26--Come on Down to Bad Apples Farm

Come on Down to Bad Apples Farm

It ’ s finally fall , and that means apple-picking season !
So why not pay a visit to Bad Apples Farm ?
We ’ re open 24/7/365 , depending on who you are .
Bad Apples Farm is a three-hundred-acre family-operated farm that is keen on tradition .
We are situated in a part of New York where you ’ re , like , “ Wow , this is a lot of white people , ” and , “ Was that a Confederate flag ?
” Our main harvest is apples , of course .
Nothing says New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state fruit .
Each year , thousands of families want—and even need—our apples .
Our operating budget is six billion dollars because , to provide you with the best American apples you ’ ve ever had , it has to be .
We offer a wonderful variety of apple ( red , mealy ) every season .
And , just to address the big , bad-apple-loving elephant in the room—yes , our apples are very bad .
Hence the name .
Ultimately , the choice is yours .
Are you going to let @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of fun you ’ re going to have picking them ?
It ’ s autumn !
This is the absolute best time to stroll—closely monitored—through our orchards and pick whichever apples we say you can .
Back to the apples—before you ask , yes , they ’ ve always been bad , and , no , it ’ s very unlikely that we ’ ll replant the whole crop .
Do you know how much of your money we ’ d lose ?
( You do , because we said it before : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s easier just to deal with them and understand that it ’ s part of the whole Bad Apples Farm experience !
Besides , who else are you going to turn to when you ’ re , like , “ Oh no , help !
This pie attacked me !
” Were some of our apples already in that pie ?
Yeah , probably .
Everyone knows that ’ s what some of our apples do .
They ( our apples ) are gon na look you right in the eye @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were you so close to the pie ?
You shouldn ’ t have looked suspicious like that.
” Speaking of pies , we bake them right here on the premises with our very own bad apples , to eliminate cross-contamination .
We also offer bad-apple-cider donuts , bad-apple strudel , candy bad apples , hot and cold bad-apple cider , and—surprise !
—popcorn .
• Petting zoo of bomb-sniffing animals !
Only O.K .
for “ good ” kids !
• Picnic clearing where your family can enjoy the beautiful fall foliage—from behind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Apples Farm outposts , conveniently situated everywhere from Los Angeles to Louisville to St. Louis to Denver to Chicago to Milwaukee to Dallas to Houston to Atlanta to Minneapolis to Seattle to Jacksonville to Miami to Kenosha—you can ’ t miss us !
And we can ’ t wait to see ( some of ) you at Bad Apples Farm .

It’s finally fall, and that means apple-picking season! So why not pay a visit to Bad Apples Farm? We’re open 24/7/365, depending on who you are.
OUR STORY
Bad Apples Farm is a three-hundred-acre family-operated farm that is keen on tradition. We are situated in a part of New York where you’re, like, “Wow, this is a lot of white people,” and, “Was that a Confederate flag?” Our main harvest is apples, of course. Nothing says New York more than an apple, the official state fruit.
Each year, thousands of families want—and even need—our apples. Our operating budget is six billion dollars because, to provide you with the best American apples you’ve ever had, it has to be.
OUR APPLES
We offer a wonderful variety of apple (red, mealy) every season. And, just to address the big, bad-apple-loving elephant in the room—yes, our apples are very bad. Hence the name.
Ultimately, the choice is yours. Are you going to let all these bad apples spoil the bunch of fun you’re going to have picking them? It’s autumn! This is the absolute best time to stroll—closely monitored—through our orchards and pick whichever apples we say you can.
Back to the apples—before you ask, yes, they’ve always been bad, and, no, it’s very unlikely that we’ll replant the whole crop. Do you know how much of your money we’d lose? (You do, because we said it before: billions, comma, six.)
It’s easier just to deal with them and understand that it’s part of the whole Bad Apples Farm experience! Besides, who else are you going to turn to when you’re, like, “Oh no, help! This pie attacked me!” Were some of our apples already in that pie? Yeah, probably. Everyone knows that’s what some of our apples do. They (our apples) are gonna look you right in the eye and say, “Well, why were you so close to the pie? You shouldn’t have looked suspicious like that.”
OUR BAKERY
Speaking of pies, we bake them right here on the premises with our very own bad apples, to eliminate cross-contamination. We also offer bad-apple-cider donuts, bad-apple strudel, candy bad apples, hot and cold bad-apple cider, and—surprise!—popcorn.
OUR OTHER ATTRACTIONS
Ride-along hayrides! The kids love ’em!
Scarecrows—in riot gear! The kids love ’em!
Militarized tractors! The kids shouldn’t touch ’em!
Petting zoo of bomb-sniffing animals! Only O.K. for “good” kids!
Cement corn maze! Safe even for “bad” kids!
Picnic clearing where your family can enjoy the beautiful fall foliage—from behind bulletproof glass!
Free parking—for fifteen minutes!
OUR LOCATIONS
Visit our other Bad Apples Farm outposts, conveniently situated everywhere from Los Angeles to Louisville to St. Louis to Denver to Chicago to Milwaukee to Dallas to Houston to Atlanta to Minneapolis to Seattle to Jacksonville to Miami to Kenosha—you can’t miss us! And we can’t wait to see (some of) you at Bad Apples Farm.


newyorker--2020-09-26--The Flashing Warning of QAnon

The Flashing Warning of QAnon

We live in strange times , and they grew stranger still in August , when the President of the United States publicly supported the fringe political ideology known as QAnon .
Trump then doubled down during an interview with Laura Ingraham , on Fox News , repeating QAnon talking points , such as how “ rich people ” were bankrolling protests in American cities and how his Democratic rival , Joe Biden , was being controlled by “ people that you ’ ve never heard of .
People that are in the dark shadows.
” Even Ingraham , normally an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taken aback .
“ What does that mean ?
” she interjected .
“ That sounds like a conspiracy theory.
” QAnon is a conspiracy theory , but it is many other things as well , by turns an online troll campaign , a Messianic world view , a form of interactive role-playing , and a way to sell T-shirts .
For its critics , QAnon is a hoax spun dangerously out of control ; for true believers , it is an all-encompassing life style .
The theory holds , among an ever-evolving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cabal of high-ranking Democratic politicians and members of the media élite is running a child sex-trafficking ring while plotting to take control of American government and society .
According to QAnon lore , the only thing standing between this ongoing deep-state scheme and God-fearing citizens is the singular presence of Donald Trump , whose every tweet and political stunt is actually cover for a top-secret shadow campaign against the forces of evil .
QAnon sounds like the plot of a Z-grade horror movie , but it is a product of the Internet and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Its origins can be traced to late October , 2017 , when an anonymous post appeared during the special counsel Robert Mueller ’ s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections .
Posted on the “ politically incorrect ” forum of the Web site 4chan , the text read , in part , “ HRC extradition already in motion effective yesterday with several countries in case of cross border run .
Passport approved to be flagged effective 10/30 @ 12:01am .
Expect massive riots organized in defiance and others fleeing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s will conduct the operation while NG activated.
” With its fixation on Hillary Clinton , its obsession with civil unrest , and its hopes for the military to intervene in the nation ’ s culture wars , the missive virtually disappeared into the background noise of a forum already buzzing with other self-described insiders dispensing similar conservative talking points .
Yet over the next few weeks , a strange narrative emerged from this particular word salad .
In a series of equally cryptic follow-up posts , the originator hinted that they were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clearance , ” supposedly feeding information from inside the deep state to patriots online .
“ Many in our govt worship Satan , ” one dispatch claimed ; others included snippets of Bible verses .
None of the outrageous predictions came true , nor did any evidence for the poster ’ s credentials ever materialize .
Nevertheless , the posts were amplified by right-wing YouTube personalities hungry for new content , and “ QAnon ” exploded as a meme among the conspiratorially inclined .
Threads dedicated to the topic emerged on 4chan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the mainstream via Reddit , Facebook , and Twitter .
To date , there have been more than forty-seven hundred Q drops , as aficionados call the posts .
Devotees continue to match Q ’ s puzzling dispatches to news headlines and scan Trump ’ s remarks for references to what they call the Storm : a civil war in which the scheming élites will get their richly deserved comeuppance and America will be made great again .
Thanks in part to the power of suggestion algorithms on YouTube and Facebook , this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fantasy into what could legitimately be described as a movement .
In his 1957 treatise on eschatological belief systems , “ The Pursuit of the Millennium , ” the late British historian Norman Cohn examined “ millennialism ” —the conviction that a savior will arrive to punish evil and refashion the world into a paradise for the faithful .
Focussing mainly on medieval Europe , he was one of the first academics to quantify how populations beset by social change and economic inequality are uniquely susceptible to end-of-times conspiracy theories .
Powerlessness begets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and , when facts prove too inconvenient or the situation too complicated to parse , fantasy bridges the gap between what is real and what is imaginary .
Doomsayers promising apocalyptic deliverance have always been with us , Cohn wrote , but “ if the threat was sufficiently overwhelming , the disorientation sufficiently widespread and acute , there could arise a mass delusion of the most explosive kind.
” It is such delusions , Cohn believed , that paved the way for dark episodes in human history , ranging from the Crusades to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with all the information now available to us , millennialist thinking would be in decline rather than running rampant online .
But the warning signs were present from the early years of the Internet : a conspiracy similar to QAnon emerged in Japan in the nineties , offering a prescient glimpse of how the “ information superhighway ” would not lead to the rational utopia that its supporters had prophesied .
After a decade of growth in the eighties , Japan unexpectedly plummeted into a prolonged economic recession and stagnation that lasted for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That dark period , known as the Lost Decades , mirrors the state of affairs in post-Great Recession America : an economic superpower brought to its knees through the venality of C.E.O.s , bankers , and politicians ; a lost generation of young people unable to leave the nest , deprived of careers or fulfilling employment ; a profound ambivalence about what the future might hold .
It was during the Lost Decades that a doomsday cult by the name of Aum Shinrikyo ( Supreme Truth ) flourished in Japan .
Its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by anime , Far Eastern philosophy , video games , and dystopian science fiction , was tailored to appeal to intellectually curious , socially alienated young citizens .
By early 1995 , Aum had managed to amass enough true believers to engineer a terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway system .
Eager to hasten the advent of Armageddon , which they imagined would scour the planet of all but the faithful , cult members boarded trains and released a nerve gas during the morning rush hour .
It killed thirteen people and injured @ @ @ @ @ @ @ curious and socially alienated young citizens would emerge on a platform that could be considered Japan ’ s last megahit of the twentieth century : the Web site 2channel .
A college student named Hiroyuki Nishimura created the anonymous online bulletin-board site during a transformative moment in Japanese society .
The telecom DoCoMo had launched the world ’ s first truly popular mobile Internet service in early 1999 , fast-tracking Web access for millions of Japanese youth via cell phones .
As a result , Japan—and Japanese women in particular—pioneered new forms of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ granted , from non-stop texting and selfie-taking to the use of emojis .
But Japan ’ s rapid Internet-ization would also have negative consequences , as became clear on 2channel .
Nishimura took the name for the site from channel 2 : the empty television band to which video-game consoles had been connected in the analog era , an instantly recognizable in-joke to the geeks who were the site ’ s earliest adopters .
Deliberately crude-looking , entirely text-based , and utterly impenetrable to grownups , 2channel was designed as a place to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quickly emerged as an alternative to traditional mass media : a space where teen-agers and twentysomethings who were spending increasing amounts of their free time online could swap information and vent frustrations without fear of reprisal .
By 2002 , 2channel was also home to an increasingly vocal minority of users who funnelled their anger at society into expressions of militaristic patriotism and racial superiority , gleefully denying wartime atrocities while troll-brigading anyone who disagreed with their conspiratorial paranoia .
In their eyes , the blame for their nation ’ s troubles fell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ correct mainstream media , who they believed had deliberately minimized Japan ’ s greatness to curry favor with the newly ascendant Korea and China .
This perpetually aggrieved cyber community came to be known as the netto-uyoku ( the “ net-right ” ) .

We live in strange times, and they grew stranger still in August, when the President of the United States publicly supported the fringe political ideology known as QAnon. Trump then doubled down during an interview with Laura Ingraham, on Fox News, repeating QAnon talking points, such as how “rich people” were bankrolling protests in American cities and how his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, was being controlled by “people that you’ve never heard of. People that are in the dark shadows.” Even Ingraham, normally an unflappable supporter of the President, seemed taken aback. “What does that mean?” she interjected. “That sounds like a conspiracy theory.”
QAnon is a conspiracy theory, but it is many other things as well, by turns an online troll campaign, a messianic world view, a form of interactive role-playing, and a way to sell T-shirts. For its critics, QAnon is a hoax spun dangerously out of control; for true believers, it is an all-encompassing life style. The theory holds, among an ever-evolving collage of tenets, that a satanic cabal of high-ranking Democratic politicians and members of the media élite is running a child sex-trafficking ring while plotting to take control of American government and society. According to QAnon lore, the only thing standing between this ongoing deep-state scheme and God-fearing citizens is the singular presence of Donald Trump, whose every tweet and political stunt is actually cover for a top-secret shadow campaign against the forces of evil.
QAnon sounds like the plot of a Z-grade horror movie, but it is a product of the Internet and, more specifically, of social-media networks. Its origins can be traced to late October, 2017, when an anonymous post appeared during the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Posted on the “politically incorrect” forum of the Web site 4chan, the text read, in part, “HRC extradition already in motion effective yesterday with several countries in case of cross border run. Passport approved to be flagged effective 10/30 @ 12:01am. Expect massive riots organized in defiance and others fleeing the US to occur. US M’s will conduct the operation while NG activated.” With its fixation on Hillary Clinton, its obsession with civil unrest, and its hopes for the military to intervene in the nation’s culture wars, the missive virtually disappeared into the background noise of a forum already buzzing with other self-described insiders dispensing similar conservative talking points.
Yet over the next few weeks, a strange narrative emerged from this particular word salad. In a series of equally cryptic follow-up posts, the originator hinted that he or she was a government insider with top-secret “Q clearance,” supposedly feeding information from inside the deep state to patriots online. “Many in our govt worship Satan,” one dispatch claimed; others included snippets of Bible verses. None of the outrageous predictions came true, nor did any evidence for the poster’s credentials ever materialize. Nevertheless, the posts were amplified by right-wing YouTube personalities hungry for new content, and “QAnon” exploded as a meme among the conspiratorially inclined. Threads dedicated to the topic emerged on 4chan, moved to 8chan, then crept into the mainstream via Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter.
To date, there have been more than forty-seven hundred Q drops, as aficionados call the posts. Devotees continue to match Q’s puzzling dispatches to news headlines and scan Trump’s remarks for references to what they call the Storm: a civil war in which the scheming élites will get their richly deserved comeuppance and America will be made great again. Thanks in part to the power of suggestion algorithms on YouTube and Facebook, this paranoid perspective has snowballed from a fringe fantasy into what could legitimately be described as a movement.
In his 1957 treatise on eschatological belief systems, “The Pursuit of the Millennium,” the late British historian Norman Cohn examined “millennialism”—the conviction that a savior will arrive to punish evil and refashion the world into a paradise for the faithful. Focussing mainly on medieval Europe, he was one of the first academics to quantify how populations beset by social change and economic inequality are uniquely susceptible to end-of-times conspiracy theories. Powerlessness begets rage; rage seeks a scapegoat; and, when facts prove too inconvenient or the situation too complicated to parse, fantasy bridges the gap between what is real and what is imaginary. Doomsayers promising apocalyptic deliverance have always been with us, Cohn wrote, but “if the threat was sufficiently overwhelming, the disorientation sufficiently widespread and acute, there could arise a mass delusion of the most explosive kind.” It is such delusions, Cohn believed, that paved the way for dark episodes in human history, ranging from the Crusades to Nazism.
You might suppose that, with all the information now available to us, millennialist thinking would be in decline rather than running rampant online. But the warning signs were present from the early years of the Internet: a conspiracy similar to QAnon emerged in Japan in the nineties, offering a prescient glimpse of how the “information superhighway” would not lead to the rational utopia that its supporters had prophesied. After a decade of growth in the eighties, Japan unexpectedly plummeted into a prolonged economic recession and stagnation that lasted for the entirety of the nineties and two-thousands. That dark period, known as the Lost Decades, mirrors the state of affairs in post-Great Recession America: an economic superpower brought to its knees through the venality of C.E.O.s, bankers, and politicians; a lost generation of young people unable to leave the nest, deprived of careers or fulfilling employment; a profound ambivalence about what the future might hold. It was during the Lost Decades that a doomsday cult by the name of Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) flourished in Japan. Its conspiratorial outlook, influenced in equal measure by anime, Far Eastern philosophy, video games, and dystopian science fiction, was tailored to appeal to intellectually curious, socially alienated young citizens. By early 1995, Aum had managed to amass enough true believers to engineer a terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway system. Eager to hasten the advent of Armageddon, which they imagined would scour the planet of all but the faithful, cult members boarded trains and released a nerve gas during the morning rush hour. The attack killed thirteen people and injured thousands more.
Another breed of intellectually curious and socially alienated young citizens would emerge on a platform that could be considered Japan’s last megahit of the twentieth century: the Web site 2channel. A college student named Hiroyuki Nishimura created the anonymous online bulletin-board site during a transformative moment in Japanese society. The telecom DoCoMo had launched the world’s first truly popular mobile Internet service in early 1999, fast-tracking Web access for millions of Japanese youth via cell phones. As a result, Japan—and Japanese women in particular—pioneered new forms of communication that the world now takes for granted, from non-stop texting and selfie-taking to the use of emojis. But Japan’s rapid Internet-ization would also have negative consequences, as became clear on 2channel.
Nishimura took the name for the site from channel 2: the empty television band to which video-game consoles had been connected in the analog era, an instantly recognizable in-joke to the geeks who were the site’s earliest adopters. Deliberately crude-looking, entirely text-based, and utterly impenetrable to grownups, 2channel was designed as a place to find one’s tribe. It quickly emerged as an alternative to traditional mass media: a space where teen-agers and twentysomethings who were spending increasing amounts of their free time online could swap information and vent frustrations without fear of reprisal. By 2002, 2channel was also home to an increasingly vocal minority of users who funnelled their anger at society into expressions of militaristic patriotism and racial superiority, gleefully denying wartime atrocities while troll-brigading anyone who disagreed with their conspiratorial paranoia. In their eyes, the blame for their nation’s troubles fell squarely on liberal politicians and the politically correct mainstream media, who they believed had deliberately minimized Japan’s greatness to curry favor with the newly ascendant Korea and China. This perpetually aggrieved cyber community came to be known as the netto-uyoku (the “net-right”).


newyorker--2020-09-26--There Should Be No Doubt Why Trump Nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court

Amy Coney Barrett , whom President Trump has nominated to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court , was born in 1972 , so she can expect to spend several decades shaping both American law and American life .
As it happens , a year before Barrett ’ s birth , Lewis F. Powell , Jr. , then a prominent lawyer in Richmond , Virginia , and later a Supreme Court Justice himself , wrote a now famous memorandum to the United States Chamber of Commerce , arguing that businesses needed to take a more aggressive hand in shaping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system is under broad attack , ” he wrote , from , specifically , the consumer , environmental , and labor movements .
He added that “ the campus is the single most dynamic source ” of that attack .
To counter it , Powell suggested that business interests should make a major financial commitment to shaping universities , so that the “ bright young men ” of tomorrow would hear messages of support for the free-enterprise system .
A little less than a decade later , a pair of law professors named @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as the first faculty advisers to a fledgling organization for conservative law students called the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies .
The efforts of the Federalist Society were lavishly funded by the business interests invoked by Powell , and it has trained a generation or two of future leaders .
Not all of them have been “ bright young men.
” Some are women , including Barrett , and her confirmation would vindicate Powell ’ s plan and transform the Supreme Court .
Barrett made an appealing first impression in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the federal bench .
She and her husband are the parents of seven children .
For many years , she was a popular professor at Notre Dame Law School , which she also attended and from which she graduated summa cum laude .
She clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Scalia .
As a judge on the Seventh Circuit , she has been a reliable conservative voice .
Even liberal peers in the academy find her personable .
She will probably do well in providing the artful non-answers that are the currency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senate Judiciary Committee , just as she did in 2017 .
But there should be no doubt about why Barrett has been chosen .
Much of the commentary about her selection will focus on the issue of abortion , and her likely role in overturning Roe v. Wade .
During the 2016 campaign , Trump repeatedly promised to appoint Justices who would vote to overrule that landmark , and with his three selections , including Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh , he appears to have delivered .
Barrett is not only a member @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Church ; her legal writings , and the views of some who know her , suggest that she would overturn Roe .
Still , it ’ s worth remembering the real priorities of Trump and Mitch McConnell , the Senate Majority Leader , in this nomination .
They ’ re happy to accommodate the anti-abortion base of the Republican Party , but an animating passion of McConnell ’ s career has been the deregulation of political campaigns .
The Supreme Court ’ s Citizens United decision brought the issue to wide public attention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it for decades .
He wants the money spigot kept open , so that he can protect his Senate majority and the causes for which it stands .
This , too , is why the Federalist Society has been so lavishly funded over the years , and why it has expanded from a mere campus organization into a national behemoth for lawyers and students .
Under Republican Presidents , Federalist Society events have come to operate as auditions for judicial appointments .
The corporate interests funding the growth of the Federalist Society probably @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but they were almost certainly committed to crippling the regulatory state .
Barrett is a product of this movement , and not just because she clerked for Scalia .
Her writings and early rulings reflect it .
Her financial-disclosure form shows that , in recent years , she has received about seven thousand dollars in honoraria from the Federalist Society and went on ten trips funded by it .
But it ’ s not as if Barrett was bought ; she was already sold .
The judge has described herself as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” —the same words of legal jargon that were associated with Scalia .
( She believes in relying on the specific meaning of the words in statutes , not on legislators ’ intent .
She interprets the Constitution according to her belief in what the words meant when the document was ratified , not what the words mean now . )
But these words are abstractions .
In the real world , they operate as an agenda to crush labor unions , curtail environmental regulation , constrain the voting rights of minorities , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and free the wealthy to buy political influence .
It should go without saying that the nomination and the expected confirmation of Barrett in the final days before a Presidential election represent a paramount act of hypocrisy for McConnell and the other Republicans who denied even a hearing to Merrick Garland , President Barack Obama ’ s choice for the Supreme Court , in 2016 .
But the fact that these Republicans are willing to risk that charge shows how important the Supreme Court is to them .
Far more than a senator @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the agenda .
The war on abortion is just the start .
This post has been updated to confirm the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett .
Read More About the 2020 Election • Can Joe Biden win the Presidency based on a promise of generational change ?
• The fall and rise of Kamala Harris .
• When a sitting President threatens to delay a sacrosanct American ritual like an election , you should listen .
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• What happens if Trump fights the election results ?
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Amy Coney Barrett, whom President Trump has nominated to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, was born in 1972, so she can expect to spend several decades shaping both American law and American life. As it happens, a year before Barrett’s birth, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., then a prominent lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, and later a Supreme Court Justice himself, wrote a now famous memorandum to the United States Chamber of Commerce, arguing that businesses needed to take a more aggressive hand in shaping public policy. “The American economic system is under broad attack,” he wrote, from, specifically, the consumer, environmental, and labor movements. He added that “the campus is the single most dynamic source” of that attack. To counter it, Powell suggested that business interests should make a major financial commitment to shaping universities, so that the “bright young men” of tomorrow would hear messages of support for the free-enterprise system. A little less than a decade later, a pair of law professors named Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia signed on as the first faculty advisers to a fledgling organization for conservative law students called the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. The efforts of the Federalist Society were lavishly funded by the business interests invoked by Powell, and it has trained a generation or two of future leaders. Not all of them have been “bright young men.” Some are women, including Barrett, and her confirmation would vindicate Powell’s plan and transform the Supreme Court.
Barrett made an appealing first impression in 2017, during her confirmation hearings to the federal bench. She and her husband are the parents of seven children. For many years, she was a popular professor at Notre Dame Law School, which she also attended and from which she graduated summa cum laude. She clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Scalia. As a judge on the Seventh Circuit, she has been a reliable conservative voice. Even liberal peers in the academy find her personable. She will probably do well in providing the artful non-answers that are the currency of Supreme Court confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, just as she did in 2017.
But there should be no doubt about why Barrett has been chosen. Much of the commentary about her selection will focus on the issue of abortion, and her likely role in overturning Roe v. Wade. During the 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to appoint Justices who would vote to overrule that landmark, and with his three selections, including Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, he appears to have delivered. Barrett is not only a member of a conservative organization within the Catholic Church; her legal writings, and the views of some who know her, suggest that she would overturn Roe.
Still, it’s worth remembering the real priorities of Trump and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, in this nomination. They’re happy to accommodate the anti-abortion base of the Republican Party, but an animating passion of McConnell’s career has been the deregulation of political campaigns. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision brought the issue to wide public attention, but McConnell has been crusading about it for decades. He wants the money spigot kept open, so that he can protect his Senate majority and the causes for which it stands. This, too, is why the Federalist Society has been so lavishly funded over the years, and why it has expanded from a mere campus organization into a national behemoth for lawyers and students. Under Republican Presidents, Federalist Society events have come to operate as auditions for judicial appointments. The corporate interests funding the growth of the Federalist Society probably weren’t especially interested in abortion, but they were almost certainly committed to crippling the regulatory state.
Barrett is a product of this movement, and not just because she clerked for Scalia. Her writings and early rulings reflect it. Her financial-disclosure form shows that, in recent years, she has received about seven thousand dollars in honoraria from the Federalist Society and went on ten trips funded by it. But it’s not as if Barrett was bought; she was already sold. The judge has described herself as a “textualist” and an “originalist”—the same words of legal jargon that were associated with Scalia. (She believes in relying on the specific meaning of the words in statutes, not on legislators’ intent. She interprets the Constitution according to her belief in what the words meant when the document was ratified, not what the words mean now.) But these words are abstractions. In the real world, they operate as an agenda to crush labor unions, curtail environmental regulation, constrain the voting rights of minorities, limit government support for health care, and free the wealthy to buy political influence.
It should go without saying that the nomination and the expected confirmation of Barrett in the final days before a Presidential election represent a paramount act of hypocrisy for McConnell and the other Republicans who denied even a hearing to Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, in 2016. But the fact that these Republicans are willing to risk that charge shows how important the Supreme Court is to them. Far more than a senator, a Supreme Court Justice can deliver on the agenda. The war on abortion is just the start.
This post was updated following the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.
Read More About the 2020 Election


newyorker--2020-09-26--Trump’s Selection of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court Is Part of a Larger Antidemocratic Proj

Trump’s Selection of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court Is Part of a Larger Antidemocratic Project

On Friday evening , CNN , the New York Times , and other media outlets reported that Donald Trump had told associates that he has chosen Judge Amy Coney Barrett , a prominent social conservative , to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court .
Although Trump ’ s choice of Barrett—whom he appointed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals , in 2017—wasn ’ t unexpected , it ’ s sure to escalate the bitter political conflict surrounding the Republican effort to rush a nomination through the U.S. Senate less than forty days before the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like Mitch McConnell , the Senate Majority Leader , has the votes to do that .
The brazen and unapologetic nature of this G.O.P .
power play is fanning perfectly justified outrage , and the selection of Barrett—who has ruled in favor of restrictions on abortion and who once served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia—as a replacement for a liberal icon will further inflame passions .
The nominee is expected to appear alongside Trump at the White House on Saturday afternoon .
Some Democratic senators have openly considered boycotting the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , at least in the modern era .
With the first Presidential debate , on Tuesday , set to add to the political tension , the next few weeks will be fast-moving and nerve-racking .
But it is worth first stepping back and considering the larger context in which all this is taking place .
If the aftermath of Ginsburg ’ s untimely death has taught us anything , it ’ s that the antiquated institutions of American democracy are in urgent need of repair—that is , if the country can get through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ institutions still intact , which at times this week hasn ’ t always seemed like a given .
The alternative to wholesale reform is almost too ghastly to contemplate : the continuation and intensification of a years-long effort to consolidate minority rule .
For , when you strip away all the diversions and disinformation , that is the project that the Republican Party and the forty-fifth President are engaged in .
According to a new poll from ABC News , which was released on Friday , fifty-seven per cent of Americans think that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ replacement should be left to the next President ; only thirty-eight per cent think Trump should make the pick .
Other surveys have found similar results .
The data site FiveThirtyEight examined twelve polls and found that , in the aggregate , fifty-two per cent of respondents favored waiting until after the election to fill Ginsburg ’ s seat , while thirty-nine per cent said that Trump should fill it immediately .
This is just the current antidemocratic outrage .
When you consider the combined influence of the Electoral College and the Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Republican voters living in less densely populated parts of the country , the empowerment of the minority—an overwhelmingly white and conservative minority—goes far beyond this instance , egregious as it is .
If the Senate confirms Trump ’ s nominee , five members of the Court will have been selected by a President who initially won the White House while losing the popular vote .
George W. Bush nominated John Roberts , the Chief Justice , and Samuel Alito ; Trump picked Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh , and will soon nominate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s two picks came during his second term , which followed a handy popular-vote victory over John Kerry , in 2004 .
But Bush wouldn ’ t have been running in the 2004 election as an incumbent if the 2000 election had been decided on the basis of who received the most support nationally .
In the popular vote , Al Gore beat him by more than half a million votes .
Why bring up an event that , to younger readers , may seem like ancient history ?
Because , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t something that resides solely in the past .
With the nation ’ s early years having bequeathed to posterity an unrepresentative Electoral College and an unrepresentative U.S. Senate , this history is ever present—shaping some outcomes , ruling out others , and exercising a baleful influence that politicians of bad will , such as McConnell and Trump , can seize upon to further entrench the minority of which they are very much part .
After all , McConnell ’ s status as the Dark Lord of Capitol Hill depends on a political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ senators to California ( population 39.1 million ) as it does to Wyoming ( population 0.6 million ) .
According to the Real Clear Politics poll average , Trump is trailing Biden by 6.7 percentage points , and he ’ s been well behind all year .
At this stage , his hopes of getting reëlected hinge almost entirely on cobbling together another majority in the Electoral College , to negate the expressed will of the majority .
In trying to do this , he has amply demonstrated his willingness to rely on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and even possibly call upon Republican legislatures to set aside their states ’ election results and appoint slates of loyalist electors to the Electoral College .
( In the magazine this week , my colleague Jeffrey Toobin wrote about all these possibilities . )
When points like these are put to Republicans , some of them reply that this is a republic rather than a democracy , which is conceding the point .
A somewhat more sophisticated argument is that the United States is a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the seemingly antidemocratic elements of the political system to protect minorities and prevent mob rule .
The proper response to this argument is to invoke actual history rather than fables .
The Founders were men of property and eighteenth-century views .
In his book , “ The Framers ’ Coup : The Making of the United States Constitution , ” from 2016 , Michael J. Klarman , a professor at Harvard Law School , explains that they “ had interests , prejudices , and moral blind spots .
They could not foresee the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Largely drawn from the landed class , they had little interest in empowering the common man , and no interest at all in empowering women and Black people .
But , unlike many latter-day “ constitutionalists , ” they were aware of their own shortcomings .
Although they tussled long and hard over the system they created , they didn ’ t consider it a perfect solution or something that couldn ’ t be altered in the future , depending on the circumstances and exigencies of the time .
“ As Jefferson would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ those who wish to sanctify the Constitution are often using it to defend some particular interest that , in their own day , can not be adequately justified on its own merits.
” In the nearly two centuries since Jefferson ’ s death , some of the more objectionable aspects of the system that he helped to create have been reformed and updated .
It is our misfortune to be living through a period in which Trump and his allies are busy exploiting the system ’ s remaining weaknesses for their own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is , the rushed nomination of Amy Coney Barrett is but one part of a bigger and even more alarming story .

On Friday evening, CNN, the New York Times, and other media outlets reported that Donald Trump had told associates that he has chosen Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a prominent social conservative, to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. Although Trump’s choice of Barrett—whom he appointed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in 2017—wasn’t unexpected, it’s sure to escalate the bitter political conflict surrounding the Republican effort to rush a nomination through the U.S. Senate less than forty days before the election.
Right now, it looks like Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, has the votes to do that. The brazen and unapologetic nature of this G.O.P. power play is fanning perfectly justified outrage, and the selection of Barrett—who has ruled in favor of restrictions on abortion and who once served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia—as a replacement for a liberal icon will further inflame passions. The nominee is expected to appear alongside Trump at the White House on Saturday afternoon. Some Democratic senators have openly considered boycotting the confirmation hearings, which would be unprecedented, at least in the modern era.
With the first Presidential debate, on Tuesday, set to add to the political tension, the next few weeks will be fast-moving and nerve-racking. But it is worth first stepping back and considering the larger context in which all this is taking place. If the aftermath of Ginsburg’s untimely death has taught us anything, it’s that the antiquated institutions of American democracy are in urgent need of repair—that is, if the country can get through the next couple of months with these institutions still intact, which at times this week hasn’t always seemed like a given. The alternative to wholesale reform is almost too ghastly to contemplate: the continuation and intensification of a years-long effort to consolidate minority rule. For, when you strip away all the diversions and disinformation, that is the project that the Republican Party and the forty-fifth President are engaged in.
According to a new poll from ABC News, which was released on Friday, fifty-seven per cent of Americans think that the job of selecting Ginsburg’s replacement should be left to the next President; only thirty-eight per cent think Trump should make the pick. Other surveys have found similar results. The data site FiveThirtyEight examined twelve polls and found that, in the aggregate, fifty-two per cent of respondents favored waiting until after the election to fill Ginsburg’s seat, while thirty-nine per cent said that Trump should fill it immediately.
This is just the current antidemocratic outrage. When you consider the combined influence of the Electoral College and the Senate, both of which amplify the power of Republican voters living in less densely populated parts of the country, the empowerment of the minority—an overwhelmingly white and conservative minority—goes far beyond this instance, egregious as it is.
If the Senate confirms Trump’s nominee, five members of the Court will have been selected by a President who initially won the White House while losing the popular vote. George W. Bush nominated John Roberts, the Chief Justice, and Samuel Alito; Trump picked Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, and will soon nominate Barrett. To be sure, Bush’s two picks came during his second term, which followed a handy popular-vote victory over John Kerry, in 2004. But Bush wouldn’t have been running in the 2004 election as an incumbent if the 2000 election had been decided on the basis of who received the most support nationally. In the popular vote, Al Gore beat him by more than half a million votes.
Why bring up an event that, to younger readers, may seem like ancient history? Because, in this country, American history isn’t something that resides solely in the past. With the nation’s early years having bequeathed to posterity an unrepresentative Electoral College and an unrepresentative U.S. Senate, this history is ever present—shaping some outcomes, ruling out others, and exercising a baleful influence that politicians of bad will, such as McConnell and Trump, can seize upon to further entrench the minority of which they are very much part.
After all, McConnell’s status as the Dark Lord of Capitol Hill depends on a political system that affords the same number of senators to California (population 39.1 million) as it does to Wyoming (population 0.6 million). According to the Real Clear Politics poll average, Trump is trailing Biden by 6.7 percentage points, and he’s been well behind all year. At this stage, his hopes of getting reëlected hinge almost entirely on cobbling together another majority in the Electoral College, to negate the expressed will of the majority. In trying to do this, he has amply demonstrated his willingness to rely on voter suppression, challenge legitimate mail-in ballots, and even possibly call upon Republican legislatures to set aside their states’ election results and appoint slates of loyalist electors to the Electoral College. (In the magazine this week, my colleague Jeffrey Toobin wrote about all these possibilities.)
When points like these are put to Republicans, some of them reply that this is a republic rather than a democracy, which is conceding the point. A somewhat more sophisticated argument is that the United States is a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy, and that the Founders expressly designed the seemingly antidemocratic elements of the political system to protect minorities and prevent mob rule. The proper response to this argument is to invoke actual history rather than fables.
The Founders were men of property and eighteenth-century views. In his book,“The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution,” from 2016, Michael J. Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School, explains that they “had interests, prejudices, and moral blind spots. They could not foresee the future, and they made mistakes.” Largely drawn from the landed class, they had little interest in empowering the common man, and no interest at all in empowering women and Black people. But, unlike many latter-day “constitutionalists,” they were aware of their own shortcomings. Although they tussled long and hard over the system they created, they didn’t consider it a perfect solution or something that couldn’t be altered in the future, depending on the circumstances and exigencies of the time. “As Jefferson would have recognized,” Klarman writes, “those who wish to sanctify the Constitution are often using it to defend some particular interest that, in their own day, cannot be adequately justified on its own merits.”
In the nearly two centuries since Jefferson’s death, some of the more objectionable aspects of the system that he helped to create have been reformed and updated. It is our misfortune to be living through a period in which Trump and his allies are busy exploiting the system’s remaining weaknesses for their own iniquitous and antidemocratic ends. Disturbing as it is, the rushed nomination of Amy Coney Barrett is but one part of a bigger and even more alarming story.


newyorker--2020-09-27--The Private Trump Angst of the Republican Icon James Baker

Over lunch a few blocks from the White House on a bright , sunny day in the summer of 2019 , one of the architects of the modern Republican Party admitted he was thinking the unthinkable .
If Joseph R. Biden , Jr. , won the his party ’ s nomination , former Secretary of State James A. Baker III confided that he might vote for the Democrat over President Trump .
For Baker , that would be a profound break with the Party he spent decades building .
Until Trump came along , every Republican President for four decades @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their campaigns or their White Houses , brought them to power or helped them stay there .
Not Trump , the antithesis of everything Baker stood for during his storied career as Washington ’ s indispensable man : the sitting President was a boorish , dishonest carnival barker who was tearing down everything Baker ’ s party and generation had accomplished—free-trade pacts , international alliances , American leadership in the world , nuclear-arms treaties .
The words Baker kept coming up with to describe Trump to us were “ crazy ” and “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the fall of 2019 to talk it over again , at his office in Houston , he had changed his mind .
“ Don ’ t say that I will vote for Biden , ” Baker cautioned .
“ I will vote for the Republican—I really will .
I won ’ t leave my party .
You can say my party has left me , because the head of it has .
But I think it ’ s important , the big picture.
” What was the big picture ?
Republican control @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if it means another four years of Trump in the White House .
For five years , ever since Trump first announced his Presidential candidacy , we ’ ve had a running conversation with Baker as he wrestled with conflicted feelings about the President , appalled by his erratic leadership yet unwilling to publicly break with him .
We watched as Baker initially dismissed the reality-show veteran as a joke who would never win , then searched for reasons to embrace his party ’ s choice and ignore his own personal misgivings .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ with advice and personnel recommendations only to find a President impervious to counsel .
Eventually , Baker started rationalizing the outrages and forgiving the mistakes , focussing instead on those Trump Administration policies he supported .
Baker ’ s struggle these last five years is a parable for the Republican establishment that he once embodied , a political leadership that ultimately chose to reconcile itself to what Jared Kushner , Trump ’ s son-in-law , recently called a “ hostile takeover.
” Rather than reject a President they fear has damaged their party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the election five weeks from now , Republicans like Baker have doubled down on Trump without ever fully accepting him—even as the costs that Baker feared from a Trump Presidency have become all too real for the country and for Baker personally .
With a pandemic raging in the U.S. that has now claimed more than two hundred thousand lives , Baker , ninety years old , and his wife fell ill last month with the coronavirus that the President had denied was a serious threat .
Few did more to build @ @ @ @ @ @ @ James Addison Baker III .
A courtly lawyer with a Texas twang , a genial manner , and an ear for gossip , Baker hails from Houston aristocracy but was an unlikely national and international power broker .
His grandfather , one of the architects of modern Houston , had long enforced a family maxim : “ Work hard , study and apply yourself closely , stay on the job , and keep out of politics.
” Baker ultimately disregarded that maxim thanks to a chance friendship forged on the tennis courts of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ oilman named George H. W. Bush .
Through much of the nineteen-seventies , eighties , and early nineties , Baker was one of the dominant forces in both American politics and policymaking .
As a delegate hunter , campaign manager , White House chief of staff , Treasury Secretary , and Secretary of State , he played a leading role in some of the most critical junctures in modern American history , capped by the peaceful end of the Cold War .
Baker had only a passing acquaintance with Trump before the 2016 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Secretary and laboring to overhaul the tax code for President Ronald Reagan , Trump was among those with special interests who objected to losing provisions that benefitted him .
When the New York developer arrived at Baker ’ s office at the Treasury Building for an appointment on July 9 , 1986 , he raised hell about the impact of the tax proposal on real estate .
“ He came in there like a Storm Trooper , ” Baker recalled .
The Treasury Secretary ’ s patience finally wore thin , and he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House next door .
“ Look , ” he told Trump , “ you ’ re at the wrong building .
This building right across the street here , a guy that wants to do this is in that building , and you need to go there.
” The next time he recalled hearing much about Trump was a couple of years later , when Baker was stepping down from the Cabinet to manage Bush ’ s campaign for President , in 1988 .
Trump sent word through Bush ’ s campaign adviser @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vice-Presidential running mate—a proposal that Bush dismissed as “ strange and unbelievable , ” an assessment Baker shared .
It was no less strange or unbelievable when Trump kicked off his own campaign for President in 2015 and promptly demolished a field of experienced Republican rivals , including Jeb Bush , a son of Baker ’ s friend .
As he found himself falling short , Jeb warned , presciently , that Trump was a chaos candidate who would become a chaos President .
But Baker was not ready to give up on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ embracing this crude outsider .
In March , 2016 , at a memorial service for Nancy Reagan , where Baker delivered the eulogy , he found himself talking politics with former Secretary of State George Shultz , former House Speaker Newt Gingrich , and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney , of Canada .
“ I see some eerie parallels to the way Reagan came up and the way Trump is coming up , ” Baker recalled telling them over lunch .
Not that they were precisely the same but they were both disruptors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mention entertainers before they became politicians .
They both appealed to disaffected Midwest Democrats who flocked to the “ Make America Great Again ” slogan first used by Reagan and later adopted by Trump .
“ We thought he was a grade-B movie actor , ‘ Bedtime for Bonzo , ’ he was going to get us in a nuclear war , and we were scared to death , ” Baker recalled saying to the other lunch guests , as he reflected about the initial fears of Reagan .
“ And look at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Party , and then I see somewhat the same kind of phenomenon at work here.
” Baker ’ s effort to see Trump in the best light struck Mulroney , who was friendly with the real-estate developer in Palm Beach , Florida , where they both lived part of the year .
When Mulroney returned home , he called Trump and told him about what Baker had said .
“ I think that you should put in a call to Jim Baker and visit with him , ” Mulroney told him .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the straight talk and good advice.
” Trump agreed .
A call was set up , and they ended up speaking for twenty minutes .

Over lunch a few blocks from the White House on a bright, sunny day in the summer of 2019, one of the architects of the modern Republican Party admitted he was thinking the unthinkable. If Joseph R. Biden, Jr., won his party’s nomination, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III confided that he might vote for the Democrat over President Trump. For Baker, that would be a profound break with the Party he spent decades building. Until Trump came along, every Republican President for four decades had relied on Baker. Baker ran their campaigns or their White Houses, brought them to power or helped them stay there.
Not Trump, the antithesis of everything Baker stood for during his storied career as Washington’s indispensable man: the sitting President was a boorish, dishonest carnival barker who was tearing down everything Baker’s party and generation had accomplished—free-trade pacts, international alliances, American leadership in the world, nuclear-arms treaties. The words Baker kept coming up with to describe Trump to us were “crazy” and “nuts.”
But when we sat down in the fall of 2019 to talk it over again, at his office in Houston, he had changed his mind. “Don’t say that I will vote for Biden,” Baker cautioned. “I will vote for the Republican—I really will. I won’t leave my party. You can say my party has left me, because the head of it has. But I think it’s important, the big picture.” What was the big picture? Republican control of the levers of power. Even if it means another four years of Trump in the White House.
For five years, ever since Trump first announced his Presidential candidacy, we’ve had a running conversation with Baker as he wrestled with conflicted feelings about the President, appalled by his erratic leadership yet unwilling to publicly break with him. We watched as Baker initially dismissed the reality-show veteran as a joke who would never win, then searched for reasons to embrace his party’s choice and ignore his own personal misgivings. We saw him try to help Trump with advice and personnel recommendations only to find a President impervious to counsel. Eventually, Baker started rationalizing the outrages and forgiving the mistakes, focussing instead on those Trump Administration policies he supported.
Baker’s struggle these last five years is a parable for the Republican establishment that he once embodied, a political leadership that ultimately chose to reconcile itself to what Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, recently called a “hostile takeover.” Rather than reject a President they fear has damaged their party and may drag it down to defeat in the election five weeks from now, Republicans like Baker have doubled down on Trump without ever fully accepting him—even as the costs that Baker feared from a Trump Presidency have become all too real for the country and for Baker personally. With a pandemic raging in the U.S. that has now claimed more than two hundred thousand lives, Baker, ninety years old, and his wife fell ill last month with the coronavirus that the President had denied was a serious threat.
Few did more to build the modern Republican Party before Trump than James Addison Baker III. A courtly lawyer with a Texas twang, a genial manner, and an ear for gossip, Baker hails from Houston aristocracy but was an unlikely national and international power broker. His grandfather, one of the architects of modern Houston, had long enforced a family maxim: “Work hard, study and apply yourself closely, stay on the job, and keep out of politics.”
Baker ultimately disregarded that maxim thanks to a chance friendship forged on the tennis courts of the Houston Country Club with an ambitious oilman named George H. W. Bush. Through much of the nineteen-seventies, eighties, and early nineties, Baker was one of the dominant forces in both American politics and policymaking. As a delegate hunter, campaign manager, White House chief of staff, Treasury Secretary, and Secretary of State, he played a leading role at some of the most critical junctures in modern American history, capped by the peaceful end of the Cold War.
Baker had only a passing acquaintance with Trump before the 2016 Presidential campaign. When Baker was Treasury Secretary and laboring to overhaul the tax code for President Ronald Reagan, Trump was among those with special interests who objected to losing provisions that benefitted him. When the New York developer arrived at Baker’s office at the Treasury Building for an appointment on July 9, 1986, he raised hell about the impact of the tax proposal on real estate. “He came in there like a Storm Trooper,” Baker recalled. The Treasury Secretary’s patience finally wore thin, and he pointed out the window to the White House, next door. “Look,” he told Trump, “you’re at the wrong building. This building right across the street here, a guy that wants to do this is in that building, and you need to go there.”
The next time he recalled hearing much about Trump was a couple of years later, when Baker was stepping down from the Cabinet to manage Bush’s campaign for President, in 1988. Trump sent word through Bush’s campaign adviser Lee Atwater offering himself up as a Vice-Presidential running mate—a proposal that Bush dismissed as “strange and unbelievable,” an assessment Baker shared. It was no less strange or unbelievable when Trump kicked off his own campaign for President in 2015 and promptly demolished a field of experienced Republican rivals, including Jeb Bush, a son of Baker’s friend. As he found himself falling short, Jeb warned, presciently, that Trump was a chaos candidate who would become a chaos President. But Baker was not ready to give up on the Republican Party just because it was embracing this crude outsider.
In March, 2016, at a memorial service for Nancy Reagan, where Baker delivered the eulogy, he found himself talking politics with former Secretary of State George Shultz, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, of Canada. “I see some eerie parallels to the way Reagan came up and the way Trump is coming up,” Baker recalled telling them over lunch. Not that they were precisely the same but they were both disruptors feared by the establishment, not to mention entertainers before they became politicians. They both appealed to disaffected Midwest Democrats who flocked to the “Make America Great Again” slogan first used by Reagan and later adopted by Trump. “We thought he was a grade-B movie actor, ‘Bedtime for Bonzo,’ he was going to get us in a nuclear war, and we were scared to death,” Baker recalled saying to the other lunch guests, as he reflected on the initial fears of Reagan. “And look at the people he brought into the Republican Party, and then I see somewhat the same kind of phenomenon at work here.”
Baker’s effort to see Trump in the best light struck Mulroney, who was friendly with the real-estate developer in Palm Beach, Florida, where they both lived part of the year. When Mulroney returned home, he called Trump and told him about what Baker had said. “I think that you should put in a call to Jim Baker and visit with him,” Mulroney told him. “He’ll give you nothing but the straight talk and good advice.” Trump agreed. A call was set up, and they ended up speaking for twenty minutes.
“I really think you need to be thinking about pivoting to becoming more Presidential,” Baker told the candidate.
“I hear that a lot,” Trump said. “But, when I’m under attack, I have to fight back.” And, as far as Trump was concerned, he was always under attack.
Not long after their phone conversation, Trump’s campaign Convention manager, Paul Manafort, called Baker. Manafort had worked for Baker during the 1976 Republican Convention, counting delegates for President Gerald R. Ford before going on to a long and ultimately criminal career as a big-money lobbyist for an array of Russian-aligned interests. At that point, though, Manafort was the bridge between an insurgent candidate and the G.O.P. establishment. Manafort asked Baker to meet with Trump. Baker agreed, reasoning that he had met with other Republican candidates. One afternoon, he slipped into the offices of a Washington law firm that worked for Trump’s campaign and the two sat down for about twenty-five minutes. Baker handed Trump a two-page list of suggestions for what to do now that he was becoming the nominee.
“You do not need to abandon your outsider/rebel persona,” Baker’s memo said. “But you do need to bring on board other voters if you expect to win.” Stop attacking people who might be allies, Baker urged. Don’t feed the “shoot-from-the-lip big mouth” narrative. Reach out to women, minorities, and establishment Republicans. Steer clear of isolationism; embrace a more balanced immigration plan; stop talking about getting rid of NATO; do not advocate a new arms race.
Baker, the master of compromise, recommended negotiating with Democrats, much as he had done brokering a landmark Social Security deal in 1983 and the tax overhaul in 1986. “These suggestions,” Baker concluded, “come to you from one who, at the age of eighty-six, doesn’t want anything except a Republican president in 2017 who is like the four I was privileged to have served.”
The meeting was supposed to be off the record, but naturally it leaked almost immediately. That was why Baker gave Trump the two-page paper in the first place, so that the campaign could not spin the meeting as a quasi-endorsement. Baker had, in effect, laid out conditions for his support, conditions that Trump would never meet. Baker was recommending that Trump abandon the political formula that had taken him to the brink of the Republican nomination, that had enabled him to triumph over sixteen other candidates. Trump would never do that. He would not pivot to the center, as the candidates of Baker’s day had invariably done. He did not care about being Presidential. He would never be like the four Republican Presidents Baker had served.
Baker’s flirtation with Trump was enough to cause heartache among his friends and family. He got a call one day from Tom Brokaw, the now-retired NBC anchor who had become a close friend. “Jim, you do not want to do this,” Brokaw warned him. “You served your country nobly and your party admirably and you’re at an age and stage, I’m telling you, as a friend, that this is not a good move.” Baker was hardly convinced by Trump. “He’s probably his own worst enemy,” he reflected to us one day shortly before the 2016 Republican Convention. “I don’t think he’s disciplined enough to do what he needs to do.” But, he added, “I’m a Republican and I will tell you this—I’ve always believed at the end of the day there has to be a really overriding reason why you wouldn’t support the nominee of your party.”
A few months later, on Halloween, with the election days away, we sat down with Baker in his favorite suite at the Willard Hotel, near the White House. “The guy is nuts,” he sighed. “He’s crazy. I will not endorse him.” He ticked off some of the ways that Trump was promising to upend everything Baker had built. “He’s against free trade. He’s talking about NATO being a failed alliance. He’s dumping all over NAFTA,” a trade agreement that Baker had a role in forging. “That was a hell of a deal,” he said, shaking his head.
So could Jim Baker, the very definition of the establishment, really vote for Donald Trump? Baker looked stricken. “Well,” he said, almost pleadingly, “I haven’t voted for him yet.”
Baker had a ready-made excuse to vote against Trump, given the candidate’s vilification of the Bushes. The Bush family loathed Trump. One day, when we met with them in the midst of the 2016 campaign, Barbara Bush scrunched her face in horror at the thought of Trump as President. “We’re talking about ego that knows no bounds,” she said. Months later, she wrote in her son Jeb’s name on her ballot while her husband and her eldest son, George W. Bush, also voted against Trump, the elder former President casting his ballot for Hillary Clinton and the younger for “none of the above.”
Yet Baker could not bring himself to follow their lead and bolt from the Party. “I’m a conservative,” he explained, almost with a shrug. Better to have a conservative in the Oval Office than a liberal, “even if he’s crazy.” His compromise was not to publicly come out for Trump—no statement, no joint appearance. But, in the privacy of the voting booth, Baker later told us, he voted for Trump.
Still, the ambivalence with Trump that we found in all our conversations with Baker was real, too. During the succeeding four years, Baker would be offended by the new President’s sheer incompetence even more than the outrageous tweets and statements. The failure to hire an effective staff, the myriad ethical scandals, the gratuitous insults to allies—it all grated.


newyorker--2020-09-27--The Cryptic Crossword: No. 68

The Cryptic Crossword: No. 68

Some clues have been edited for clarity .
Subscribers can find explanations of the original puzzle ’ s answers in @ @ @

Some clues have been edited for clarity. Subscribers can find explanations of the original puzzle’s answers in our archive.


newyorker--2020-09-27--Sunday Reading: Intrepid Personalities

Sunday Reading: Intrepid Personalities

In 1989 , Wallace White profiled Sylvia Earle , the renowned marine biologist and deep-sea diver , in The New Yorker .
At the time , Earle was the world ’ s best-known marine scientist ; her dive to twelve hundred and fifty feet in a Jim suit , near Oahu , set a women ’ s depth record and earned her the nickname Her Deepness .
She also became legendary for her fearlessness—at one point delivering a sharp kick to the snout of a shark that happened to swim a bit too close while she was scuba-diving .
Earle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ influenced several generations of female explorers .
This week , we ’ re bringing you a selection of pieces on intrepid adventurers and remarkable feats .
In “ The Man Who Walks on Air , ” Calvin Tomkins writes about the high-wire artist Philippe Petit and contemplates his astonishing acts of wire walking .
In “ No Obstacles , ” Alec Wilkinson explores the birth of parkour , in France .
In “ Musher , ” Susan Orlean profiles Susan Butcher , who , in 1986 , became the second woman to win @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Alaska .
Francis Steegmuller examines the fascinating career of a trapeze artist who served as a muse for Jean Cocteau , and Mark Levine reports on the striking exploits of the skateboarder Tony Hawk .
Namwali Serpell revisits the legacy of a Zambian schoolteacher and “ Afronaut ” who dreamed of bringing his country into the space race .
In “ The White Darkness , ” David Grann chronicles Henry Worsley ’ s arduous and monumental treks across Antarctica .
Finally , in “ Top of the World , ” Lauren Collins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the first African-American woman to reach both the North and South Poles .
Taken together , these pieces offer an intriguing look at the lives of those who dare to venture beyond the ordinary .
Philippe Petit is about to perform the greatest show of his life .
Is it art ?
Navigating the world by leaps and bounds .
How Barbette and his trapeze once dominated vaudeville .
Tony Hawk—part Michael Jordan , part Evel Knievel—is the star of a multimillion-dollar industry that still can ’ t shake its outlaw image .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a schoolteacher launched the Zambian Space Program with a dozen aspiring teen-age astronauts .
Was he unfairly mocked ?
At fifty-five , Henry Worsley began a solitary trek across Antarctica .
It became a singular test of character .

In 1989, Wallace White profiled Sylvia Earle, the renowned marine biologist and deep-sea diver, in The New Yorker. At the time, Earle was the world’s best-known marine scientist; her dive to twelve hundred and fifty feet in a Jim suit, near Oahu, set a women’s depth record and earned her the nickname Her Deepness. She also became legendary for her fearlessness—at one point delivering a sharp kick to the snout of a shark that happened to swim a bit too close while she was scuba-diving. Earle’s bold, enterprising nature has influenced several generations of female explorers. This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces on intrepid adventurers and remarkable feats. In “The Man Who Walks on Air,” Calvin Tomkins writes about the high-wire artist Philippe Petit and contemplates his astonishing acts of wire walking. In “No Obstacles,” Alec Wilkinson explores the birth of parkour, in France. In “Musher,” Susan Orlean profiles Susan Butcher, who, in 1986, became the second woman to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, in Alaska. Francis Steegmuller examines the fascinating career of a trapeze artist who served as a muse for Jean Cocteau, and Mark Levine reports on the striking exploits of the skateboarder Tony Hawk. Namwali Serpell revisits the legacy of a Zambian schoolteacher and “Afronaut” who dreamed of bringing his country into the space race. In “The White Darkness,” David Grann chronicles Henry Worsley’s arduous and monumental treks across Antarctica. Finally, in “Top of the World,” Lauren Collins recounts the life of Barbara Hillary, the first African-American woman to reach both the North and South Poles. Taken together, these pieces offer an intriguing look at the lives of those who dare to venture beyond the ordinary.
— Erin Overbey, archive editor
Sylvia Earle’s underwater explorations.
Photograph By Chris Callis
Philippe Petit is about to perform the greatest show of his life. Is it art?
Photographs from Magnolia Pictures
Navigating the world by leaps and bounds.
Susan Butcher, Iditarod champion.
Photograph from Ullstein Bild / Getty
How Barbette and his trapeze once dominated vaudeville.
Photograph by Jamie Squire / Getty
Tony Hawk—part Michael Jordan, part Evel Knievel—is the star of a multimillion-dollar industry that still can’t shake its outlaw image.
At the height of the Cold War, a schoolteacher launched the Zambian Space Program with a dozen aspiring teen-age astronauts. Was he unfairly mocked?
At fifty-five, Henry Worsley began a solitary trek across Antarctica. It became a singular test of character.
A seventy-five-year-old explorer returns from the North Pole.