newyorker--2020-10-21--Can We Trust the Polls?

Can We Trust the Polls?

Polls are not predictive .
They are snapshots taken at a particular moment in time .
By the time the public sees a poll , that moment will have passed .
Andrew Weissert , who runs a Republican polling firm outside of Chicago , told me , “ I remember , in 2012 , when Mitt Romney had a stellar debate performance , and , all of a sudden , people were writing President Obama ’ s political obituary .
Then the next debate happened .
Obama had a strong debate .
And suddenly the polls were showing something completely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ news because people are sensitive to the news .
They are inconsistent because people are inconsistent .
According to Andrew Mercer , a senior research methodologist at the Pew Research Center , polls also tend to vary because “ there are a lot of subjective decisions about how to go about things that different pollsters do differently for a variety of reasons.
” When pollsters rely on landlines , they tend to get older voters .
A reliance on mobile-phone numbers might miss rural voters who don ’ t have cell service .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ respond to pollsters , but people who are civically engaged—and research shows that those people tend to be Democrats—do .
Polls are based on models , and models are built on assumptions about who is likely to vote and how much weight to afford each demographic cohort in that universe of likely voters .
Tom Bonier , the C.E.O .
of TargetSmart , a polling and analytics company that works with Democratic candidates and progressive organizations , told me about a 2016 online survey , where a young Black man reported that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there were so few men of color in his exact age range being surveyed , his voice was weighted as if he represented the universe of young Black men .
“ It just screwed up the whole poll , where it went heavily to Trump , ” Bonier said .
Trump did win , of course , and his victory highlights the inherent fallibility of polls .
Because they capture a lapsed moment in time , they couldn ’ t account for voters who turned to Trump at the last minute , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who succumbed to the Trump campaign ’ s efforts to keep them from voting .
And polling samples that are poorly calibrated fail to accurately reflect the electorate .
In 2016 , pollsters gave too much weight to college-educated voters , who tend to vote for Democrats , and not enough to those with less education , as well as people who typically don ’ t vote .
“ The question is , how are you constructing the sample , ” Bonier told me .
“ That ’ s especially true this year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who ’ s going to vote in this election is a really difficult question .
After 2016 , every poll should be offered with the caveat that the results are meaningful if the electorate looks like we think it will look.
” If 2016 taught us anything , it ’ s that national polls are deceptive .
Clinton was projected to beat Trump in the popular vote by about three percentage points , which turned out to be largely correct .
But , since U.S. elections are not popularity contests , a better @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chances is to look at polls of voters in battleground states , where , ultimately , the race will be determined .
Those polls show Biden and Trump nearly tied in Florida and Ohio ; according to the RealClearPolitics polling average , Trump is ahead in Texas by about the same margin that Biden is ahead in Arizona .
Even so , are those numbers meaningful ?
Maybe not .
One impediment , Bonier said , is that the cohort of people who tell pollsters they are not going to vote has the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rate .
“ Pollsters are guessing what the voting population looks like , ” Mercer told me .
“ But it ’ s hard , because it ’ s not a population that exists until the election.
” To account for this , most polls are accompanied by a kind of consumer warning , the margin of error , which signals that the poll is likely to contain sampling errors .
It is not an admission that the poll may be wrong .
Rather , Mercer said , “ it ’ s the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ error in a poll , ” a benchmark that shows the spread of possible outcomes .
A candidate polling at fifty-one per cent with a three-point margin of error , for example , is likely to receive anywhere from forty-eight per cent to fifty-four per cent of the vote .
Assuming the other candidate has forty-nine per cent of the vote , with the same margin of error , the race is , statistically , a tossup .
Recent research suggests that the margin of error only accounts for a portion of potential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ account for respondents who don ’ t understand what the pollster is asking , or who are unwilling to divulge the candidate whom they are actually supporting .
Mercer , among others , suggests a simple solution : double the margin of error .
“ That ’ s because of all those other kinds of problems and subjective decisions that just aren ’ t captured by the margin of error as it ’ s typically constructed , ” he told me .
The recent New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden up by ten points , with a four-point margin of error , would not only look much closer , it would suggest that Trump could still pull out a victory .
“ Right now I think it would be feasible to say that Vice-President Biden is winning , ” Weissert told me .
“ But , really , this will come down to a handful of states , and they are closer , I think , than people realize.
” Campaigns looking for a more dynamic understanding of voter intent have turned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Weissert has worked with AdVictory , a data-analytics and media-placement company that uses an artificial-intelligence tool called Eyesover to comb through social media .
( AdVictory ’ s clients have included Senator Ben Sasse , a Republican from Nebraska ; Bill Lee , the Republican governor of Tennessee ; and the College Republican National Committee . )
“ We ’ re able to treat social media as a kind of always-on focus group to get a more real-time understanding of trends than you get with polling , ” Adam Meldrum , AdVictory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ By analyzing what people are saying on social media , we can see what people are thinking .
Over time , as we start to see issues pop up in greater frequency around a candidate ’ s name , we ’ ll look at how people are talking about them .
Is it positive ?
Is it negative ?
And are people starting to pick up on what we ’ re putting out there in the broadcast media ?
” In late September , Meldrum was seeing that Trump ’ s comments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ positive responses than Biden ’ s .
On the Democratic side , a company called Avalanche Insights , led by Michiah Prull , a veteran of both Obama campaigns , is also using machine learning , in tandem with human analysts , to better understand the electorate .
Avalanche convenes online groups , with as many as ten thousand participants , that are representative of the larger universe of likely voters .
Traditional polls , by contrast , tend to query a thousand or fifteen hundred people .
The company uses algorithms to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ language that are otherwise difficult to identify .
( Participants are compensated with non-monetary incentives , such as a couple of Candy Crush jewels . )
“ You want to say , ‘ Here are the undecided voters , ’ and find out what they care about right now , because you want to understand why they are undecided , ” Prull told me .
“ It ’ s that qualitative component that gives a deeper understanding that makes us different than a traditional poll.
” Neither AdVictory nor Avalanche Insights is working @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but a company called Expert.ai has been sifting through hundreds of thousands of social-media posts to determine which candidate is currently winning the race .
Using a natural-language processor to extract what its algorithms determine to be the most relevant information , it currently shows Biden slightly ahead of Trump , with a lead so narrow that it ’ s hardly a lead at all .
It ’ s too early to know if Expert.ai ’ s model will be more accurate than traditional polling , but a recent article in Fortune magazine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and would have come closer to anticipating Trump ’ s success in 2016 than the polls led the public to believe .
Of course , compared with 2016 , there are so many unique variables this year that it ’ s unlikely the polls will be able to reflect all of them .
Even doubling the margin of error may be inadequate .
Voters are heading to the polls during a pandemic .
Republicans have stepped up their efforts to keep people from voting—and from having certain votes counted .
Hundreds of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by mail than in previous years , even as the Postmaster General has intentionally attempted to slow down the mail .
Something like sixty per cent of Democrats will have cast ballots by Election Day .
The electorate is energized and turning out in unprecedented numbers .
It is also more polarized than ever .
As Weissert , the Republican pollster , told me , “ People want to anoint Biden , but what I see is a very close race .
I would not write out the President.
” Read More About @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rise of Kamala Harris .
• When a sitting President threatens to delay a sacrosanct American ritual like an election , you should listen .
• To understand the path Donald Trump has taken to the 2020 election , look at what he has provided the executive class .
• What happens if Trump fights the election results ?
• The refusal by Mitch McConnell to rein in Trump is looking riskier than ever .
• Sign up for our election newsletter for insight and analysis from our reporters and columnists .

On October 18, 2016, the New York Times gave Hillary Clinton a ninety-one-per-cent chance of beating Donald Trump. Five days later, ABC News released a tracking poll showing her ahead of Trump by twelve points. Buoyed by the polls, Democrats—especially Democratic women—approached November 8th with a joyful sense of inevitability. The collective disbelief when Clinton lost was tinged with confusion: How could the pollsters have been so wrong? Now, with Joe Biden leading Trump by double digits in the lead-up to Election Day, according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey, the question has to be asked: Are voters hoping for a Biden victory about to fall in the same trap?
Polls are not predictive. They are snapshots taken at a particular moment in time. By the time the public sees a poll, that moment will have passed. Andrew Weissert, who runs a Republican polling firm outside of Chicago, told me, “I remember, in 2012, when Mitt Romney had a stellar debate performance, and, all of a sudden, people were writing President Obama’s political obituary. Then the next debate happened. Obama had a strong debate. And suddenly the polls were showing something completely different.” Polls are sensitive to the news because people are sensitive to the news. They are inconsistent because people are inconsistent. According to Andrew Mercer, a senior research methodologist at the Pew Research Center, polls also tend to vary because “there are a lot of subjective decisions about how to go about things that different pollsters do differently for a variety of reasons.”
When pollsters rely on landlines, they tend to get older voters. A reliance on mobile-phone numbers might miss rural voters who don’t have cell service. People whose candidate is losing may not respond to pollsters, but people who are civically engaged—and research shows that those people tend to be Democrats—do. Polls are based on models, and models are built on assumptions about who is likely to vote and how much weight to afford each demographic cohort in that universe of likely voters. Tom Bonier, the C.E.O. of TargetSmart, a polling and analytics company that works with Democratic candidates and progressive organizations, told me about a 2016 online survey, where a young Black man reported that he planned to vote for Trump. Because there were so few men of color in his exact age range being surveyed, his voice was weighted as if he represented the universe of young Black men. “It just screwed up the whole poll, where it went heavily to Trump,” Bonier said.
Trump did win, of course, and his victory highlights the inherent fallibility of polls. Because they capture a lapsed moment in time, they couldn’t account for voters who turned to Trump at the last minute, or for people of color in swing states who succumbed to the Trump campaign’s efforts to keep them from voting. And polling samples that are poorly calibrated fail to accurately reflect the electorate. In 2016, pollsters gave too much weight to college-educated voters, who tend to vote for Democrats, and not enough to those with less education, as well as people who typically don’t vote. “The question is, how are you constructing the sample,” Bonier told me. “That’s especially true this year, because to get a sense of who’s going to vote in this election is a really difficult question. After 2016, every poll should be offered with the caveat that the results are meaningful if the electorate looks like we think it will look.”
If 2016 taught us anything, it’s that national polls are deceptive. Clinton was projected to beat Trump in the popular vote by about three percentage points, which turned out to be largely correct. But, since U.S. elections are not popularity contests, a better way to assess a candidate’s chances is to look at polls of voters in battleground states, where, ultimately, the race will be determined. Those polls show Biden and Trump nearly tied in Florida and Ohio; according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Trump is ahead in Texas by about the same margin that Biden is ahead in Arizona. Even so, are those numbers meaningful? Maybe not.
One impediment, Bonier said, is that the cohort of people who tell pollsters they are not going to vote has the potential to vote at a surprisingly high rate. “Pollsters are guessing what the voting population looks like,” Mercer told me. “But it’s hard, because it’s not a population that exists until the election.” To account for this, most polls are accompanied by a kind of consumer warning, the margin of error, which signals that the poll is likely to contain sampling errors. It is not an admission that the poll may be wrong. Rather, Mercer said, “it’s the minimum estimate for the range of possible error in a poll,” a benchmark that shows the spread of possible outcomes. A candidate polling at fifty-one per cent with a three-point margin of error, for example, is likely to receive anywhere from forty-eight per cent to fifty-four per cent of the vote. Assuming the other candidate has forty-nine per cent of the vote, with the same margin of error, the race is, statistically, a tossup.
Recent research suggests that the margin of error only accounts for a portion of potential sampling problems. It doesn’t account for respondents who don’t understand what the pollster is asking, or who are unwilling to divulge the candidate whom they are actually supporting. Mercer, among others, suggests a simple solution: double the margin of error. “That’s because of all those other kinds of problems and subjective decisions that just aren’t captured by the margin of error as it’s typically constructed,” he told me. The recent New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters in Wisconsin, for instance, which showed Biden up by ten points, with a four-point margin of error, would not only look much closer, it would suggest that Trump could still pull out a victory. “Right now I think it would be feasible to say that Vice-President Biden is winning,” Weissert told me. “But, really, this will come down to a handful of states, and they are closer, I think, than people realize.”
Campaigns looking for a more dynamic understanding of voter intent have turned to technology to supplement their internal polling. Weissert has worked with AdVictory, a data-analytics and media-placement company that uses an artificial-intelligence tool called Eyesover to comb through social media. (AdVictory’s clients have included Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska; Bill Lee, the Republican governor of Tennessee; and the College Republican National Committee.) “We’re able to treat social media as a kind of always-on focus group to get a more real-time understanding of trends than you get with polling,” Adam Meldrum, AdVictory’s C.E.O., told me. “By analyzing what people are saying on social media, we can see what people are thinking. Over time, as we start to see issues pop up in greater frequency around a candidate’s name, we’ll look at how people are talking about them. Is it positive? Is it negative? And are people starting to pick up on what we’re putting out there in the broadcast media?” In late September, Meldrum was seeing that Trump’s comments on the Supreme Court were getting more positive responses than Biden’s.
On the Democratic side, a company called Avalanche Insights, led by Michiah Prull, a veteran of both Obama campaigns, is also using machine learning, in tandem with human analysts, to better understand the electorate. Avalanche convenes online groups, with as many as ten thousand participants, that are representative of the larger universe of likely voters. Traditional polls, by contrast, tend to query a thousand or fifteen hundred people. The company uses algorithms to search within massive datasets for nuances in language that are otherwise difficult to identify. (Participants are compensated with non-monetary incentives, such as a couple of Candy Crush jewels.) “You want to say, ‘Here are the undecided voters,’ and find out what they care about right now, because you want to understand why they are undecided,” Prull told me. “It’s that qualitative component that gives a deeper understanding that makes us different than a traditional poll.”


newyorker--2020-10-24--Some Pertinent Quotes from 2020

Some Pertinent Quotes from 2020

“ Now is a great time to invest in water.
” —Peter Montgomery III , hedge-fund manager “ What are we getting tested on ?
” —Tyson Higgs , 27 , football player at Ohio State University “ O.K.
, I think this has gotten out of hand.
” —Cathy Barkstrom , white suburban mother of three biracial children “ I can ’ t wait to be stimulated by the government again.
” —Dan Doons , record holder for most Tinder matches “ I ’ ve seen worse.
” —Wallace Jeffreys , 73 , would have fought in Vietnam if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to the Cape , indefinitely.
” —the DuBois family , of Park Avenue “ I hope this audit finds you well.
” —Max Smith , I.R.S .
official “ Do you believe in God ?
Use promo code : IMMUNE for ten per cent off holy water at pastorkennethheals.com.
” —Pastor Kenneth , on Twitter “ So , it will likely end , but it won ’ t ostensibly end when such is the case.
” —Dr .
Alan Ross , immunologist at Johns Hopkins Medical Center “ Hi , friends , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , so I ’ m doing my part to help by selling homemade , ethically sourced masks for twenty-five dollars each .
D.M .
for details .
XOXO .
Stay safe.
” —Jenna Crawford , Bushwick-based freelancer with supportive parents “ Do you guys have margaritas to go ?
” —Aidan Lass , sports fan “ It ’ s been an eye-opener.
” —Aaron Turnbull , moved back home after college “ It would be socially irresponsible to have sex at this time.
” —mutual decision by Katherine and Ronald Erikson “ How @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
” —Trevor Kates , tenth grader who went viral

“Now is a great time to invest in water.” —Peter Montgomery III, hedge-fund manager
“What are we getting tested on?” —Tyson Higgs, 27, football player at Ohio State University
“O.K., I think this has gotten out of hand.” —Cathy Barkstrom, white suburban mother of three biracial children
“I can’t wait to be stimulated by the government again.” —Dan Doons, record holder for most Tinder matches
“I’ve seen worse.” —Wallace Jeffreys, 73, would have fought in Vietnam if not for asthma
“We’re going to the Cape, indefinitely.” —the DuBois family, of Park Avenue
“I hope this audit finds you well.” —Max Smith, I.R.S. official
“Racism can’t be solved with a closed economy.” —Ralph Carr, Fortune 500 C.E.O.
“Do you believe in God? Use promo code: IMMUNE for ten per cent off holy water at pastorkennethheals.com.” —Pastor Kenneth, on Twitter
“So, it will likely end, but it won’t ostensibly end when such is the case.” —Dr. Alan Ross, immunologist at Johns Hopkins Medical Center
“Can we FaceTime instead?” —Chloe Smith, Gen Z-er
“Hi, friends, I know this is a tough time, so I’m doing my part to help by selling homemade, ethically sourced masks for twenty-five dollars each. D.M. for details. XOXO. Stay safe.” —Jenna Crawford, Bushwick-based freelancer with supportive parents
“I don’t read the media.” —Jeff Warberger, 52, proud American
“Do you guys have margaritas to go?” —Aidan Lass, sports fan
“It’s been an eye-opener.” —Aaron Turnbull, moved back home after college
“It would be socially irresponsible to have sex at this time.” —mutual decision by Katherine and Ronald Erikson
“How about we follow the C.D.C. guidelines?” —Trevor Kates, tenth grader who went viral
“This sucks. A lot.” —Landlords Union
“I’m going on a jog.” —Ronald Erikson
“This is not a joke.” —DeAngelo Barbes, essential worker
“Do you sell Lysol?” —the State of Georgia


newyorker--2020-10-24--What Can You Do If Trump Stages a Coup?

What Can You Do If Trump Stages a Coup?

Ah , election season .
There ’ s a patriotic buzz in the air .
Bumper stickers and lawn signs all over the neighborhood .
Now comes the time when we check the location of our polling places , make a plan to vote—and pack a “ go bag ” in case we need to take to the streets in sustained mass protest to protect the integrity of the vote count .
That last one is not something you ’ d expect to be doing in the United States , but things are different in the Trump era .
For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he might not concede the election in November if he loses , telling reporters who asked him to commit to a peaceful transfer of power , “ There won ’ t be a transfer , frankly .
There ’ ll be a continuation.
” It sounded ominous , although it was hard to imagine how he could make good on the threat to stick around no matter what .
Then , media organizations began publishing pieces outlining the myriad ways in which the President and his allies might turn a narrow loss @ @ @ @ @ @ @ familiar tactics—contesting mail-in ballots and turning the process into Bush v. Gore on steroids—and others that sound straight out of a police state .
For example , Trump could summon federal agents or his supporters to stop a recount or intimidate voters .
According to some experts , this would constitute an autogolpe , or “ self coup ” : when a President who obtained power through constitutional means holds onto it through illegitimate ones , beginning the slide into authoritarianism .
O.K.
, then .
Time to start getting ready .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ?
In September , a group of organizers and researchers published a fifty-five-page manual called “ Hold the Line : A Guide to Defending Democracy , ” which has been downloaded more than eighteen thousand times .
And the Indivisible Project , along with a coalition called Stand Up America , are preparing their members to take to the streets if Trump contests the election results .
“ I ’ ve been beating the drum on this particular cause since July , and I ’ m delighted to see so many people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activist and sociologist George Lakey said recently .
His own “ Aha !
” moment came when Trump sent federal agents in military fatigues to Portland , Oregon , to tangle with protesters .
“ It hit me , the way Trump is dealing with Portland , Oregon , that ’ s a test , ” he said .
He guessed that Trump was hoping to provoke a violent backlash from the protesters , so that he could lay the groundwork for not accepting the election results , under the pretense that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Trump can be underestimated by the left , ” Lakey said .
“ He gets made fun of , but he ’ s shrewd.
” Lakey , who is eighty-two , is best known for his book “ A Manual for Direct Action , ” from 1964 , which was often referred to as a bible for the participants of the civil-rights movement .
Since then , he has trained activists in countries including South Africa , Thailand , and Sri Lanka in their struggles against repressive regimes .
“ In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ waiting for social change , ” he said , referring to multiyear efforts like the civil-rights or women ’ s-rights movements .
But defeating a coup is different .
“ Everything happens really fast .
You ’ ve got sometimes three days , sometimes a week , sometimes three months to beat a coup.
” The average American activist needed a new skill set .
“ This is the teen-ager who ’ s been playing excellent football , and now he wants to play baseball , ” he said .
“ He can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and be great .
He needs to learn a new set of rules.
” In August , Lakey helped form a group called Choose Democracy that has been circulating a pledge committing people to “ nonviolently take to the streets if a coup is attempted , ” which has more than thirty thousand signatures .
And he began giving a series of training sessions via Zoom called “ How To Beat an Election-Related Power Grab.
” On a recent Thursday , at 7:30 P.M. , more than five hundred concerned citizens tuned in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chat : Lakey , who has white hair and bushy white eyebrows , is a Quaker , and brings a cheerful , Sunday-school-style delivery to lessons about overthrowing authoritarian regimes .
He began with the work of the political scientist Stephen Zunes , who has studied occasions when the citizens of a country managed to rise up and defeat a coup : Bolivia , in 1978 ; the Soviet Union , in 1991 ; Thailand , in 1992 ; and Burkina Faso , in 2015 .
According to Zunes , these movements had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nonviolent , and they drew from a broad cross-section of society .
And they refused to compromise .
So , Lakey emphasized , there could be no cutting a deal with Trump .
“ That is reeeeally important , ” he said , citing a demand from the Choose Democracy pledge : “ Every vote must be counted .
And we refuse to accept the authority of someone who is practicing something different.
” Another takeaway , for activists , is to focus “ on the center of the political spectrum , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ looking to influence them to tip the outcome of the struggle in our direction.
” Will they side with the protesters or with Trump ?
To illustrate , he told the story of the Kapp Putsch , in the Weimar Republic .
In 1920 , a group of soldiers , veterans , and civilians tried to seize control of Berlin , under the right-wing leadership of Wolfgang Kapp .
The legitimate government fled , and Kapp proclaimed himself the country ’ s leader .
“ He walked into the capitol building ready to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ However , he found that the government workers had all gone on strike .
There was nobody in the building except him.
” He wanted to issue a proclamation that he was running the country , Lakey added , “ But he didn ’ t know how to type .
So , the next day , he had to bring his daughter to type out the manifesto.
” The coup collapsed within days .
Lakey said , “ The magic in that situation was the rapid alliance that was built , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” —trade unions , Communists— “ and the center .
It could overcome the right wing , even though they had the Army.
” He said that his listeners should start to build similar alliances .
“ Go beyond the usual suspects : the progressives , the left.
” One woman asked in the chat , “ Who is the Center in the US these days ?
Dems ?
Church ?
Libertarians ?
Moderate Republicans ?
Ha .
How to trust them ?
” Lakey assured his audience that , while the U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ truth is we ’ re not nearly as polarized as we may become.
” He said that centrists could be found everywhere from the business world to the medical establishment .
“ Bank presidents .
People who manage schools or colleges .
.
.
you name it , if it ’ s some kind of institution that expects to have a future.
” There were questions about tactics .
“ What does refusal to recognize illegitimate authority look like ?
” one participant wrote .
Mass protests ?
Lakey warned that , while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my opinion they are wayyyy overrated.
” ( It is hard to imagine a Trumpist regime being swayed by a mob of citizens in pussy hats . )
Instead , he encouraged his audience to think strategically .
He pulled up a slide titled “ Pillars of Power , ” which showed a classical edifice .
The roof was labelled “ Regime/Status Quo.
” The pillars were labelled with the words Business , Politicians , Military , Media , Judiciary , Police , and Bureaucracies .
“ Obviously , the Trump family is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the government by itself , ” he said .
They ’ ll need institutional support .
“ The question is how do we , as activists , go after these pillars in such a way as to encourage them to buckle , and allow the Trump regime , or his attempted regime , to fall ?
” Participants in the chat then came up with politicians they might approach : “ State officials in PA will be critical !
!
!
” “ Retired politicians can be powerful and are less constrained by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clicked to a slide that said , “ What about Violence ?
” This topic had been hovering over the proceedings .
Zunes , the political scientist , had said in a recent interview , “ The thing that scares me the most is , unlike all these other countries I ’ ve studied , this country has millions of people who have guns—and not just guns but semi-automatic weapons—that are loyal Trump supporters , and whom he can call out to suppress such a nonviolent uprising.
” Several attendees had expressed concerns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Proud Boys and right-wing militias , writing things like , “ I have never been in a demonstration where some people are likely to have automatic weapons.
” Lakey acknowledged , “ There are a lot of alarming things going on already in this country with regard to what I call Trump ’ s ‘ irregulars.
’ ” He said that protesters should plan their rallies for places where it would be difficult for violence to break out : in the lobby of an office building or in a car caravan .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Proud Boys looking to “ rumble.
” “ Ask , ‘ What would they welcome ?
’ And then not do that !
” he said .
One tip , from the civil-rights movement : “ When in doubt , sit down .
It ’ s counterintuitive .
But it has been used in multiple cultures , and it works.
” ( Except with tear gas .
Then , he said , “ walking slowly would be best.
” ) If things do get ugly , he noted , it could be useful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ smartphone and expose what happened .
Offer yourself for interviews , ” he said .
The key is to draw a contrast between the violent regime and the peaceful protesters .
That ’ s what happened during Thailand ’ s military coup , in 1992 , when soldiers shot into a crowd of nonviolent demonstrators .
The public was horrified .
“ It brought a surge of people into the struggle that overthrew the coup plotters , ” Lakey said .
“ What we ’ re teaching tonight is evidence-based .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brokaw , a retired physician and Quaker in Hanover , New Hampshire , attended the Zoom training and came away feeling better about the coming weeks .
“ I found it helpful and hopeful , ” she said .
She ’ d written to New Hampshire ’ s secretary of state , a Democrat , and its governor , a Republican , asking them not certify the election results until all absentee ballots have been counted .
The secretary of state ’ s office had responded affirmatively .
“ I haven ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she said .
But she plans to keep writing .
And she will join in street protests if necessary , despite the spectre of election-related violence and the threat of the coronavirus .
“ If need be , I ’ m ready , ” she said .
“ If we ’ re talking about the well-being and safety of millions of people in this country from this President—who is totally off the rails from what I ’ ve seen—yes , I ’ ll put myself on the line for that .
I have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ old , and I want the world to be safe for him.
” Read More About the 2020 Election • The fall and rise of Kamala Harris .
• When a sitting President threatens to delay a sacrosanct American ritual like an election , you should listen .
• To understand the path Donald Trump has taken to the 2020 election , look at what he has provided the executive class .
• What happens if Trump fights the election results ?
• The refusal by Mitch McConnell to rein in Trump is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up for our election newsletter for insight and analysis from our reporters and columnists .

Ah, election season. There’s a patriotic buzz in the air. Bumper stickers and lawn signs all over the neighborhood. Now comes the time when we check the location of our polling places, make a plan to vote—and pack a “go bag” in case we need to take to the streets in sustained mass protest to protect the integrity of the vote count. That last one is not something you’d expect to be doing in the United States, but things are different in the Trump era. For months, the President has been warning that he might not concede the election in November if he loses, telling reporters who asked him to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, “There won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation.” It sounded ominous, although it was hard to imagine how he could make good on the threat to stick around no matter what. Then media organizations began publishing pieces outlining the myriad ways in which the President and his allies might turn a narrow loss into a win. The possibilities include familiar tactics—contesting mail-in ballots and turning the process into Bush v. Gore on steroids—and others that sound straight out of a police state. For example, Trump could summon federal agents or his supporters to stop a recount or intimidate voters. According to some experts, this would constitute an autogolpe, or “self-coup”: when a President who obtained power through constitutional means holds onto it through illegitimate ones, beginning the slide into authoritarianism.
O.K., then. Time to start getting ready. But how, exactly, do we do that? In September, a group of organizers and researchers published a fifty-five-page manual called “Hold the Line: A Guide to Defending Democracy,” which has been downloaded more than eighteen thousand times. And the Indivisible Project, along with a coalition called Stand Up America, is preparing its members to take to the streets if Trump contests the election results. “I’ve been beating the drum on this particular cause since July, and I’m delighted to see so many people coming around to it,” the activist and sociologist George Lakey said recently. His own “Aha!” moment came when Trump sent federal agents in military fatigues to Portland, Oregon, to tangle with protesters. “It hit me: the way Trump is dealing with Portland, Oregon, that’s a test,” he said. He guessed that Trump was hoping to provoke a violent backlash from the protesters so that he could lay the groundwork for not accepting the election results, under the pretense that the country had descended into violent chaos. “Trump can be underestimated by the left,” Lakey said. “He gets made fun of, but he’s shrewd.”
President Obama’s New Memoir Read an excerpt in this week’s issue.
Lakey, who is eighty-two, is best known for his book “A Manual for Direct Action,” from 1964, which was often referred to as a bible for participants in the civil-rights movement. Since then, he has trained activists in countries including South Africa, Thailand, and Sri Lanka in their struggles against repressive regimes. “In the U.S., we’re used to waiting for social change,” he said, referring to multiyear efforts like the civil-rights and women’s-rights movements. But defeating a coup is different. “Everything happens really fast. You’ve got sometimes three days, sometimes a week, sometimes three months to beat a coup.” The average American activist needed a new skill set. “This is the teen-ager who’s been playing excellent football, and now he wants to play baseball,” he said. “He can’t just walk on the field and be great. He needs to learn a new set of rules.”
In August, Lakey helped form a group called Choose Democracy that has been circulating a pledge committing people to “nonviolently take to the streets if a coup is attempted,” which has more than thirty thousand signatures. And he began giving a series of training sessions via Zoom called “How To Beat an Election-Related Power Grab.” On a recent Thursday, at 7:30 P.M., more than five hundred concerned citizens tuned in. They exchanged greetings on the group chat:
Hello from “Bad things happen” in Philadelphia! Please do more of these!!! I know lots of white suburban women who are interested.
Lakey, who has white hair and bushy white eyebrows, is a Quaker, and brings a cheerful, Sunday-school-style delivery to lessons about overthrowing authoritarian regimes. He began with the work of the political scientist Stephen Zunes, who has studied occasions when the citizens of a country managed to rise up and defeat a coup: Bolivia, in 1978; the Soviet Union, in 1991; Thailand, in 1992; and Burkina Faso, in 2015. According to Zunes, these movements had several things in common: they were nonviolent, and they drew from a broad cross-section of society. And they refused to compromise. So, Lakey emphasized, there could be no cutting a deal with Trump. “That is reeeeally important,” he said, citing a demand from the Choose Democracy pledge: “Every vote must be counted. And we refuse to accept the authority of someone who is practicing something different.” Another takeaway, for activists, is to focus “on the center of the political spectrum,” Lakey said. “We’re looking to influence them to tip the outcome of the struggle in our direction.” Will they side with the protesters or with Trump?
To illustrate, he told the story of the Kapp Putsch, in the Weimar Republic. In 1920, a group of soldiers, veterans, and civilians tried to seize control of Berlin, under the right-wing leadership of Wolfgang Kapp. The legitimate government fled, and Kapp proclaimed himself the country’s leader. “He walked into the capitol building ready to run the country,” Lakey said. “However, he found that the government workers had all gone on strike. There was nobody in the building except him.” He wanted to issue a proclamation that he was running the country, Lakey added, “But he didn’t know how to type. So, the next day, he had to bring his daughter to type out the manifesto.” The coup collapsed within days. Lakey said, “The magic in that situation was the rapid alliance that was built, over a weekend, between the left”—trade unions, Communists—“and the center. It could overcome the right wing, even though they had the Army.”
He said that his listeners should start to build similar alliances. “Go beyond the usual suspects: the progressives, the left.” One woman asked in the chat, “Who is the Center in the US these days? Dems? Church? Libertarians? Moderate Republicans? Ha. How to trust them?” Lakey assured his audience that, while the U.S. may feel extremely polarized, “the truth is we’re not nearly as polarized as we may become.” He said that centrists could be found everywhere from the business world to the medical establishment. “Bank presidents. People who manage schools or colleges . . . you name it, if it’s some kind of institution that expects to have a future.”
There were questions about tactics. “What does refusal to recognize illegitimate authority look like? ” one participant wrote. Mass protests? Lakey warned that, while marches may be useful, “in my opinion they are wayyyy overrated.” (It is hard to imagine a Trumpist regime being swayed by a mob of citizens in pussy hats.) Instead, he encouraged his audience to think strategically. He pulled up a slide titled “Pillars of Power,” which showed a classical edifice. The roof was labelled “Regime/Status Quo.” The pillars were labelled with the words Business, Politicians, Military, Media, Judiciary, Police, and Bureaucracies. “Obviously, the Trump family is not going to be able to run the government by itself,” he said. They’ll need institutional support. “The question is how do we, as activists, go after these pillars in such a way as to encourage them to buckle, and allow the Trump regime, or his attempted regime, to fall?” Participants in the chat then came up with politicians they might approach:
“State officials in PA will be critical!!!”
“Retired politicians can be powerful and are less constrained by their funders. ”
Last, Lakey clicked to a slide that said, “What about Violence?” This topic had been hovering over the proceedings. Zunes, the political scientist, had said in a recent interview, “The thing that scares me the most is, unlike all these other countries I’ve studied, this country has millions of people who have guns—and not just guns but semi-automatic weapons—that are loyal Trump supporters, and whom he can call out to suppress such a nonviolent uprising.” Several attendees had expressed concerns in the chat about groups like the Proud Boys and right-wing militias, writing things like “ I have never been in a demonstration where some people are likely to have automatic weapons.”
Lakey acknowledged, “There are a lot of alarming things going on already in this country with regard to what I call Trump’s ‘irregulars.’ ” He said that protesters should plan their rallies for places where it would be difficult for violence to break out: in the lobby of an office building or in a car caravan. He told participants to imagine that they were Proud Boys looking to “rumble.” “Ask, ‘What would they welcome?’ And then not do that!” he said. One tip, from the civil-rights movement: “When in doubt, sit down. It’s counterintuitive. But it has been used in multiple cultures, and it works.” (Except with tear gas. Then, he said, “walking slowly would be best.”)
If things do get ugly, he noted, it could be useful for the cause. “Get your smartphone and expose what happened. Offer yourself for interviews,” he said. The key is to draw a contrast between the violent regime and the peaceful protesters. That’s what happened during Thailand’s military coup, in 1992, when soldiers shot into a crowd of nonviolent demonstrators. The public was horrified. “It brought a surge of people into the struggle that overthrew the coup plotters,” Lakey said. “What we’re teaching tonight is evidence-based. It’s how baseball is played.”
Frances Brokaw, a retired physician and Quaker in Hanover, New Hampshire, attended the Zoom training and came away feeling better about the coming weeks. “I found it helpful and hopeful,” she said. She’d written to New Hampshire’s secretary of state, a Democrat, and its governor, a Republican, asking them not to certify the election results until all absentee ballots have been counted. The secretary of state’s office had responded affirmatively. “I haven’t heard back from the governor,” she said. But she plans to keep writing. And she will join in street protests if necessary, despite the spectre of election-related violence and the threat of the coronavirus. “If need be, I’m ready,” she said. “If we’re talking about the well-being and safety of millions of people in this country from this President—who is totally off the rails from what I’ve seen—yes, I’ll put myself on the line for that. I have a grandson who’s five months old, and I want the world to be safe for him.”
Read More About the 2020 Election


newyorker--2020-10-24--The Lessons of Reading Every Book About Trump

I learned this history from a podcast , “ Radiolab , ” while desperately seeking distraction from an apocalyptic news cycle .
( To the episode ’ s credit , it didn ’ t end with the words “ and that ’ s how we got Trump.
” ) The next segment was about the many thousands of species of fungi that are now evolving in response to climate change .
Our ancient enemies , it seems , are beginning to tolerate dangerously high temperatures , and could soon gain the ability to thrive in warm-blooded hosts .
If they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s warm-blooded host , the age of mammals might be revealed for what it is : an epoch-spanning fluke .
Which brings me to Carlos Lozada ’ s new book , “ What Were We Thinking : A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era.
” Lozada , the nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post , revisits all the books on Donald Trump that he ’ s read since 2015 : about a hundred and fifty titles , each purporting to illuminate the man and his times .
( Immediately , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ What Was I Thinking.
” ) One of the book ’ s standout preoccupations is whether Trump is an asteroid or a fungus .
In other words , was the President ’ s victory a freak event , a chunk of debris that crashed into the country and transformed it forever ?
Or had Trumpism long been waiting in the soil , its destiny intertwined with ours ?
As Lozada shows , some Trump books exclaim over the norms that this Administration has broken ; others take a longer view , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of dark American traditions .
Lozada finds the second approach more useful ( the revolution will , and should , be contextualized ) but leaves room for the fact that Trump has degraded us , and that some of the rot can be scraped off .
The book ’ s most original idea is its structure : a taxonomy that presents ten types of Trump book , including the White House “ chaos chronicles ” ( “ an endless encore of officials expressing concern ” ) , “ heartlandia ” ( lyrical portraits @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Russian lit ” ( a genre which both looks at Trump ’ s personal ties to Russia and unpacks his Soviet-style tactics ) , and activism manuals for the resistance .
Each chapter offers an essay made up of loosely connected mini-reviews ; because there ’ s a lot of stylish recapping , the appeal of Lozada ’ s study can depend on the material being discussed .
A chapter on the erosion of truth contains a fascinating précis of “ A Lot of People Are Saying , ” Russell Muirhead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about “ the new conspiracism , ” which proceeds via “ innuendo and repetition ” and “ substitutes social validation for scientific validation.
” ( With Trump , Lozada writes , “ there is conspiracy , but no theory.
” ) A chapter on immigration , which thrums with Lozada ’ s mixed feelings about what America has come to mean for the hopeful and the suffering—Lozada , originally from Peru , obtained U.S. citizenship in 2014—is enriched by references to “ This Land Is Our Land , ” by Suketu Mehta , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history , “ The End of the Myth : From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.
” For Mehta , Lozada writes , immigration isn ’ t simply a matter of go-getters with big dreams ; it ’ s “ reparations .
.
.
payback for colonialism , for the plunder of resources , for ecological and economic devastation.
” Grandin , meanwhile , believes that once Americans lost the “ safety valve ” of a frontier and became hemmed in by a border , the result was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and self-devouring.
” The most entertaining chapter , “ The Conservative Pivot , ” maps Trump ’ s effect on the right ’ s media ecosystem .
There are the sycophants , Lozada shows , with their sloppy , hagiographic accounts of the President ’ s “ invincibility.
” ( Think Jeanine Pirro and Newt Gingrich . )
There are the conservative intellectuals , such as Rich Lowry or the military historian Victor Davis Hanson , who labor to dress Trumpism up in tweed .
Lozada reserves his most annihilating judgment for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ series of books he calls “ meh culpas , ” bemoan the G.O.P.
’ s tribalism and obstinance but refuse to examine how the Party got that way .
Lozada proposes that the Never Trumpers change their name to Only Trumpers .
“ Had Trump come close but failed to win the 2016 Republication nomination , ” he notes , brilliantly , “ the conscience and corrosion of conservatism , the mind of the Right , would remain undisturbed and unexamined .
Only with Trump .
Maybe they should thank him.
” Lozada @ @ @ @ @ @ @ obvious .
He is charming , funny , and light on his feet , and his descriptions are exceptionally clear and pithy .
Pro-Trump intellectuals “ claim to support the president for his principles but they really love him for his enemies , ” he writes .
And : “ Bush hoped to remake the world .
Trump just makes it up as he goes along.
” This aphoristic style cuts to the quick of complex ideas , making them easy to maneuver in the course of the book ’ s meta-analysis .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ aesthetic judgments for evaluations of a work ’ s substance , as when he complains that Gregg Jarrett “ argues by adverb ” and that Robin DiAngelo ’ s “ White Fragility ” “ reads like a pharmaceutical ad for treating whiteness.
” ( As someone who , initially beguiled by DiAngelo ’ s ideas , remains curious about the backlash against her , I was eager to hear how Lozada would prosecute his case .
Instead , he simply asks the book to “ do better.
” ) And “ What Were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be confusing .
Lozada attacks Naomi Klein ’ s resistance tome “ No Is Not Enough ” for outlining a specific and ambitiously progressive policy platform .
( “ Demilitarization of police .
Free college tuition .
One hundred percent renewable energy.
” ) A few pages later , he announces that “ the resistance books are packed with calls for the renewal of the American story but give no clear sense of how to begin.
” Lozada also chides Klein , along with the writer Dana Fisher and the social activist Brittany @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conservative voices from their movement .
“ The intellectuals of the resistance seem to deliberately alienate prospective foot soldiers , prioritizing the purity of resistance over its expansion , ” he writes .
But the very next chapter is the one in which Lozada savages the Never Trumpers , suggesting that the issue is less line-drawing per se than where , exactly , the line is drawn .
The conventional wisdom , of course , is that we know all we need to know—and perhaps all there is to know—about who Trump is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flatness , the weird transparency , of his subject by suggesting that “ the most essential books of the Trump era are scarcely about Trump at all.
” There is a hint of circular reasoning here : volumes are assessed for their ability to elucidate the Trump age , yet they are only selected because Lozada believes that they should elucidate the Trump age .
At times , one is left with the impression of a critic who has lumped together disparate works in order to have something to criticize .
And , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the present can be made to speak to Trump , he also assumes that all books can be made to speak well .
For him , either a work offers insight in the traditional fashion or it inadvertently reveals the folly that helped sweep us to where we are .
As the introduction makes clear , “ What Were We Thinking ” is largely a critical history—a scathing one—which examines intellectual projects that , as Lozada argues , are riddled with “ blind spots , resentments , and failures of imagination.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out the twelve volumes that “ helped me make sense of this time , ” Lozada writes , and he has a gift , perhaps in spite of himself , for making whatever title he ’ s describing sound at least a little alluring . )
The badness , though , is a feature , not a bug .
Sycophantic praise poems by Fox News personalities , self-important nothingburgers by anonymous White House staffers , memoirs that condescend to coal miners or rely heavily on “ racial grievance ” : according to Lozada @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” about our moment .
Sure .
But the “ good ” Trump books make their points more fully than Lozada can , and dissecting the “ bad ” books—his more central concern—only yields the most obvious truths .
If I were Lozada , straining to find meaning in an empty publishing phenomenon , I might take the redundancy dogging his project as a lesson for our time .
Once , it was effective to underline Trump ’ s abnormality .
Later , it seemed fitting to situate the Administration ’ s atrocities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Both framings—Trump as exception , Trump as steroidal avatar of the country that formed him—have always been true .
The difference is that , in 2020 , they are equally banal .
Watching Lozada press his lively intelligence into what feels , in places , like a critique of itself is its own education in saturation , and in the incentives of a culture that is designed to keep talking long after there ’ s anything left to say .

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid slammed into Earth, releasing such a thick plume of toxic particles that most of the creatures spared by tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and wildfires died of asphyxiation, cold, or hunger. It was exeunt dinosaurs, along with most life on the planet. In the rebooted world, mammals reigned, despite their high body temperatures (which chewed up calories) and relatively low reproductive rates. For years, this rise was a scientific mystery. How did such inefficient life-forms beat the competition? One explanation is that the dark, wet Earth, newly crowded with decaying matter, became a fungal paradise. Molds flourished and bloomed, colonizing the flesh of cold-blooded vertebrates; meanwhile, the trait that seemed to spell doom for the mammals—their heat—protected them.
I learned this history from a podcast, “Radiolab,” while desperately seeking distraction from an apocalyptic news cycle. (To the episode’s credit, it didn’t end with the words “and that’s how we got Trump.”) The next segment was about the many thousands of species of fungi that are now evolving in response to climate change. Our ancient enemies, it seems, are beginning to tolerate dangerously high temperatures, and could soon gain the ability to thrive in warm-blooded hosts. If they do, a scientist informed the podcast’s warm-blooded host, the age of mammals might be revealed for what it is: an epoch-spanning fluke.
Which brings me to Carlos Lozada’s new book, “What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era.” Lozada, the nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post, revisits all the books on Donald Trump that he’s read since 2015: about a hundred and fifty titles, each purporting to illuminate the man and his times. (Immediately, the reader is primed for the sequel: “What Was I Thinking.”) One of the book’s standout preoccupations is whether Trump is an asteroid or a fungus. In other words, was the President’s victory a freak event, a chunk of debris that crashed into the country and transformed it forever? Or had Trumpism long been waiting in the soil, its destiny intertwined with ours? As Lozada shows, some Trump books exclaim over the norms that this Administration has broken; others take a longer view, considering the White House’s channelling of dark American traditions. Lozada finds the second approach more useful (the revolution will, and should, be contextualized) but leaves room for the fact that Trump has degraded us, and that some of the rot can be scraped off.
The book’s most original idea is its structure: a taxonomy that presents ten types of Trump book, including the White House “chaos chronicles” (“an endless encore of officials expressing concern”), “heartlandia” (lyrical portraits of Trump voters in flyover country), “Russian lit” (a genre which both looks at Trump’s personal ties to Russia and unpacks his Soviet-style tactics), and activism manuals for the resistance. Each chapter offers an essay made up of loosely connected mini-reviews; because there’s a lot of stylish recapping, the appeal of Lozada’s study can depend on the material being discussed. A chapter on the erosion of truth contains a fascinating précis of “A Lot of People Are Saying,” Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum’s tract about “the new conspiracism,” which proceeds via “innuendo and repetition” and “substitutes social validation for scientific validation.” (With Trump, Lozada writes, “there is conspiracy, but no theory.”) A chapter on immigration, which thrums with Lozada’s mixed feelings about what America has come to mean for the hopeful and the suffering—Lozada, originally from Peru, obtained U.S. citizenship in 2014—is enriched by references to “This Land Is Our Land,” by Suketu Mehta, and Greg Grandin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history, “The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.” For Mehta, Lozada writes, immigration isn’t simply a matter of go-getters with big dreams; it’s “reparations . . . payback for colonialism, for the plunder of resources, for ecological and economic devastation.” Grandin, meanwhile, believes that once Americans lost the “safety valve” of a frontier and became hemmed in by a border, the result was “an extremism turned inward, all-consuming and self-devouring.”
The most entertaining chapter, “The Conservative Pivot,” maps Trump’s effect on the right’s media ecosystem. There are the sycophants, Lozada shows, with their sloppy, hagiographic accounts of the President’s “invincibility.” (Think Jeanine Pirro and Newt Gingrich.) There are the conservative intellectuals, such as Rich Lowry or the military historian Victor Davis Hanson, who labor to dress Trumpism up in tweed. Lozada reserves his most annihilating judgment for the Never Trumpers, who, in a series of books he calls “meh culpas,” bemoan the G.O.P.’s tribalism and obstinance but refuse to examine how the Party got that way. Lozada proposes that the Never Trumpers change their name to Only Trumpers. “Had Trump come close but failed to win the 2016 Republication nomination,” he notes, brilliantly, “the conscience and corrosion of conservatism, the mind of the Right, would remain undisturbed and unexamined. Only with Trump. Maybe they should thank him.”
Lozada’s strengths as a critic are obvious. He is charming, funny, and light on his feet, and his descriptions are exceptionally clear and pithy. Pro-Trump intellectuals “claim to support the president for his principles but they really love him for his enemies,” he writes. And: “Bush hoped to remake the world. Trump just makes it up as he goes along.” This aphoristic style cuts to the quick of complex ideas, making them easy to maneuver in the course of the book’s meta-analysis. Yet Lozada also tends to substitute minor aesthetic judgments for evaluations of a work’s substance, as when he complains that Gregg Jarrett “argues by adverb” and that Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” “reads like a pharmaceutical ad for treating whiteness.” (As someone who, initially beguiled by DiAngelo’s ideas, remains curious about the backlash against her, I was eager to hear how Lozada would prosecute his case. Instead, he simply asks the book to “do better.”)
And “What Were We Thinking” ’s complaints can be confusing. Lozada attacks Naomi Klein’s resistance tome “No Is Not Enough” for outlining a specific and ambitiously progressive policy platform. (“Demilitarization of police. Free college tuition. One hundred percent renewable energy.”) A few pages later, he announces that “the resistance books are packed with calls for the renewal of the American story but give no clear sense of how to begin.” Lozada also chides Klein, along with the writer Dana Fisher and the social activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham, for excluding moderate and conservative voices from their movement. “The intellectuals of the resistance seem to deliberately alienate prospective foot soldiers, prioritizing the purity of resistance over its expansion,” he writes. But the very next chapter is the one in which Lozada savages the Never Trumpers, suggesting that the issue is less line-drawing per se than where, exactly, the line is drawn.
Did we arrive here because of an asteroid? Mold? Climate change? In one sense, “What Were We Thinking” studies the hazards of trying to pick apart the innumerable contingencies that prop up a moment. Most of the titles being discussed lean on a specific theory or framework, which can’t help but prove incomplete. (At times, Lozada seems to fault the books for this limitation—several interesting-sounding projects are dismissed for their failure to definitively explain, say, the “white working class.”) But, taken together, the hope is that the literature will paint a rich cumulative picture. Through a combination of summary and critique, Lozada is trying to achieve what he believes the authors he’s writing about mostly have not: a genuinely revelatory Trump book.
The conventional wisdom, of course, is that we know all we need to know—and perhaps all there is to know—about who Trump is. Lozada seems to steer around the flatness, the weird transparency, of his subject by suggesting that “the most essential books of the Trump era are scarcely about Trump at all.” There is a hint of circular reasoning here: volumes are assessed for their ability to elucidate the Trump age, yet they are only selected because Lozada believes that they should elucidate the Trump age. At times, one is left with the impression of a critic who has lumped together disparate works in order to have something to criticize.
And, just as Lozada assumes that all books about the present can be made to speak to Trump, he also assumes that all books can be made to speak well. For him, either a work offers insight in the traditional fashion or it inadvertently reveals the folly that helped sweep us to where we are. As the introduction makes clear, “What Were We Thinking” is largely a critical history—a scathing one—which examines intellectual projects that, as Lozada argues, are riddled with “blind spots, resentments, and failures of imagination.” (Exceptions exist: an epilogue singles out the twelve volumes that “helped me make sense of this time,” Lozada writes, and he has a gift, perhaps in spite of himself, for making whatever title he’s describing sound at least a little alluring.) The badness, though, is a feature, not a bug. Sycophantic praise poems by Fox News personalities, self-important nothingburgers by anonymous White House staffers, memoirs that condescend to coal miners or rely heavily on “racial grievance”: according to Lozada, they all uncover something “essential” about our moment.
Sure. But the “good” Trump books make their points more fully than Lozada can, and dissecting the “bad” books—his more central concern—only yields the most obvious truths. If I were Lozada, straining to find meaning in an empty publishing phenomenon, I might take the redundancy dogging his project as a lesson for our time. Once, it was effective to underline Trump’s abnormality. Later, it seemed fitting to situate the Administration’s atrocities within a wider context of disgrace. Both framings—Trump as exception, Trump as steroidal avatar of the country that formed him—have always been true. The difference is that, in 2020, they are equally banal. Watching Lozada press his lively intelligence into what feels, in places, like a critique of itself is its own education in saturation, and in the incentives of a culture that is designed to keep talking long after there’s anything left to say.


newyorker--2020-10-24--The Improbable Life of Helen Jones Woods and the International Sweethearts of Rhythm

After retiring from nursing , Woods became a teacher ’ s aide—she felt called to handle the problem children , Hughes said , and appointed herself “ the director of hugs and kisses.
” But it was an earlier job that she is best known for .
In the nineteen-thirties and forties , Woods travelled the world as one of the founding members of a record-breaking , racially integrated , all-female swing band , the International Sweethearts of Rhythm .
Like the history of that band , Woods ’ s own origin story is complex .
It begins in 1923 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in Meridian , Mississippi , where Laurence C. Jones , a renowned Black educator , adopted her as a baby .
He brought her to the Piney Woods Country Life School , south of Jackson , which he was in the process of establishing as a boarding school for African-American children .
Years later , Jones would be mythologized by Dale Carnegie in his book “ How to Stop Worrying and Start Living , ” which told of how Jones escaped a lynching , in 1918 , and convinced the white mob @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was building .
But , to hear some of Jones ’ s family tell it , Woods was not only his adopted daughter .
“ I believe my mother was actually Dr. Jones ’ s illegitimate daughter , by a white woman in Mississippi , ” Hughes told me .
“ Her hands were identical to his .
She was shaped like him .
I lived with him for three years of my life .
Their laugh was the same.
” A decade before , Jones had married Grace Morris Allen , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Allen was six years older than Jones , and she died at the age of fifty-two , when Woods was four ; the reported cause of death was pneumonia and exhaustion , after years of relentless fund-raising trips for Piney Woods .
“ Some said Grandmother died of a broken heart when she realized my grandfather hadn ’ t just brought any child home , ” Hughes said .
Eventually , Helen began to take classes alongside the other students at Piney Woods , many of whom were orphans and disabled children from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and gifts arrived in the mail for her , raising eyebrows—presumably , these had been sent by Woods ’ s biological mother .
They made her an object of scorn .
Once , her classmates picked on her for having a watch , and she threw it into a lake .
Then music changed her social standing .
Her father , with the help of a series of music directors , put the children together in groups that toured the country , raising money for Piney Woods .
First , there were the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Five Blind Boys of Mississippi .
Then came the Sweethearts of Rhythm , an all-girls instrumental group .
Woods learned the trombone .
When she was fourteen , the band hit the road , with members of Hawaiian , Chinese , African , Indian , and Mexican descent , some recruited from outside the school .
They were advertised by Jones as a band “ in whose veins ran the blood of five different races , ” and “ a package of music wrapped in the cellophane of loveliness.
” They would sometimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ packing places like Atlantic City ’ s Rosedale Beach Club and Los Angeles ’ s Plantation Club .
After a few years of touring , the school-appointed chaperone , Rae Lee Jones—no relation—convinced the girls that they could do better on their own .
In 1941 , they went on the run , holing up with a sponsor in Arlington , Virginia .
Laurence Jones sent the police after them , and demanded that his daughter and the other girls return .
Woods chose the band .
Soon after , the Sweethearts set @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came to see them in one week , at the Howard Theatre in Washington , D.C .
The band , now the International Sweethearts of Rhythm , added older musicians , including the trumpeter Tiny Davis and the saxophonist Vi Burnside , formerly of the Harlem Playgirls .
Refused meals and lodging by segregated establishments , the women lived together on their bus and regularly broke Jim Crow laws in the states that they passed through , sometimes covering white members in dark makeup to avoid arrest .
Roz Cron , the last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of those white musicians , and one of Woods ’ s best friends .
She remembers passing through Mississippi while on the road with the band , and , between gigs , looking out the windows of the bus at a white woman on the sidewalk .
“ Supposedly , she was Helen ’ s mother , ” Cron , who ’ s now ninety-five , said .
The band played the Apollo and rubbed elbows with Duke Ellington , Count Basie , and Billie Holiday .
They toured occupied Germany with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with RCA , which included songs like “ Vi Vigor ” and “ Don ’ t Get It Twisted , ” arranged for them by Maurice King , who would later work with the Supremes and Marvin Gaye .
In Seattle , a young Quincy Jones and Ray Charles once snuck into a club to watch the Sweethearts play , and Jones later told Hughes that the music “ touched his soul.
” Woods became pregnant with Cathy , in 1946 , and she took refuge in a house that Rae Lee Jones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to her for safekeeping .
In the end , everyone took advantage of the band .
“ First , it was the white community that was after them , then Piney Woods , then Rae Lee , ” Hughes said .
Woods was also a social activist , Hughes said , going to marches and protests as the civil-rights movement gathered steam .
“ My mother was taking me to demonstrations when I was about five years old .
The sign was heavy , and I was dragging it like Jesus drug the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ head and said , ‘ Hold up the damn sign , Cathy—no one can read it.
’ ” The International Sweethearts broke up in 1949 .
Musical tastes had begun to change , and television had become a major tastemaker—TV execs preferred white faces .
Woods ’ s final gig , with the Omaha Symphony , was cut short after one performance , when the symphony realized that she was Black .
“ Music had hurt her so badly , so deeply , ” Hughes said , “ that once she found something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ behind.
” “ Mom considered herself adopted , ” Hughes said .
“ Every Sunday after mass , she would bring Black kids home from the orphanage to eat dinner with us .
She said that people don ’ t adopt Black children.
” Hughes remembered a Sunday evening when one of the orphans reached for a chicken wing that Hughes wanted , and she complained .
“ Mama snapped off a piece of the bone and put it on my plate and told me I needed to learn to share.
” Hughes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , when she got pregnant herself .
“ He told me the same thing he told my mama , ” she said .
“ That I wouldn ’ t amount to anything .
But I knew I was going to be somebody.
” Hughes founded a broadcast-media company , Radio One—since renamed Urban One—and became the first African-American woman to lead a publicly traded corporation .
She credits her mother with opening her mind to a wider world .
“ Even when we were living in the housing projects , she insisted we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ She was so brilliant , ” Hughes said , through tears .
She added , “ My mama deserved to be recognized for her brilliance .
She didn ’ t care about the music at the end .
I want people to know she was the epitome of strength and fulfillment in womanhood.
” For Hughes , her mother ’ s legacy of kindness and resilience matters more than her legacy as a jazz musician .
“ My mother had so many hardships , ” she said .
“ And so @ @ @ @

When ninety-six-year-old Helen Jones Woods entered the hospital on July 25th, for complications arising from COVID-19, the nurse on duty was astounded to learn that she was not on any medications. “My mother had some rigid rules about how you were supposed to live your life,” Woods’s daughter, Cathy Hughes, told me recently. Woods herself had been a nurse for decades, at Omaha’s Douglas County Hospital, but she “did not believe in pharmaceuticals,” Hughes said. “She only kept toothpaste, mouthwash, and a bottle of aspirin in her medicine cabinet. She said the aspirin was for visitors.”
After retiring from nursing, Woods became a teacher’s aide—she felt called to handle the problem children, Hughes said, and appointed herself “the director of hugs and kisses.” But it was an earlier job that she is best known for. In the nineteen-thirties and forties, Woods travelled the world as one of the founding members of a record-breaking, racially integrated, all-female swing band, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm.
Like the history of that band, Woods’s own origin story is complex. It begins in 1923, at an orphanage for white children, in Meridian, Mississippi, where Laurence C. Jones, a renowned Black educator, adopted her as a baby. He brought her to the Piney Woods Country Life School, south of Jackson, which he was in the process of establishing as a boarding school for African-American children. Years later, Jones would be mythologized by Dale Carnegie in his book “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living,” which told of how Jones escaped a lynching, in 1918, and convinced the white mob to donate to the school that he was building. But, to hear some of Jones’s family tell it, Woods was not only his adopted daughter. “I believe my mother was actually Dr. Jones’s illegitimate daughter, by a white woman in Mississippi,” Hughes told me. “Her hands were identical to his. She was shaped like him. I lived with him for three years of my life. Their laugh was the same.”
A decade before, Jones had married Grace Morris Allen, the founder of a school in Iowa. Allen was six years older than Jones, and she died at the age of fifty-two, when Woods was four; the reported cause of death was pneumonia and exhaustion, after years of relentless fund-raising trips for Piney Woods. “Some said Grandmother died of a broken heart when she realized my grandfather hadn’t just brought any child home,” Hughes said.
Eventually, Helen began to take classes alongside the other students at Piney Woods, many of whom were orphans and disabled children from rural Mississippi. Occasionally, expensive clothes and gifts arrived in the mail for her, raising eyebrows—presumably, these had been sent by Woods’s biological mother. They made her an object of scorn. Once, her classmates picked on her for having a watch, and she threw it into a lake.
Then music changed her social standing. Her father, with the help of a series of music directors, put the children together in groups that toured the country, raising money for Piney Woods. First, there were the Cotton Blossom Singers, and later the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. Then came the Sweethearts of Rhythm, an all-girls instrumental group. Woods learned the trombone. When she was fourteen, the band hit the road, with members of Hawaiian, Chinese, African, Indian, and Mexican descent, some recruited from outside the school. They were advertised by Jones as a band “in whose veins ran the blood of five different races,” and “a package of music wrapped in the cellophane of loveliness.” They would sometimes cram twelve engagements into sixteen days, packing places like Atlantic City’s Rosedale Beach Club and Los Angeles’s Plantation Club.
After a few years of touring, the school-appointed chaperone, Rae Lee Jones—no relation—convinced the girls that they could do better on their own. In 1941, they went on the run, holing up with a sponsor in Arlington, Virginia. Laurence Jones sent the police after them, and demanded that his daughter and the other girls return. Woods chose the band. Soon after, the Sweethearts set a box-office record: thirty-five thousand people came to see them in one week, at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Roz Cron, a white musician in the Sweethearts and the group’s last living member, was one of Helen Jones Woods’s best friends. Photograph by Bill O'Leary / The Washington Post / Getty
The band, now the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, added older musicians, including the trumpeter Tiny Davis and the saxophonist Vi Burnside, formerly of the Harlem Playgirls. Refused meals and lodging by segregated establishments, the women lived together on their bus and regularly broke Jim Crow laws in the states that they passed through, sometimes covering white members in dark makeup to avoid arrest. Roz Cron, the last living member of the Sweethearts, was one of those white musicians, and one of Woods’s best friends. She remembers passing through Mississippi while on the road with the band, and, between gigs, looking out the windows of the bus at a white woman on the sidewalk. “Supposedly, she was Helen’s mother,” Cron, who’s now ninety-five, said.
The band played the Apollo and rubbed elbows with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Billie Holiday. They toured occupied Germany with the U.S.O. and cut a record with RCA, which included songs like “Vi Vigor” and “Don’t Get It Twisted,” arranged for them by Maurice King, who would later work with the Supremes and Marvin Gaye. In Seattle, a young Quincy Jones and Ray Charles once snuck into a club to watch the Sweethearts play, and Jones later told Hughes that the music “touched his soul.”
Woods became pregnant with Cathy, in 1946, and she took refuge in a house that Rae Lee Jones had bought—with money that Woods had entrusted to her for safekeeping. In the end, everyone took advantage of the band. “First, it was the white community that was after them, then Piney Woods, then Rae Lee,” Hughes said.
Woods was also a social activist, Hughes said, going to marches and protests as the civil-rights movement gathered steam. “My mother was taking me to demonstrations when I was about five years old. The sign was heavy, and I was dragging it like Jesus drug the cross. She bopped me upside the head and said, ‘Hold up the damn sign, Cathy—no one can read it.’ ”
The International Sweethearts broke up in 1949. Musical tastes had begun to change, and television had become a major tastemaker—TV execs preferred white faces. Woods’s final gig, with the Omaha Symphony, was cut short after one performance, when the symphony realized that she was Black. “Music had hurt her so badly, so deeply,” Hughes said, “that once she found something that she was good at—nursing—she left music behind.”
Laurence Jones waged a war against the Sweethearts in the press after they parted ways from the school, telling the Pittsburgh Courier that “the band girls had no reason to leave,” and enumerating their many debts to him: music lessons, for starters, plus food and lodging and books. But, eventually, Woods forgave him. When Hughes was eight, a plane ticket appeared in the mail, and, at Laurence Jones’s urging, Woods took her family back to Mississippi, moving into a house on the Piney Woods campus for several years.
“Mom considered herself adopted,” Hughes said. “Every Sunday after mass, she would bring Black kids home from the orphanage to eat dinner with us. She said that people don’t adopt Black children.” Hughes remembered a Sunday evening when one of the orphans reached for a chicken wing that Hughes wanted, and she complained. “Mama snapped off a piece of the bone and put it on my plate and told me I needed to learn to share.”
Hughes remained close to her grandfather until 1964, when she got pregnant herself. “He told me the same thing he told my mama,” she said. “That I wouldn’t amount to anything. But I knew I was going to be somebody.” Hughes founded a broadcast-media company, Radio One—since renamed Urban One—and became the first African-American woman to lead a publicly traded corporation. She credits her mother with opening her mind to a wider world. “Even when we were living in the housing projects, she insisted we go to museums,” Hughes remembered.
“She was so brilliant,” Hughes said, through tears. She added, “My mama deserved to be recognized for her brilliance. She didn’t care about the music at the end. I want people to know she was the epitome of strength and fulfillment in womanhood.” For Hughes, her mother’s legacy of kindness and resilience matters more than her legacy as a jazz musician. “My mother had so many hardships,” she said. “And so many blessings.”


newyorker--2020-10-24--All the Wrong Reasons to Remake “Rebecca”

In April of 1938 , the manuscript for Daphne du Maurier ’ s new novel , “ Rebecca , ” landed on the desk of her British editor , Norman Collins .
Du Maurier was only thirty years old at the time , and this was her fifth book , but she had yet to have a runaway commercial hit .
Collins , for his part , breathed a sigh of relief upon turning the pages .
He saw money in the book , and maybe even literary value .
In a letter to Victor Gollancz , the head of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the novel “ brilliantly creates a sense of atmosphere and suspense , ” and also , “ I don ’ t know another author who imagines so hard all the time.
” The allure of “ Rebecca ” lies in how du Maurier places the reader , right away , inside the nervous mind of its protagonist—an unnamed , docile young woman who is referred to by others in the book only as Mrs. de Winter—as she recounts a particularly vivid nightmare .
The book ’ s famous first line— “ Last night @ @ @ @ @ @ @ again ” —initiates a journey in her memory , back to the sprawling English countryside estate where she had once lived as a wealthy man ’ s second wife .
Du Maurier made it clear in her notes for the novel that “ Rebecca ” was “ not a ghost story , ” at least not in the traditional sense .
No spectres pop out of closets ; no oil portraits come to life after dark .
What haunts the narrator is not a presence but an idea , the idea of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whom she can never compare .
When the narrator meets the dashing ( and , in the novel , much older ) Maxim de Winter while accompanying the aging socialite Mrs. Van Hopper on a holiday in Monte Carlo as a lady ’ s maid , she learns quickly that he is a recent widower , but she doesn ’ t really press the issue .
Instead , she rushes into a marriage , a decision born of both hope and pragmatism .
( Her choices are to continue to eat plates of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her grotesque employer or become the mistress of a hulking seaside palazzo .
Which would you choose ? )
When she returns to England , the new Mrs. de Winter finds both her new husband and her vision of her future much changed ; Manderley ’ s staff , and particularly the frigid housekeeper , Mrs. Danvers , are bizarrely affronted by her presence , and somehow seem still to be working in service of a dead woman , Maxim ’ s ex-wife , Rebecca .
Mrs. Danvers keeps Rebecca ’ s chambers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; the second wife is not allowed in these rooms and must sleep in far smaller quarters on the other side of the estate .
There is , as plenty of scholars have detailed , a latent sapphic energy between Mrs. Danvers and the late Rebecca .
As she shows Mrs. de Winter around Rebecca ’ s old room , in one scene , Mrs. Danvers stops to cuddle the dead woman ’ s clothing .
“ She looked beautiful in this velvet , ” she says .
“ Put it against your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ isn ’ t it ?
You can feel it , can ’ t you ?
The scent is still fresh , isn ’ t it ?
” Mrs. Danvers ’ s desperate yearning for Rebecca stands in contrast to Maxim ’ s aloof frostiness toward his young bride ; it ’ s also what provides much of the story ’ s terror .
Alfred Hitchcock realized as much when he adapted the book into a claustrophobic , Gothic masterpiece , in 1940 .
The Australian stage actress Judith Anderson was perfectly cast in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through scenes in her black , high-necked mourning suits , with a severe middle-part in her dark hair , and hissing through her teeth as she spoke .
She looked both menacing and pathetic , lovelorn and a bit rangy .
A young Joan Fontaine , as the guileless Mrs. de Winter , was a creampuff in pert silk blouses , with the shaky constitution of a newborn fawn , while Laurence Olivier , as Maxim de Winter , was a walking tempest , seductive one moment and deranged and brutish the next @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been ripe for a remake .
In a climactic scene in du Maurier ’ s novel , after Mr. de Winter has chastised the heroine for wearing the same dress as the dead Rebecca to a grand fête ( the result of a dastardly scheme set in motion by Mrs. Danvers ) , she lies on her bed thinking that nothing could be “ so shaming , so degrading , as a marriage that had failed.
” In 1938 , the dread in taking over a big house like Manderley came from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an inept matriarch , a woman who could not fulfill her obligations .
Today , the story could have been fertile terrain on which to explore issues of control , abuse , and the sheer terror of becoming a wife at all .
Hitchcock ’ s version was shaped in other ways by the mores of the time .
Because of Hays Code restrictions , the homoeroticism of Mrs. Danvers ’ s longing for Rebecca could be addressed only through innuendo , and the ending of the novel was adjusted because—spoiler—it would have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deliberately murdered his wife .
A new film could have explored the violence and sensuality of du Maurier ’ s tale any way it pleased .
And yet Ben Wheatley ’ s superficial , slapdash new Netflix adaptation fails to plumb these possible new depths .
It does not , in fact , really dip below its slick surfaces at all .
The forty-eight-year-old Wheatley , who has made some deeply challenging ( and , to be more precise , deeply fucked-up ) horror films in his native Britain over the past decade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the task of reinvigorating a spooky-season classic .
Just a bit older than Hitchcock was when he made “ Rebecca , ” Wheatley has built a career on disorienting and often nauseating viewers .
At the end of his 2011 film “ Kill List , ” ( again , spoiler ahead ) , the protagonist , a professional assassin , is kidnapped and made to kill a “ hunchback , ” which turns out to be his wife , who is wearing their child strapped to her back and covered in a cloak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came out in the U.S. in 2017 , from A24 , is essentially a ninety-minute shootout in a warehouse in Boston .
It ’ s ultraviolent and timed down to the second , like a bloody Marx Brothers picture .
When Netflix announced Wheatley as the new director of “ Rebecca , ” in 2018 , I imagined that he ’ d create something shocking , or , at the very least , novel .
What he ended up making , instead , is a film that lies somewhere between a lukewarm retread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ glossy Instagram feed .
Wheatley includes a few , brief experimental shots—like a floor that turns to tangled vines and a sinister hair-brushing session—which suggest that a more interesting film may have been left on some cutting-room floor .
But the film struggles in all aspects , beginning with the casting .
Lily James , as the naïf Mrs. de Winter , is too vacant in her affect , and not even a little jumpy .
Instead , she seems merely befuddled , bumping from scene to scene like a wayward pinball .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ works just fine in Monte Carlo , when he woos the ingénue , taking her on long drives in a souped-up vintage coupe .
But his waggish , golden-retriever appeal does not transfer well to the creepy English manse , where Mr. de Winter ’ s darker impulses start showing ; Hammer ’ s bursts of anger look like petulant tantrums compared to Olivier ’ s volcanic expressions of rage .
As the besotted Mrs. Danvers , Kristin Scott Thomas puts in a valiant effort , but her smoldering intensity is almost too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s slinking , Oscar-nominated portrayal , and this puts her in an entirely different film than her co-stars .
Against James and Hammer ’ s chaste drabness , Thomas ’ s extreme commitment to the part turns to camp ; as such , Mrs. Danvers becomes less an object of pity and unease than the film ’ s comic relief .
The thing is , a “ Rebecca ” remake could have been funny .
Another director might have leaned into du Maurier ’ s melodramatic sentences or highlighted the way that Mrs. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dead person ’ s underthings .
Du Maurier ’ s novel includes a trove of amusing material that Hitchcock did not use in his tightly wound thriller , like the chattering presence of a local busybody named Lady Crowan .
But Wheatley ’ s film is devoid of silliness .
As the priggish Mrs. Van Hopper , Ann Dowd does her best tragic clown , but she is only in the film for the first ten minutes .
In 2020 , the couple ’ s Monte Carlo affair should feel like a steamy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future Mrs. de Winter is getting away with something , after all , wriggling out of her job for a clandestine romance—but it seems more like a staged perfume ad .
The costumes , including James ’ s frumpish selection of gauchos and floral tops , could be period styles or simply from Madewell ; I had to check that the company wasn ’ t sponsoring the production .
( Hammer ’ s three-piece , mustard-colored suit , which first appeared in promotional stills for the film and circulated on social media , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
Even the new ending , which hews closer to du Maurier ’ s original , has no bite ; it trails off into a stuffy legal drama , when it should make the viewer feel as though everything is on fire .
Ultimately , “ Rebecca ” suffers from a malady that is plaguing much of streaming entertainment , one that might be traced back to the surprising success of Amazon ’ s TV show “ The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel , ” a splashy , high-budget period piece that had a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ buy too heartily into its own schtick .
Streaming executives seem to have learned the wrong lesson from “ Maisel , ” which is that if they make a production look good enough , the viewers will follow .
Streaming executives , who have admitted that they use data to calibrate the films and shows they produce , seem to believe that films like the “ Rebecca ” remake give viewers exactly what they want .
“ Here , ” they seem to say .
“ Here is some maximalist fare with actors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Netflix , in particular , has been leaning on the formula of late .
We saw it in “ Ratched , ” another period piece that is more style than substance , and in the recent “ Emily in Paris , ” a grating girlboss fantasia that felt like a Pinterest board in search of a plot .
As I reached the infamous party-dress scene in “ Rebecca , ” which played like the dénouement of a teen drama rather than the brutal , visceral abasement that it is in the novel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think we ’ ll watch anything .
And perhaps , in the end , they are right .
We are stuck at home ; it is spooky season .
But du Maurier ’ s story deserves better .
Throughout the film , I kept wishing for a sense of how big Manderley was .
The real-life inspiration for the home was a long-abandoned Cornish mansion named Menabilly , which du Maurier later leased , in 1943 , with the proceeds from “ Rebecca ” and its 1940 film adaptation .
The house , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1573 , was empty when du Maurier first stumbled upon it while taking a walk as a young woman , seeing its shuttered windows and ivy skittering up the walls .
Inside , she later wrote , “ family portraits stared into the silence and the dust.
” It was , in other words , a dead house , and a house that seemed to hold the dead .
In “ Rebecca , ” it is supposed to swallow Mrs. de Winter , and to make her feel like a vulnerable little girl @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which James was simply able to roam , silently , feeling creeped out and trapped in her new reality .
The new “ Rebecca ” offers up GIF-ready fantasy on a platter , but it never gives us a chance to dream of Manderley again .

In April of 1938, the manuscript for Daphne du Maurier’s new novel, “Rebecca,” landed on the desk of her British editor, Norman Collins. Du Maurier was only thirty years old at the time, and this was her fifth book, but she had yet to have a runaway commercial hit. Collins, for his part, breathed a sigh of relief upon turning the pages. He saw money in the book, and maybe even literary value. In a letter to Victor Gollancz, the head of the publishing house, Collins wrote that the novel “brilliantly creates a sense of atmosphere and suspense,” and also, “I don’t know another author who imagines so hard all the time.” The allure of “Rebecca” lies in how du Maurier places the reader, right away, inside the nervous mind of its protagonist—an unnamed, docile young woman who is referred to by others in the book only as Mrs. de Winter—as she recounts a particularly vivid nightmare. The book’s famous first line—“Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again”—initiates a journey in her memory, back to the sprawling English countryside estate where she had once lived as a wealthy man’s second wife.
Du Maurier made it clear in her notes for the novel that “Rebecca” was “not a ghost story,” at least not in the traditional sense. No spectres pop out of closets; no oil portraits come to life after dark. What haunts the narrator is not a presence but an idea, the idea of the beloved wife who came before and to whom she can never compare. When the narrator meets the dashing (and, in the novel, much older) Maxim de Winter while accompanying the aging socialite Mrs. Van Hopper on a holiday in Monte Carlo as a lady’s maid, she learns quickly that he is a recent widower, but she doesn’t really press the issue. Instead, she rushes into a marriage, a decision born of both hope and pragmatism. (Her choices are to continue to eat plates of dry “ham and tongue” with her grotesque employer or become the mistress of a hulking seaside palazzo. Which would you choose?) When she returns to England, the new Mrs. de Winter finds both her new husband and her vision of her future much changed; Manderley’s staff, and particularly the frigid housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, are bizarrely affronted by her presence, and somehow seem still to be working in service of a dead woman, Maxim’s ex-wife, Rebecca. Mrs. Danvers keeps Rebecca’s chambers as they were before she mysteriously drowned; the second wife is not allowed in these rooms and must sleep in far smaller quarters on the other side of the estate.
There is, as plenty of scholars have detailed, a latent sapphic energy between Mrs. Danvers and the late Rebecca. As she shows Mrs. de Winter around Rebecca’s old room, in one scene, Mrs. Danvers stops to cuddle the dead woman’s clothing. “She looked beautiful in this velvet,” she says. “Put it against your face. It’s soft, isn’t it? You can feel it, can’t you? The scent is still fresh, isn’t it?” Mrs. Danvers’s desperate yearning for Rebecca stands in contrast to Maxim’s aloof frostiness toward his young bride; it’s also what provides much of the story’s terror. Alfred Hitchcock realized as much when he adapted the book into a claustrophobic, Gothic masterpiece, in 1940. The Australian stage actress Judith Anderson was perfectly cast in that film as Mrs. Danvers, skulking through scenes in her black, high-necked mourning suits, with a severe middle-part in her dark hair, and hissing through her teeth as she spoke. She looked both menacing and pathetic, lovelorn and a bit rangy. A young Joan Fontaine, as the guileless Mrs. de Winter, was a creampuff in pert silk blouses, with the shaky constitution of a newborn fawn, while Laurence Olivier, as Maxim de Winter, was a walking tempest, seductive one moment and deranged and brutish the next.
Joan Fontaine and Judith Anderson in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” from 1940. Photograph from John Springer Collection / Corbis / Getty
Still, “Rebecca” could have warranted a remake. In a climactic scene in du Maurier’s novel, after Mr. de Winter has chastised the heroine for wearing the same dress as the dead Rebecca to a grand fête (the result of a dastardly scheme set in motion by Mrs. Danvers), she lies on her bed thinking that nothing could be “so shaming, so degrading, as a marriage that had failed.” In 1938, the dread in taking over a big house like Manderley came from the idea that one could end up an inept matriarch, a woman who could not fulfill her obligations. Today, the story could have been fertile terrain on which to explore issues of control, abuse, and the sheer terror of becoming a wife at all. Hitchcock’s version was shaped in other ways by the mores of the time. Because of Hays Code restrictions, the homoeroticism of Mrs. Danvers’s longing for Rebecca could be addressed only through innuendo, and the ending of the novel was adjusted because—spoiler—it would have been taboo to imply that a husband deliberately murdered his wife. A new film could have explored the violence and sensuality of du Maurier’s tale any way it pleased.
And yet Ben Wheatley’s superficial, slapdash new Netflix adaptation fails to plumb these possible new depths. It does not, in fact, really dip below its slick surfaces at all. The forty-eight-year-old Wheatley, who has made some deeply challenging (and, to be more precise, deeply fucked-up) horror films in his native Britain over the past decade, seemed likely to be up to the task of reinvigorating a spooky-season classic. Just a bit older than Hitchcock was when he made “Rebecca,” Wheatley has built a career on disorienting and often nauseating viewers. At the end of his 2011 film “Kill List,” (again, spoiler ahead), the protagonist, a professional assassin, is kidnapped and made to kill a “hunchback,” which turns out to be his wife, who is wearing their child strapped to her back and covered in a cloak. “Free Fire,” which came out in the U.S. in 2017, from A24, is essentially a ninety-minute shootout in a warehouse in Boston. It’s ultraviolent and timed down to the second, like a bloody Marx Brothers picture. When Netflix announced Wheatley as the new director of “Rebecca,” in 2018, I imagined that he’d create something shocking, or, at the very least, novel. What he ended up making, instead, is a film that lies somewhere between a lukewarm retread of Hitchcock’s original and a glossy Instagram feed.
Wheatley includes a few, brief experimental shots—like a floor that turns to tangled vines and a sinister hair-brushing session—which suggest that a more interesting film may have been left on some cutting-room floor. But the film struggles in all aspects, beginning with the casting. Lily James, as the naïf Mrs. de Winter, is too vacant in her affect, and not even a little jumpy. Instead, she seems merely befuddled, bumping from scene to scene like a wayward pinball. As Maxim de Winter, Armie Hammer works just fine in Monte Carlo, when he woos the ingénue, taking her on long drives in a souped-up vintage coupe. But his waggish, golden-retriever appeal does not transfer well to the creepy English manse, where Mr. de Winter’s darker impulses start showing; Hammer’s bursts of anger look like petulant tantrums compared to Olivier’s volcanic expressions of rage. As the besotted Mrs. Danvers, Kristin Scott Thomas puts in a valiant effort, but her smoldering intensity is almost too close to that of Judith Anderson’s slinking, Oscar-nominated portrayal, and this puts her in an entirely different film than her co-stars. Against James and Hammer’s chaste drabness, Thomas’s extreme commitment to the part turns to camp; as such, Mrs. Danvers becomes less an object of pity and unease than the film’s comic relief.
The thing is, a “Rebecca” remake could have been funny. Another director might have leaned into du Maurier’s melodramatic sentences or highlighted the way that Mrs. Danvers simply cannot stop sniffing a dead person’s underthings. Du Maurier’s novel includes a trove of amusing material that Hitchcock did not use in his tightly wound thriller, like the chattering presence of a local busybody named Lady Crowan. But Wheatley’s film is devoid of silliness. As the priggish Mrs. Van Hopper, Ann Dowd does her best tragic clown, but she is only in the film for the first ten minutes. In 2020, the couple’s Monte Carlo affair should feel like a steamy romp, a sweaty summer fling— the future Mrs. de Winter is getting away with something, after all, wriggling out of her job for a clandestine romance—but it seems more like a staged perfume ad. The costumes, including James’s frumpish selection of gauchos and floral tops, could be period styles or simply from Madewell; I had to check that the company wasn’t sponsoring the production. (Hammer’s three-piece, mustard-colored suit, which first appeared in promotional stills for the film and circulated on social media, provided false promises of costuming to come.) Even the new ending, which hews closer to du Maurier’s original, has no bite; it trails off into a stuffy legal drama, when it should make the viewer feel as though everything is on fire.