newyorker--2020-08-26--The Special Hypocrisy of Melania Trump’s Speech at the Republican National Convention

In place of roses , the First Lady grew concrete .
Prior to her address at the Republican National Convention , on Tuesday night , the White House unveiled Melania Trump ’ s renovations to the Rose Garden , which had been pitched as her personal project .
Cultivation of the garden would link her to Jackie Kennedy , the one figure whose lineage Melania , and her boosters , can tenuously claim .
Homage , to Melania , looked like draining the floriculture of its traditional crimson and magenta , replacing the garden ’ s formerly bright bushes with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ removing the row of crab-apple trees around the perimeter , leaving a walkway of fresh pavement in their stead .
If First Lady is an unofficial office whose only , and therefore critical , mandate is to rustle up symbolism , then Melania ’ s redesign was flawless : the content of the metaphor was clean and clear .
Drained of life , the garden now better functions as a stage .
Cameras followed Melania as she strode into the garden , where she received movie-star lighting , to deliver her speech .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ R.N.C .
has emphasized scale—the single boasting figure at the dais in an empty hall , the wide frame a kind of implicit and defiant fuck-you to the pandemic ’ s constriction of space .
In the Rose Garden , what looked like dozens of audience members , including Melania ’ s husband , as she would refer to the President , looked on from chairs .
( According to reports , only the guests who sat near the President and Vice-President were tested for COVID-19 . )
Her olive-green skirt suit , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fatigues , and recalled the palette of her other famous jacket , with its quick message of fast-fashion fascism : “ I REALLY DON ’ T CARE DO U ?
” You know the thing about Melania by now .
Profundity is wrung from her vapidity , messages decoded from the tea leaves of her rote silence .
Belief in her moral grain , faith in the fable in which she is the innocent immigrant who has tumbled into an accursed set of circumstances , is , for some , the last thing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The story of her R.N.C .
address , then , is less about what streamed from the teleprompter than the trap it laid for the D.C. press .
Already , the Washington Post has noted that Melania ’ s speech “ emphasized her empathy , which only highlighted the president ’ s lack of it.
” Groping in the dark banality of the address , one can agree that Melania did provide a superficial counter to her husband .
But one gets the sense that Melania Trump does not appreciate the custodial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ address , she offered a careful appraisal of the state of the nation , admitting the “ harsh reality ” of “ racial unrest in our country , ” and extending sympathy to Americans who have lost loved ones and livelihoods to the pandemic .
She also freely recalled her childhood in the Communist state of Slovenia , and even spoke , notionally , of Islam , all while her husband maintains his Muslim ban .
The exploitative speech , like the Convention as a whole , was tasked with conjuring an alternative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has before , Melania claimed her husband ’ s incivility to be a form of passionate patriotism .
At the same time , she acted as a kind of quiet , maternal foil to the rest of the R.N.C.
’ s overactive bombast , with its vision of a world in which COVID-19 has been vanquished and the economy is roaring .
Her delivery was shy , and the words did not seem fully processed or digested by their speaker .
Still , it was by far Melania ’ s best political performance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ At this year ’ s R.N.C.
, the scions of the Trump family are no longer vehemently attesting to the character of the king , as they did at the 2016 Convention .
The G.O.P .
has produced instead a number of convincing “ regular ” women and people of color to exert that soft power , which is to say : the propaganda has grown more sophisticated .
Take , for instance , the cheap eloquence of the Kentucky attorney general , Daniel Cameron , a Black Republican who seems poised for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the death of Breonna Taylor might cause a viewer to forget that he is the figure who has declined to bring charges against her killers .
When the Trump children do emerge , they are on the offense .
In her short speech , Tiffany , dressed in Tiffany blue , claimed to know firsthand the uncertainty of young voters right now , marshalling her age and the fact that she recently graduated from law school as points of commonality .
Eric Trump blared on about his father ’ s acumen ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night , was worse at hiding the desperation , resorting to a convoluted Loch Ness analogy to jab at his father ’ s opponent .
The G.O.P .
is having to spin several disasters of the Presidency at the same time .
The team behind the Convention includes former producers of “ The Apprentice , ” and they have resorted to some old tricks .
The aesthetic of the week has alternated between fascist soap opera and fascist game show .
The President is televising shows of fealty , making the White House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people who had formerly been held hostage , and they thank him profusely for freeing them .
I had a physical reaction to the stunt of Trump pardoning a tearful Jon Ponder , a former felon who grew up believing that the police “ were my enemy , ” which aired two days after police in Kenosha , Wisconsin , shot Jacob Blake , a young Black father , seven times in the back .
So , too , while watching the President host a naturalization ceremony , in which five grateful immigrants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course , it is only ever Trump who wins .
In conjuring the image of herself as charitable First Lady , hopping the African continent to learn about the slave trade , Melania is playing that game , too , mirroring exactly her husband ’ s farce of magnanimity .
As she tentatively maneuvered the topic of the nation ’ s unavoidable racism , proclaiming that our “ diverse and storied history is what makes our country strong , ” pundits online immediately produced the infamous interview , from 2011 , of Melania @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It is easy , and also morally correct , to call out the First Lady ’ s special hypocrisy .
What matters , of course , isn ’ t what I saw , or what the viewers on CNN or MSNBC saw , either .

In place of roses, the First Lady grew concrete. Prior to her address at the Republican National Convention, on Tuesday night, the White House unveiled Melania Trump’s renovations to the Rose Garden, which had been pitched as her personal project. Cultivation of the garden would link her to Jackie Kennedy, the one figure whose lineage Melania, and her boosters, can tenuously claim. Homage, to Melania, looked like draining the floriculture of its traditional crimson and magenta, replacing the garden’s formerly bright bushes with flowers of the palest shades, and removing the row of crab-apple trees around the perimeter, leaving a walkway of fresh pavement in their stead. If First Lady is an unofficial office whose only, and therefore critical, mandate is to rustle up symbolism, then Melania’s redesign was flawless: the content of the metaphor was clean and clear.
Drained of life, the garden now better functions as a stage. Cameras followed Melania as she strode into the garden, where she received movie-star lighting, to deliver her speech. So far, the production of the R.N.C. has emphasized scale—the single boasting figure at the dais in an empty hall, the wide frame a kind of implicit and defiant fuck-you to the pandemic’s constriction of space. In the Rose Garden, what looked like dozens of audience members, including Melania’s husband, as she would refer to the President, looked on from chairs. (According to reports, only the guests who sat near the President and Vice-President were tested for COVID-19.) Her olive-green skirt suit, by Alexander McQueen, looked rather like fatigues, and recalled the palette of her other famous jacket, with its quick message of fast-fashion fascism: “I REALLY DON’T CARE DO U?”
You know the thing about Melania by now. Profundity is wrung from her vapidity, messages decoded from the tea leaves of her rote silence. Belief in her moral grain, faith in the fable in which she is the innocent immigrant who has tumbled into an accursed set of circumstances, is, for some, the last thing standing in the way of full-on nihilism. The story of her R.N.C. address, then, is less about what streamed from the teleprompter than the trap it laid for the D.C. press. Already, the Washington Post has noted that Melania’s speech “emphasized her empathy, which only highlighted the president’s lack of it.”
Groping in the dark banality of the address, one can agree that Melania did provide a superficial counter to her husband. But one gets the sense that Melania Trump does not appreciate the custodial role. Generally emotionless throughout her twenty-six-minute address, she offered a careful appraisal of the state of the nation, admitting the “harsh reality” of “racial unrest in our country,” and extending sympathy to Americans who have lost loved ones and livelihoods to the pandemic. She also freely recalled her childhood in the Communist state of Slovenia, and even spoke, notionally, of Islam, all while her husband maintains his Muslim ban. The exploitative speech, like the Convention as a whole, was tasked with conjuring an alternative interpretation of Trumpian fascism. As she has before, Melania claimed her husband’s incivility to be a form of passionate patriotism. At the same time, she acted as a kind of quiet, maternal foil to the rest of the R.N.C.’s overactive bombast, with its vision of a world in which COVID-19 has been vanquished and the economy is roaring. Her delivery was shy, and the words did not seem fully processed or digested by their speaker. Still, it was by far Melania’s best political performance since her entrance into public life.
At this year’s R.N.C., the scions of the Trump family are no longer vehemently attesting to the character of the king, as they did at the 2016 Convention. The G.O.P. has produced instead a number of convincing “regular” women and people of color to exert that soft power, which is to say: the propaganda has grown more sophisticated. Take, for instance, the cheap eloquence of the Kentucky attorney general, Daniel Cameron, a Black Republican who seems poised for a bright political future; his invocation of the death of Breonna Taylor might cause a viewer to forget that he is the figure who has declined to bring charges against her killers. When the Trump children do emerge, they are on the offense. In her short speech, Tiffany, dressed in Tiffany blue, claimed to know firsthand the uncertainty of young voters right now, marshalling her age and the fact that she recently graduated from law school as points of commonality. Eric Trump blared on about his father’s acumen; Donald Trump, Jr., on Monday night, was worse at hiding the desperation, resorting to a convoluted Loch Ness analogy to jab at his father’s opponent.
The G.O.P. is having to spin several disasters of the Presidency at the same time. The team behind the Convention includes former producers of “The Apprentice,” and they have resorted to some old tricks. The aesthetic of the week has alternated between fascist soap opera and fascist game show. The President is televising shows of fealty, making the White House his studio: the host invites in people who had formerly been held hostage, and they thank him profusely for freeing them. I had a physical reaction to the stunt of Trump pardoning a tearful Jon Ponder, a former felon who grew up believing that the police “were my enemy,” which aired two days after police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot Jacob Blake, a young Black father, seven times in the back. So, too, while watching the President host a naturalization ceremony, in which five grateful immigrants got their prize of citizenship. Of course, it is only ever Trump who wins.
In conjuring the image of herself as charitable First Lady, hopping the African continent to learn about the slave trade, Melania is playing that game, too, mirroring exactly her husband’s farce of magnanimity. As she tentatively maneuvered the topic of the nation’s unavoidable racism, proclaiming that our “diverse and storied history is what makes our country strong,” pundits online immediately produced the infamous interview, from 2011, of Melania questioning the birthplace of Barack Obama. It is easy, and also morally correct, to call out the First Lady’s special hypocrisy. What matters, of course, isn’t what I saw, or what the viewers on CNN or MSNBC saw, either.


newyorker--2020-08-26--Hundreds of R.N.C. Attendees Test Positive for Delusion

CHARLOTTE ( The Borowitz Report ) —An outbreak hit the 2020 Republican National Convention this week as hundreds of attendees tested positive for delusion .
While public-health experts have yet to determine the extent of the outbreak , the episodes of attendees exhibiting magical thinking bordering on the hallucinatory appear to be widespread .
Davis Logsdon , who studies delusional epidemics at the University of Minnesota ’ s School of Medicine , said that multiple R.N.C .
participants professed to see things “ that are not actually there , ” such as a strong economy , a successful coronavirus response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kindness .
In another worrying symptom , Logsdon said that attendees who tested positive were unable to see things that were clearly in their line of vision .
“ One participant on Monday was shouting for more than six minutes despite the presence of a microphone inches away from her , ” he said .
While scientists tried to get their arms around the extent of the outbreak , containing the spread of delusion at the R.N.C .
will be “ challenging , ” Logsdon warned .
“ The most successful treatment for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have built up an immunity to those over the course of many years , ” he said .

CHARLOTTE (The Borowitz Report)—An outbreak hit the 2020 Republican National Convention this week as hundreds of attendees tested positive for delusion.
While public-health experts have yet to determine the extent of the outbreak, the episodes of attendees exhibiting magical thinking bordering on the hallucinatory appear to be widespread.
Davis Logsdon, who studies delusional epidemics at the University of Minnesota’s School of Medicine, said that multiple R.N.C. participants professed to see things “that are not actually there,” such as a strong economy, a successful coronavirus response, and an immigration policy brimming with kindness.
In another worrying symptom, Logsdon said that attendees who tested positive were unable to see things that were clearly in their line of vision. “One participant on Monday was shouting for more than six minutes despite the presence of a microphone inches away from her,” he said.
While scientists tried to get their arms around the extent of the outbreak, containing the spread of delusion at the R.N.C. will be “challenging,” Logsdon warned.
“The most successful treatment for delusion is facts, and these patients have built up an immunity to those over the course of many years,” he said.


Ask Your Doctor

Illness runs in the family , so ask your doctor before settling on a family .
You ’ ll want to make sure it ’ s right for you , which means consulting with a medical professional to determine that your mom is a good idea .
( Sometimes moms are conceptually good but risky in practice . )
Ask your doctor before getting fired .
Your doctor can let you know if you have a preëxisting condition that necessitates you not losing your insurance .
Once you have a doctor ’ s opinion , you ’ ll at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ physically devastating or just financially devastating .
Check with your doctor prior to allowing your employer-sponsored health insurance to run out .
See if there ’ s anything your doctor can do to delay the end of the month .
No , I personally can ’ t think of a way to slow the passage of time ( short of being in quarantine for six months ) , but doctors go to school for so long—maybe they can work something out .
Ask your doctor before paying out of pocket for health care @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percentage of people who are physically intolerant to going broke .
Whatever you ask your doctor , ask it via Zoom .
You don ’ t want to get sick , or—much , much worse—get your doctor sick .
Before letting the government deny you health coverage during a pandemic , ask your doctor if this is a good idea .
It ’ s always smart to check in with a medical professional , you know ?
If you ’ re aggressively swiping on Hinge in the hopes of finding a partner with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of acquiring an S.T.D .
or COVID-19 or carpal tunnel .
Ask your doctor before engaging in sexual intercourse with someone new .
Pausing a date to call a doctor is the best known method of birth control .
See if your doctor has a strong opinion on you moving to a country with free health care .
If your doctor thinks this is a good idea , check and see what it takes to gain citizenship in that country .
Check and see if other countries are letting U.S. citizens across their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ask your doctor before crying in desperation about the state of the world and your deteriorating mental and physical health .
Some people have found crying dehydrating , and your doctor might not recommend it for you .
Ask your doctor prior to contracting any sort of illness .
He or she will give you sound advice on which illnesses can be “ slept off ” ( such as depression , according to my parents ) and which require a medical intervention that you can ’ t afford ( such as being single @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
Your doctor can also advise you on which diseases are covered by health insurance and which are not .
This isn ’ t relevant to you , because you don ’ t have health insurance , but it is something to angrily tweet about .
Ask your doctor if it ’ s really like “ Grey ’ s Anatomy.
” I ’ ve always wondered .
Ask your doctor before developing a potentially fatal illness .
Many doctors will advise against it .
They may charge you seven hundred dollars for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ O.K.
, because it ’ s one of the few times you can really trust your health-care provider ’ s word .
They may also try to charge you eight hundred dollars .
If so , negotiate down to seven hundred and ninety-nine dollars .
Ask your doctor before dying .
You don ’ t have health insurance , but you can see if your doctor might do anything to make you more comfortable , just this once .
It ’ s the only time you ’ re going to ask , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before going to visit your doctor .
Doctor ’ s visits are notoriously expensive .

Illness runs in the family, so ask your doctor before settling on a family. You’ll want to make sure it’s right for you, which means consulting with a medical professional to determine that your mom is a good idea. (Sometimes moms are conceptually good but risky in practice.)
Ask your doctor before getting fired. Your doctor can let you know if you have a preëxisting condition that necessitates you not losing your insurance. Once you have a doctor’s opinion, you’ll at least know whether the firing is financially and physically devastating or just financially devastating.
Check with your doctor prior to allowing your employer-sponsored health insurance to run out. See if there’s anything your doctor can do to delay the end of the month. No, I personally can’t think of a way to slow the passage of time (short of being in quarantine for six months), but doctors go to school for so long—maybe they can work something out.
Ask your doctor before paying out of pocket for health care. You may be among the large percentage of people who are physically intolerant to going broke.
Whatever you ask your doctor, ask it via Zoom. You don’t want to get sick, or—much, much worse—get your doctor sick.
Before letting the government deny you health coverage during a pandemic, ask your doctor if this is a good idea. It’s always smart to check in with a medical professional, you know?
If you’re aggressively swiping on Hinge in the hopes of finding a partner with health insurance, you run the risk of acquiring an S.T.D. or COVID-19 or carpal tunnel. Ask your doctor before engaging in sexual intercourse with someone new. Pausing a date to call a doctor is the best known method of birth control.
See if your doctor has a strong opinion on you moving to a country with free health care. If your doctor thinks this is a good idea, check and see what it takes to gain citizenship in that country. Check and see if other countries are letting U.S. citizens across their borders. They’re not.
Ask your doctor before crying in desperation about the state of the world and your deteriorating mental and physical health. Some people have found crying dehydrating, and your doctor might not recommend it for you.
Ask your doctor prior to contracting any sort of illness. He or she will give you sound advice on which illnesses can be “slept off” (such as depression, according to my parents) and which require a medical intervention that you can’t afford (such as being single at thirty-two, according to my parents). Your doctor can also advise you on which diseases are covered by health insurance and which are not. This isn’t relevant to you, because you don’t have health insurance, but it is something to angrily tweet about.
Ask your doctor if it’s really like “Grey’s Anatomy.” I’ve always wondered.
Ask your doctor before developing a potentially fatal illness. Many doctors will advise against it. They may charge you seven hundred dollars for this advice, but that’s O.K., because it’s one of the few times you can really trust your health-care provider’s word. They may also try to charge you eight hundred dollars. If so, negotiate down to seven hundred and ninety-nine dollars.
Ask your doctor before dying. You don’t have health insurance, but you can see if your doctor might do anything to make you more comfortable, just this once. It’s the only time you’re going to ask, and they know that.
Ask your doctor before going to visit your doctor. Doctor’s visits are notoriously expensive.


newyorker--2020-08-26--Should You Send Your Child Back to School During the Pandemic?

The thing we call “ parenting ” is , to some extent , a long stretch of decision-making on behalf of another person .
It begins with questions about breast-feeding and sleep , and progresses through more complex topics like discipline , schooling , and sex education .
It can be unnerving to have such power .
We want to get it right for our sweet , vulnerable children , or at least be comforted by the thought that other people are getting it wrong .
People divide themselves into opposing camps : breast- versus bottle-feeders , gamers versus screen-free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ groups .
To this , the coronavirus has added a new dilemma : Are you sending your kid back to school in September ?
It ’ s an impossible choice—so much so that schools themselves are having trouble making a call and sticking to it .
For the past few weeks , as New York City schools rolled out hybrid learning plans , and the Mayor publicly battled with the teachers ’ union , I agonized over the question of whether or not to send my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter to day care .
After @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family quarantine , her father and I were getting desperate .
Our jobs are not compatible with running an in-home preschool .
We prepared to enroll her .
But , as the date approached , new information kept coming along that rattled my confidence .
The school in Georgia .
The camp in Texas .
The headlines proclaiming that children under five are walking around with a high “ viral load ” in their noses .
Was I sending us all off a cliff ?
Seeking reassurance , I logged on to Facebook @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in various mom groups .
“ Please tell me I ’ m not the only one torn on the decision , ” someone had written in a group for Brooklyn moms .
A torrent of anguish followed : “ This entire ordeal has set us back immensely.
” .
.
.
“ I feel like I am forced to choose between his health and his brain.
” .
.
.
“ Subway is going to be a filthy fiasco.
” .
.
.
“ The school has no clue how they are going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
.
.
“ We work from home and it ’ s impossible to do remote learning with 2 kids , do homework , and work !
” .
.
.
“ I have to lose my job for this [ ? ]
” The women ’ s- and family-health startup Maven , which connects users with health-care providers like pediatricians and ob-gyns , has seen a three-hundred-per-cent spike in the use of its mental-health services since the pandemic began .
Psychiatrists and coaches reported that while the causes were all over the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or anxiety that had been made worse by lockdowns—one of the biggest stressors was child care .
Maven commissioned a survey of a thousand parents and found that , as of August , sixty-three per cent of them were still undecided about whether or not to send their children back to school .
The company ’ s founder and C.E.O.
, Kate Ryder , told me , “ People are so stressed out that they ’ re not able to make decisions .
Couples are struggling .
Each partner might be on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it safe to ride the subway or not ?
” To help them , the company partnered with an expert in the realm of parental decision-making : Emily Oster , a health economist at Brown University whom I profiled last year , and whose books , “ Expecting Better ” and “ Cribsheet , ” on pregnancy and child-rearing , respectively , have won her Dr. Spock status among a certain type of new parent—the type likely to take “ metrics ” into account in their daily decision-making .
Oster has a knack @ @ @ @ @ @ @ audience .
Like Steven Levitt , the “ Freakonomics ” author , she applies an economist ’ s tools—and an economist ’ s cool-headed temperament—to unlikely and fraught topics such as pregnancy diets , potty training , and the day-care-versus-nanny question .
Naturally , she ’ s been in demand in the era of COVID-19 .
“ It ’ s been all COVID all the time , ” she told me last week from her home in Providence , where , like all working parents , she was taking calls while nominally supervising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ co-chaired Brown ’ s reopening task force and co-created a Web site , COVID-Explained , which provides an overview of medical and scientific knowledge about the virus .
She also writes a parenting newsletter , ParentData , in which she has been attempting to bring fact-based reasoning to parents grappling with the latest coronavirus news .
In general , she said , her readers ’ mental state is “ poor.
” “ I think the uncertainty is what ’ s really weighing on people , ” she said .
“ The world is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feels good about any of their choices.
” Some of our confusion has to do with our expectations .
“ There ’ s a bunch of people like the President—and even people who are not so terrible—saying , ‘ Kids don ’ t get it !
, ’ ” she explained .
So we ’ re stunned when we read about instances in which kids do get COVID-19 .
Meanwhile , “ The actual truth is nuanced .
Kids tend to have very mild infections .
They do not seem to get very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s not that they can ’ t get sick , but it ’ s rare .
The piece that is less certain is the degree to which they transmit the virus if they get it .
And I think our best data suggests that younger kids probably do transmit it less efficiently than older adults .
Although not everyone would say that was totally settled.
” In her recent writings , Oster has critiqued the methodology of that viral-load-in-the-nose study and questioned its usefulness for school-opening decisions .
Instead , she gives more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which found that young children transmit the virus within households at very low rates .
When the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children ’ s Hospital Association issued a report saying that almost a hundred thousand kids had tested positive for the virus in the last two weeks of July , she told me , “ People were like , ‘ Oh , my God .
This is such terrible news .
I thought that kids didn ’ t get it !
’ It ’ s interesting .
I talked to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a specialist in pediatric infectious disease , and he was , like , ‘ I read that headline as reassuring .
Look at how many kids got it , and not that many of them were hospitalized !
’ ” In her newsletter , she wrote , “ Conclusion : please do not panic every time there is a scary headline .
Breathe , read the context , and think about what we learn.
” Back in the spring , Oster was fielding a lot of e-mails from readers begging for help with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic : Is it safe for us to get a babysitter ?
To go to the grocery store when we have a newborn at home ?
To have a playdate with the neighbor ’ s kids ?
And the most common : Is it safe for us to visit the grandparents ?
She recalled , “ People would send these incredibly specific e-mails , like , ‘ I live in Washington , and my parents live in this part of Oregon , and we ’ d have to drive X hours to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
.
.
.
’ ” The answer was usually , “ It depends.
” Each family has a different set of options , preferences , and health risks .
She couldn ’ t write back to everyone , so she created a five-step decision-making system—a COVID-19-specific version of cost-benefit analysis , that goes like this :

The thing we call “parenting” is, to some extent, a long stretch of decision-making on behalf of another person. It begins with questions about breast-feeding and sleep, and progresses through more complex topics like discipline, schooling, and sex education. It can be unnerving to have such power. We want to get it right for our sweet, vulnerable children, or at least be comforted by the thought that other people are getting it wrong. People divide themselves into opposing camps: breast- versus bottle-feeders, gamers versus screen-free homes. Scuffles break out in Facebook groups.
To this, the coronavirus has added a new dilemma: Are you sending your kid back to school in September? It’s an impossible choice—so much so that schools themselves are having trouble making a call and sticking to it. For the past few weeks, as New York City schools rolled out hybrid learning plans, and the Mayor publicly battled with the teachers’ union, I agonized over the question of whether or not to send my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter to day care. After a few gruelling, sometimes-magical months of family quarantine, her father and I were getting desperate. Our jobs are not compatible with running an in-home preschool. We prepared to enroll her. But, as the date approached, new information kept coming along that rattled my confidence. The school in Georgia. The camp in Texas. The headlines proclaiming that children under five are walking around with a high “viral load” in their noses. Was I sending us all off a cliff?
Seeking reassurance, I logged on to Facebook, where I found even more desperation in various mom groups. “Please tell me I’m not the only one torn on the decision,” someone had written in a group for Brooklyn moms. A torrent of anguish followed: “This entire ordeal has set us back immensely.” . . . “I feel like I am forced to choose between his health and his brain.” . . . “Subway is going to be a filthy fiasco.” . . . “The school has no clue how they are going to clean and with what products.” . . . “We work from home and it’s impossible to do remote learning with 2 kids, do homework, and work!” . . . “I have to lose my job for this[?]”
The women’s- and family-health startup Maven, which connects users with health-care providers like pediatricians and ob-gyns, has seen a three-hundred-per-cent spike in the use of its mental-health services since the pandemic began. Psychiatrists and coaches reported that while the causes were all over the map—unemployment, marital problems, existing depression or anxiety that had been made worse by lockdowns—one of the biggest stressors was child care. Maven commissioned a survey of a thousand parents and found that, as of August, sixty-three per cent of them were still undecided about whether or not to send their children back to school. The company’s founder and C.E.O., Kate Ryder, told me, “People are so stressed out that they’re not able to make decisions. Couples are struggling. Each partner might be on a different side of questions like, is it safe to ride the subway or not?”
To help them, the company partnered with an expert in the realm of parental decision-making: Emily Oster, a health economist at Brown University whom I profiled last year, and whose books, “Expecting Better” and “Cribsheet,” on pregnancy and child-rearing, respectively, have won her Dr. Spock status among a certain type of new parent—the type likely to take “metrics” into account in their daily decision-making. Oster has a knack for interpreting scientific data for a broad audience. Like Steven Levitt, the “Freakonomics” author, she applies an economist’s tools—and an economist’s cool-headed temperament—to unlikely and fraught topics such as pregnancy diets, potty training, and the day-care-versus-nanny question.
Naturally, she’s been in demand in the era of COVID-19. “It’s been all COVID all the time,” she told me last week from her home in Providence, where, like all working parents, she was taking calls while nominally supervising a five-year-old and a nine-year-old. She co-chaired Brown’s reopening task force and co-created a Web site, COVID-Explained, which provides an overview of medical and scientific knowledge about the virus. She also writes a parenting newsletter, ParentData, in which she has been attempting to bring fact-based reasoning to parents grappling with the latest coronavirus news. In general, she said, her readers’ mental state is “poor.” “I think the uncertainty is what’s really weighing on people,” she said. “The world is very confusing right now. No one feels good about any of their choices.”
Some of our confusion has to do with our expectations. “There’s a bunch of people like the President—and even people who are not so terrible—saying, ‘Kids don’t get it!,’ ” she explained. So we’re stunned when we read about instances in which kids do get COVID-19. Meanwhile, “The actual truth is nuanced. Kids tend to have very mild infections. They do not seem to get very sick in most cases. It’s not that they can’t get sick, but it’s rare. The piece that is less certain is the degree to which they transmit the virus if they get it. And I think our best data suggests that younger kids probably do transmit it less efficiently than older adults. Although not everyone would say that was totally settled.”
In her recent writings, Oster has critiqued the methodology of that viral-load-in-the-nose study and questioned its usefulness for school-opening decisions. Instead, she gives more credence to a large South Korean study, which found that young children transmit the virus within households at very low rates. When the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association issued a report saying that almost a hundred thousand kids had tested positive for the virus in the last two weeks of July, she told me, “People were like, ‘Oh, my God. This is such terrible news. I thought that kids didn’t get it!’ It’s interesting. I talked to a pediatrician, a guy who’s a specialist in pediatric infectious disease, and he was, like, ‘I read that headline as reassuring. Look at how many kids got it, and not that many of them were hospitalized!’ ” In her newsletter, she wrote, “Conclusion: please do not panic every time there is a scary headline. Breathe, read the context, and think about what we learn.”
Back in the spring, Oster was fielding a lot of e-mails from readers begging for help with the daily conundrums that come up during the pandemic: Is it safe for us to get a babysitter? To go to the grocery store when we have a newborn at home? To have a playdate with the neighbor’s kids? And the most common: Is it safe for us to visit the grandparents? She recalled, “People would send these incredibly specific e-mails, like, ‘I live in Washington, and my parents live in this part of Oregon, and we’d have to drive X hours to see them and stop at three restaurants. . . .’ ” The answer was usually, “It depends.” Each family has a different set of options, preferences, and health risks. She couldn’t write back to everyone, so she created a five-step decision-making system—a COVID-19-specific version of cost-benefit analysis, that goes like this:


newyorker--2020-08-26--Why Hurricane Katrina Was Not a Natural Disaster

When we came home to New Orleans for the first time after Hurricane Katrina , over Thanksgiving weekend of 2005 , my then three-year-old son , looking out the window on the drive in from the airport , said , “ You told me we were going to New Orleans , but now we ’ re in Iraq.
” This was three months after the storm hit .
The floodwaters had receded , the Superdome had emptied , the national press had left , and we weren ’ t anywhere near the city ’ s most famous devastated neighborhood , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saw was a landscape of abandoned buildings , moldy refrigerators set out on sidewalks , downed trees and electrical wires , and a thick impasto of mud covering everything .
Even now , fifteen years after Katrina , New Orleans has not fully recovered , in population and otherwise .
By the standards of one ’ s middle-school geography class , New Orleans ought to be one of America ’ s most prosperous cities , instead of one of its poorest .
It is the natural port for the vast interior of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Appalachians .
In its immediate vicinity are many natural resources : rich soil for growing rice and sugarcane , and plenty of cotton , sulfur , seafood , and , beginning in the early twentieth century , oil .
Then there are the city ’ s celebrated charms—the food , the music , the generally soft , seductive atmosphere .
But New Orleans peaked , relative to other American cities , back in 1840 , and has been losing ground ever since .
It looks today like an especially severe example of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extraction was based originally on slavery—antebellum New Orleans was the country ’ s leading marketplace for the buying and selling of humans—and then on Jim Crow , which generated a system of exploitation that pervades every local institution , as well as a deep , evidently permanent mistrust between the races .
And then there is New Orleans ’ s relationship to nature .
Half of the city is below sea level ; only a relatively small portion , the section that was originally settled , is habitable by traditional definitions .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that shifts between river , marsh , swamp , and ocean .
Katrina was only one of a long series of hurricanes that have struck near the mouth of the Mississippi .
In New Orleans , civic monumentalism was always bound up in the racial order—consider the Confederate statues that the city built , in the early twentieth century , and only recently removed—but not every expression of it was explicitly racial .
Another important project , from the same period , was the creation of an elaborate system of drains and pumps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Baldwin Wood , which was supposed to make the entire area within the great crescent bend of the river , all the way to the shore of Lake Pontchartrain , permanently flood-proof .
As Andy Horowitz , a young historian at Tulane University , writes in “ Katrina , ” his new history of the event , it was twentieth-century New Orleans—the part built after the drainage system was constructed—that flooded in the late summer of 2005 .
If there ’ s a standard Katrina narrative among non-New Orleanians , it runs something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ devastating as it was because of real-time official incompetence , especially by the George W. Bush Administration .
Its main victims were poor African-Americans , particularly in the Lower Ninth Ward , and today , thanks to the indomitable spirit of the community , the city has vibrantly come back to life .
By stretching the frame backward by a hundred years , and forward by ten , Horowitz presents a strikingly different story , and a more depressing one .
The main thrust of Horowitz ’ s account is to make us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ storm itself—as a consequence of decades of bad decisions by humans , not an unanticipated caprice of nature .
“ Usually , we imagine disasters as exceptions , ” he writes .
“ We describe them as external attacks , ahistorical acts of God , blows from without .
That is why most accounts of Katrina begin when the levees broke and conclude not long after .
But these stories have a denuded sense of what happened , why , or what might have prevented the catastrophe .
Somebody had to build the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaves readers with a strong sense that it ’ s only a matter of time before there is a similar disaster in New Orleans , and that , in whatever lull there is between now and then , things aren ’ t great .
Horowitz ’ s story begins with oil , which seemed like a bonanza when it was discovered in Louisiana , in 1901 , but which set in motion two long-running problems .
Almost immediately , the state government realized it could finance itself by taxing the oil companies .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ those days , “ states ’ rights ” may have been primarily code for preserving racial segregation , but it also meant considering distant offshore rigs to be on Louisiana property . )
It was during the era when oil revenues were flowing freely that the state ’ s grandest public buildings—the vast Charity Hospital , in New Orleans , and the state capitol building and the campus of Louisiana State University , in Baton Rouge—were built .
In 1950 , a landmark Supreme Court decision , which severely restricted the zone in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rigs , ended that party .
The state has never successfully developed another way of paying for a competent government .
The oil companies also ravaged southern Louisiana ’ s previously trackless freshwater marshes , by drilling and by building access canals that allowed saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico to flow in .
The result was a relentless , yearly loss of land—or , to represent more accurately what it looks like , “ land ” —and greater vulnerability to hurricanes .
A combination of civic boosterism and excessive faith in engineered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reclaiming swampland for housing , building canal systems for commercial ship traffic , and dredging spillways that were supposed to draw floodwater away from the city when the need arose .
These systems all failed during Katrina .
A severe hurricane in 1915 , Horowitz reminds us , caused relatively little damage and so enhanced New Orleans ’ s hubris .
But in 1965 Hurricane Betsy—which I lived through as a boy , huddled next to my parents , as far as we could get from any windows that might blow in—was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ century ’ s worth of misguided building .
The storm caused massive , sustained flooding .
Two hundred and sixty thousand people had to leave their homes .
Betsy coincided with the high-water mark of Lyndon Johnson ’ s Great Society ; Johnson immediately came to New Orleans to show his concern , and Louisiana ’ s leading politicians , then all still Democrats , demanded , and mostly got , generous federal emergency aid .
But it ’ s always easier to address a pressing crisis than to prevent the next one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without adequate flood protection continued .
An ambitious long-term hurricane-protection plan passed by Congress and signed into law by Johnson was never completed .
Katrina flooded out many white people as well as Black people , and , within Black New Orleans , many working-class and middle-class people as well as poor people .
That was because the largest wiped-out neighborhoods—Lakeview , Gentilly , New Orleans East—were places where New Orleanians of both races had moved to ascend the ladder by a step or two , often enabled by government-backed lending programs that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of flooding .
New Orleans ’ s extensive public-housing projects , all Black and all poor , were in older parts of the city , and mostly didn ’ t flood .
But the dynamic of recovery was all about race .
New Orleans is a Black-majority city .
The mayor , Ray Nagin , a Black businessman elected with more white than Black votes in 2002 , appointed an urban-planning committee , headed by a white real-estate developer , to guide the city ’ s recovery .
( Nagin was later convicted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) The committee soon unveiled a plan that entailed not rebuilding some of the Black neighborhoods that had flooded .
Many residents were outraged ; on the Martin Luther King , Jr. , holiday in 2006 , Nagin gave a speech disowning the plan and committing himself to rebuilding “ a chocolate New Orleans.
” He was reëlected a few months later , this time with more Black than white votes , and the idea of shrinking the residential footprint of New Orleans to something closer to what it had been a century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea was that every homeowner should get prompt and generous help in order to return and rebuild .

When we came home to New Orleans for the first time after Hurricane Katrina, over Thanksgiving weekend of 2005, my then three-year-old son, looking out the window on the drive in from the airport, said, “You told me we were going to New Orleans, but now we’re in Iraq.” This was three months after the storm hit. The floodwaters had receded, the Superdome had emptied, the national press had left, and we weren’t anywhere near the city’s most famous devastated neighborhood, the Lower Ninth Ward—but still what you saw was a landscape of abandoned buildings, moldy refrigerators set out on sidewalks, downed trees and electrical wires, and a thick impasto of mud covering everything. Even now, fifteen years after Katrina, New Orleans has not fully recovered, in population and otherwise.
By the standards of one’s middle-school geography class, New Orleans ought to be one of America’s most prosperous cities, instead of one of its poorest. It is the natural port for the vast interior of the country, from the Rockies to the Appalachians. In its immediate vicinity are many natural resources: rich soil for growing rice and sugarcane, and plenty of cotton, sulfur, seafood, and, beginning in the early twentieth century, oil. Then there are the city’s celebrated charms—the food, the music, the generally soft, seductive atmosphere. But New Orleans peaked, relative to other American cities, back in 1840, and has been losing ground ever since. It looks today like an especially severe example of the resource curse, because its economy of extraction was based originally on slavery—antebellum New Orleans was the country’s leading marketplace for the buying and selling of humans—and then on Jim Crow, which generated a system of exploitation that pervades every local institution, as well as a deep, evidently permanent mistrust between the races.
And then there is New Orleans’s relationship to nature. Half of the city is below sea level; only a relatively small portion, the section that was originally settled, is habitable by traditional definitions. The city is surrounded by an endless borderland that shifts between river, marsh, swamp, and ocean. Katrina was only one of a long series of hurricanes that have struck near the mouth of the Mississippi. In New Orleans, civic monumentalism was always bound up in the racial order—consider the Confederate statues that the city built, in the early twentieth century, and only recently removed—but not every expression of it was explicitly racial. Another important project, from the same period, was the creation of an elaborate system of drains and pumps, supervised by an engineer named A. Baldwin Wood, which was supposed to make the entire area within the great crescent bend of the river, all the way to the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, permanently flood-proof. As Andy Horowitz, a young historian at Tulane University, writes in “Katrina,” his new history of the event, it was twentieth-century New Orleans—the part built after the drainage system was constructed—that flooded in the late summer of 2005.
If there’s a standard Katrina narrative among non-New Orleanians, it runs something like this: the storm was as devastating as it was because of real-time official incompetence, especially by the George W. Bush Administration. Its main victims were poor African-Americans, particularly in the Lower Ninth Ward, and today, thanks to the indomitable spirit of the community, the city has vibrantly come back to life. By stretching the frame backward by a hundred years, and forward by ten, Horowitz presents a strikingly different story, and a more depressing one. The main thrust of Horowitz’s account is to make us understand Katrina—the civic calamity, not the storm itself—as a consequence of decades of bad decisions by humans, not an unanticipated caprice of nature. “Usually, we imagine disasters as exceptions,” he writes. “We describe them as external attacks, ahistorical acts of God, blows from without. That is why most accounts of Katrina begin when the levees broke and conclude not long after. But these stories have a denuded sense of what happened, why, or what might have prevented the catastrophe. Somebody had to build the levees before they could break.” He leaves readers with a strong sense that it’s only a matter of time before there is a similar disaster in New Orleans, and that, in whatever lull there is between now and then, things aren’t great.
Horowitz’s story begins with oil, which seemed like a bonanza when it was discovered in Louisiana, in 1901, but which set in motion two long-running problems. Almost immediately, the state government realized it could finance itself by taxing the oil companies. (As Horowitz points out, in those days, “states’ rights” may have been primarily code for preserving racial segregation, but it also meant considering distant offshore rigs to be on Louisiana property.) It was during the era when oil revenues were flowing freely that the state’s grandest public buildings—the vast Charity Hospital, in New Orleans, and the state capitol building and the campus of Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge—were built. In 1950, a landmark Supreme Court decision, which severely restricted the zone in which the state could tax offshore oil rigs, ended that party. The state has never successfully developed another way of paying for a competent government. The oil companies also ravaged southern Louisiana’s previously trackless freshwater marshes, by drilling and by building access canals that allowed saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico to flow in. The result was a relentless, yearly loss of land—or, to represent more accurately what it looks like, “land”—and greater vulnerability to hurricanes.
A combination of civic boosterism and excessive faith in engineered water-control systems led New Orleans to keep reclaiming swampland for housing, building canal systems for commercial ship traffic, and dredging spillways that were supposed to draw floodwater away from the city when the need arose. These systems all failed during Katrina. A severe hurricane in 1915, Horowitz reminds us, caused relatively little damage and so enhanced New Orleans’s hubris. But in 1965 Hurricane Betsy—which I lived through as a boy, huddled next to my parents, as far as we could get from any windows that might blow in—was a demonstration of the folly of a half century’s worth of misguided building. The storm caused massive, sustained flooding. Two hundred and sixty thousand people had to leave their homes. Betsy coincided with the high-water mark of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society; Johnson immediately came to New Orleans to show his concern, and Louisiana’s leading politicians, then all still Democrats, demanded, and mostly got, generous federal emergency aid. But it’s always easier to address a pressing crisis than to prevent the next one, so the pattern of continued development without adequate flood protection continued. An ambitious long-term hurricane-protection plan passed by Congress and signed into law by Johnson was never completed.
Katrina flooded out many white people as well as Black people, and, within Black New Orleans, many working-class and middle-class people as well as poor people. That was because the largest wiped-out neighborhoods—Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans East—were places where New Orleanians of both races had moved to ascend the ladder by a step or two, often enabled by government-backed lending programs that didn’t sufficiently appreciate the risk of flooding. New Orleans’s extensive public-housing projects, all Black and all poor, were in older parts of the city, and mostly didn’t flood. But the dynamic of recovery was all about race. New Orleans is a Black-majority city. The mayor, Ray Nagin, a Black businessman elected with more white than Black votes in 2002, appointed an urban-planning committee, headed by a white real-estate developer, to guide the city’s recovery. (Nagin was later convicted of taking bribes from city contractors.) The committee soon unveiled a plan that entailed not rebuilding some of the Black neighborhoods that had flooded. Many residents were outraged; on the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday in 2006, Nagin gave a speech disowning the plan and committing himself to rebuilding “a chocolate New Orleans.” He was reëlected a few months later, this time with more Black than white votes, and the idea of shrinking the residential footprint of New Orleans to something closer to what it had been a century earlier became disreputable. Instead, the idea was that every homeowner should get prompt and generous help in order to return and rebuild.
But that didn’t happen, either. A series of measures that would have provided enough relief to rebuild New Orleans completely either wasn’t enacted or proceeded at the leisurely pace that is customary in Louisiana. New Orleans has a large racial gap in resources—the Black poverty rate is triple the white poverty rate—so whites were able to move back more quickly and with less hardship. For a decade after Katrina, New Orleans was a whiter city than it had been before. That fed into a venerable tradition, in Black New Orleans, of suspicion of what white New Orleans might be up to. Back in 1927, when the Mississippi River flooded disastrously (because of heavy spring rains, not a hurricane), New Orleans’s white city fathers ordered the dynamiting of the levee below the city, in the hope of preventing flooding. Since then, the idea that breaches in the flood walls were not accidental has been common in Black New Orleans—and, in fact, Horowitz unearths some evidence that official decisions may have contributed to one of the major breaches, in the Lower Ninth Ward, during Hurricane Betsy. After Katrina, the spectacle of a Black refugee population in the Superdome, along with the short-lived plan from Mayor Nagin’s committee to wipe out some Black neighborhoods, revived these sentiments. And, on the white side of town, lurid stories about Black criminality, that ancient fear of white Southerners, circulated widely. So did wishful conversations about the possibility of New Orleans becoming a white-majority city again, as it hadn’t been since the nineteen-seventies.
Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans during what was, it’s now clear, the final period of the New Deal political order. In the South, people still looked to government to solve big problems, as long as racism wasn’t included on the list of big problems, and the Democrats, the party of government, still held power. By the time Katrina hit, the Democrats had moved left on race and right on political economy, and the Republicans were in power nationally. Three major public institutions, all serving mainly Black clienteles, withstood the storm physically but not politically: Charity Hospital, the large-scale housing projects, and the unionized, government-managed public-school system. All were replaced by smaller, more privatized, more gentrified alternatives. Instead of Charity, New Orleans has the new, lower-capacity University Medical Center; instead of the projects, lower-density, more middle-class housing developments; instead of the old public schools, the country’s most extensive charter-school system, with mainly Black students and mainly white teachers. One could see these changes as evidence of civic rebirth, but it would be fairer to say that they represent a reordering of priorities, an embrace of a different political vision, and a racial recalibration. As Horowitz mordantly puts it, “What came to be known as New Orleans’s ‘recovery’ involved . . . a decision to evict people from their homes in the face of a homelessness crisis, a decision to close the hospital in the midst of an epidemic of suicide, and a decision to help children by firing their parents.”
New Orleans is a little corner of some other culture grafted onto the periphery of the United States. Horowitz points out that the state of Louisiana, in the last census before Katrina, had the lowest level of population mobility in the United States. Almost ninety per cent of Black New Orleanians had been born there, as compared with sixty per cent of Black Atlantans. The standard American idea of leaving an impoverished, provincial place to find opportunity elsewhere just doesn’t play in New Orleans: people who choose to make their lives elsewhere are the subject of hushed, sorrowful conversations, as if they had been banished because of some kind of disgrace. Just about everybody had to leave New Orleans for at least a few weeks after Katrina. If New Orleanians had been cost-benefit-calculating androids, a great many of them would have realized that it made sense to build a new life elsewhere. But the preference to return was strong, for both whites and Blacks and in all income categories. Did people imagine that they were coming back to a different New Orleans, or did they understand the essential bargain? Dense family and neighborhood ties, and a rich local culture unattainable elsewhere in the United States, in exchange for a society that is essentially premodern in what it can offer many of its citizens?
It is not possible to make New Orleans completely hurricane- and flood-proof, but if one wanted to try there would be two over-all approaches. One would be to depopulate the city and deindustrialize southern Louisiana, creating a small-footprint eco-paradise—the New Orleans that nature seems to want. That violates the strong preferences of the residents and a poor area’s hunger for money. The other option would be to invest in a protective infrastructure so mighty that, at least plausibly, New Orleans could survive anything. After Katrina, as after Betsy, such plans were drawn up, but nobody wanted to pay for them. New Orleans had to settle for levee enhancements that fell far short of providing invulnerability to a Category 5 hurricane, and wound up returning to something not too different from its pre-Katrina state. The city is an irresistibly alluring place that does far better by its white citizens than its Black ones. Life is sweet when it isn’t tragic. Lodged somewhere in everyone’s consciousness is the knowledge that what happened in 2005 is going to happen again.


newyorker--2020-08-26--At the Republican National Convention, a Dubious Pompeo Speech for an Empty Trump Foreign Policy

On the second night of the Republican National Convention , Secretary of State Mike Pompeo , who is widely known in Washington to have his own Presidential ambitions , broke with long-standing diplomatic tradition and delivered a glowing speech about Donald Trump ’ s “ bold initiatives ” in “ nearly every corner of the world.
” Speaking from the rooftop of a Jerusalem hotel , while on a taxpayer-funded trip through the Middle East , Pompeo praised the President for exposing China ’ s “ predatory aggression , ” getting North Korea to the negotiating table , withdrawing from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent diplomatic opening between Israel and the United Arab Emirates .
Yet what was most striking about the surprisingly stiff and skimpy speech was how much Trump hasn ’ t done in four years—and even that at a cost .
He ’ s devastated America ’ s reputation globally .
He ’ s done little to confront dictators or counter competing powers .
And his policies on the defining issues of our time are too often empty , even illusory .
In 2020 , America is a shell of the nation it once @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump seeks reëlection , some of the toughest criticism on his foreign policy is from other Republicans , including a scathing joint condemnation last week by seventy-five senior Republican officials from four Administrations .
“ Without question , Trump has denigrated our standing with friends and with foes .
They all think less of us , ” Richard Armitage , one of the signatories , and the Deputy Secretary of State during the George W. Bush Administration and Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration , told me .
“ Our standing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end of the Cold War and probably not since before World War Two .
.
.
.
People don ’ t really care about us .
They ’ re so over us because of this guy.
” Long-standing American principles and policies shared by both parties—promoting democracy , defending human rights , containing aggression , and addressing climate change , migration , and public health—have been discarded or ignored .
As Pompeo spoke from Jerusalem—a transparent appeal to Trump ’ s evangelical base and a boost to Pompeo ’ s own Presidential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a coma , in intensive care from poisoning .
Trump has remained largely silent on what German doctors claim was clearly an attempt on Navalny ’ s life .
Trump has also avoided questions about the ongoing popular protests in Belarus against Alexander Lukashenko , Europe ’ s last dictator .
Trump has done little to confront President Vladimir Putin on his most egregious aggressions , including Russian bounties reportedly paid to the Taliban for killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan .
Trump called the New York Times story “ a made-up fake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his reputation .
Putin is running rampant and penetrating deeper into Europe , the Middle East , and Africa , but Trump still has illusions of befriending and transforming the former K.G.B .
operative .
“ Trump ’ s Russia policy has been a complete and utter failure , ” Richard Burt , the chief U.S. negotiator in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the Soviet Union , during the George H. W. Bush Administration , told me .
“ Putin has gotten away with whatever he wants.
” Trump hasn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Xi Jinping , either .
His effort to rebalance relations with a country that is now America ’ s main economic competitor has tanked since the two nations signed Phase I of a trade deal , designed to lower tariffs , earlier this year .
“ I had a great relationship with President Xi , ” Trump told Fox Sports Radio this month .
“ I like him , but I don ’ t feel the same way now.
” Undeterred , Xi has increasingly used his military and economic muscle across @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clashed with India ’ s military in one of the worst escalations on their border in decades .
China has threatened Taiwan with nearby military drills , while engaging in standoffs with Malaysia and Vietnam in the South China Sea .
No diplomatic initiative has been bolder and no relationship stranger than the Trump bromance with the North Korean dictator , Kim Jong Un .
The relationship has fluctuated wildly and , like many of the President ’ s foreign-policy decisions , somewhat impulsively .
After their first meeting , in Singapore , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rally , “ We fell in love .
No , really .
He wrote me beautiful letters.
” But the skimpy four-point agreement they signed has gone nowhere since then .
Two years and two summits later , the two nations have still not even defined what “ denuclearization ” means .
“ On North Korea , Trump has achieved nothing , ” Armitage said .
“ The North Koreans have only increased their nuclear arsenal.
” North Korea is far more dangerous today than when Trump took office .
Despite its promise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remains of fifty-five soldiers—of the more than five thousand Americans still missing—who were killed in a war that ended in 1953 .
Trump ’ s penchant for dictators—often over allies—extends beyond Putin , Xi , and Kim .
Trump also counts notorious political thugs , including the Egyptian President , Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ; the Philippines ’ President , Rodrigo Duterte ; and the Saudi crown prince , Mohammed bin Salman , who was linked to the assassination of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi , as good friends .
Meanwhile , he has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Justin Trudeau , is “ very dishonest and weak ” and has publicly embarrassed the French President , Emmanuel Macron , over low public-opinion polls .
According to the former national-security adviser John Bolton , Trump described the European Union as “ worse than China , only smaller.
” He has been particularly mean , to the point of sadistic , in calls with female leaders , including to the German Chancellor , Angela Merkel , CNN reported in June .
Trump allegedly called her “ stupid ” and suggested that she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russians.
” Trump ’ s biggest bungle is on Iran policy—at a profound cost to America ’ s alliances and to future attempts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons .
His decision , in 2018 , to abandon the nuclear deal , brokered by the world ’ s six major powers and endorsed unanimously by the U.N. Security Council , has not brought the theocracy back to the negotiating table .
Tehran has responded by breaching its commitments in the accord five times to illustrate the costs of pressuring Iran .
Diplomatic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brinksmanship .
Trump ’ s go-it-alone policy with Iran has , in turn , produced the deepest transatlantic rift since the Second World War .
America ’ s isolation was showcased on August 14th , when Trump ’ s proposal to indefinitely extend an arms embargo on the Islamic Republic was roundly rejected by the U.N. Security Council .
Of the fifteen rotating members , only one voted with Washington .
Eleven countries , including close European allies , abstained .
The Administration countered by invoking so-called snapback sanctions on Iran—one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had abandoned and claimed not to be party to anymore .
“ It achieves absolutely nothing in terms of dealing with the problem at hand , ” a senior European official told a small group of journalists last week .
“ This has no existence in the real world other than the parallel legal universe that the U.S. has created.
” He warned of the long-term costs to America ’ s standing .
“ It underlines U.S. isolation , which we don ’ t think is a good thing .
”

On the second night of the Republican National Convention, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is widely known in Washington to have his own Presidential ambitions, broke with long-standing diplomatic tradition and delivered a glowing speech about Donald Trump’s “bold initiatives” in “nearly every corner of the world.” Speaking from the rooftop of a Jerusalem hotel, while on a taxpayer-funded trip through the Middle East, Pompeo praised the President for exposing China’s “predatory aggression,” getting North Korea to the negotiating table, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, and the recent diplomatic opening between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Yet what was most striking about the surprisingly stiff and skimpy speech was how much Trump hasn’t done in four years—and even that at a cost. He’s devastated America’s reputation globally. He’s done little to confront dictators or counter competing powers. And his policies on the defining issues of our time are too often empty, even illusory. In 2020, America is a shell of the nation it once was on the global stage.
As Trump seeks reëlection, some of the toughest criticism on his foreign policy is from other Republicans, including a scathing joint condemnation last week by seventy-five senior Republican officials from four Administrations. “Without question, Trump has denigrated our standing with friends and with foes. They all think less of us,” Richard Armitage, one of the signatories, and the Deputy Secretary of State during the George W. Bush Administration and Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration, told me. “Our standing globally has not been this low since the end of the Cold War and probably not since before World War Two. . . . People don’t really care about us. They’re so over us because of this guy.”
Long-standing American principles and policies shared by both parties—promoting democracy, defending human rights, containing aggression, and addressing climate change, migration, and public health—have been discarded or ignored. As Pompeo spoke from Jerusalem—a transparent appeal to Trump’s evangelical base and a boost to Pompeo’s own Presidential ambitions—the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny lay in a coma, in intensive care from poisoning. Trump has remained largely silent on what German doctors claim was clearly an attempt on Navalny’s life. Trump has also avoided questions about the ongoing popular protests in Belarus against Alexander Lukashenko, Europe’s last dictator.
Trump has done little to confront President Vladimir Putin on his most egregious aggressions, including Russian bounties reportedly paid to the Taliban for killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Trump called the New York Times story “a made-up fake news media hoax” designed to damage his reputation. Putin is running rampant and penetrating deeper into Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, but Trump still has illusions of befriending and transforming the former K.G.B. operative. “Trump’s Russia policy has been a complete and utter failure,” Richard Burt, the chief U.S. negotiator in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the Soviet Union, during the George H. W. Bush Administration, told me. “Putin has gotten away with whatever he wants.”
Trump hasn’t done well with China’s President, Xi Jinping, either. His effort to rebalance relations with a country that is now America’s main economic competitor has tanked since the two nations signed Phase I of a trade deal, designed to lower tariffs, earlier this year. “I had a great relationship with President Xi,” Trump told Fox Sports Radio this month. “I like him, but I don’t feel the same way now.” Undeterred, Xi has increasingly used his military and economic muscle across Asia. This summer, his forces clashed with India’s military in one of the worst escalations on their border in decades. China has threatened Taiwan with nearby military drills, while engaging in standoffs with Malaysia and Vietnam in the South China Sea.
No diplomatic initiative has been bolder and no relationship stranger than the Trump bromance with the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un. The relationship has fluctuated wildly and, like many of the President’s foreign-policy decisions, somewhat impulsively. After their first meeting, in Singapore, in 2018, Trump told a campaign rally, “We fell in love. No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters.” But the skimpy four-point agreement they signed has gone nowhere since then. Two years and two summits later, the two nations have still not even defined what “denuclearization” means. “On North Korea, Trump has achieved nothing,” Armitage said. “The North Koreans have only increased their nuclear arsenal.” North Korea is far more dangerous today than when Trump took office. Despite its promise, Pyongyang has still only returned the remains of fifty-five soldiers—of the more than five thousand Americans still missing—who were killed in a war that ended in 1953.
Trump’s penchant for dictators—often over allies—extends beyond Putin, Xi, and Kim. Trump also counts notorious political thugs, including the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; the Philippines’ President, Rodrigo Duterte; and the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who was linked to the assassination of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as good friends. Meanwhile, he has tweeted that Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is “very dishonest and weak” and has publicly embarrassed the French President, Emmanuel Macron, over low public-opinion polls. According to the former national-security adviser John Bolton, Trump described the European Union as “worse than China, only smaller.” He has been particularly mean, to the point of sadistic, in calls with female leaders, including to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, CNN reported in June. Trump allegedly called her “stupid” and suggested that she was “in the pocket of the Russians.”
Trump’s biggest bungle is on Iran policy—at a profound cost to America’s alliances and to future attempts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. His decision, in 2018, to abandon the nuclear deal, brokered by the world’s six major powers and endorsed unanimously by the U.N. Security Council, has not brought the theocracy back to the negotiating table. Tehran has responded by breaching its commitments in the accord five times to illustrate the costs of pressuring Iran. Diplomatic containment is gradually being converted into nuclear brinksmanship.
Trump’s go-it-alone policy with Iran has, in turn, produced the deepest transatlantic rift since the Second World War. America’s isolation was showcased on August 14th, when Trump’s proposal to indefinitely extend an arms embargo on the Islamic Republic was roundly rejected by the U.N. Security Council. Of the fifteen rotating members, only one voted with Washington. Eleven countries, including close European allies, abstained. The Administration countered by invoking so-called snapback sanctions on Iran—one of the provisions of the nuclear deal that it had abandoned and claimed not to be party to anymore.
“It achieves absolutely nothing in terms of dealing with the problem at hand,” a senior European official told a small group of journalists last week. “This has no existence in the real world other than the parallel legal universe that the U.S. has created.” He warned of the long-term costs to America’s standing. “It underlines U.S. isolation, which we don’t think is a good thing.”
Trump’s decision to rip up the Iran nuclear deal is one of at least eight treaties or global institutions that he has abandoned. The Administration has withdrawn from the World Health Organization, the Paris climate accord, UNESCO and the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Open Skies Treaty, which allows reconnaissance to verify arms accords, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty on nuclear weapons.
One of the biggest dangers under Trump is to the treaties that have prevented nuclear war. “This is Mr. Art-of-the-Deal, and look what he’s done on arms control. In his first conversation with Putin after taking office, Putin offered to extend the New START accord by five years. Trump had to cover the phone and ask Michael Flynn, who was then his national-security adviser, what New START was,” Burt, who also signed the Republican letter, told me. The accord—which stands for New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty—is an updated version of the process started by the Reagan Administration to verifiably reduce the size of the U.S. and Russian arsenals of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Extending the accord would have been to America’s advantage, Burt said. But Trump rebuffed Putin’s overture. “Arms control, which the U.S. and Russia have defined for more than half a century, is on the verge of collapse,” Burt said. “Since 1972, under Richard Nixon, we have had transparency and predictability on the two largest nuclear arsenals on the planet. We are now a hair’s breadth from losing that under Trump.”


newyorker--2020-08-26--“Tesla,” Reviewed: A Strangely Inert Bio-Pic of a Visionary Inventor

All genres are corrupt—they emphasize convention over personal inspiration—but the bio-pic is especially so , because it ’ s damned through literalism and infidelity alike .
So , for starters , Michael Almereyda ’ s “ Tesla , ” starring Ethan Hawke as the visionary but ill-fated inventor Nikola Tesla , is an admirably ambitious effort to break out of that double bind and reveal the contrivance on which the project depends—namely , a reliance on research to reconstruct details of a distant life while emphasizing the ( pardon the pun ) current perspective that makes Tesla a more prominent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his time .
That time , as defined in the film , runs from 1884 , when Tesla came to the United States to work for Thomas Edison ( with the mistaken expectation of working with him ) , to around 1905 , when his grandest project came to a halt and his scientific career , as a result , was cut short .
That inescapable element of research is defined in the film by a now-commonplace source of information , which the movie links to Tesla ’ s own far-reaching scientific imagination @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is narrated by one of the film ’ s main characters , Anne Morgan ( Eve Hewson ) , a daughter of J. P. Morgan and a friend and benefactor ( and even romantic admirer ) of Tesla ’ s .
Almereyda , who wrote and directed the film , includes Anne in the dramatic action , but he also wrenches her out of it and puts her onscreen , in a present-day studio space , in front of a MacBook , on which she calls up images from the Web ( seen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her points while referring to Tesla and other inventors of his time in terms of their Google results .
Anachronism is a crucial part of Almereyda ’ s vision ; he depicts Tesla as a visionary whose ideas and ideals leap over the limits of his own time and foreshadow , albeit impractically , major developments ( both technical and moral ) of twenty-first-century modernity .
The movie casts Tesla ’ s fundamental vision as global and his goals as humanistic .
Tesla ’ s advocacy and development of alternating current ( as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ direct current ) anticipates widespread electrification—the ability to transmit electricity merely with wires and transformers , at a far lower cost than the construction of local power stations ( as D.C. required ) .
Tesla ’ s mighty ( and costly ) experiments in wave-based electricity transmission—in wireless transmission that would turn the Earth itself into a universal and uniform transmitter—aim at bringing electricity and its benefits to the world , even to the most neglected of people in the remotest of regions .
He expresses these ideals to Anne , along with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arising from a worldwide network—something like the Internet—that would also transmit information and images wirelessly .
Strangely , Tesla ’ s world-spanning ambitions remain largely only implicit in the drama—they ’ re more thrilling to relate than they appear in the movie itself .
Rather , Almereyda depicts the passion of progress elsewhere : in the cavalier energy of Thomas Edison ( played by Kyle MacLachlan with a quietly brutal grandiosity ) ; the bluff energy of George Westinghouse ( Jim Gaffigan ) , who buys and markets Tesla ’ s A.C. system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ colossal wealth that he was contractually owed ; and the cynical energy of J. P. Morgan ( Donnie Keshawarz ) , who invests in Tesla ’ s ultimate grand experiment before cutting off its funding and dooming it to collapse .
By contrast , Tesla comes off as a pale prince , a distracted theoretician whose lofty ponderings , undertaken without regard for commercial concerns , allow him to be humiliated and cheated in every significant deal .
He speaks of his obsessive absorption in his own thought processes .
After Tesla rejects @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) at a key moment in his career—when he travels to the Columbian Exposition , in Chicago , in 1893 , which was electrified with his system—she wonders whether he would ultimately have triumphed if only he ’ d had “ someone sharp and smart at his side , an enlightened hustler ” to help him in business .
The movie sets Tesla up as a holy innocent who is ignorant not merely of financial considerations but of the world at large .
His introverted and inhibited manner ( betrayed only by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suggests an uncultured provincial lamb dropped into a den of world-sharpened lions .
This depiction cuts Tesla off from the intellectual roots of his principles—the Eurocentric , high-cultural heritage that he embraced and enjoyed .
It also deprives his scientific activity of the daily vitality , the turbulent physicality , that went into it .
One of the most appealing elements found in accounts of daily commercial life in the nineteenth century is its volatility , its vigor , its rapid decisions and sudden drastic changes , and the uninhibited presence of curious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ By contrast , Almereyda strangely yields to the artistic temptation to consider the past in the light of its now-superseded formalities and repressive mores—and , therefore , to depict it as inherently sedate and stuffy .
That air of repression confines the movie itself , rendering it bloodless and devitalized—and there isn ’ t enough intellectual or psychological energy to compensate .
On the other hand , the movie sets up the purity of Tesla ’ s theoretical life , his rarefied scientific exclusivity , as a drive that leads to his downfall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for his repudiation of sexual pleasure .
Anne ’ s narration calls attention to the marriages and families of Edison and Morgan—and , by contrast , to Tesla ’ s own vow of celibacy , adopted at the behest of Swami Vivekananda ( Jameal Ali ) , Tesla ’ s spiritual adviser , who counsels him that “ chastity is a path to enlightenment ” and that a scientist should never marry .
This is the tragic extra step of unworldly purity that causes Tesla to reject marriage to Anne—and to deprive himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mazes of business .
This perspective is the central element of modernity with which Almereyda infuses “ Tesla.
” The movie ’ s other cultural anachronisms—the brief transformation of a nineteenth-century party into a flashing-lights , electro-throbbing disco , and ( in one of the most cringe-inducing scenes in recent cinema ) Tesla ’ s karaoke performance of “ Everybody Wants to Rule the World ” —underline the contrast between the swing and swagger of modern uninhibitedness and Tesla ’ s self-imposed sexlessness .
Far from being depicted as an intellectual tangled up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overgrowth , he comes off here , too , as a guileless and passive victim , no less of the predatory ways of grand-scale capitalists than of the wiles of spiritual charlatans .
This , too , is a facile modern oversimplification that deprives the story of variety and the character of a complex inner life .
The movie ’ s style falls similarly between poles .
A handful of dramatic scenes are performed in front of green-screen photographic backdrops , lending them an air of technical artifice and theatrical abstraction that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There ’ s no inherent merit to naturalism or to its opposite , but the confidence and simplicity of the naturalistic scenes in “ Tesla ” turn its breaks into mere ornaments , mere nods toward the sort of dramaturgical bravado that ’ s found in other , bolder , and more comprehensive cinematic efforts at speculative history and biography .
There ’ s also an element of self-conscious media-centricity in “ Tesla , as in a scene ( expressly labelled by Anne as fictitious ) in which Edison introduces Tesla to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of movies , and in others showing the recording of an Edison cylinder ( he was a pioneer of sound recording , too ) , yet these , too , are mere touches of little consequence .
Moreover , Tesla ’ s experiments are shown to have involved two major construction projects , one in Colorado and the other on Long Island , that proved to be his downfall—they resemble movie sets and , like the making of movies , burn money along the way and risk requiring new infusions to realize their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came back , hat in hand , until no more resources were forthcoming .
Almereyda ’ s own admirably self-conscious attempts to grapple with the varieties of film form in historical drama come off mainly as gestures that bear little substance in their figures of style .
Yet , for all its midway-ness and compromises , “ Tesla ” remains a more audacious and more curiosity-sparking movie than almost all of the bio-pics that come from Hollywood studios .
At the very least , Almereyda poses the question of how we access the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reanimating history cinematically .
Most directors of bio-pics don ’ t bother .

All genres are corrupt—they emphasize convention over personal inspiration—but the bio-pic is especially so, because it’s damned through literalism and infidelity alike. So, for starters, Michael Almereyda’s “Tesla,” starring Ethan Hawke as the visionary but ill-fated inventor Nikola Tesla, is an admirably ambitious effort to break out of that double bind and reveal the contrivance on which the project depends—namely, a reliance on research to reconstruct details of a distant life while emphasizing the (pardon the pun) current perspective that makes Tesla a more prominent figure in retrospect than he was in his time.
That time, as defined in the film, runs from 1884, when Tesla came to the United States to work for Thomas Edison (with the mistaken expectation of working with him), to around 1905, when his grandest project came to a halt and his scientific career, as a result, was cut short. That inescapable element of research is defined in the film by a now-commonplace source of information, which the movie links to Tesla’s own far-reaching scientific imagination: the Internet. “Tesla” is narrated by one of the film’s main characters, Anne Morgan (Eve Hewson), a daughter of J. P. Morgan and a friend and benefactor (and even romantic admirer) of Tesla’s. Almereyda, who wrote and directed the film, includes Anne in the dramatic action, but he also wrenches her out of it and puts her onscreen, in a present-day studio space, in front of a MacBook, on which she calls up images from the Web (seen on large video monitors) to make her points while referring to Tesla and other inventors of his time in terms of their Google results.
Anachronism is a crucial part of Almereyda’s vision; he depicts Tesla as a visionary whose ideas and ideals leap over the limits of his own time and foreshadow, albeit impractically, major developments (both technical and moral) of twenty-first-century modernity. The movie casts Tesla’s fundamental vision as global and his goals as humanistic. Tesla’s advocacy and development of alternating current (as opposed to Edison’s marketing of direct current) anticipates widespread electrification—the ability to transmit electricity merely with wires and transformers, at a far lower cost than the construction of local power stations (as D.C. required). Tesla’s mighty (and costly) experiments in wave-based electricity transmission—in wireless transmission that would turn the Earth itself into a universal and uniform transmitter—aim at bringing electricity and its benefits to the world, even to the most neglected of people in the remotest of regions. He expresses these ideals to Anne, along with his anticipation of those additional benefits, arising from a worldwide network—something like the Internet—that would also transmit information and images wirelessly.
Strangely, Tesla’s world-spanning ambitions remain largely only implicit in the drama—they’re more thrilling to relate than they appear in the movie itself. Rather, Almereyda depicts the passion of progress elsewhere: in the cavalier energy of Thomas Edison (played by Kyle MacLachlan with a quietly brutal grandiosity); the bluff energy of George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan), who buys and markets Tesla’s A.C. system while ultimately cheating him out of the colossal wealth that he was contractually owed; and the cynical energy of J. P. Morgan (Donnie Keshawarz), who invests in Tesla’s ultimate grand experiment before cutting off its funding and dooming it to collapse.
By contrast, Tesla comes off as a pale prince, a distracted theoretician whose lofty ponderings, undertaken without regard for commercial concerns, allow him to be humiliated and cheated in every significant deal. He speaks of his obsessive absorption in his own thought processes. After Tesla rejects Anne’s help (and companionship) at a key moment in his career—when he travels to the Columbian Exposition, in Chicago, in 1893, which was electrified with his system—she wonders whether he would ultimately have triumphed if only he’d had “someone sharp and smart at his side, an enlightened hustler” to help him in business. The movie sets Tesla up as a holy innocent who is ignorant not merely of financial considerations but of the world at large. His introverted and inhibited manner (betrayed only by the frozen force of his fixed gaze) suggests an uncultured provincial lamb dropped into a den of world-sharpened lions.
This depiction cuts Tesla off from the intellectual roots of his principles—the Eurocentric, high-cultural heritage that he embraced and enjoyed. It also deprives his scientific activity of the daily vitality, the turbulent physicality, that went into it. One of the most appealing elements found in accounts of daily commercial life in the nineteenth century is its volatility, its vigor, its rapid decisions and sudden drastic changes, and the uninhibited presence of curious and rowdy throngs in public life. By contrast, Almereyda strangely yields to the artistic temptation to consider the past in the light of its now-superseded formalities and repressive mores—and, therefore, to depict it as inherently sedate and stuffy. That air of repression confines the movie itself, rendering it bloodless and devitalized—and there isn’t enough intellectual or psychological energy to compensate.
On the other hand, the movie sets up the purity of Tesla’s theoretical life, his rarefied scientific exclusivity, as a drive that leads to his downfall,by establishing it as the basis for his repudiation of sexual pleasure. Anne’s narration calls attention to the marriages and families of Edison and Morgan—and, by contrast, to Tesla’s own vow of celibacy, adopted at the behest of Swami Vivekananda (Jameal Ali), Tesla’s spiritual adviser, who counsels him that “chastity is a path to enlightenment” and that a scientist should never marry. This is the tragic extra step of unworldly purity that causes Tesla to reject marriage to Anne—and to deprive himself of her sharp-minded guidance through the treacherous mazes of business.
This perspective is the central element of modernity with which Almereyda infuses “Tesla.” The movie’s other cultural anachronisms—the brief transformation of a nineteenth-century party into a flashing-lights, electro-throbbing disco, and (in one of the most cringe-inducing scenes in recent cinema) Tesla’s karaoke performance of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”—underline the contrast between the swing and swagger of modern uninhibitedness and Tesla’s self-imposed sexlessness. Far from being depicted as an intellectual tangled up in the thicket of his own cultural overgrowth, he comes off here, too, as a guileless and passive victim, no less of the predatory ways of grand-scale capitalists than of the wiles of spiritual charlatans. This, too, is a facile modern oversimplification that deprives the story of variety and the character of a complex inner life.
The movie’s style falls similarly between poles. A handful of dramatic scenes are performed in front of green-screen photographic backdrops, lending them an air of technical artifice and theatrical abstraction that the rest of the film is missing. There’s no inherent merit to naturalism or to its opposite, but the confidence and simplicity of the naturalistic scenes in “Tesla” turn its breaks into mere ornaments, mere nods toward the sort of dramaturgical bravado that’s found in other, bolder, and more comprehensive cinematic efforts at speculative history and biography.
There’s also an element of self-conscious media-centricity in “Tesla, as in a scene (expressly labelled by Anne as fictitious) in which Edison introduces Tesla to the “kinetoscope,” a primal version of movies, and in others showing the recording of an Edison cylinder (he was a pioneer of sound recording, too), yet these, too, are mere touches of little consequence. Moreover, Tesla’s experiments are shown to have involved two major construction projects, one in Colorado and the other on Long Island, that proved to be his downfall—they resemble movie sets and, like the making of movies, burn money along the way and risk requiring new infusions to realize their conclusions. Like a filmmaker, Tesla came back, hat in hand, until no more resources were forthcoming.
Almereyda’s own admirably self-conscious attempts to grapple with the varieties of film form in historical drama come off mainly as gestures that bear little substance in their figures of style. Yet, for all its midway-ness and compromises, “Tesla” remains a more audacious and more curiosity-sparking movie than almost all of the bio-pics that come from Hollywood studios. At the very least, Almereyda poses the question of how we access the past, and of the viability of reanimating history cinematically. Most directors of bio-pics don’t bother.


newyorker--2020-08-25--Melania Trump to Read Passages from Her Best-Selling Book, “Becoming”

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —Melania Trump gave a sneak preview of her speech at the 2020 Republican National @ @ @ @ @ would be reading passages from her best-selling memoir , “ Becoming.
” “ I asked @ @ @ @ @ the best way for people to learn more about me ?
” Melania told reporters @ @ @ @ @ “ The answer came loud and clear : my book be best.
” Trump said @ @ @ @ @ from her book that describe her childhood in Chicago and her education at Harvard Law @ @ @ @ @ going to be introducing the American people to a Melania they never knew , Chicago @ @ @ @ @ said .
She said that , unlike in 2016 , she was not concerned about @ @ @ @ @ her R.N.C .
speech this year .
“ When they get low , we get @ @ @ @ @ .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Melania Trump gave a sneak preview of her speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention by revealing that she would be reading passages from her best-selling memoir, “Becoming.”
“I asked myself, what’s the best way for people to learn more about me?” Melania told reporters at the White House. “The answer came loud and clear: my book be best.”
Trump said that she had chosen passages from her book that describe her childhood in Chicago and her education at Harvard Law School.
“I am going to be introducing the American people to a Melania they never knew, Chicago lawyer lady,” she said.
She said that, unlike in 2016, she was not concerned about what critics might say about her R.N.C. speech this year. “When they get low, we get high,” she said.