newyorker--2020-09-28--Why Private Eyes Are Everywhere Now

Why Private Eyes Are Everywhere Now

One day in 2016 , a Manhattan private investigator named Tyler Maroney went to doorstep a seasoned criminal .
In this era of the ubiquitous smartphone , even an unscheduled call can feel like an intrusion ; showing up unannounced at someone ’ s house can seem outright belligerent , and a bit antique .
But Maroney , who is a careful student of human interaction , figured it ’ s easier to hang up on someone than it is to slam a door in his face .
The man he was looking for , Bill Antoni ( a pseudonym @ @ @ @ @ @ @ included charges for assault , burglary , and attempted manslaughter .
He had recently been released from prison , and Maroney consulted a proprietary database to find his new address .
When Maroney arrived at Antoni ’ s apartment building , he found that the buzzer was on the fritz , so he waited until another tenant walked out , then slipped inside .
As he was climbing the stairs , Maroney ran into a man who was walking out .
He had tattooed arms and wore a gold chain around his neck @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adopt what is known as a “ pretext , ” telling a fib about the purpose of their visit , or assuming a fake identity .
Occasionally , the ruse is more elaborate , involving a fictitious business , with phony business cards , e-mail addresses , and social-media accounts .
But Maroney takes a dim view of such subterfuge .
“ I ’ m a private detective , ” he said to Antoni .
“ I ’ m here to ask for your help on a case.
” He had rehearsed this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enlisted , rather than antagonized .
“ My client is a man who spent more than ten years in prison for a crime he did not commit , ” Maroney said .
“ He was a victim of police misconduct , and you may have information that can help.
” Antoni had a sideline as a police informant , and , two decades earlier , he had offered sworn testimony to help convict Maroney ’ s client of murder .
Now the man was suing city authorities , and his attorneys hired Maroney @ @ @ @ @ @ @ QRI , to find the jailhouse snitch and see if he might recant .
Antoni invited his visitor in .
A good sign .
Prior to becoming a private investigator , Maroney had worked as a journalist , and he had an eye for detail .
Surveying the apartment , he noticed moldings blurred by layers of accumulated paint , a CCTV camera , and , on a table , a holstered Glock .
One wall was decorated with a homemade collage of J.F.K .
memorabilia : photos of Jackie Kennedy , Hyannis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Antoni declared , “ Kennedy was the last great American.
” And , when he said that , Maroney knew : this guy was going to talk .
People talk to a detective for different reasons .
Sometimes they want absolution , or credit , or justice .
Sometimes they ’ re lonely , seduced by a sympathetic ear .
Antoni revealed that he had been induced to supply fraudulent testimony in the case by crooked cops who offered him a break on his prison sentence .
Maroney ’ s client ended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a settlement .
A third of that went to the lawyers .
Maroney ’ s firm got seventy-five thousand dollars .
More than thirty thousand private investigators now work in the United States , Maroney reports in his new book , “ The Modern Detective : How Corporate Intelligence Is Reshaping the World ” ( Riverhead ) .
They engage in a dizzying variety of low-profile intrigue : tracking missing people , tailing cheating spouses , recovering looted assets , vetting job applicants and multibillion-dollar deals , spying on one corporation at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strategies for hedge funds , compiling opposition research .
Contemporary private eyes , Maroney explains , are often “ refugees from other industries , ” including law enforcement , journalism , accounting , and academia .
One hallmark of the business is discretion—like spy agencies , private eyes must often keep their greatest triumphs secret—so it is notable that Maroney would write a book like this .
In a disclaimer , he says that he has had to change names and alter some details , presumably to protect client confidentiality .
But “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exposé .
It is part memoir , part how-to guide , a celebration of the analytical and interpersonal intelligence that makes a great investigator .
When Maroney showed up for work at the giant detective firm Kroll , back in 2005 , he e-mailed an executive to ask where that executive ’ s office was , hoping to introduce himself .
The private eye has been a staple of popular culture for so long that it can be difficult to disentangle the fictional archetype from the real thing , and part of Maroney @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to demythologize his vocation .
This is a tricky undertaking , not least because the very notion of a private investigator first flourished not in the real world but in fiction .
In 1841 , before the word “ detective ” had even been coined , Edgar Allan Poe introduced the character of Auguste Dupin , a Parisian gentleman with “ an unusual reasoning power , ” who solves a grisly double homicide in “ The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
” Dupin—who is thought to have been modelled on a real-life Frenchman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a prodigious intellect , remarkable skills of observation , and time on his hands , cracking cases that stump the local constabulary .
Dupin appeared in three Poe stories , and was the progenitor of Sherlock Holmes , Miss Marple , and all who followed .
A decade after Dupin ’ s début , an Illinois barrelmaker named Allan Pinkerton established his own detective agency , in the eighteen-fifties .
Pinkerton was the real thing : he investigated counterfeiters and train robbers , and adopted a corporate insignia featuring an unblinking eye and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He began expanding the Pinkerton National Detective Agency , and eventually it employed thousands of agents across the country .
For a time , the U.S. Justice Department outsourced its investigative work to the Pinkertons , and the firm provided a model for both the Secret Service and the F.B.I .
Still , Pinkerton was prone to a little mythologizing himself .
He published eighteen volumes of pulp fiction and embroidered nonfiction , with titles such as “ Strikers , Communists , Tramps , and Detectives ” ( 1878 ) and “ Cornered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( 1892 ) .
The most famous veteran of the Pinkertons was Dashiell Hammett , who joined the agency in Baltimore , in 1915 , and eventually migrated to California .
Hammett worked as a Pinkerton operative on and off for seven years , and then quit to become a writer .
His fictional detectives , including the nameless sleuth known as the Continental Op , in “ Red Harvest ” ( 1929 ) , and Sam Spade , in “ The Maltese Falcon ” ( 1930 ) , signified a departure from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Agatha Christie .
Hardboiled detective fiction , as Raymond Chandler once explained , sought to “ get murder away from the upper classes , the weekend house party and the vicar ’ s rose-garden , and back to the people who are really good at it.
” To the jaded private dicks of Hammett and Chandler , the job was not some intellectual fancy , much less a noble calling .
It was a job , and a dirty one at that .
Tyler Maroney ’ s career trajectory was the opposite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a writer for a decade , for Fortune and other magazines , before a chance encounter brought him to Kroll .
The founder of the company , Jules Kroll , is a legendary figure , the Allan Pinkerton of his day , who worked as a prosecutor in New York in the nineteen-sixties before establishing his own shop , in 1972 .
Kroll was deeply attuned to the iconography of his industry , and allergic to the image of the stereotypical sleuth with his trenchcoat and fedora , prowling the shadows like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seemed eager to restore to the profession the patrician aura of Auguste Dupin ; he dressed like the corporate titans he hoped to cultivate as clients .
Kroll got his start combatting extortion and fraud , but his business thrived on the more prosaic fields of due diligence , background checks , and corporate compliance .
As these services became essential for white-shoe law firms and Wall Street banks , the company grew into a juggernaut , with offices all over the world , and gave birth to a new industry : corporate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ started working there , the firm was acquired by Marsh & McLennan , for $ 1.9 billion . )

There are private investigators, of course, who find the old techniques irresistible and continue to employ them, often in contravention of the law. Some, Maroney says, “exploit shady reputations to attract clients with shallow morals and deep pockets.” Working on behalf of Harvey Weinstein, the Israeli firm Black Cube, which was founded by two former spies, routinely engaged in pretexting—creating false identities and fictitious companies—and, according to the book “Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators,” by my colleague Ronan Farrow, may have relied on unlawful surveillance techniques. (Black Cube denies this.) After Uber hired the private intelligence firm Ergo to investigate people who were suing the company, a federal judge described the investigators’ tactics as “blatantly fraudulent and arguably criminal.”
In Maroney’s view, a firm that resorts to such conduct does a disservice to its “clients, to the industry, and to society.” Most private investigators work within the rules, he says, and those constraints require them to be “more creative.” At times, “The Modern Detective” can read like a promotional brochure, depicting investigators as “painstaking and nimble, law-abiding and enterprising, imaginative and deliberate—all to ensure our clients get the hidden information they need.” Indeed, Maroney writes that one of his purposes is “to demonstrate that our services are necessary throughout the ecosystem of global transactions and disputes.”
It’s certainly true that this ecosystem is becoming increasingly opaque. In another new book, “Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World” (Harper), the journalist Tom Burgis depicts an unsavory coalition of corrupt strongmen, artful criminals, and rapacious élites who, abetted by a network of accountants, lawyers, and other professional facilitators, have managed to pillage money on a grand scale and hide it abroad. When millions of confidential files from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca were leaked to the press, in 2016, Burgis observes, it was as if someone had flicked on the lights: suddenly the public could see the outrageous self-dealing that had been happening all along, in the dark. “From Australia to Argentina, Iceland to Rwanda, presidents, prime ministers and their advisers and confidants, intelligence chiefs, generals, ministers, legislators and central bankers had chosen to store their money not among their compatriots but within the global financial secrecy system,” he writes. The leaked files revealed that a hundred and forty political leaders held money in front companies. The monetization of public office, Burgis believes, is no longer an aberration but often the very “purpose of seeking that office.” The techniques of financial obfuscation have grown so sophisticated that theft is easy, and, for the thief who hires the right advisers, impunity is all but assured.
Jules Kroll has claimed that the role of his industry is to “keep the fish tank clean,” and Maroney makes a compelling case that the private detective is an antidote to the prevailing trends of financial malfeasance, a check on corruption and fraud, and a force for transparency and accountability. In one delightful chapter, he tells the story of Michael and Linda Mastro, an elderly couple from Washington State, who, facing bankruptcy and a stampede of pissed-off creditors, shipped their Range Rover to Portugal, boarded a private jet with their beloved Shih Tzus, and fled the United States. Maroney recounts how a pair of patient, charming investigators managed to track the couple to Annecy, in the French Alps, and then, in a moment of inspiration, paid a visit to the poshest veterinarian in town and showed him a photograph of Michael Mastro. (“Find the dogs, and you find the man.”) With the help of the investigators, who were working on behalf of the Mastros’ creditors, authorities were ultimately able to recover twenty-four million dollars in assets. Asset recovery is a major staple of the business. Maroney notes that Kroll helped to repatriate the plundered riches of dictators like Saddam Hussein and Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier. In a 2009 Profile in this magazine, Kroll told a story about how Baby Doc’s assets were not so difficult to trace, because he paid for them by check. “Apartment in Trump Tower?” he said, pantomiming the dictator writing out a check in longhand. “ ‘Trump . . . Tower.’ ”
Yet Donald Trump is now President; transparency and accountability could hardly be described as on the upswing. On the contrary, the wealthy and powerful are ever more capable of gaming the financial and legal systems to compound their own advantages. This is one nagging dissonance at the heart of Maroney’s book. He tells us that his firm, QRI, specializes in “investigations that seek to benefit the public interest: reforming the criminal justice system, holding corrupt government officials accountable, exposing financial crimes, fighting the causes of climate change.” And, indeed, this one small firm boasts a laudable record of such work. But how typical is it?
In a 2010 book, “Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage,” Eamon Javers takes a more jaundiced view of the industry, depicting private investigators as an accoutrement of corporate power, a tribe of highly skilled mercenaries who seem mostly untroubled by matters of moral conscience and ready, even eager, to flout the law, gaining access to personal phone bills and banking records. Maroney is dismissive of this characterization, suggesting that Javers cherry-picked sensational anecdotes. “My colleagues and I work hard to maintain integrity, and I would argue that private investigators benefit the public good in sharp contrast to our reputations,” he writes. But he also mentions that roughly “once a month” someone asks him to break the law. And, because the detective business is frequently an adversarial one, the professional ethics of the trade differ, in significant ways, from conventional ethics. An investigator can follow every legal and ethical guideline and still be doing the wrong thing. When Tyler Shultz, an employee at Theranos, attempted to blow the whistle on fraud inside the tech startup, the company had him followed by private eyes. If investigators sometimes function as agents of transparency, they also sometimes do the opposite, seeking not to clean the fish tank but to muddy it. It depends on the client—and the detective.
Hackers, who have some affinities with private eyes, are often distinguished as either “white hat” (law-abiding and scrupulous) or “black hat” (neither of those things). Maroney, decrying “the misperception that private eyes are amoral rule flouters who deploy dark arts,” points out that private investigators are generally hired not directly by clients but by “lawyers, including the world’s savviest and most ethical.” Still, there’s little comfort in the fact that Black Cube was engaged to surveil and intimidate journalists not by Harvey Weinstein but by the celebrated attorney David Boies. (Boies, who also represented Theranos, has said that he regrets his handling of the Black Cube contract.) Lawyers, even the world’s savviest, can be prone to a certain ethical flexibility.
Cartoon by Michael Maslin Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
When the rapper Meek Mill was nineteen years old, in 2007, he was living in a house at 2204 South Hemberger Street, in Philadelphia, where several of his cousins also resided. Some of them were in the drug business. Meek was pursuing another line of work—he wanted to be a rapper—but he did carry a gun, illegally. He walked out of the house one evening and spotted a team of cops approaching. According to Meek, he immediately placed his gun on the sidewalk, but the cops rushed him, bundling him into the house and beating him mercilessly. In a photo taken not long afterward, his face is lumpy and bandaged, his left eye swollen shut. The next day, Meek was charged with aggravated assault, possession with intent to deliver crack cocaine, and seventeen other charges. Most damagingly, the cops maintained that, when they approached, he pointed his gun at them. To Meek, this was a laughable assertion. He was a young Black man. Had he pointed his weapon at advancing police officers, he would almost certainly be dead. But one of the cops, Reginald Graham, testified to that version of events, and a judge sentenced Meek to prison, which was followed by a decade of probation.
He was released after eight months, and continued to pursue his music career, with considerable success. He worked with Rick Ross and with Jay-Z, both kingmakers in the hip-hop industry. But he was still on parole, and the judge who had sentenced him, Genece Brinkley, seemed to take a fanatically punitive interest in curtailing his new career. Even as Meek travelled the country on tour, he was obliged to seek preapproval from parole authorities for his movements. When he slipped up, even in small ways, Judge Brinkley would haul him back into court. Eventually, in 2017, after a string of trivial violations, she sent him back to state prison with a new sentence of between two and four years. Meek Mill was thirty now. He had a son, and a thriving music career. Jay-Z wrote an Op-Ed in the Times, arguing that Meek’s plight was emblematic of how the criminal-justice system “entraps and harasses hundreds of thousands of black people every day.”
Among fans online, a #FreeMeek movement arose. The rapper was now represented by top-shelf criminal defense counsel, and his lawyers turned to Tyler Maroney’s firm, QRI. Maroney, working with a colleague, Luke Brindle-Khym, compiled a dossier of evidence on Judge Brinkley, revealing a pattern of vindictive behavior. The judge, it turned out, was also a serial litigant, who had initiated dozens of lawsuits on the slightest of pretexts. Meek’s attorneys demanded that she recuse herself from the case, but she wouldn’t. So the investigators decided to reëxamine the original arrest at 2204 South Hemberger Street. The cops had shown up that night with a search warrant, which they had obtained after claiming to have witnessed Meek Mill selling drugs on a street corner and then returning to the house. Yet, when Maroney and Brindle-Khym reënacted the scene that the cops described, the angles and the vantage points didn’t add up; it seemed unlikely that the police could have made a positive identification. Nor did the report’s description of the drug seller mention his having braids, which Meek did at the time—a conspicuous identifying feature.
When the investigators looked into Reginald Graham, the officer who had written the search warrant and testified against Meek, they discovered that he had subsequently left the police force after an internal investigation found that he had stolen money and then lied about it. Another disgraced ex-officer told them that Graham had been part of a ring of Philadelphia cops who robbed drug dealers. (Graham has denied the allegation.) After this information was brought to light, Meek was released from prison, five months into his sentence, and an appeals court ultimately overturned his conviction. He pleaded guilty to a single weapons charge, and is now free of court supervision for the first time in his adult life.
“We are traditionally hired by criminal defense lawyers to counter the unparalleled resources of prosecutors,” Maroney writes, and the Meek Mill case would seem to illustrate why private investigators are indispensable to righting the wrongs of the criminal-justice system—a system that ensnared a young Black man until investigators were able to expose corruption, and free him. But, of course, the acclaimed rapper had become precisely the sort of wealthy, expertly advised individual who can avail himself of such tools. Maroney suggests that “the most indigent among us” also benefit from investigators, and that “federal and state governments often not only provide defendants with lawyers but also subsidize investigators, among other experts, to support a legal defense.” Realistically, though, extensive investigative resources are mainly a prerogative of the privileged. In certain cases, investigators may help remedy the imbalances of our justice system on behalf of the powerless. But their deployment mostly ends up reinforcing these inequities. One wonders how Meek Mill might have fared had he been able to hire a topnotch investigator back when he was a poor Philly kid of nineteen.
In a 1949 essay, the social critic David T. Bazelon argued that Dashiell Hammett’s real subject was “the ascendancy of the job in the lives of Americans.” Where Sherlock Holmes was “essentially an English gentleman acting to preserve a moral way of life,” Hammett’s world is one in which “the moral and social base is gone.” Hammett’s investigators are morally pliable, less assured that there is anything edifying about their professional exertions. These men aren’t “doing their duty,” Bazelon writes. “They are merely doing.”
Bazelon—who later wrote speeches for a federal judge, his uncle, famed for expanding the rights of criminal defendants—describes the Hammett gumshoe as a job holder whose adventures “begin with an assignment and end when he has completed it.” (The same structure holds for each of Maroney’s chapters.) The hardboiled detective knows that there are no guarantees about a client’s moral worth, and, indeed, he frequently finds himself working for the bad guy. So Hammett’s detectives approach their professional obligations in a spirit of weary detachment. The “moral problem—the matter of individual responsibility or decision-making in a situation where society has defaulted morally—is never even faced, much less resolved,” Bazelon writes. “The question of doing or not doing a job competently seems to have replaced the whole larger question of good and evil.”
Maroney acknowledges that investigators “do not always choose their clients.” He discloses that he was once hired to conduct dozens of interviews just so that his interview subjects would report to their boss that a private eye had been asking about him. “I was, in essence, used as a tool for intimidation,” he writes. And he describes uncovering criminal wrongdoing in an investigation, only to learn subsequently that a client has, for one reason or another, chosen not to act upon the information. Investigators can pledge to follow the law; they can regulate their own conduct by adhering to a finely honed ethical code. But, like Hammett’s detectives, they answer to clients, and the client is in control. The professionalization of the industry means that personal values are, necessarily, sublimated to corporate objectives. The investigator is no longer an amateur, like Dupin, or a morally conflicted lone gun, like Spade, but an instrument of the check writer. Often, the detective, hired by a law firm or some other intermediary, does not even know who the client is. Maroney appears to have succeeded in fashioning a righteous career. Still, the typical modern investigator combines impressive technocratic ability with conspicuously limited moral agency.
When Hammett talked about Sam Spade, he said that his character had “no original”—that he was not based on any actual investigator. Rather, he was an ideal. “He is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been,” Hammett said. It takes nothing away from Maroney’s fascinating account to say that the gap between the profession’s noblest aspirations and its customary activities is a subject worth investigating. ♦


newyorker--2020-09-28--The New Yorker Endorses Joe Biden for President

On November 8 , 2016 , Donald John Trump , a shady real-estate pitchman and reality-TV host from New York , was elected the forty-fifth President of the United States .
The distinguishing features of his character––bigotry , deceit , narcissism––were as evident during the 2016 campaign as they are now .
But , though many more voters supported his opponent , the Trump Presidency had to be endured .
Contempt has been at the core of his time in office : contempt for the Constitution ; contempt for truth and dissent ; contempt for women and people of color @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as great as John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg .
Trump ’ s contempt for science and the basic welfare of Americans is so profound that , through an enraging combination of incompetence , indifference , and stupidity , he has failed to meet the pitiless demands of a viral pandemic .
The national death toll is more than two hundred thousand .
The pandemic has also laid bare the inequities , corruptions , and cruelties of our political life—features that the Administration did not originate but which it has magnified and exploited @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; the shrivelling of critical government agencies , regulations , and protections ; the persistence of sharp racial disparities in wealth and in health ; the unwillingness to deal with the clear danger of climate change––these have all contributed to the dire redefinition of “ American exceptionalism.
” In an established autocracy—like Vladimir Putin ’ s Russia , Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ’ s Turkey , or Mohammed bin Salman ’ s Saudi Arabia—it is nearly impossible to criticize or to investigate the autocrat .
In the liminal condition in which we now live @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yet defeated by an elected President , the would-be autocrat must still face the indignities of journalism , legal inquiry , and popular opposition .
He must also face an open election .
The polls suggest that Joe Biden currently leads the 2020 Presidential race .
We suffer no delusions : Trump has on his side demagogic skill and ruthlessness , a willingness to break any norm or law in order to win .
Nevertheless , we hope that Biden will displace him by a margin that prevents prolonged dispute or the kind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relish .
Ideally , Biden will have an opportunity to govern with Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate , which would vastly increase his chances of passing legislation to confront the nation ’ s array of crises .
In March , 1933 , as Franklin Roosevelt approached his first Inauguration , the country was submerged in the Great Depression .
It was a dark time of breadlines and Hoovervilles .
The unemployment rate was around twenty-five per cent .
At first , Roosevelt ’ s crucial contribution to national solidarity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his clarity and his optimism .
“ This Nation is asking for action , and action now , ” he declared in his Inaugural Address .
In the next hundred days , he proceeded with bracing resolution , initiating the legislation that laid the foundation for the New Deal , economic recovery , and a more humane and activist government than the Republic had ever known .
There is no underestimating the craving for restorative calm .
It would surely be a relief simply to have a President who is not a chronic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abuse the office as a colossal grift .
It would be a relief to have a President who is reflexively devoted to democratic institutions and refuses to make common cause with white nationalists , QAnon , and other inhabitants of the lunatic fringe .
It is true that Biden is not a transcendent speaker or a towering intellect .
Yet he has the capacity to convey genuineness and fellow-feeling to a wide range of Americans .
“ We ’ re in this together , ” the phrase heard so often during the pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ethos of selfishness exemplified by the President himself .
At his best , Biden has the potential to appeal to the country in an emotionally honest way that might help to engender a greater sense of social cohesion , compassion , and mutual respect .
But a new President must also address the failures and the inequalities that have been festering in American life for decades .
He must reckon immediately with an environmental crisis that is already upon us and can not be conquered with a vaccine .
Biden , during his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hardly a consistent and ardent progressive .
On issues as varied as criminal justice and foreign policy , his record and his judgment were mixed .
In recent months , he seems to have acknowledged to a far greater degree than he had before the depths of the country ’ s systemic failings ; he relies for advice , to be sure , on a great many Party regulars , but he has also reached out to politicians like Senator Bernie Sanders , who ran distinctly to his left , and to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inspiration .
Biden will govern best if , like F.D.R.
, he is attuned to voices and experts who understand the need for profound changes in policy .
It ’ s worth remembering that on the day after Trump ’ s Inauguration millions of Americans flooded the streets of cities and towns across the country .
The Women ’ s March was one of the largest single-day protests in the history of the United States .
Since then , there have been mass demonstrations for environmental protection , gun control , racial and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Black Lives Matter protests have been inspiring not only because of their scale and persistence but because of their diversity and the support they ’ ve received from countless millions who have stayed at home .
Biden ran in the primaries as a moderate .
If he wins the Presidency , he will have to govern with boldness , urgency , tenacity , and creativity .
In the face of such challenges , realism and radicalism are not so far apart .
Raging fires and rising seas will not respond to pallid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has lately been talking in specific terms about job creation and industrial policy , voting rights , higher pay for teachers , police reform , raising the minimum wage , ambitious environmental policy , and serious measures to reduce the dismaying gaps in wealth and opportunity .
In what follows , you ’ ll read a set of briefs concerning just some of the crises that a new Administration will have to confront and what it must do in order to repair the damage done and shift the moral arc of a troubled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to building an infrastructure that would support public health and equitable medical care .
Controlling the pandemic is the first step toward rescuing a failed system .
• Biden can rise to the challenge of the climate emergency .
This year ’ s devastating wildfires illustrate how high the costs of failing to deal with climate change already are .
• Protecting voting rights is an essential step that Biden must take to repair our democracy after Trump 's assault on the rule of law .
But it is only the first one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of brazen racism and supported the networks of intolerance that are furthering it .
A Biden Administration will have a moral imperative to safeguard civil rights .
• Imagine a President determined to combat the destruction of democracy .
Biden will restore the most fundamental principles of American leadership .

On November 8, 2016, Donald John Trump, a shady real-estate pitchman and reality-TV host from New York, was elected the forty-fifth President of the United States. The distinguishing features of his character––bigotry, deceit, narcissism––were as evident during the 2016 campaign as they are now. But, though many more voters supported his opponent, the Trump Presidency had to be endured. Contempt has been at the core of his time in office: contempt for the Constitution; contempt for truth and dissent; contempt for women and people of color; contempt for champions of civil rights as great as John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Trump’s contempt for science and the basic welfare of Americans is so profound that, through an enraging combination of incompetence, indifference, and stupidity, he has failed to meet the pitiless demands of a viral pandemic. The national death toll is more than two hundred thousand.
The pandemic has also laid bare the inequities, corruptions, and cruelties of our political life—features that the Administration did not originate but which it has magnified and exploited. The lack of universal health care; the shrivelling of critical government agencies, regulations, and protections; the persistence of sharp racial disparities in wealth and in health; the unwillingness to deal with the clear danger of climate change––these have all contributed to the dire redefinition of “American exceptionalism.”
Biden’s Top Priority How he must protect public health if he wins.
In an established autocracy—like Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, or Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia—it is nearly impossible to criticize or to investigate the autocrat. In the liminal condition in which we now live, with public institutions threatened but not yet defeated by an elected President, the would-be autocrat must still face the indignities of journalism, legal inquiry, and popular opposition. He must also face an open election. The polls suggest that Joe Biden currently leads the 2020 Presidential race. We suffer no delusions: Trump has on his side demagogic skill and ruthlessness, a willingness to break any norm or law in order to win. Nevertheless, we hope that Biden will displace him by a margin that prevents prolonged dispute or the kind of civil unrest that Trump appears to relish. Ideally, Biden will have an opportunity to govern with Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate, which would vastly increase his chances of passing legislation to confront the nation’s array of crises.
In March, 1933, as Franklin Roosevelt approached his first Inauguration, the country was submerged in the Great Depression. It was a dark time of breadlines and Hoovervilles. The unemployment rate was around twenty-five per cent. At first, Roosevelt’s crucial contribution to national solidarity and the restoration of the economy was his clarity and his optimism. “This Nation is asking for action, and action now,” he declared in his Inaugural Address. In the next hundred days, he proceeded with bracing resolution, initiating the legislation that laid the foundation for the New Deal, economic recovery, and a more humane and activist government than the Republic had ever known.
There is no overestimating the craving for restorative calm. It would surely be a relief simply to have a President who is not a chronic liar, someone who doesn’t abuse the office as a colossal grift. It would be a relief to have a President who is reflexively devoted to democratic institutions and refuses to make common cause with white nationalists, QAnon, and other inhabitants of the lunatic fringe. It is true that Biden is not a transcendent speaker or a towering intellect. Yet he has the capacity to convey genuineness and fellow-feeling to a wide range of Americans. “We’re in this together,” the phrase heard so often during the pandemic, has routinely been traduced by an ethos of selfishness exemplified by the President himself. At his best, Biden has the potential to appeal to the country in an emotionally honest way that might help to engender a greater sense of social cohesion, compassion, and mutual respect.
But a new President must also address the failures and the inequalities that have been festering in American life for decades. He must reckon immediately with an environmental crisis that is already upon us and cannot be conquered with a vaccine. Biden, during his long career in the Senate, was hardly a consistent and ardent progressive. On issues as varied as criminal justice and foreign policy, his record and his judgment were mixed. In recent months, he seems to have acknowledged to a far greater degree than he had before the depths of the country’s systemic failings; he relies for advice, to be sure, on a great many Party regulars, but he has also reached out to politicians like Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran distinctly to his left, and to the wave of protesters, for ideas and inspiration. Biden will govern best if, like F.D.R., he is attuned to voices and experts who understand the need for profound changes in policy.
It’s worth remembering that on the day after Trump’s Inauguration millions of Americans flooded the streets of cities and towns across the country. The Women’s March was one of the largest single-day protests in the history of the United States. Since then, there have been mass demonstrations for environmental protection, gun control, racial and gender equality, universal health care. The Black Lives Matter protests have been inspiring not only because of their scale and persistence but because of their diversity and the support they’ve received from countless millions who have stayed at home.
Biden ran in the primaries as a moderate. If he wins the Presidency, he will have to govern with boldness, urgency, tenacity, and creativity. In the face of such challenges, realism and radicalism are not so far apart. Raging fires and rising seas will not respond to pallid proclamations. It is encouraging that Biden has lately been talking in specific terms about job creation and industrial policy, voting rights, higher pay for teachers, police reform, raising the minimum wage, ambitious environmental policy, and serious measures to reduce the dismaying gaps in wealth and opportunity.
In what follows, you’ll read a set of briefs concerning just some of the crises that a new Administration will have to confront and what it must do in order to repair the damage done and shift the moral arc of a troubled nation. ♦
Why Biden Must Win


newyorker--2020-09-28--“Family as a Western in Which No One Talks,” by Jacob Sunderlin

We had to take away our uncle ’ s shotguns but Big Kev , my cousin , is formerly a Midas Muffler tech , unemployed , & not discussing it .
He guns his rebuilt truck to say it : everything broken gets fixed .
You can feel there are good bones inside the shit cosmetics , detouring down-canyon where Crazy Horse planned raids against Custer & where Big Kev comes to boulder impossible angles in a lifted Jeep .
We ’ re cousins , which means we ’ re killing an hour flat-backed , not talking , looking straight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cloud like Randy Savage , the Macho Man , dropping his big elbow on a sky I can ’ t say is like the sky Crazy Horse saw , since it ’ s hazed with contrail & carbon .
He rode his horse fast down each grade & walked it slow up the next , Custer close behind , I read somewhere .
Their horses ’ tongues dry as snakes .
Back in Kearney , I tried to listen to Kev ’ s kid out in the chicken yard gathering eggs in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through wire fence like she is looking through a rifle sight at a wolf licking its paws in a bowl of dust , looking through it into what she thinks she knows .
Some of the eggs she finds are tucked in shit .
Some are full of blood .

Audio: Read by the author.
We had to take away our uncle’s shotguns
but Big Kev, my cousin, is formerly a Midas
Muffler tech, unemployed,
& not discussing it. He guns
his rebuilt truck to say it: everything broken
gets fixed. You can feel there are good bones inside the shit
cosmetics, detouring down-canyon
where Crazy Horse
planned raids against Custer & where
Big Kev comes to boulder impossible
angles in a lifted Jeep. We’re cousins, which means we’re killing
an hour flat-backed, not talking, looking straight
up into North American sky, one cloud
like Randy Savage, the Macho Man,
dropping his big elbow on a sky
I can’t say is like the sky Crazy Horse saw,
since it’s hazed with contrail
& carbon. He rode his horse fast
down each grade & walked it slow
up the next, Custer close behind,
I read somewhere. Their horses’
tongues dry as snakes.
Back in Kearney, I tried to listen
to Kev’s kid out in the chicken yard
gathering eggs in a Happy Meal
box. She already looks
through wire fence like she is looking
through a rifle sight at a wolf
licking its paws in a bowl of dust, looking through it
into what she thinks
she knows. Some of the eggs she finds are
tucked in shit.
Some are full of blood.


newyorker--2020-09-28--How Does Science Really Work?

How Does Science Really Work?

When I was a kid , I ’ d sometimes spend the day with my dad in his lab , at the National Institutes of Health .
For a few hours I ’ d read , while eating vending-machine crackers and drinking Diet Coke .
I ’ d spend the rest of the time at a lab bench , pipetting—using a long glass eyedropper to draw water out of one set of test tubes and drip it , carefully , into another .
I was seven , eight , maybe nine years old .
Still , the lab was an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , loosely , that my dad was investigating addiction in the brain .
He believed that it depended on the way certain chemicals bind to certain receptors .
To study this , the scientists in his lab performed experiments on rats , then killed them and analyzed their brains .
On one of my visits , a lab tech named Victor reached into a centrifuge and removed a large container filled with foamy pink liquid .
“ Brain juice !
” he said , pretending to drink it .
Often , though , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were the only ones in the lab .
The corridors were dim and quiet , the rooms mostly dark and deserted ; the metal and linoleum surfaces were beige , gray , white , and green , relieved , occasionally , by a knob or button made of vivid red or blue plastic .
Hulking machines stood on the counters—ugly but , according to my dad , incredibly expensive .
Chemical showers and eyewash stations loomed ; sometimes , in a distant room , a dot-matrix printer burred .
In the sci-fi novels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ futuristic .
But my dad ’ s seemed worn-in , workaday , more “ Alien ” than “ 2001.
” I knew that the experiments done there took years and could come to nothing .
As I pipetted , I watched my dad in his office , poring over statistical printouts—a miner in the mountains of knowledge .
Later , in college and afterward , I got to see the glamorous side of science .
Some researchers had offices with sweeping views , and schedules coördinated by multiple assistants .
They wore tailored @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and debated ideas in fancy restaurants .
Their rivalries , as they described them , evoked titanic struggles from the history of science—Darwin versus Owen , Galileo versus the Pope—in which rationalist grit overpowered bias and folly .
Science , in this world , was a form of exploratory combat , in which flexible minds stretched to encompass the truth , pushing against the limits of what was known and thought .
It was an enterprise that demanded total human engagement .
Even aesthetics mattered .
“ You live and breathe paradox and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see the beauty of them than the fish can see the beauty of the water , ” Niels Bohr tells Werner Heisenberg , in Michael Frayn ’ s quantum-physics play , “ Copenhagen.
” Reading , seeing , learning all of this , I wanted to be a scientist .
So why did I find the actual work of science so boring ?
In college science courses , I had occasional bursts of mind-expanding insight .
For the most part , though , I was tortured by drudgery .
In my senior year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during field work and in the lab , but found the writing of lab reports so dreary that , after consulting the grading rubric on the syllabus , I decided not to do them .
I performed well enough on the exams to get a D—the minimum grade that would allow me to graduate .
Recorded history is five thousand years old .
Modern science , which has been with us for just four centuries , has remade its trajectory .
We are no smarter individually than our medieval ancestors , but we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ antibiotics and electronics , vitamins and vaccines , synthetic materials and weather forecasts ; we comprehend our place in the universe with an exactness that was once unimaginable .
I ’ d found that science was two-faced : simultaneously thrilling and tedious , all-encompassing and narrow .
And yet this was clearly an asset , not a flaw .
Something about that combination had changed the world completely .
In “ The Knowledge Machine : How Irrationality Created Modern Science ” ( Liveright ) , Michael Strevens , a philosopher at New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something .
Strevens is a philosopher of science—a scholar charged with analyzing how scientific knowledge is generated .
Philosophers of science tend to irritate practicing scientists , to whom science already makes complete sense .
It doesn ’ t make sense to Strevens .
“ Science is an alien thought form , ” he writes ; that ’ s why so many civilizations rose and fell before it was invented .
In his view , we downplay its weirdness , perhaps because its success is so fundamental to our continued existence .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ T. Barnum of the laboratory , unveiling the monstrosity that lies at the heart of modern science.
” In school , one learns about “ the scientific method ” —usually a straightforward set of steps , along the lines of “ ask a question , propose a hypothesis , perform an experiment , analyze the results.
” That method works in the classroom , where students are basically told what questions to pursue .
But real scientists must come up with their own questions , finding new routes through a much vaster landscape @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been disagreement about how those routes are charted .
Two twentieth-century philosophers of science , Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn , are widely held to have offered the best accounts of this process .
Popper maintained that scientists proceed by “ falsifying ” scientific claims—by trying to prove theories wrong .
Kuhn , on the other hand , believed that scientists work to prove theories right , exploring and extending them until further progress becomes impossible .
These two accounts rest on divergent visions of the scientific temperament .
For Popper , Strevens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a process of disproof , and scientists are the disprovers , the debunkers , the destroyers.
” Kuhn ’ s scientists , by contrast , are faddish true believers who promulgate received wisdom until they are forced to attempt a “ paradigm shift ” —a painful rethinking of their basic assumptions .
Working scientists tend to prefer Popper to Kuhn .
But Strevens thinks that both theorists failed to capture what makes science historically distinctive and singularly effective .
To illustrate , he tells the story of Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Nobel Prize in 1977 for discovering the molecular structure of TRH—a hormone , produced in the hypothalamus , that helps regulate the release of other hormones and so shapes many aspects of our lives .
Mapping the hormone ’ s structure , Strevens explains , was an “ epic slog ” that lasted more than a decade , during which “ literally tons of brain tissue , obtained from sheep or pigs , had to be mashed up and processed.
” Guillemin and Schally , who were racing each other to analyze @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t weirdos who loved animal brains .
They gritted their teeth through the work .
“ Nobody before had to process millions of hypothalami , ” Schally said .
“ The key factor is not the money , it ’ s the will .
.
.
the brutal force of putting in sixty hours a week for a year to get one million fragments.
” Looking back on the project , Schally attributed their success to their outsider status .
“ Guillemin and I , we are immigrants , obscure little doctors , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” he said .
But Strevens points out that “ many important scientific studies have required of their practitioners a degree of single-mindedness that is quite inhuman.
” It ’ s not just brain juice that demands such commitment .
Scientists have dedicated entire careers to the painstaking refinement of delicate instruments , to the digging up of bone fragments , to the gathering of statistics about variations in the beaks of finches .
Uncertain of success , they toil in an obscurity that will deepen into futility if their work doesn @ @ @ @ @

behind these achievements . . . are long hours, days, months of tedious laboratory labor. The single greatest obstacle to successful science is the difficulty of persuading brilliant minds to give up the intellectual pleasures of continual speculation and debate, theorizing and arguing, and to turn instead to a life consisting almost entirely of the production of experimental data.
The allocation of vast human resources to the measurement of possibly inconsequential minutiae is what makes science truly unprecedented in history. Why do scientists agree to this scheme? Why do some of the world’s most intelligent people sign on for a lifetime of pipetting?
Strevens thinks that they do it because they have no choice. They are constrained by a central regulation that governs science, which he calls the “iron rule of explanation.” The rule is simple: it tells scientists that, “if they are to participate in the scientific enterprise, they must uncover or generate new evidence to argue with”; from there, they must “conduct all disputes with reference to empirical evidence alone.” Compared with the theories proposed by Popper and Kuhn, Strevens’s rule can feel obvious and underpowered. That’s because it isn’t intellectual but procedural. “The iron rule is focused not on what scientists think,” he writes, “but on what arguments they can make in their official communications.” Still, he maintains, it is “the key to science’s success,” because it “channels hope, anger, envy, ambition, resentment—all the fires fuming in the human heart—to one end: the production of empirical evidence.”
Strevens arrives at the idea of the iron rule in a Popperian way: by disproving the other theories about how scientific knowledge is created. The problem isn’t that Popper and Kuhn are completely wrong. It’s that scientists, as a group, don’t pursue any single intellectual strategy consistently. Exploring a number of case studies—including the controversies over continental drift, spontaneous generation, and the theory of relativity—Strevens shows scientists exerting themselves intellectually in a variety of ways, as smart, ambitious people usually do. Sometimes they seek to falsify theories, sometimes to prove them; sometimes they’re informed by preëxisting or contextual views, and at other times they try to rule narrowly, based on the evidence at hand.
Like everybody else, scientists view questions through the lenses of taste, personality, affiliation, and experience. In 1912, a young meteorologist and champion balloonist named Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents had once fit together but then drifted apart. His theory, which drew on a global survey of coastlines and continental shelves, made sense of the fact that the same sorts of rocks and fossilized animals often appeared on distant shores. Opponents of Wegener’s theory, led by the eminent paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, pointed out that he had no explanation for how the continents had moved. A rational non-scientist might have stayed neutral until more evidence had come in. But geologists had a professional obligation to take sides. Europeans, Strevens reports, tended to back Wegener, who was German, while scholars in the United States often preferred Simpson, who was American. Outsiders to the field were often more receptive to the concept of continental drift than established scientists, who considered its incompleteness a fatal flaw.
Strevens’s point isn’t that these scientists were doing anything wrong. If they had biases and perspectives, he writes, “that’s how human thinking works.” His point is that, despite their heated partiality, the papers they published consisted solely of data about rocks. Ultimately, in fact, it was good that the geologists had a “splendid variety” of somewhat arbitrary opinions: progress in science requires partisans, because only they have “the motivation to perform years or even decades of necessary experimental work.” It’s just that these partisans must channel their energies into empirical observation. The iron rule, Strevens writes, “has a valuable by-product, and that by-product is data.”
Science is often described as “self-correcting”: it’s said that bad data and wrong conclusions are rooted out by other scientists, who present contrary findings. But Strevens thinks that the iron rule is often more important than overt correction. He tells the story of Arthur Eddington, an English astronomer who, in 1919, sailed to the island of Príncipe, off the west coast of Africa, to observe and photograph the position of a group of stars during a total eclipse of the sun. Eddington’s observations were expected to either confirm or falsify Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which predicted that the sun’s gravity would bend the path of light, subtly shifting the stellar pattern. For reasons having to do with weather and equipment, the evidence collected by Eddington—and by his colleague Frank Dyson, who had taken similar photographs in Sobral, Brazil—was inconclusive; some of their images were blurry, and so failed to resolve the matter definitively. Eddington pressed ahead anyway: the expedition report he published with Dyson contained detailed calculations and numerical tables that, they argued, showed that Einstein was right.
At the time, many physicists and astronomers were skeptical of the findings. Everyone knew that Eddington “wanted very much for Einstein’s theory to be true,” Strevens writes, “both because of its profound mathematical beauty” and because of Eddington’s “ardent internationalist desire to dissolve the rancor that had some Britons calling for a postwar boycott of German science.” (As a Quaker and an avowed pacifist, Eddington believed that scientific progress could be “a bond transcending human differences.”) All the same, Eddington was never really refuted. Other astronomers, driven by the iron rule, were already planning their own studies, and “the great preponderance of the resulting measurements fit Einsteinian physics better than Newtonian physics.” It’s partly by generating data on such a vast scale, Strevens argues, that the iron rule can power science’s knowledge machine: “Opinions converge not because bad data is corrected but because it is swamped.”
Why did the iron rule emerge when it did? Strevens takes us back to the Thirty Years’ War, which concluded with the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648. The war weakened religious loyalties and strengthened national ones. Afterward, he writes, what mattered most “was that you were English or French”; whether you were Anglican or Catholic became “your private concern.” Two regimes arose: in the spiritual realm, the will of God held sway, while in the civic one the decrees of the state were paramount. As Isaac Newton wrote, “The laws of God & the laws of man are to be kept distinct.” These new, “nonoverlapping spheres of obligation,” Strevens argues, were what made it possible to imagine the iron rule. The rule simply proposed the creation of a third sphere: in addition to God and state, there would now be science.
In the single-sphered, pre-scientific world, thinkers tended to inquire into everything at once. Often, they arrived at conclusions about nature that were fascinating, visionary, and wrong. Looking back, we usually fault such thinkers for being insufficiently methodical and empirical. But Strevens tells a more charitable story: it was only natural for intelligent people who were free of the rule’s strictures to attempt a kind of holistic, systematic inquiry that was, in many ways, more demanding. It never occurred to them to ask if they might illuminate more collectively by thinking about less individually.
It’s in this context, Strevens suggests, that we should understand the story of René Descartes, the philosopher and mathematician who, among other things, invented the system of plotting points and lines on a grid. In his first book, “The World,” completed in 1633, Descartes, who was then in his late thirties, offered a sprawling account of the universe, explaining how vision works, how muscles move, how plants grow, how gravity functions, and how God set everything spinning in the first place. Today, the ambition of treatises like “The World” strikes us as absurd. But Strevens imagines how, to someone in Descartes’s time, the iron rule would have seemed “unreasonably closed-minded.” Since ancient Greece, it had been obvious that the best thinking was cross-disciplinary, capable of knitting together “poetry, music, drama, philosophy, democracy, mathematics,” and other elevating human disciplines. We’re still accustomed to the idea that a truly flourishing intellect is a well-rounded one. And, by this standard, Strevens says, the iron rule looks like “an irrational way to inquire into the underlying structure of things”; it seems to demand the upsetting “suppression of human nature.” (Perhaps it’s as compensation that, today, so many scientists seem to pursue their hobbies—woodworking, sailing, ballroom dancing—with such avidity.) Descartes, in short, would have had good reasons for resisting a law that narrowed the grounds of disputation, or that encouraged what Strevens describes as “doing rather than thinking.”
“If I leave them in there with a bottle, I can usually get a little time for myself.” Cartoon by Benjamin Schwartz Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
In fact, the iron rule offered scientists a more supple vision of progress. Before its arrival, intellectual life was conducted in grand gestures. Descartes’s book was meant to be a complete overhaul of what had preceded it; its fate, had science not arisen, would have been replacement by some equally expansive system. The iron rule broke that pattern. Strevens sees its earliest expression in Francis Bacon’s “The New Organon,” a foundational text of the Scientific Revolution, published in 1620. Bacon argued that thinkers must set aside their “idols,” relying, instead, only on evidence they could verify. This dictum gave scientists a new way of responding to one another’s work: gathering data. But it also changed what counted as progress. In the past, a theory about the world was deemed valid when it was complete—when God, light, muscles, plants, and the planets cohered. The iron rule allowed scientists to step away from the quest for completeness.


newyorker--2020-09-28--Ending Trump’s Assault on the Rule of Law

Donald Trump , both in his own behavior and in the policies of his Administration , has waged war on the rule of law .
The tragedy of the coronavirus pandemic has absorbed the nation ’ s attention for most of 2020 , so it ’ s easy to forget that Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives less than a year ago––and that he deserved to be .
Trump ’ s withholding of congressionally appropriated assistance to Ukraine , in an attempt to extract from its government damaging information and propaganda about the Biden family , was precisely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intended impeachment to address .
Trump ’ s defiance of Congress ’ s right to investigate his wrongdoing was another proper ground for his removal .
Trump ’ s Ukraine misadventure followed the conduct that the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III detailed in his report about the 2016 campaign and its aftermath .
The Mueller report , now an even more distant memory , suggested that the President committed repeated acts of criminal obstruction of justice , which were at least as serious as those which led to Richard Nixon ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scandal or the Mueller investigation to bring about Trump ’ s removal speaks more to the craven state of the contemporary Republican Party , which has blindly supported its leader , than to the evident merits of the case against him .
But Trump ’ s departure alone will not be nearly enough to restore the rule of law , and the changes necessary to achieve that must begin with the foundational right in a democracy : the right to vote .
Since well before Trump ’ s Presidency , the Republican Party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Supreme Court ’ s shameful decision in Shelby County v. Holder , in 2013 , crippled the Voting Rights Act of 1965 , and invited Republican-dominated states to undo the progress made since the passage of the nation ’ s most important civil-rights law .
In transparent attempts to prevent the poor and people of color from going to the polls , Republicans have relied on spurious arguments about the possibility of voter fraud ( a nearly nonexistent problem ) to impose photo-identification requirements at polling places and to limit absentee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during the current campaign , has made the situation worse , in particular by attempting to sabotage the U.S .
Postal Service , which will bear the burden of delivering ballots in the year of the coronavirus .
A Biden Administration could begin to address these issues right away .
The House of Representatives has already passed a revision of the Voting Rights Act , which is now named for John Lewis , the late Georgia congressman , who devoted much of his life to winning and preserving the right to vote .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ as “ preclearance , ” in which jurisdictions with histories of discrimination must justify their changes in electoral practices .
And it would empower the Attorney General to grant immediate relief when states attempt to limit the vote .
The new law would need a Department of Justice committed to its enforcement ; fortunately , Biden , who has a long history of supporting voting rights , could be expected to replace the lamentable William Barr with an Attorney General who is a strong advocate for democratic values .
A renewed Voting Rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a Biden era , will , of course , have to pass in the Senate , too .
It now seems possible that the Democrats will retake control of that chamber , and thus end the sinister reign of Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader .
But majority control won ’ t suffice , owing to the ubiquity of the filibuster .
Even in the best of circumstances , the Senate has a dubious connection to representative democracy , which is why Wyoming and California have the same number of senators .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who may represent a great deal less than forty-one per cent of the population , to stymie legislation indefinitely .
And although Democrats have made use of the filibuster in recent years , it ’ s clear that they , as the party of activist government , will always suffer more from this procedural roadblock .
Sooner rather than later , a new majority should revise the Senate rules and abolish this relic once and for all .
Control of the judiciary has been an animating force in the Trump Administration , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demonstrated with astounding cynicism .
After Antonin Scalia died , in February , 2016 , McConnell prevented a vote on Merrick Garland , President Obama ’ s nominee to replace Scalia on the Supreme Court , by inventing a rule that no Court confirmations should take place during a Presidential-election year .
That seat went to Neil Gorsuch , and his nomination was followed by that of Brett Kavanaugh .
Now , after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg , Trump and McConnell are violating the principle used to thwart Garland and attempting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ though early voting in this Presidential election is already under way .
Democrats in the Senate may not be able to prevent the confirmation of a third Trump Justice , but if they win back the majority , and Biden is elected , they should take a hard line .
Trump has filled the lower courts with conservative ideologues who will use their lifetime posts to limit the rights of women and the L.G.B.T.Q .
community , and ( as ever ) to attack the voting rights of people of color .
Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the judiciary , appointing judges who will undo some of the damage and , while he ’ s at it , initiate legislation to expand the federal judiciary , which has remained essentially the same size for decades .
Control of the courts would be the pivot on which much of Biden ’ s agenda would turn .
Thanks to the Citizens United decision and related cases , anonymous donors were able to spend millions of dollars to help confirm Gorsuch and Kavanaugh .
That was , in part , because conservatives wanted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but the money was meant to purchase far more .
With great but incomplete success , conservatives have used the courts to hamstring the administrative state .
Many of Obama ’ s initiatives have been challenged in the courts , including those on health care , labor law , immigration , and climate change .
The initiatives of a President Biden would be , too .
So Biden should invest political capital in quickly filling the lower courts with progressive , distinguished ( and young ) women and men .
As the great @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than two centuries ago , “ It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department ” —now called the judicial branch— “ to say what the law is.
” A new Administration should act with this still urgent insight in mind .
♦

Donald Trump, both in his own behavior and in the policies of his Administration, has waged war on the rule of law. The tragedy of the coronavirus pandemic has absorbed the nation’s attention for most of 2020, so it’s easy to forget that Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives less than a year ago––and that he deserved to be. Trump’s withholding of congressionally appropriated assistance to Ukraine, in an attempt to extract from its government damaging information and propaganda about the Biden family, was precisely the kind of offense that the Framers intended impeachment to address. Trump’s defiance of Congress’s right to investigate his wrongdoing was another proper ground for his removal.
Trump’s Ukraine misadventure followed the conduct that the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III detailed in his report about the 2016 campaign and its aftermath. The Mueller report, now an even more distant memory, suggested that the President committed repeated acts of criminal obstruction of justice, which were at least as serious as those which led to Richard Nixon’s resignation. The failure of the Ukraine scandal or the Mueller investigation to bring about Trump’s removal speaks more to the craven state of the contemporary Republican Party, which has blindly supported its leader, than to the evident merits of the case against him.
But Trump’s departure alone will not be nearly enough to restore the rule of law, and the changes necessary to achieve that must begin with the foundational right in a democracy: the right to vote. Since well before Trump’s Presidency, the Republican Party has been committed to limiting the franchise. The Supreme Court’s shameful decision in Shelby County v. Holder, in 2013, crippled the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and invited Republican-dominated states to undo the progress made since the passage of the nation’s most important civil-rights law. In transparent attempts to prevent the poor and people of color from going to the polls, Republicans have relied on spurious arguments about the possibility of voter fraud (a nearly nonexistent problem) to impose photo-identification requirements at polling places and to limit absentee and early voting. Trump, especially during the current campaign, has made the situation worse, in particular by attempting to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service, which will bear the burden of delivering ballots in the year of the coronavirus.
A Biden Administration could begin to address these issues right away. The House of Representatives has already passed a revision of the Voting Rights Act, which is now named for John Lewis, the late Georgia congressman, who devoted much of his life to winning and preserving the right to vote. The act would restore the process known as “preclearance,” in which jurisdictions with histories of discrimination must justify their changes in electoral practices. And it would empower the Attorney General to grant immediate relief when states attempt to limit the vote. The new law would need a Department of Justice committed to its enforcement; fortunately, Biden, who has a long history of supporting voting rights, could be expected to replace the lamentable William Barr with an Attorney General who is a strong advocate for democratic values.
A renewed Voting Rights Act, along with all other legislation in a Biden era, will, of course, have to pass in the Senate, too. It now seems possible that the Democrats will retake control of that chamber, and thus end the sinister reign of Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader. But majority control won’t suffice, owing to the ubiquity of the filibuster. Even in the best of circumstances, the Senate has a dubious connection to representative democracy, which is why Wyoming and California have the same number of senators. But the filibuster allows just forty-one senators, who may represent a great deal less than forty-one per cent of the population, to stymie legislation indefinitely. And although Democrats have made use of the filibuster in recent years, it’s clear that they, as the party of activist government, will always suffer more from this procedural roadblock. Sooner rather than later, a new majority should revise the Senate rules and abolish this relic once and for all.
Control of the judiciary has been an animating force in the Trump Administration, as the President and the Majority Leader have demonstrated with astounding cynicism. After Antonin Scalia died, in February, 2016, McConnell prevented a vote on Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia on the Supreme Court, by inventing a rule that no Court confirmations should take place during a Presidential-election year. That seat went to Neil Gorsuch, and his nomination was followed by that of Brett Kavanaugh. Now, after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump and McConnell are violating the principle used to thwart Garland and attempting to install a new Justice, even though early voting in this Presidential election is already under way.
Democrats in the Senate may not be able to prevent the confirmation of a third Trump Justice, but if they win back the majority, and Biden is elected, they should take a hard line. Trump has filled the lower courts with conservative ideologues who will use their lifetime posts to limit the rights of women and the L.G.B.T.Q. community, and (as ever) to attack the voting rights of people of color. Biden should pay the same close attention to the judiciary, appointing judges who will undo some of the damage and, while he’s at it, initiate legislation to expand the federal judiciary, which has remained essentially the same size for decades.
Control of the courts would be the pivot on which much of Biden’s agenda would turn. Thanks to the Citizens United decision and related cases, anonymous donors were able to spend millions of dollars to help confirm Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. That was, in part, because conservatives wanted to push their reactionary social agenda, but the money was meant to purchase far more. With great but incomplete success, conservatives have used the courts to hamstring the administrative state. Many of Obama’s initiatives have been challenged in the courts, including those on health care, labor law, immigration, and climate change. The initiatives of a President Biden would be, too. So Biden should invest political capital in quickly filling the lower courts with progressive, distinguished (and young) women and men. As the great Chief Justice John Marshall said, more than two centuries ago, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department”—now called the judicial branch—“to say what the law is.” A new Administration should act with this still urgent insight in mind. ♦


newyorker--2020-09-28--Harry Smith’s Musical Catalogue of Human Experience

In 1951 , the record collector Harry Smith met with Moe Asch , a co-founder of Folkways Records , to see if Asch would buy all or part of his collection .
Smith , who was born in Portland , Oregon , in 1923 , and died in 1991 , was an eccentric polymath .
He painted , made experimental films , practiced occult alchemy ( he was ordained in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica , a spiritual group affiliated with the magician and self-appointed prophet Aleister Crowley ) , and believed that the careful accumulation and ordering of things could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my projects are only attempts to build up a series of objects that allow some sort of generalizations to be made , ” he said , in 1968 .
Smith collected all sorts of stuff : paper airplanes , Ukrainian Easter eggs , figures he made by looping or weaving lengths of string , anything shaped like a hamburger , and thousands , if not tens of thousands , of 78-r.p.m .
records , ten-inch platters introduced around the beginning of the twentieth century that contain about three minutes of music on each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was by the Mississippi-born blues guitarist Tommy McClennan .
“ It sounded strange—and I looked for others , ” he said .
Like many serious collectors of arcane but precious objects , Smith could be irascible , mean , and single-minded to the point of psychopathy .
There are stories of his thieving , particularly when he believed that an item would be better off in his care .
He never married , drank to unconsciousness , went absolutely nuts if anyone talked while he was playing a record , and , according @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ several years ’ deposits of his semen ” in the back of his freezer for “ alchemical purposes.
” In addition to buying records from Smith , Asch tasked him with compiling “ The Anthology of American Folk Music , ” a six-LP compendium of vernacular songs recorded in the United States between 1926 and 1934 .
In an interview with the magazine Sing Out !
, from 1972 , Asch said that Smith “ understood the content of the records .
He knew their relationship to folk music , their relationship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the world.
” Smith ’ s “ Anthology ” was derived from his personal collection , and made up of eighty-four tracks , broken into three groups : social music , ballads , and songs .
Within those categories , Smith relished the juxtaposition of regional styles .
A single LP might contain an Acadian one-step , a Delta blues , a lonesome Appalachian ballad , and a Sacred Harp hymn .
Each of the three sleeves was printed in a different color and featured a drawing of a celestial monochord—a single-stringed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ God—taken from “ De Musica Mundana , ” a book by the Elizabethan alchemist Robert Fludd , from 1618 .
“ The Anthology of American Folk Music ” is probably the most significant example of how a particular collector ’ s preferences can guide ( if not dictate ) a historical canon .
Obscure records tend to survive only when there are collectors willing to seek out and preserve them .
Most early recording masters were either destroyed or melted down for reuse , so the pressed and sold records became the only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a record is lost to time or circumstance—78s are made from a shellac compound that is brittle and shatters easily—the performance is effectively erased .
It makes many people anxious that record collectors have come to be the default custodians of this music .
( The question of who owns the music , and how the descendants of the performers should be compensated if a reissue generates revenue , is also complicated .
Many of these songs are variations on traditional compositions with no single author , and many rural musicians signed their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the record executive who recruited them . )
Yet Smith ’ s singular vision for the “ Anthology ” —his particular and irregular cosmology—is part of what makes it such a fascinating artifact .
The set ultimately became one of the central texts of the folk revival , guiding artists including Woody Guthrie , Joan Baez , and Bob Dylan .
“ I ’ d match the ‘ Anthology ’ up against any other single compendium of important information ever assembled , ” the guitarist John Fahey once wrote .
Despite its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not comprehensive .
It did not contain any music from Native Americans or recent European immigrants , and there are no Spanish-language songs , although they were popular along the southern border .
Some folklorists and musicologists found the “ Anthology ” inherently faulty , because Smith used commercial recordings , and it was believed that only field recordings could represent authentic folk music .
Yet the songs on the “ Anthology ” still work as a dizzying catalogue of human experience .
Love , lust , rage , determination , malice , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s hard to think of a feeling that is not represented here .
Sixty-eight years on , the “ Anthology ” remains powerful evidence of the depth and fury of early American folk songs .
Serious fans of the set tend to discuss it in ecstatic terms .
I ’ ve often cited it as foundational in the development of my own taste—a work that unlocks other works .
Once , in a strange fury of obsession , I spent several months on the lower level of the New York Public Library @ @ @ @ @ @ @ track down Smith ’ s own 78s , some of which he had sold to the library before he died .
Smith believed that objects have power ; I thought there might be something to learn from holding those records in my hands .
I came up short , in the end—they may have been pilfered from the archives , or simply been mixed in with the general collection .
During the 1991 Grammys telecast , the Recording Academy gave Smith a Chairman ’ s Merit Award , for his “ ongoing insight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and his deep commitment to presenting folk music as a vehicle for social change.
” At the time , Smith was working as the “ shaman-in-residence ” at Naropa University , in Colorado .
In a video of his short acceptance speech , his scraggly gray hair is gathered into a ponytail .
He seems vaguely amused but happy .
“ My dreams came true , ” Smith says .
“ I saw America changed through music.
” This fall , the “ Anthology ” is being revisited twice .
Dust-to-Digital , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meticulous resuscitation and repackaging of historical recordings , is releasing “ The Harry Smith B-Sides , ” a boxed set containing the flip sides of every 78 Smith used for the “ Anthology.
” In addition , the Harry Smith Archives is rereleasing two films , both from 2006 : “ The Old , Weird America , ” a documentary about the legacy of Smith ’ s work , and “ The Harry Smith Project Live , ” which includes highlights from five tribute concerts , featuring artists such as Beck , Sonic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Kate and Anna McGarrigle , all playing songs from the “ Anthology.
” In a filmed introduction to “ The Harry Smith Project Live , ” the producer and curator Hal Willner , who died earlier this year of complications from COVID-19 , describes the five shows as “ happenings , ” an allusion to Fluxus and other avant-garde art movements that emphasized process above all else .
Willner is sitting in a recording studio , holding a battered banjo and a marionette .
“ I ’ m sure you ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ m sure you ’ ll hate some of it , ” he says .
“ But you ’ ll be a different person once this is over.
” One of my favorite appearances is by Lou Reed , who covers “ See That My Grave Is Kept Clean , ” a blues song recorded by Blind Lemon Jefferson in 1928 .
Many country-blues songs already have a mesmeric , almost ghostly quality ; Reed adds dissonance and drone , turning the song into a meandering dirge .
The performance lasts for more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more hypnotic as it goes on .
By the time Reed arrives at Jefferson ’ s fifth verse— “ Have you ever heard a coffin sound ?
” —I start to feel as if my own soul has departed my body .
The release also contains a minute or so of footage of Smith , speaking on an enormous portable phone and declaring , in a nasal lilt , a kind of mission statement : “ Perfection may be perfect , but to hell with it .
”

In 1951, the record collector Harry Smith met with Moe Asch, a co-founder of Folkways Records, to see if Asch would buy all or part of his collection. Smith, who was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1923, and died in 1991, was an eccentric polymath. He painted, made experimental films, practiced occult alchemy (he was ordained in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, a spiritual group affiliated with the magician and self-appointed prophet Aleister Crowley), and believed that the careful accumulation and ordering of things could bring about new knowledge. “All my projects are only attempts to build up a series of objects that allow some sort of generalizations to be made,” he said, in 1968. Smith collected all sorts of stuff: paper airplanes, Ukrainian Easter eggs, figures he made by looping or weaving lengths of string, anything shaped like a hamburger, and thousands, if not tens of thousands, of 78-r.p.m. records, ten-inch platters introduced around the beginning of the twentieth century that contain about three minutes of music on each side. The first 78 Smith bought was by the Mississippi-born blues guitarist Tommy McClennan. “It sounded strange—and I looked for others,” he said.
Like many serious collectors of arcane but precious objects, Smith could be irascible, mean, and single-minded to the point of psychopathy. There are stories of his thieving, particularly when he believed that an item would be better off in his care. He never married, drank to unconsciousness, went absolutely nuts if anyone talked while he was playing a record, and, according to his friend Allen Ginsberg, kept “several years’ deposits of his semen” in the back of his freezer for “alchemical purposes.”
In addition to buying records from Smith, Asch tasked him with compiling “The Anthology of American Folk Music,” a six-LP compendium of vernacular songs recorded in the United States between 1926 and 1934. In an interview with the magazine Sing Out!, from 1972, Asch said that Smith “understood the content of the records. He knew their relationship to folk music, their relationship to English Literature, and their relationship to the world.” Smith’s “Anthology” was derived from his personal collection, and made up of eighty-four tracks, broken into three groups: social music, ballads, and songs. Within those categories, Smith relished the juxtaposition of regional styles. A single LP might contain an Acadian one-step, a Delta blues, a lonesome Appalachian ballad, and a Sacred Harp hymn. Each of the three sleeves was printed in a different color and featured a drawing of a celestial monochord—a single-stringed dulcimer, tuned by the hand of God—taken from “De Musica Mundana,” a book by the Elizabethan alchemist Robert Fludd, from 1618.
“The Anthology of American Folk Music” is probably the most significant example of how a particular collector’s preferences can guide (if not dictate) a historical canon. Obscure records tend to survive only when there are collectors willing to seek out and preserve them. Most early recording masters were either destroyed or melted down for reuse, so the pressed and sold records became the only material evidence of these performances. If a record is lost to time or circumstance—78s are made from a shellac compound that is brittle and shatters easily—the performance is effectively erased.
It makes many people anxious that record collectors have come to be the default custodians of this music. (The question of who owns the music, and how the descendants of the performers should be compensated if a reissue generates revenue, is also complicated. Many of these songs are variations on traditional compositions with no single author, and many rural musicians signed their rights over to the recording company or to the record executive who recruited them.) Yet Smith’s singular vision for the “Anthology”—his particular and irregular cosmology—is part of what makes it such a fascinating artifact.
The set ultimately became one of the central texts of the folk revival, guiding artists including Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. “I’d match the ‘Anthology’ up against any other single compendium of important information ever assembled,” the guitarist John Fahey once wrote. Despite its title, the “Anthology” is not comprehensive. It did not contain any music from Native Americans or recent European immigrants, and there are no Spanish-language songs, although they were popular along the southern border. Some folklorists and musicologists found the “Anthology” inherently faulty, because Smith used commercial recordings, and it was believed that only field recordings could represent authentic folk music. Yet the songs on the “Anthology” still work as a dizzying catalogue of human experience. Love, lust, rage, determination, malice, envy, heartache, exhaustion, joy—it’s hard to think of a feeling that is not represented here. Sixty-eight years on, the “Anthology” remains powerful evidence of the depth and fury of early American folk songs.
Serious fans of the set tend to discuss it in ecstatic terms. I’ve often cited it as foundational in the development of my own taste—a work that unlocks other works. Once, in a strange fury of obsession, I spent several months on the lower level of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, trying to track down Smith’s own 78s, some of which he had sold to the library before he died. Smith believed that objects have power; I thought there might be something to learn from holding those records in my hands. I came up short, in the end—they may have been pilfered from the archives, or simply been mixed in with the general collection.
During the 1991 Grammys telecast, the Recording Academy gave Smith a Chairman’s Merit Award, for his “ongoing insight into the relationship between artistry and society, and his deep commitment to presenting folk music as a vehicle for social change.” At the time, Smith was working as the “shaman-in-residence” at Naropa University, in Colorado. In a video of his short acceptance speech, his scraggly gray hair is gathered into a ponytail. He seems vaguely amused but happy. “My dreams came true,” Smith says. “I saw America changed through music.”
This fall, the “Anthology” is being revisited twice. Dust-to-Digital, an Atlanta-based label that specializes in the meticulous resuscitation and repackaging of historical recordings, is releasing “The Harry Smith B-Sides,” a boxed set containing the flip sides of every 78 Smith used for the “Anthology.” In addition, the Harry Smith Archives is rereleasing two films, both from 2006: “The Old, Weird America,” a documentary about the legacy of Smith’s work, and “The Harry Smith Project Live,” which includes highlights from five tribute concerts, featuring artists such as Beck, Sonic Youth, Elvis Costello, Nick Cave, and Kate and Anna McGarrigle, all playing songs from the “Anthology.”
In a filmed introduction to “The Harry Smith Project Live,” the producer and curator Hal Willner, who died earlier this year of complications from COVID-19, describes the five shows as “happenings,” an allusion to Fluxus and other avant-garde art movements that emphasized process above all else. Willner is sitting in a recording studio, holding a battered banjo and a marionette. “I’m sure you’ll love some of it, I’m sure you’ll hate some of it,” he says. “But you’ll be a different person once this is over.” One of my favorite appearances is by Lou Reed, who covers “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean,” a blues song recorded by Blind Lemon Jefferson in 1928. Many country-blues songs already have a mesmeric, almost ghostly quality; Reed adds dissonance and drone, turning the song into a meandering dirge. The performance lasts for more than seven minutes, growing deeper and more hypnotic as it goes on. By the time Reed arrives at Jefferson’s fifth verse—“Have you ever heard a coffin sound?”—I start to feel as if my own soul has departed my body. The release also contains a minute or so of footage of Smith, speaking on an enormous portable phone and declaring, in a nasal lilt, a kind of mission statement: “Perfection may be perfect, but to hell with it.”
“The Harry Smith B-Sides,” which was produced by Eli Smith, Lance Ledbetter, April Ledbetter, and John Cohen, was first conceived of by the collector Robert Nobley, who was known for his ability to revive cracked 78s with, as Lance Ledbetter writes in the set’s introduction, “nothing more than a tube of model airplane glue and a toothpick.” In 2004, Nobley self-released, on CD-R, two compilations of some of the B-sides from the “Anthology,” titled “Anthology of American Folk Music, Other Sides Vol. 1 and 2,” and sold them via mail order. Ledbetter was intrigued. “If the featured recordings are so remarkable, there’s an excellent chance that the song on the other side by the same artist probably isn’t half bad,” he writes.
Nobley died in 2005; in 2013, Eli Smith and Cohen got in touch with Ledbetter, the founder of Dust-to-Digital, about issuing a more complete version of the project. It took them several years to secure permissions from copyright holders, and even now the music can exist only on compact disk and vinyl—the licenses do not allow for streaming or downloads. In June, the producers chose to omit three tracks, because they use racist language. The set was already finished, and the decision required the remanufacturing of three of the four disks. “In our seventeen-year history, we have never published tracks with racist lyrics,” April Ledbetter, a co-director of Dust-to-Digital, told me. “Our intent to adhere to the concept for the project is what led to the recordings being included in the first place. I am thankful that we had the time to realize what a mistake that would have been, and the ability to do something about it.”
In a way, “The Harry Smith B-Sides” is a thought experiment. The “Anthology” is potent mostly because of Smith’s vision—his taste, his aesthetic, his fussy sequencing—which makes a mirror-image compilation of the sides he rejected a novelty of sorts. But I have found it to be just as moving, haunting, and profound as the original. In some cases, the producers were able to acquire cleaner source copies, resulting in especially rich audio. Smith chose Henry Thomas’s “Old Country Stomp” for the “Anthology,” but its flip side, “Bull Doze Blues,” is uncommonly beautiful—lonesome and giddy at the same time. Lance Ledbetter described it to me as “one of the very finest recordings ever made.” Most 78s exist in varying stages of degradation, but when a clean copy is properly engineered and transferred there’s something uncanny about how intimate it feels. I’ve never heard Thomas—who recorded twenty-four songs between 1927 and 1929, and who probably died in 1930—sound quite so close.
Some selections have changed the way I think about the original side. Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s rendition of the folk song “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground” is one of the most confounding and fascinating tracks on the “Anthology.” Its narrator expresses a deep desire to be turned into a mole, or maybe a lizard. “He wants to be delivered from his life and to be changed into a creature insignificant and despised,” the critic Greil Marcus wrote, in “Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century.” “He wants to see nothing and to be seen by no one. He wants to destroy the world and to survive it.” The record’s flip side, “Mountain Dew,” is an earnest appreciation of bootleg liquor. Lunsford—who was born in Mars Hill, North Carolina, in 1882, and performed in formal dress to combat stereotypes about Appalachia—also worked as a lawyer, and during Prohibition he frequently defended moonshiners. “They call it that old mountain dew, and those who refuse it are few,” Lunsford sings, strumming a banjo. There’s a narrative consonance between the two sides of the record—a hungering for oblivion. Smith loved these simple points of communion. He believed in interconnectedness—that every piece of art contains every piece of art.