newrepublic--2020-09-18--The Cult of Presidential “Leadership”

The Cult of Presidential “Leadership”

We live in an anxious society almost pathologically obsessed with leadership .
Self-help books package its secrets for frustrated middle managers .
Websites offer listicles of tips for how to make leaders of your children .
( “ Teach them to be winners , ” suggests Inc.com .
“ Surround them with leaders , ” offers Lifehack.org , threateningly . )
Universities offer undergraduate majors in the subject .
And every presidential campaign inspires countless stories about men and women making “ bold choices ” and taking “ decisive action.
” Journalists present these vanquishing heroes as great leaders of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the myth of presidential leadership being a natural by-product of a media industry preoccupied by speculations about the persona of the person in the Oval Office .
If Donald Trump came to power promising a fantasy of manly executive strength , then Joe Biden is selling a new brand of leadership .
Waging what Time called an “ empathy offensive ” after George Floyd ’ s death , the Biden campaign has consistently emphasized his moral and emotional traits over any ideological program : It ’ s his dignity and decency that will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” For liberals , leadership is what sets their candidate apart from the president : While the neophyte Trump is snarling , impulsive , and petty , the former Delaware senator and vice president exudes restraint and smiling bonhomie .
The contrast between Trump ’ s macho authoritarianism and Biden ’ s recent turn as soul-searching empath mixes two broad trends in how “ leadership ” has been marketed in the United States .
Nineteenth-century self-help manuals lionized “ men of industry , ” like Francis Pettit Smith , the designer of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ was not a great inventor , ” wrote Samuel Smiles in his 1884 book , Men of Invention and Industry .
What Smith had was “ determined tenacity , ” an aggressive trait that the average person could develop , much like the “ controlled neurosis ” Trump advised his own readers to adopt in The Art of the Deal .
If Trump is a throwback to the Great Men of Industry tradition , Biden embodies a more recent mode of leadership advice that emphasizes more feminized social traits .
In 2017 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ find “ that sweet spot between success and happiness , ” you have to be “ personal.
” Biden will “ elevate the voices ” of others , his campaign site assures us .
In 2016 , Joshua Rothman of The New Yorker remarked that our national faith in leadership “ survives , again and again , our disappointment with actual leaders.
” But it is precisely our disappointment in our leaders that keeps us coming back for more .
Presidential campaigns , like self-help books , trade in both despair and hope @ @ @ @ @ @ @ readers , even as they offer them faith that things will change—a combination that only works as a selling point so long as little ever does .
This is what the promise of “ leadership ” in American political rhetoric boils down to : a promise to transcend politics and transform the country without inconveniencing anyone .

We live in an anxious society almost pathologically obsessed with leadership. Self-help books package its secrets for frustrated middle managers. Websites offer listicles of tips for how to make leaders of your children. (“Teach them to be winners,” suggests Inc.com. “Surround them with leaders,” offers Lifehack.org, threateningly.) Universities offer undergraduate majors in the subject. And every presidential campaign inspires countless stories about men and women making “bold choices” and taking “decisive action.”
Journalists present these vanquishing heroes as great leaders of men, forged in crisis—their devotion to the myth of presidential leadership being a natural by-product of a media industry preoccupied by speculations about the persona of the person in the Oval Office. If Donald Trump came to power promising a fantasy of manly executive strength, then Joe Biden is selling a new brand of leadership. Waging what Time called an “empathy offensive” after George Floyd’s death, the Biden campaign has consistently emphasized his moral and emotional traits over any ideological program: It’s his dignity and decency that will redeem the “soul of the nation.” For liberals, leadership is what sets their candidate apart from the president: While the neophyte Trump is snarling, impulsive, and petty, the former Delaware senator and vice president exudes restraint and smiling bonhomie.


newrepublic--2020-09-18--The Generation That Was Exhausted

The Generation That Was Exhausted

Everyone hates millennials .
To Baby Boomers , millennials are lazy , entitled , spoiled , narcissistic , simultaneously stuck in our parents ’ basements and wielding enough economic clout to “ kill ” entire industries—from diamonds , paper napkins , and bar soap to department stores , golf , and Applebee ’ s .
To Generation Z , millennials are wine-guzzling solipsists , obsessed with “ ’ 90s culture , ” constantly complaining about the difficulties of “ adulting , ” endlessly striving for a stability that will never materialize .
Or , as one Gen Z-er put it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ they be 34 talking about ‘ i ’ m a hufflepuff ’ like grow up and do a line of coke already.
” Not even meriting a capitalization , we millennials—the generation born between 1981 and 1996 , give or take—are unmoored , disoriented “ to not be the youngest kind of adult anymore , ” as the novelist Lily King recently wrote of her 31-year-old protagonist , but also dismayed to find that we lack the social and economic security our parents had attained by the time they were our age @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vanguard of technological savvy , multicultural inclusion , and entrepreneurial pluck ; now we are the precariat : sad , lonely , and saddled with debt .
The olds are cruelly hoarding all the wealth ; the youths are leading the uprisings against gun violence and for the future of the planet ; and so many millennials are just exhausted .
This is the context for Anne Helen Petersen ’ s trenchant new book , Can ’ t Even : How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation , based on her ultraviral BuzzFeed article @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and scholar of media studies—argues that millennials , as a generation , are suffering from “ burnout , ” a psychological condition characterized by the collapse that follows overwork .
“ Exhaustion means going to the point where you can ’ t go further , ” Petersen writes , while “ burnout means reaching that point and pushing yourself to keep going , whether for days or weeks or years.
” “ Burnout ” is what Petersen realized she felt when , in the fall of 2018 , her editor at BuzzFeed suggested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a hard few months of reporting .
Petersen initially insisted she was fine , that she was just looking for her next project , but then she noticed that her to-do list never got any shorter .
The concept is a usefully flexible one .
It can describe the fry cook , late on his rent , forced to drive Uber during his off-hours to just maybe pay the bills .
It can describe the medical student , barely surviving on four hours of sleep a night even as she aces every test @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , trying desperately to monetize a hobby in between her thankless job and caring for her aging parents and managing the constant demands of modern parenthood .
But it can also describe the overeducated New York literary agent , possessing immense cultural capital but unable to find time to see their friends and trying not to think about the six figures of student loan debt threatening to destroy their carefully cultivated life .
Burnout is a one-word descriptor that Petersen argues is capacious enough to encapsulate an entire generation ’ s crisis—even if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different ways .
Over the course of nine bleak chapters , Petersen seeks to show , basically , how much worse things are for millennials than even they might realize .
While earlier generations have been similarly dismissed as ungrateful and spoiled , they enjoyed many societal safeguards that simply don ’ t exist anymore .
When the Baby Boomers came of age , they could go to college for a few hundred dollars a semester , more easily join a union , expect to earn a living wage , and join a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ workers in 1980 but just 16 percent in 2019 .
Yet Boomers went on to pull the ladder up after themselves , electing politicians who would “ protect ” the middle class with ( bipartisan ) tax cuts , welfare reform , “ right to work ” legislation , and a general decimation of public services .
By the time millennials were born , so many of the supposed guarantees that made up the mythic , midcentury “ American dream ” were gone .

Millennials entered a world that was beginning to embrace the notion that children had to work really hard in order to “make it.” If the childhoods of many of their parents were marked by play and independence, many millennial childhoods were carefully structured with playdates, music lessons, organized sports leagues, and constant academic striving. “Millennials became the first generation to fully conceptualize themselves as walking college resumes,” Petersen writes. With more and more jobs demanding college (and even graduate) degrees, and colleges becoming harder to get into, many millennial childhoods became stress-filled slogs. In 1940, just 4 percent of women and 6 percent of men over the age of 25 had earned college degrees; by 2018, that number had passed 45 percent. For many jobs, it started to matter not just if you went to college, but where. Millennial children sought the much-maligned “gold stars,” in other words, not because they were entitled, but because they justifiably feared falling into, or remaining in, poverty if they didn’t secure adequate educational credentials.
Millennial children sought the much-maligned “gold stars” not because they were entitled, but because they justifiably feared falling into, or remaining in, poverty.
But for the majority of millennials, college has not led to “the middle-class stability that was promised to both us and our parents.” In part, this is because college has become so expensive. According to one analysis from 2017, the average Boomer had to work 306 hours at the minimum wage to pay for four years of public college; the average millennial would have had to work 4,459 hours. Because this isn’t, you know, at all practical, millennials have taken on truly astounding amounts of student loan debt—at least 300 percent more than Boomers, permanently affecting their ability to buy homes (something millennials have only been able to do at half the rate of their parents).
The absence of stability is also attributable to the jobs themselves. Older millennials graduated directly into the 2008 financial crisis, an economic cataclysm of their parents’ making that fundamentally upended—or rather, devastated—the labor market. Attractive jobs disappeared—total employment dropped by 8.6 million, and the millennial unemployment rate doubled—and then reemerged a few years later, transformed into “gig” positions, such as freelance writing or driving for Lyft. Marketed aggressively as flexible and modern—work from your own laptop, or your own car, when you have time—these jobs were, in fact, contract labor, with few of the protections or benefits of boring, old, stable employment.


newrepublic--2020-09-18--Jared Kushner’s Psychopathic Incompetence

The Jared Kushner Phenomenon—how this unpleasant and widely loathed man , the perpetual son , became so important to the Trump administration—would be very interesting if it weren ’ t so deadly .
It would be funny , too , that he is so massively incompetent , so out of his depth that you can barely see the top of his unconvincing comb-over , if he weren ’ t one of the principal authors of the current pandemic crisis .
He is the least effective psychopath in American history , managing to be both ruthlessly dedicated to enriching himself and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has the malice of Cy Tolliver and the brains of E.B .
Farnum .
How fascinating : A Very Rare Type of Guy , right in our own White House .
A new piece from Vanity Fair has provided fresh evidence of how Kushner ’ s unique incompetence—most notably his maniacal commitment to “ free market ” principles—has hampered the federal response to the coronavirus .
According to the magazine , in March , Kushner told a meeting of officials tasked with responding to the pandemic that the federal government “ is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and it was instead “ up to the states.
” “ Free markets will solve this , ” Kushner reportedly said .
As always , there was also a self-serving , murderous political calculation , too : One attendee told the magazine that Kushner was “ less interested in finding a solution because , at the time , the virus was primarily ravaging cities in blue states.
” ( This did not pan out so well . )
The new story comes just a few months after a New York Times article detailed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of LinkedIn power-user crowd of wealthy twentysomethings with fancy degrees and absolutely no idea what they were doing .
Now we have a little bit of extra context : He did this because he really did believe the private sector is better and that the market would more efficiently allocate equipment .
This intuitively makes sense , after all .
A rabid belief in the sacred free market , exalted above all else , might be the only thing that can really explain what happened with this administration ’ s response to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not to help people were taken .
It certainly seems politically insane to do things like blocking the post office from mailing out free masks to every American household , or indeed generally allowing a deadly virus to spread unchecked right before a presidential election in which one of the two people who might lose happens to be the only person in America who ’ s stupid enough to employ you .
If you truly believe in letting the free market take care of things like nationally coordinating the distribution of personal protective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is “ begging ” for the government to take over , then perhaps you might also make this insane wager .
This is always the question with conservatives : Do they really believe this shit ?
There ’ s no shortage of vicious right-wingers in this town who came here dreaming of cutting Medicaid , people who wake up every morning and go to work to find new ways to rip food from poor children ’ s hands—all while pretending to believe that the free market is simply the best way of ensuring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ act like they don ’ t absolutely love that poor people die young for lack of insulin , or money , or hope .
They have been very successful in convincing the media that their ideology is not murderous , and actually is not an ideology at all .
It is just Common Sense .

This intuitively makes sense, after all. A rabid belief in the sacred free market, exalted above all else, might be the only thing that can really explain what happened with this administration’s response to the pandemic, and why so many decisions not to help people were taken. It certainly seems politically insane to do things like blocking the post office from mailing out free masks to every American household, or indeed generally allowing a deadly virus to spread unchecked right before a presidential election in which one of the two people who might lose happens to be the only person in America who’s stupid enough to employ you. If you truly believe in letting the free market take care of things like nationally coordinating the distribution of personal protective equipment, even when the private sector is “begging” for the government to take over, then perhaps you might also make this insane wager.
This is always the question with conservatives: Do they really believe this shit? There’s no shortage of vicious right-wingers in this town who came here dreaming of cutting Medicaid, people who wake up every morning and go to work to find new ways to rip food from poor children’s hands—all while pretending to believe that the free market is simply the best way of ensuring Freedom. They work very hard to act like they don’t absolutely love that poor people die young for lack of insulin, or money, or hope. They have been very successful in convincing the media that their ideology is not murderous, and actually is not an ideology at all. It is just Common Sense.


newrepublic--2020-09-18--I’m Living Under the Weight of Nearly Four Months of Back Rent

I left a job as a secretary at a local Pasadena church in January in order to start working independently as an interpretive translator .
My timing wasn ’ t the greatest .
By March , everything shut down .
The few clients that I had , because they were schools and churches , closed down right away .
I was scheduled to take the judicial interpreter test on March 19 , a job with a salary double what I was making as a church secretary , but that got canceled , too .
That ’ s when I knew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to be able to make my March rent .
I called my landlord and told them all the work has stopped for me .
I had always paid my rent before then .
But they sent me a form that included a repayment schedule and asked me to sign it—even though , by that time , Pasadena had passed an ordinance prohibiting eviction .
That ’ s when I immediately looked for assistance from the Pasadena Tenants Union .
With them , I came to the conclusion that I didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are both covered by this ordinance , which makes it clear that I owe the rent after the emergency is lifted .
Pasadena had a rental assistance program that they allocated a million dollars for , and I applied for that .
There were over 600 applications , and they could only help around 220 people .
I was put on a waiting list .
Then I applied to the Los Angeles County program .
They were flooded with applications , and it ’ s a lottery system .
I ’ m waiting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ next five days .
I won ’ t have a chance to take the judicial interpreters test , which was pushed back again earlier this summer , until maybe March of 2021 , but I ’ ve continued working when I could—when work was available .
I ’ ve been able to transfer some of the translator work that I was doing to Zoom calls .
Not everybody ’ s done that , but a couple of clients have been pretty consistent .
I also signed up to work as a census enumerator @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at least a couple months of a good—but temporary—paying job .
And I ’ m fully bilingual , Spanish and English , so I figured it would give me the chance to do work that ’ s meaningful and that is very much needed here in L.A. We only worked for three weeks .
I applied for unemployment .
I dialed the same number for days .
I finally got through and was able to get somebody to process an application for me .
My unemployment payment is $ 167 a week .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ through my translator clients , it gets cut off .
I see in the news that some folks think that that might be an incentive for people to stay home .
I ’ m thinking , “ Sure , of course it would.
” But I don ’ t see that as the problem .
The question we should be asking is , why is that such an easy choice ?
It ’ s because our salaries have not kept up with inflation for decades now .

I work as a volunteer now with Pasadena Tenants Union, doing a little bit of tenant counseling and interpretive translation for them. I’m going to turn 50 soon. A lot of the people that work with the PTU and organizations like it are younger people, in their twenties and thirties. And even though I am a progressive, I did have trouble at first with the things that I heard in the meetings. Like, when I first heard “Cancel rent,” I was like, Cancel rent? And there were also things like, “Down with the landlords” and “Let’s end this whole feudal system.” I know PTU isn’t going to save me or pay my rent, but it has changed the way I see this whole tenancy situation. I’m beginning really to understand what they’re trying to do, why they’re trying to do it, and the reasoning behind why it is that the housing system is unsustainable.
After all this—the unemployment, the census gig, the translator work—I was able to pay my March rent. But I am still behind on May, June, and July, and I owe half of September’s rent. What really worries me is what’s gonna happen next year. I may find more income sources; I may not. I may be able to take my test, which would greatly increase my income earning ability; I may not. I have consumer debt in the thousands. I also need to come up with my monthly rent. And as of now, I don’t have an answer for that. I honestly don’t.


newrepublic--2020-09-19--The Wildfires Changed How She Sees Life

The Wildfires Changed How She Sees Life

Close to 200 bushfires ignited in Australia in early October 2019 .
They torched nearly 15 million acres of land and destroyed more than 2,000 homes in the states of Victoria and New South Wales along the country ’ s eastern and southern seaboard .
Twenty-four people lost their lives , and an estimated one billion wild animals perished in the flames .
Carol Duncan wasn ’ t sure her father would survive .
She was in Newcastle , New South Wales , and her 83-year-old father , John Duncan , lived about six hours north , in the small @ @ @ @ @ @ @ called me around 3 o ’ clock in the afternoon to say that they were a bit worried about the approaching fire , ” she said .
Duncan tried to persuade her father to evacuate to the local school , but he and his partner were thinking of sheltering in a steel shed they used for storage , instead .
“ He believed that it wouldn ’ t burn down.
” Moments later , a local fire department posted advice to Twitter : All Rappville residents were urged to leave their houses immediately @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but his phone connection didn ’ t seem to be working .
“ I sent a tweet to the local fire service saying that my father was sheltering in his shed , ” said Duncan , a 53-year-old former radio journalist .
The deputy commissioner called her .
He “ asked me where my father was and said that they would radio up north to send some firefighting volunteers to rescue my father.
” They got him and his partner out .
The shed melted .

Duncan felt she had to change her life. She quit her latest profession as a digital communications specialist in Sydney to spend her time supporting her father and the other fire survivors. Being absent from her husband and two teenage boys five days a week didn’t feel right anymore.
“The fire was a catalyst to say to myself: ‘I just cannot be away from my family,’” she said. “My boys are 16 and 18. They are quite big, almost men, and I want to be with them when they are still around. Also, my mother-in-law wasn’t doing so well. Being away just wasn’t worth it.”
Duncan doesn’t recognize the country she grew up in. “I grew up with bushfires, but this wasn’t even a fire season yet,” she said. “As a child, we had over 100 degrees once in a summer. This year, we’ve had over 100 degrees in five to six consecutive days. Australia has been in a grip of drought and extreme heat for the last 10 years now, but the government has ignored all warnings and reports about the changing climate. Not too long ago, 30 leading fire chiefs advised the government about increased fire risk during the bushfire season. Even my father believes that the weather patterns have changed, even if he wouldn’t use the words ‘climate change.’ ... And people are angry with the government. They give millions to the coal industry instead of fire prevention. So people are fundraising and doing what they can to help bushfire and wildlife services.”


newrepublic--2020-09-19--The Consequences of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Death for American Democracy

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , the leader of the Supreme Court ’ s liberal wing and a trailblazer for women ’ s rights in the law , died on Friday at the age of 87 .
According to NPR , Ginsburg dictated a deathbed statement to her granddaughter earlier this month , one acknowledging what everyone had long known—that her death would send a destabilizing jolt through American politics if it occurred before January 20 , 2021 .
“ My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed , ” she reportedly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be fulfilled .
President Donald Trump is now poised to nominate a staunchly conservative jurist to fill the vacancy and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already stated he would hold a floor vote on that nominee , abandoning the election-year stance he pretended to take four years ago as Justice Antonin Scalia ’ s seat was left vacant .
But this is not 2016 , and the politics of this moment may turn out differently than most observers expect .
The most immediate impact of Ginsburg ’ s death will be felt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is now left with eight members for the immediate future .
Her death comes just three weeks before the start of the court ’ s October term .
Until the vacancy is filled , the court will be ideologically split between three liberal justices , Chief Justice John Roberts , and four reliably conservative justices .
Roberts played a decisive role as the fifth vote in almost every major Supreme Court case last term , including in a series of notable defeats for right-wing advocates before the court .
Now he is no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Most cases heard by the high court are not decided along the familiar 5-4 lines , of course .
But many of the most consequential ones are .
Without Ginsburg , the liberal justices will need two votes from the court ’ s conservative wing to prevail on any particular case .
That may be beyond their powers of persuasion in cases involving abortion , LGBT rights , and the Second Amendment .
The court is currently scheduled to hear a case that threatens to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Her death also complicates a more immediate wave of legal battles : those surrounding the 2020 election .
The Trump campaign is waging a high-dollar , high-stakes war in courts across the country over mail-in voting , citing phantasmal fears of voter fraud in an effort to limit access to absentee ballots during a pandemic .
Both campaigns also anticipate those battles to continue after Election Day as states try to count what ’ s expected to be a historic number of mail-in ballots .
Ginsburg ’ s absence raises the possibility that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in an election-related case if it falls along the usual lines—and that would only be if one of the conservatives breaks ranks with his colleagues in the first place .
Only two of the court ’ s current members , Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer , also participated in Bush v. Gore .

Across the street from the Supreme Court building, Ginsburg’s death will also upend the Senate. This is the second time in four years that a justice has died in a presidential election year. When Scalia unexpectedly died in February 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately vowed that the Republican-led Senate would not vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee put forward by Barack Obama. “Given that we are in the midst of the presidential election process, we believe that the American people should seize the opportunity to weigh in on whom they trust to nominate the next person for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court,” McConnell wrote in a Washington Post op-ed five days after Scalia’s death.
More recently, McConnell admitted that he would move forward with a Supreme Court nomination by Trump if a vacancy arose in 2020. He quickly confirmed that stance on Friday night, claiming his rule in 2016 only applied when the White House and the Senate were held by different parties. “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate,” he declared in a statement on Ginsburg’s death. McConnell’s claim that the “rule” only applies when the Senate and White House are controlled by different parties is, of course, a fig leaf; his goal is to maximize conservative control over the courts whenever and wherever possible.
How soon could a new justice be installed on the court? That depends on how quickly the Senate wants it to happen. Previous Supreme Court nominations took multiple months to work their way through the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation process. Ginsburg’s long illness and Trump’s ever-expanding Supreme Court shortlist means the White House may not wait long before announcing a nominee. In theory, the Judiciary Committee’s Republicans could also try to accelerate the process on their end, especially if Trump chooses a nominee who recently went through it for a seat on the lower federal courts. Senate Democrats have no procedural tools to block a nominee outright from getting a floor vote, though they will likely try to slow down the process.


newrepublic--2020-09-19--Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Failure of Democratic Politics

Ruth Bader Ginsburg , the pioneering lawyer , judge , and Supreme Court justice , died on Friday at the age of 87 .
Nominated to the Court by Bill Clinton in 1993 , Ginsburg ’ s legacy stretches back six decades .
One of the most profound and consequential legal minds in American history , Ginsburg played a pivotal role in advancing women ’ s rights , serving as the first general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union and founding the organization ’ s Women ’ s Right ’ s Project .
On the Court , she was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the right , playing a pivotal role on issues like gay marriage and gender equality .
It ’ s rare for Supreme Court justices to become celebrities .
But Ginsburg , particularly in her last decade , was a bona fide star—not just RBG but the Notorious RBG .
Ginsburg ’ s unexpected pop culture relevance reflected not only her enormous legal contributions , but also the strange , macabre place she occupied in contemporary politics .
She was a testament to the enormous progress that liberals have achieved over the past half-century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how tenuous that progress is .
She helped author legal victories that would have been unthinkable a generation earlier—victories that could quickly be undone if she were to suddenly fall ill or die , a possibility that has been fretted over constantly over the last decade of her life .
As she fought cancer repeatedly , she was someone liberals prayed for , a frail octogenarian who seemed to be preventing the dam of American democracy from breaking all by her lonesome .
Ginsburg ’ s celebrity reflected several interlocking trends .
One @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Another was the increasing calls for her to retire during Barack Obama ’ s second term to make way for another , younger justice who could continue her liberal project .
These two combined to turn Ginsburg into a “ badass , ” which was aimed at countering the argument that she was too old , that she should step aside—the Notorious RBG could rule forever .
The third trend was a growing obsession with celebrity among Democrats , as if celebrity itself could somehow transcend the grubby business of politics .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , this thinking went , the party could win the day on the back of its leading lights .
Those pleading for Ginsburg to retire were brushed off , or branded as sexists .
Meanwhile , the conservative machine installed a bunch of young jurists to the Supreme Court who might not be famous , but will be determining the fate of this country for years to come .

Ginsburg’s celebrity reflected several interlocking trends. One was her awesome, path-breaking judicial career. Another was the increasing calls for her to retire during Barack Obama’s second term to make way for another, younger justice who could continue her liberal project. These two combined to turn Ginsburg into a “badass,” which was aimed at countering the argument that she was too old, that she should step aside—the Notorious RBG could rule forever.
The third trend was a growing obsession with celebrity among Democrats, as if celebrity itself could somehow transcend the grubby business of politics. With figures like Ginsburg and Barack Obama, this thinking went, the party could win the day on the back of its leading lights. Those pleading for Ginsburg to retire were brushed off, or branded as sexists. Meanwhile, the conservative machine installed a bunch of young jurists to the Supreme Court who might not be famous but will be determining the fate of this country for years to come.


newrepublic--2020-09-19--Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the End of the One Great Woman Myth

In the last decade of the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , she saw herself crowned a feminist icon .
The memefication of the precedent-setting women ’ s rights attorney and judge first took root in 2013 , with a post quoting from her dissent in Shelby County v. Holder , the Supreme Court case which helped undermine the Voting Rights Act .
“ Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes , ” she wrote at the time , “ is like throwing away your umbrella in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The character of The Notorious RBG , then , emerged not just in her legal victories , but also , for some women , as a figure of solace in loss—in dissent .
It would be an era that ushered in a lot of such losses .
As state after state passed new restrictions on abortion , Roe vs. Wade felt more and more on the verge of meaninglessness .
All this coalesced into the towering figure of Ginsburg—literally , she was made into an action figure which raised more than $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ money to generously run several abortion funds—as women ’ s shield from those who would repeal Roe , which itself was held up as the paramount women ’ s rights concern .
For some time , though , reproductive justice advocates and those working on abortion funds had been sounding the alarm , urging abortion rights defenders to turn their attentions to the states , and to better resourcing the grassroots work of women of color in the places where a slate of new laws had made the right to an abortion , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , little more than an abstraction for poor women .
The disconnect between large , national reproductive rights organizations and their ( now publicly documented ) institutional racism was interconnected with the online media feminist shakeup that produced the RBG meme .
This image of Ginsburg was a triumph of branded feminism , and a bid—for some who drove it—to turn away from a feminist reckoning over race and class and entrust their freedom in one of the only women in the United States with a job for life .
What conception of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind of feminist movement , might have died with Ginsburg ?
Fear of the end of legal abortion rightly fuels many women ’ s mourning , a pre-wake for an idea of Roe as the most significant indicator of the status of women ’ s freedom .
But we still have Roe , now , and yet we are faced with the continued neglect and abuse of women in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers , with the police who kill Black women like Breonna Taylor with apparent impunity .
As tightly as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s as if she ruled on it , or argued it .
In the early 1970s , Ginsburg had hoped to bring a reproductive rights case before the Supreme Court herself , and had one : it didn ’ t involve the right to have an abortion , but the right to have a child .
She thought this would sidestep controversy and sexist biases , as she had in the past by successfully arguing sex discrimination cases on behalf of men .
The strategy would allow her to make the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she had been advancing bit by bit : “ The words of the 14th Amendment ’ s equal protection clause— ’ nor shall any state deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.
’ Well , that word , ‘ any person , ’ covers women as well as men .
”

That was the argument Ginsburg had hoped would secure reproductive rights. But Roe came before she got the chance to make it. “In a lecture she delivered in 1984, she noted the political significance of the fact that the Court had treated sex discrimination as a matter of equal protection but reproductive autonomy as a matter of privacy,” wrote Jill Lepore in The New Yorker in 2018, looking back at this fight. “Roe v. Wade sparked public opposition and academic criticism,” Ginsburg had said in her lecture, “in part, I believe, because the Court ventured too far in the change it ordered and presented an incomplete justification for its action.” As Lepore recounts Ginsburg’s Supreme Court nomination process in 1993, this led groups like the National Women’s Law Center, the Women’s Legal Defense Fund, and the National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund to urge President Bill Clinton to look elsewhere for his first Supreme Court nomination.
Ginsburg, a staunch defender of this basic right, has more recently said that she considers Roe settled and relatively difficult to overturn. Her critiques didn’t seem to be about its precarity, but its narrowness. When she said in 1984 that she wished the court “had acknowledged a woman’s equality aspect, not simply a patient-physician autonomy constitutional dimension to the abortion issue,” she was doing so in relation to the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funds from being used for abortion except in very limited circumstances, and is one reason why abortion access today is premised on cost and class. If abortion rights were premised, as Ginsburg would have argued, on woman’s equal treatment under the law—an affirmative right to have an abortion—she believed Hyde may have been ruled unconstitutional. The Hyde Amendment has since expanded, and with it, abortion rights have become more or less hypothetical for the millions of people who are denied one because they can’t afford one; or live in a county where there’s no one to provide one; or, even if they can arrange the costs and travel, can’t have one in the narrow legal window of time some states allow.
All this isn’t to say Ginsburg had an intersectional or third-wave understanding of women’s rights before others did—though she was influenced by legal scholar Pauli Murray, who coined the idea of “Jane Crow” to describe Black women’s experience of discrimination based on sex and race, which informed both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Ginsburg’s sex discrimination cases. It’s more that her particular and precise legal reasoning sometimes took her there.


newrepublic--2020-09-19--Can Senate Democrats Run Out the Clock on Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee?

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg should inspire a week of public mourning and reflections on her enduring legacy .
With just 45 days to go before an election , there should be bipartisan agreement that choosing her successor is a task left to the victorious presidential candidate and the incoming Senate .
Instead , we are about to witness the Senate version of Game of Thrones .
There is no principle here other than raw power politics .
The only relevant precedent for what we are about to see is the way that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell held @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 to thwart Barack Obama .
But now—devoid of embarrassment and reveling in their own hypocrisy—Republicans are pressing for a rush to judgment in the waning days of the Donald Trump ’ s first ( and probably last ) term .
At this moment of peril , Democrats and judicial liberals have to face the reality that the tactics they have deployed for three decades against conservative Supreme Court picks have consistently failed .
Earnest letters from 687 law school deans are not going to do the trick .
Loud marches upholding Roe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deaf ears .
Charges of sexual improprieties failed to derail the confirmations of Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh .
Even the eventual Senate hearings , with their meticulously framed legal questions , are apt to have minimal impact , aside from giving Kamala Harris time in the spotlight .
But the Democrats have a powerful political argument on their side—fairness .
That argument was framed by an independent Senate Republican , Alaska ’ s Lisa Murkowski , in an interview hours before Ginsburg died .
Murkowski , who backed McConnell in the Garland @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I would not vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee .
We are 50-some days away from an election .
”

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg should inspire a week of public mourning and reflections on her enduring legacy. With just 45 days to go before an election, there should be bipartisan agreement that choosing her successor is a task left to the victorious presidential candidate and the incoming Senate.
Instead, we are about to witness the Senate version of Game of Thrones. There is no principle here other than raw power politics. The only relevant precedent for what we are about to see is the way that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell held Merrick Garland hostage for 10 months in 2016 to thwart Barack Obama. But now—devoid of embarrassment and reveling in their own hypocrisy—Republicans are pressing for a rush to judgment in the waning days of Donald Trump’s first (and probably last) term.


newrepublic--2020-09-19--The Mighty Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The Mighty Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The first thing to say about Ruth Bader Ginsburg , whether you agreed with her jurisprudence or not , is that she was a mensch , a good person , full of compassion and empathy .
Infused with honor and integrity , overflowing with wit and wisdom , she was never afraid to mix things up on behalf of the underdogs in American life .
A little Jewish lady from Brooklyn who grows up to be Notorious RBG is an epic American story , right ?
She also was a powerful judge who appreciated those who helped her make her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ helping so many to make their own way as tribunes of the law .
On and off the Supreme Court , Ginsburg used her brilliant mind and judicious temperament to fight on behalf of women who were discriminated against , people of color whose votes were suppressed , employees abused by their bosses , gay and lesbian people punished by bigots , and defendants denied due process and equal protection .
And , as Dahlia Lithwick points out , she did all this , especially in the last third of her life , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s rights advocates who felt she was too conservative or incremental for their liking .
Imagine that .
America changed .
She changed .
And here we are .
That Ginsburg died of complications from cancer on the eve of Rosh Hashanah , the Jewish New Year , when the proverbial Book of Life is said to be opened , gives her remarkable life and sudden death a fitting coda .
But it makes the loss no less sorrowful and stunning for those she leaves behind .
A person who dies on Rosh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of great righteousness , tweeted the critic Ruth Franklin .
Fitting , since Ginsburg was a person of faith who believed in the concept of tikkun olam , the act of healing the whole through the pursuit of justice .
This will be one of the ways in which she will be remembered long after the firestorm her death causes burns itself out .
She stayed years too late , many felt , and now she ’ s gone months too early .
The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia might have said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Their famous friendship , which transcended bitter ideological divides , seems so quaint today .
And so ironic .
The political fight over Scalia ’ s seat in 2016 will directly influence the grim , looming fight over Ginsburg ’ s seat , meaning the two old friends and opera aficionados will forever be linked in history as examples of the raging division that marks our politics today .
I suspect the fight over Ginsburg ’ s seat will make the 2016 fight over Scalia ’ s seat seem tame .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fight over politics .
Plenty of time for hoary quotes from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee .
Plenty of time to gauge the calculus of what this blow means for the future of reproductive rights .
Today we should pause and realize that Ginsburg ’ s career was a landmark in the history of women in America .
So many today are lawyers and judges and corporate counsel , so many have obtained political office , so many devote their lives to fighting discrimination in all its forms , because of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a trailblazer , an inspiration , just like Sandra Day O ’ Connor , her predecessor on the Court , who also overcame the rampant and overt gender discrimination that marked that era of American law .

But even if Ginsburg had not been nominated for the court by President Bill Clinton at age 60, after spending 13 years on a lower appeals court, even if she had not spent the better part of the past three decades fighting back against the court’s steady turn toward the right, history would remember Ginsburg as a profound figure in the history of gender discrimination law. As an advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union, she was a brilliant legal tactician and strategist, a lawyer who conceived and then articulated new constitutional concepts and doctrines that later found their way into the body of our laws. She did this in conference rooms and courthouses in hundreds of cases that, drop by drop, changed the way the law saw women and women saw the law. It is no overstatement to say that all of this made her an icon of the women’s rights movement.
I covered the Supreme Court from 1997 to 2018, through the good times for Justice Ginsburg, which were few and far between, and the bad times, which grew increasingly frequent as the court tacked ever rightward. Many say she became more liberal as the years went on. Maybe so. That’s not an uncommon theme in Supreme Court history. But it’s important to remember today that Ginsburg never sat on a court in which Democratic appointees outnumbered their Republican counterparts. She sat instead on a court that today is the most conservative it’s been in nearly a century. So she was always in the minority in that sense, always fighting to try to lessen the harsh impact of the majority’s rule, always trying to make the law more fair and just for women and others.
I remember the soft, polite voice belying the steely mind. I remember the precision with which she bored in on lawyers during oral argument—she got to the point immediately, unlike some of her colleagues—but what strikes me today is what a good and dependable writer she was. In December 2000, amid the chaotic fallout from the presidential election, I remember seeking out and reading her dissent in Bush v. Gore, the decision that handed the election to George W. Bush. It was, in the heat of the moment, with all the cameras on, the best and fastest way to understand the sleight of hand the court’s Republican appointees pulled to put their man in the White House.


newrepublic--2020-09-21--Conservatives Are Already Whitewashing the Trump Years

Jesse Helms did not keep secrets .
This is about the kindest thing that could be said about the still steaming legacy left by the longtime Senator from North Carolina , but it is and has always been true .
When Helms was a pseudo-journalist at popular Raleigh radio and television station WRAL , he publicly hitched his cart to Willis Smith , a candidate for one of the state ’ s two Senate seats in 1950 ; Smith nearly conceded the election before Helms convinced him to push for a run-off , a campaign that peaked with its infamous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ad .
Eight years later , as a city councilor , Helms wrote a letter openly opposing an upcoming visit by Martin Luther King , Jr. , feeling it would be “ a blot on the good name of Raleigh.
” Helms steadfastly opposed and berated Brown v. Board of Education , the Voting Rights Act , and the Civil Rights Act through his dying day .
After being elected to the Senate in 1972 , Helms , who at one point was , chair of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Committee , defended a horrific murder committed by the soldiers of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet by saying of one of the victims , “ the boy ’ s mother was a communist.
” He opposed a federal MLK holiday , voted against the Violence Against Women Act because it included protections for LGBT citizens , and thanked a caller on Larry King Live who praised him for “ everything you ’ ve done to help keep down the [ n-words ] .
” He ran the 1990 “ Hands ” ad , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a condolence letter Helms wrote to Patsy Clarke , a long-time campaign donor who had lost her son , Mark , to AIDS , he told Clarke that he wished Mark , “ had not played Russian roulette with his sexual activity.
” This was Jesse Helms , out in the open for all to see .
He did not apologize ; he did not repent .
By every available account , who he was in private is who he was in public : a virulent racist and homophobe who doused himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Protector Of The People while amassing a three-decade reign atop one of the federal government ’ s most prestigious and inaccessible offices .
It feels important to note this plainly now—a dozen years after his passing , situated firmly in a political reality he would have relished in seeing—if only because the passing of time naturally encourages us to soften our collective memories of people , even if the figures they cut were as jagged as Helms ’ s .
Some of this can be attributed to human nature .
But , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s also the product of people strategically plotting to save their own ass .

Going against every discernible instinct of self-preservation, Pletka subsequently agreed to an interview with The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner to discuss her column. Chotiner used his time with Pletka to try and reckon her purported dedication to anti-racism with both her public show of support for Trump and her past as a longtime Helms staffer. It is only through her explanation of the latter that it becomes clear how the former is possible.
Responding to a question asking how she feels now about her time working for Helms, given his very public history of racism, Pletka pulled a familiar card from the deck. “In my work with him, he never uttered a racist statement, never betrayed a racial bias,” she told Chotiner. She eventually conceded that “there may have been a Jesse Helms one day who did things that were wrong,” but that day conveniently fell outside her tenure. When pressed to admit Helms’s wrongdoings, Pletka stood firm: “I worked for him on the Middle East and South Asia, and I was very proud of what we accomplished.” When pressed again to acknowledge that her claims of anti-racism stand in conflict with her defense of Helms, she became slightly indignant, responding, “Are you questioning whether I’m opposed to racism and all it forms?”
Pletka herself is not a particularly interesting or engaging person. Her claims that the work environment maintained by Helms was one of decency and respect were swiftly debunked. That her credulity-straining declamations about how she is now being driven against her will to vote for Trump came to be published in The Washington Post at all isn’t so much due to her influence as it is an example of the risible sort of tripe that has come to find a happy home on the Post’s haywire opinion pages. Nevertheless, there is some useful material to extract from this episode, in that her response to being stamped as a hypocrite and enabler of racists feels disarmingly prescient—we’re going to see those who served Trump loyally attempt the same sort of slithery dodges.


newrepublic--2020-09-21--The Nikola Scandal Is a Cautionary Tale About Green Tech’s Gauzy Promises

“ There ’ s very few people that can out-Elon in this world and I ’ m one of them , ” said Nikola Motor founder Trevor Milton earlier this summer .
Milton ’ s 35 percent stake in the hydrogen-electric vehicle company—like Musk ’ s EV company , named for Nikola Tesla—made him extraordinarily rich when the company went public in June , its value shooting up to $ 27 billion .
The success has been reflected in Milton ’ s boisterous social media presence , where , between tirades addressed to his “ haters , ” he ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a private plane .
Many have compared Milton and Musk .
But whatever you think of Elon Musk , he ’ s managed to do something that Milton hasn ’ t yet : manufacture and sell cars .
Amidst allegations of fraud and reported federal investigations , Milton resigned from Nikola Monday morning .
Energy wonks had been skeptical of Nikola ’ s claims for a while .
But the real catalyst for Milton ’ s downfall came September 10 , when Hindenburg Research , which has shorted Nikola shares , released an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spinning an “ Ocean of Lies ” about its supposedly cutting-edge hydrogen and battery technology .
Hindenburg alleged , for instance , that the company staged a video claiming to show a working model of its “ Nikola 1 ” truck , positioning it atop an incline and rolling the vehicle downhill .
Much of the breakthrough technology it promised , the report also alleges , has been outsourced .
The Securities and Exchange Commission , Department of Justice and U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York are all now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ company ’ s books , according to Bloomberg and the Financial Times , with a class action lawsuit in the mix ; none of those bodies , however , have confirmed their investigations to the press as of Monday afternoon .
Complicating matters , Nikola has also allegedly reached out to the SEC , reportedly urging it to investigate Hindenburg because the research firm stands to gain if the company ’ s shares fall .
Amid the messy debacle now playing out , one or two things seem clear .
First , at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stock market has diverged starkly from the health of the world , investors ’ prior enthusiasm for Nikola seems like yet another example of their strained relationship to reality .
And second , Nikola ’ s chaos should be a cautionary tale for those who expects wunderkind CEOs to deliver the breakthrough technologies that will power the way to a low-carbon future .
Decades of ideological priming has taught many to believe that Wall Streeters and tech company founders are geniuses—the best people to plan everything from which stocks to buy to how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s why federal policymaking largely defers to the private sector to deliver much-needed innovation , subsidizing them with public funds meant to be turned into private profits that will somehow lead to societal gains .
Tax breaks and early-stage research funding for work clearly in the public interest , like those boosted by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 , are well and good .
But as politicians consider how to respond to both this recession and the climate crisis , the Nikola story is a good example of why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ driving the energy transition might lead to better and less chaotic results .
After all , the state can ’ t be any worse at deciding what ’ s best for people and planet than the collection of wealthy goons who decided that Travis Milton should be a billionaire .

“There’s very few people that can out-Elon in this world, and I’m one of them,” said Nikola Motor founder Trevor Milton earlier this summer. Milton’s 35 percent stake in the hydrogen-electric vehicle company—like Musk’s EV company, named for Nikola Tesla—made him extraordinarily rich when the company went public in June, its value shooting up to $27 billion. The success has been reflected in Milton’s boisterous social media presence, where, between tirades addressed to his “haters,” he’s boasted about having bought his father a private plane. Many have compared Milton and Musk. But whatever you think of Elon Musk, he’s managed to do something that Milton hasn’t yet: manufacture and sell cars. Amid allegations of fraud and reported federal investigations, Milton resigned from Nikola Monday morning.
Energy wonks had been skeptical of Nikola’s claims for a while. But the real catalyst for Milton’s downfall came September 10, when Hindenburg Research, which has shorted Nikola shares, released an extensive report that accused the company of spinning an “ocean of lies” about its supposedly cutting-edge hydrogen and battery technology. Hindenburg alleged, for instance, that the company staged a video claiming to show a working model of its “Nikola 1” truck, positioning it atop an incline and rolling the vehicle downhill. Much of the breakthrough technology it promised, the report also alleges, has been outsourced. The Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York are all now reportedly taking a closer look at the company’s books, according to Bloomberg and the Financial Times, with a class-action lawsuit in the mix; none of those bodies, however, have confirmed their investigations to the press as of Monday afternoon. Complicating matters, Nikola has also allegedly reached out to the SEC, reportedly urging it to investigate Hindenburg because the research firm stands to gain if the company’s shares fall.


newrepublic--2020-09-21--Trump’s Misguided, Jingoistic War Against TikTok

On August 6 , President Donald Trump signed two executive orders declaring that the popular apps TikTok and WeChat “ threaten the national security , foreign policy , and economy of the United States.
” Last week , the Trump administration promised to make good on its threats , with downloads of both apps scheduled to be banned on Sunday , September 20 .
In typical Trumpian fashion , the threats rang hollow : TikTok ’ s U.S. operations are on the verge of being sold to a partnership between Oracle and Walmart , and a California judge has blocked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impinges on the freedom of speech of Chinese expatriates communicating with family and friends back home .
( An estimated 19 million people in the U.S. use WeChat , which has more than a billion users worldwide . )
Trump ’ s ham-fisted attempts at implementing the executive orders have been a complete mess , a farrago of diplomatic and economic policy that reflects many of the larger failures of his administration .
As if we needed any further confirmation , here it is : Trump and his failson acolytes know little to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complex machinations of large tech companies , international data transfers , online communication , and digital surveillance .
And in using TikTok and WeChat as a kind of proxy battlefield in America ’ s larger rivalry with China , the administration has further clouded the fact that the abuses of Big Tech aren ’ t contained to national boundaries at all .
Since declaring TikTok and WeChat to be dangers to the American people— particularly the millions of young people who , we are reminded , are having their data cruelly harvested by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respond to this supposed threat .
In the case of TikTok , the favored option seemed to be to force a sale to an American tech Goliath .
Microsoft—which is not close to the Trump administration but did win a highly coveted Pentagon cloud-computing contract last year—was the initial front-runner .
Even in those early stages , it wasn ’ t clear what Microsoft might be getting for its money , though most reports indicated that Redmond would be bidding for rights to TikTok in several English-speaking countries—hardly the hostile takeover that Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s bid failed to gain traction , Oracle and , somewhat improbably , Walmart emerged as contenders , the two companies working in tandem .
Besides Palantir , Oracle may be the tech company with the strongest ties to the Trump administration , with Larry Ellison and Safra Catz , its two top executives , having become some of Trump ’ s proudest Silicon Valley supporters .
It seemed that Trump was essentially giving a gift to some loyal , powerful allies , while also providing an assist to a retailer that competes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detests .
The Chinese government still needs to sign off on the deal , but for their troubles Oracle and Walmart will likely host TikTok ’ s data and operations in the U.S. , and they will have the option of participating in an early initial public offering in which they can purchase up to 20 percent of a new TikTok Global company .
The ownership situation gets a little more complicated the closer one looks .
As NPR noted , ByteDance , TikTok ’ s Chinese parent company , “ is expected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ company , but since 40 percent of ByteDance is owned by U.S. investors , TikTok Global says it is majority owned by American investors .
”

In other words, this deal clarifies nothing. While China maintains its Great Firewall and widespread surveillance and censorship of its citizens’ activities, its tech industry is not neatly separated from the rest of the world. Tencent, the owner of WeChat, is a sprawling conglomerate that also holds significant interests in several major American gaming companies, such as Riot Games, Epic Games, and Activision Blizzard. It’s invested in hundreds of companies worldwide, making it nearly as influential as some of its U.S. counterparts. Untangling these investments would be complicated and messy and would surely receive heavy pushback from Tencent and the Chinese government. Even so, Tencent’s U.S. holdings are already under the microscope. As Bloomberg recently reported, “The Trump administration has asked gaming companies to provide information about their data-security protocols” related to Tencent.
It’s understandable to be wary of a country that engages in hacking and surveillance on a mass scale, whose increasingly authoritarian government holds great influence over its tech industry, and whose security services maintain incontestable legal authorities to access people’s personal information. Privacy is a close cousin of liberty. And rather than being inherently emancipatory and democracy-building, digital technologies have proved to be handy tools for governments that crack down violently on protests and fill their vast prison systems with oppressed minorities.
And then there’s China. Even the most jaundiced Trump critic would admit that China is further down the road to totalitarianism than our debauched and doddering republic. Its citizens have few political rights, and the ongoing Uighur genocide is an obscenity. But our own moral ledger, particularly since 9/11, is also stained with blood. Any sensible person should be able to denounce Chinese human rights abuses without being press-ganged into the largely right-wing effort to position China as a new Cold War adversary.


newrepublic--2020-09-21--The Libertarian Ideas That Wrecked the Fed

Last week I explained the pernicious long-term effect of Milton Friedman ’ s theory of the corporation .
But the famed libertarian economist ’ s baleful legacy doesn ’ t end there : Friedman ’ s ideas about monetary policy have long created negative economic consequences .
And now , more than 40 years after the monetarist recession that former Fed chief Paul Volcker engineered under the influence of Friedman ’ s theories , Jay Powell ’ s Federal Reserve is trying to break free from them .
Friedman ’ s ardent libertarian faith was central to his monetarist thinking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ always extremely wary of anything that would cause the size of government to grow .
He saw personal liberty as a zero sum : If government grew , then personal liberty was automatically reduced .
Friedman thus crafted most of his important theories to limit government and provide free-market alternatives to proposals that would expand government .
One area that Friedman was particularly concerned about was using government to avert or soften the impact of economic downturns .
He feared that government jobs programs and similar interventions could too easily become permanent , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high unemployment .
So Friedman argued for using monetary policy rather than fiscal policy to counteract recessions .
His prime example was the Great Depression , which he saw as primarily a failure of the Federal Reserve .
By the time the Depression hit , Friedman contended , the Fed had allowed the money supply to shrink by about a third , which brought on a deflation that caused the price level to drop by about 25 percent .
Deflation stifles economic activity because it raises real interest rates and wages , increases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ producers to sell commodities for less than the cost of production , among other things .
But Friedman ’ s account glossed over why the money collapsed .
When banks failed in those days , their deposits simply disappeared : There was no deposit insurance , and the bulk of the money supply consisted of bank deposits , not cash .
The Fed lacked the legal authority to buy banks and keep them solvent , which is the only thing that would have helped .
( Needless to say , Friedman would also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ libertarian grounds . )
The Fed was also constrained by the gold standard , which many foolish right-wingers still advocate .

The reason why this history is important is that we have been having the same debate since the beginning of the Great Recession in 2008. Is monetary policy sufficient to counteract a serious economic downturn—or must it be accompanied by an appropriately expansive fiscal policy if it is to work? Is an inflationary Fed policy to be resisted at all cost, lest we suffer a repeat of the stagflation of the 1970s? Or is it an essential consequence of an expansionary economic policy? Is any increase in interest rates to be feared lest it short-circuit the recovery, or is it a sign that monetary and fiscal policy are working exactly as they should?
For many years, the Fed has said that it couldn’t reverse the downturn by itself and needed help from fiscal policy. As Barack Obama’s stimulus package was being debated in early 2009, the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s policymaking arm, said, in early 2009, that it couldn’t be expected to produce an economic turnaround on its own: “Participants generally thought that fiscal stimulus was a necessary and important complement to the steps the Federal Reserve and other agencies were taking, and that it would help foster economic recovery.”
In November 2011, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke complained that the Fed’s efforts to stimulate growth had been hampered by an insufficiently expansive fiscal policy. “I think it would be helpful if we could get assistance from some other parts of the government to work with us, to help create more jobs,” he said.


newrepublic--2020-09-21--Inside the FBI’s File on Soviet Poet-Dissident Yevgeny
Yevtushenko

In October 1961 , the FBI decided a poem could be a weapon .
Agents at the bureau had learned about “ Babi Yar , ” a provocative piece of verse written by the wily young Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko , about the Nazi massacre of Jews in a Ukrainian ravine—and of Soviet attempts to cover it up .
The poem , with its subtitle “ against antisemitism in the Soviet Union , ” was a literary and political event in Yevtushenko ’ s home country , where the realities of the Holocaust , particularly where it occurred with Soviet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long suppressed .
“ Babi Yar ” managed to combine a brave sympathy for Jewish suffering with the 28-year-old author ’ s own blooming ego , as when he placed himself in the role of Jesus : “ I am a Jew / Here I am wandering Egypt / And here I am crucified , dying on a cross.
” The young poet was compared to dissident figures like Boris Pasternak , launching Yevtushenko into a form of literary stardom that is nonexistent today : a major poet with the power of international @ @ @ @ @ @ @ War cultural diplomat , meeting with American presidents and movie stars , while constantly toggling between different modes of criticism of the USSR , hoping to stay one step ahead of the censors and of the politburo ’ s wrath .
In 1961 , the demands of fame—the barnstorming tours across America for thousands of fans ; the fractious debates with John Steinbeck and Joseph Brodsky over whether he was sufficient in his dissent ; the careful tending of political relationships with senior Soviet officials—lay in the future for Yevgeny Yevtushenko .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and monitoring that would lead to the formation of a 400-page FBI file , which was released to me in redacted form via a Freedom of Information Act request , following Yevtushenko ’ s death in 2017 .
In the fall of 1961 , the counterintelligence agents of the FBI had one concern : how to use this poem , written by a star of Soviet literature who performed to packed stadiums in his home country , as a form of propaganda .
To start , a translator in the FBI ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ translation of “ Babi Yar , ” and some agents put together some accompanying remarks praising the poet ’ s bravery and condemning the Soviet Union ’ s official antisemitism .
The project was then pitched to FBI leadership in a memo written by an agent named F.J. Baumgardner who , among his later activities , produced FBI memos labeling Martin Luther King Jr. a degenerate communist .
“ It is believed that this poem ‘ Babi Yar ’ can be utilized by the Bureau as an excellent psychological weapon to further highlight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point out the lack of freedom of speech inside the Soviet Union , ” Baumgardner wrote .

In the overheated atmosphere of the Cold War, anything could tip the scales—even a poem.
The G-man ended with a recommendation: that the FBI’s counterintelligence program print 120 copies of the poem, along with a few pages of commentary, and mail these pamphlets to “carefully selected communists throughout the country who might be psychologically disillusioned on the Soviet Union thereby.”
Like much of the FBI’s approach to Yevtushenko over the years to follow, the idea seemed half-baked and poorly considered. There’s no evidence in the released documents that the FBI followed through on the plan, and it’s unlikely any American communists ever reported a sudden onset of disillusionment after reading an anonymous translation of “Babi Yar.” It’s not even clear that that’s what Yevtushenko would have wanted: An FBI memo written one year later, drawing on a redacted source, describes the writer as a “Soviet patriot.” It doesn’t appear that, despite all its interest, the bureau ever managed to derive useful intelligence from Yevtushenko.
What this episode does reflect is a certain bygone Cold War atmosphere—the utter moral certitude in the American cause, the almost parodic belief that the politics of culture are intermixed with the politics of war—that only survives in the less self-aware elements of the conservative press. Today, most American poets work in obscurity—our government would be more likely to send Dennis Rodman than Natasha Trethewey or Louise Glück on a diplomatic mission. There is no foreign cultural figure who would conceivably merit a White House visit, as Yevtushenko ultimately did.


newrepublic--2020-09-21--How to Save the Pandemic Generation

How to Save the Pandemic Generation

There ’ s a looming student debt cliff awaiting us in 2021 .
With America in the teeth of the Covid-19–enabled economic downturn , lawmakers suspended federal student loan payments for 80 percent of federal student loan borrowers .
This measure , which President Donald Trump extended a few weeks ago , is set to expire on New Year ’ s Eve , which means borrowers will ring in the new year by restarting their student loan payments in one of the worst job markets in a decade .
If Trump truly wanted to give relief to the 43 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could cancel student debt , using the authority Congress gave the Department of Education decades ago .
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Elizabeth Warren have now introduced a resolution urging Trump to do just that .
The beauty of canceling student debt is that it has benefits that redound to just about everybody : Research shows it would create more than one million jobs a year , as well as providing a considerable boost to our gross domestic product .
Student debt cancellation has sometimes faced criticisms due to widespread misapprehensions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extract the largest advantages , such as wealthy doctors and lawyers .
In reality , debt cancellation would have the biggest impact on those most impacted by the coronavirus pandemic : It would be a lifeline for the nation ’ s seniors and to the Black and brown communities .
It would lessen the fallout of the permanent wealth loss this year ’ s graduating class is experiencing as the Covid-19 economic crisis intensifies .
In terms of something we could do right now to safeguard the economy against the ravages of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long way to ensuring that several generations of Americans don ’ t get cast adrift .
When you think about who benefits from debt cancellation , you might not immediately think of older Americans—but you should .
Millennials are far from the only cohort struggling with this burden .
In fact , the share of borrowers over 60 with student debt has quadrupled over the last decade , making it the fastest-growing age bracket of student debtors , according to a 2017 report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau .
In increasing numbers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later and later in life ; in addition , too many have taken out loans to help pay for their children ’ s or grandchildren ’ s education .
What ’ s more , the nation ’ s older student borrowers are struggling terribly .
A staggering 37 percent of seniors with student loans are in default .
That leads to serious financial difficulties for them , as one of the ways our current student loan system severely punishes default is by seizing Social Security benefits .
In 2015 alone , 40,000 borrowers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ due to student loans .
Another segment of the nation facing severe student loan distress is Black , Indigenous , and people of color , or BIPOC—the very same people dying from the coronavirus at the highest rates .
There are massive racial disparities in student loans , which have grave and lasting consequences for wealth inequality .
Persistent , multigenerational racial discrimination has led Black college graduates to hold more overall debt than white college graduates .
Black young adults hold 10.4 percent less wealth , on average , than their white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to research by Fenaba Addo at the University of Wisconsin-Madison .
Black and Latinx borrowers also have higher rates of default than white borrowers , and two in five Native American or Alaska Native borrowers have defaulted on a federal student loan .
This leads BIPOC communities to disproportionately face very punitive consequences our student loan system creates for default , like the garnishment of wages or seized tax refunds .
In some states , it ’ s even worse : Default can lead to the suspension of driver ’ s licenses or @ @ @

In 2018, 57 percent of Black women who were repaying student loans couldn’t meet essential expenses; this situation has undoubtedly gotten even worse during the pandemic. It’s exacerbated by the disparities in rehiring, as white workers are getting hired back twice as fast as Black workers. Black and brown borrowers are also more likely than their white counterparts to have additional obligations while they are students, which extends the burdens of their student debt into their families and communities.
It is often the case that whenever the prospect of student debt cancellation is raised, detractors come out of the woodwork to fret about the so-called “cost.” This misguided complaint ignores several crucial differences between federal student debt and most other kinds of indebtedness. One key difference is that the government holds the vast majority of student loan debt in a portfolio managed by the Department of Education, which often turns a profit. Moreover, much of this debt is essentially uncollectible: It’s owed by people that likely will never be able to repay much of it. Despite this, the federal government spends taxpayer dollars hiring debt collectors to attempt to get blood from a stone; seizing the tax refunds of defaulters is one way they go about this task. What the “cost” argument failed to contemplate, however, is what is the cost of not cancelling student loan debt?
Few examples show the permanent costs of not cancelling student debt more bleakly than the future that the nation’s graduating class now faces. Not only will recent graduates have trouble simply bringing in income as they enter what’s expected to be a terrible job market, they will be losing out on wealth over their entire lives. One of the lessons of the 2008 crisis is that recessions have a long-term “scarring” effect on young workers’ entire careers, resulting in permanently lower employment and earnings. Research shows that millennials in labor markets with higher unemployment lost 13 percent in cumulative earnings from 2007 to 2017. Today’s graduates will face a dual crisis of the impact of the pandemic on their wages and the ongoing stagnation of wages. Young people were already facing barriers to wealth creation before the pandemic: The wages of people 25 to 34 years old have remained consistent over the past 10 years, at $807 per week. Over the same time period, the cost of college has risen 30 percent.


newrepublic--2020-09-21--The Man Who Is Determined to Stop Trump From Rigging the Election

It ’ s only a few hours into Election Day , and things are already coming undone .
In Michigan , Republican groups have instructed dozens of people to stand outside polling places and watch menacingly as voters enter .
In Georgia , a shortage of poll workers in Atlanta leads to seven-hour lines that stretch for miles , as would-be voters try to follow social-distancing guidelines .
To make matters worse , the U.S .
Postal Service says it won ’ t be able to deliver thousands of mail-in ballots to local election offices before the midnight deadline in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
These are the scenarios that keep Democratic lawyer Marc Elias up at night .
The U.S. election system wasn ’ t in great shape even before the pandemic upended the way tens of millions of Americans cast their ballots .
Now Trump and his Republican allies are working tirelessly to reduce turnout and delegitimize voting by mail .
Many of these fights are playing out in courtrooms across the country as lawyers for the two major parties , voting rights groups , and individual candidates rush to shape the election before it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won ’ t necessarily decide the outcome in 2020 , but they could deliver to either campaign the next best thing—namely , a decision on who actually gets to determine that outcome .
Elias is one of the central figures on the Democratic side .
A hard-charging , Twitter-happy partner at the Perkins Coie law firm , he has served as general counsel to two presidential campaigns : John Kerry ’ s in 2004 , and Hillary Clinton ’ s in 2016 .
He now works as counsel for the Democratic National Committee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senate campaign committees .
If the results are close , or the outcome uncertain , for any of their candidates on November 4 , then Elias will likely be among the lawyers who swoop in to wage the high-stakes legal battles that follow—and in the process , finally answer a defining question of the Trump era : Can the legal system actually constrain a lawless president ?
Elias is already something of a wartime consigliere for the Democratic elite .
Born and raised in New York , he earned a law degree at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , D.C. , in the 1990s .
His big break in Democratic politics came in 1998 , when he represented former Nevada Senator Harry Reid in a recount fight that saw Democrats hold the seat by just 428 votes .
Over the next 20 years , he steadily became a stalwart ally for top Democrats caught in dogfights : He took part in Al Franken ’ s successful recount battle in Minnesota in 2008 , which helped create the Democratic supermajority that passed the Affordable Care Act about a year later , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Florida in 2018 .
( After Nelson hired Elias , Trump falsely claimed on Twitter that the Democrats had “ sent their best Election stealing lawyer ” to commit election fraud .
The president ’ s ire may have been personal : Elias is infamous among Republicans , because , while working for Hillary Clinton ’ s campaign , he hired Fusion GPS to produce the research that led to the salacious and unverified Steele dossier . )
Some of Elias ’ s most influential work took place in the realm of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ efforts to remove money from politics .
After the Supreme Court ’ s landmark 2010 ruling in Citizens United , Elias , who was then working for a group devoted to electing Democratic candidates , was among the lawyers who asked the Federal Election Commission to issue an advisory opinion about political organizations that only made “ independent expenditures.
” That opinion helped usher in the age of the super PAC .
And in 2014 , Politico reported that he had played a key role in inserting a provision into a major spending @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on individual donations to political parties .

This year, Elias’s focus is filing lawsuits to expand voter access, especially when it comes to voting by mail. By early September, a few weeks after we first spoke, he was involved in 32 election-related cases in 19 states. Most of those battles revolve around what Elias calls the “four pillars” of protecting voting by mail: providing prepaid postage from states, so that voters can return ballots for free; counting mail-in ballots as long as they’re postmarked on or before Election Day; making it harder for election officials to toss out ballots if the signature doesn’t exactly match the one on file; and letting local groups gather sealed absentee ballots to submit on voters’ behalf.
More Americans will be voting by mail this year than ever before, but many others, he added, are “going to have a strong propensity and interest to vote in person,” no matter what. “We need to make sure there is safe, available, in-person voting for people who simply prefer that.” To this end, he filed lawsuits to expand early voting days in North Carolina and to add and fairly distribute polling stations in Georgia to prevent long lines.
Unfortunately, the pandemic is far from the only threat to the 2020 election. “Donald Trump has shown a willingness to violate every norm that one associates with the president of the United States, and even the law, in order to advance his political interests, and I expect that between now and the election we will continue to see him do everything he can to win reelection,” Elias told me. “And that will include things ranging from using [his] bully pulpit to bad-mouth voting by mail to worse.”


newrepublic--2020-09-22--The Accelerating Attack on Trans Student Athletes

Last October , the Supreme Court heard three cases which argued that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , which bars discrimination on the basis of sex , includes discrimination against people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity—even if it didn ’ t use those words explicitly—because these kinds of discrimination are inextricable from sex-based discrimination .
That argument succeeded , but it was far from a given , not with a court to which Justice Brett Kavanaugh had just been appointed , not with Trump ’ s Department of Justice reversing course from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ including LGBTQ people in such civil rights protections .
It was also a fragile victory .
The Trump administration has not been slowed in its attempts to roll back trans rights , in health care , in housing , and in education .
A civil rights victory at the Supreme Court , even a high-profile one , doesn ’ t guarantee those rights .
A win there can ’ t provide trans people the resources to take on multi-year anti-discrimination cases .
Often times , as we have seen with abortion rights , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a given right to just escalate their attacks elsewhere .
This is what we are seeing happen now , as the Department of Education has threatened to withhold federal funds from several Connecticut school districts , claiming the schools are violating federal anti-discrimination laws by allowing transgender students to compete in athletics .
They claim that because the school districts are members of a statewide student athletics conference with a policy of permitting students to participate in athletics in accordance with their gender identity , they are in violation of Title IX , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If the school districts don ’ t comply with the Education Department ’ s demands to leave the conference by October 1 , they stand to lose around $ 18 million dollars meant for school desegregation programs .
It ’ s just the latest front in a national campaign , spearheaded by the conservative Christian organization the Alliance Defending Freedom ( ADF ) , to launch another panic like the one over transgender students and school bathrooms , which they also helped spread .
Last year , ADF identified three students in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been discriminated against , as cis girls in student athletics programs , by the participation of trans girls .
( ADF also refuses to acknowledge that the trans girl athletes are girls . )
They filed a complaint on their behalf with the Education Department ’ s Office of Civil Rights .
As ACLU Connecticut Legal Director Dan Barrett told Outsports at the time , “ This complaint is just another way of taking away personal autonomy and making the government ‘ the gender police ’ .
That ’ s offensive and it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people .
”

ADF followed up with a federal lawsuit in February. When it announced it on the steps of the capitol building in Hartford, it reprised the baby pink signs it had used in protest on the steps of the Supreme Court during the Title VII case and the same invented threat: the need to protect cis women and girls. Meanwhile, student athletes in Connecticut, like Andraya Yearwood, have been harassed in their towns and in competitions, because they are trans girls.
“This is all part of ADF’s larger strategy to attack trans people and entrench retrograde notions of sex in law,” Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the American Civil Liberty Union’s LGBT & HIV Project, told The New Republic by email. “In 2016, the focus was on restrooms and when they largely lost that battle in court, at the ballot, and in state legislatures by the end of 2018, they pivoted to sports. Through sports, they are trying to play on people’s reflexive fear of trans people and our bodies and tap into the long history of eugenics, social control, and sex verification that have been a part of women’s inclusion in competitive sports since the early twentieth century.”
Watching a group that has been described as a “Christian legal army” discover the virtue in women’s sports—but only as a cudgel against trans people—has at times looked like a last gasp at pushing back trans rights, one that may have picked up little steam had the ADF not had the president on its side. Its attempt at using state laws against trans students in sports failed earlier this year in Idaho, with the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.” Though it passed in March, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction in August.* Even when it loses, ADF gets an opportunity to make deeply sexist and anti-trans arguments to state legislatures and through the media. And according to the ACLU, 20 such anti-trans bills were introduced across the country in 2020.


newrepublic--2020-09-22--TV Race Fables and the Privilege of a Raging Class

Once , in the mid-1980s , I was invited by a black undergraduate student group at Yale to lead a fireside discussion in one of the residential colleges .
I was bemused to learn that the group had planned a half-hour break in the program so they could repair together to watch that week ’ s episode of The Cosby Show .
As I sat in the common area and waited for their return , it occurred to me that they were at least in part modeling the behavior of upper-class black adults—much as some True Blue white male undergrads @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ivied preserves of Yale .
Those students and their general cohort were on the leading edge of a new , appropriately race-conscious , post-segregation–era black upper class .
They were already selecting out just whether and how their class consciousness and race consciousness should combine .
At around the same time , such students were struggling to navigate what it meant , how it would be possible , to be black and upper class in an integrated world .
Lorene Cary ’ s thoughtful 1991 memoir , Black Ice , captured one strain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ basically middle-class , or the already diminishing numbers of lower–middle-class , students to adopt “ hood ” personas .
Via this cultural alchemy , urban school nerds were transformed into streetwise corner boys and girls in the cloisters of elite prep schools .
Others lamented the alleged injustice entailed in the project of defining and enforcing the reigning terms of racial authenticity ; why should those who claimed impoverished “ ghetto ” backgrounds be the de facto arbiters of true cultural blackness ?
Meanwhile , auguries of how these tangled race and class @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already turning up .
A year or two before my encounter with the Cosby moment , a very bright , self-assured undergrad asserted emphatically in a seminar I was teaching that the purpose of the civil rights movement had indeed been to allow her and people like her to go to Yale and then to work at Morgan Stanley , which she was preparing to do .
The Cosby Show , certified as it was by black psychiatrists , provided appealing black upper-class family role models .
Its content was deemed wholesomely aspirational @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also for the past .
For those who did not come from upper-status backgrounds , Clair and Cliff Huxtable were the parents they were supposed to have had for the class position they assumed would be theirs .
In that sense , the Cosbys provided black bourgeois aspirants a powerful shared ( if imaginary ) social background that validated their class position by projecting it backward in time .
In other words , The Cosby Show worked for its aspirational black middle-class audience in much the same way that Merchant-Ivory films provided their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lineage .
Between the Huxtables ’ heyday and the Obama presidency , popular culture tracked the new black upper class ’ s movement , as it traversed the critical odyssey from being a class in itself to becoming a class for itself .
In 1994 , journalist Ellis Cose published The Rage of a Privileged Class , which both marked the proliferation of a black upper-middle class and the particular racial frustrations that that stratum experienced .
A spate of light films and rom-coms in the 1980s and 1990s—Spike Lee ’ s She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ School Daze , the Hudlin Brothers ’ House Party series , Sprung , The Inkwell , Waiting to Exhale , to mention only a few—played in more or less muddled ways with the tensions between racial identity and class aspiration .
And the hit sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air took up the same themes on the small screen .
This emerging genre stood out in striking contrast to the simultaneous proliferation of naturalistic urban pathology/underclass films , such as Juice , Sugar Hill , Jason ’ s Lyric , New Jack City @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Singleton ’ s reactionary films Poetic Justice , Boyz n the Hood , and , worst of all , the 2001 Baby Boy .
This narrative bifurcation—aspirational sagas of upward black mobility pitched against lurid accounts of ghetto pathology—continues largely undisturbed in today ’ s cultural scene .

Such trademark depictions of hectic black striving, while occasionally gothic, aren’t fanciful. Between 1967, when the Obama Ivy League cohort were small children, and 2016, the percentage of black families earning $35,000 to $100,000 in annual income (measured in 2016 dollars) increased; however, the greatest increase was among those earning $100,000 or more. As I noted in my previous column on this subject, in 1967, the number of African American families with incomes of $200,000 or more was negligible. By 2016, just under 3 percent of black families had such incomes, and nearly 15 percent had incomes over $100,000. Those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000 quadrupled from 3 to 12 percent of the total.
The Obama presidency may have been midwife to the new black upper class’s ever more self-confident transition into a position of cultural and political leadership. And this ascension coincided, significantly, with the emergence of the “racial wealth gap” as the principal economic issue for black politics. Studies have generally found that, at all levels of income and education and in all regions, African Americans possess considerably less individual or household wealth than whites. (However, the numbers also show that the best way to attack the racial wealth gap is through massive downward income redistribution to reverse the last four decades of regressive redistribution, from which only the top 10 percent or so of black earners have benefited.)
There are two little-noticed features of this relatively new focus on a racial wealth gap. One is that it treats racial inequality exclusively in a framework of wealth management. That is to say, the singular concentration on the wealth gap separates economic inequality from jobs, wages, income, and overall performance of the economy—and in lieu of such broader considerations, it embraces the neoliberal premise that personal wealth is the most important cushion against insecurity and the basis for opportunity. By 2018, research was showing that a crucial limiting factor in wealth-gap theorizing was coming to the fore: namely, the finding that even the wealthiest African Americans are less capable of passing on their wealth and status position intergenerationally than their white counterparts are. Of course, other apparently generically racial issues like mass incarceration and profiling, or all sorts of disadvantageous racial disparities, capture the black upper middle class’s attention at least rhetorically, as well as more evanescent ones like opposing “systemic” or “structural” racism. But in keeping with the class-centric character of the contemporary black political agenda, those issues are not posed in a way that demands or even points to resolution. (How, after all, would one “eliminate ‘structural racism’”? How could one even delimit it confidently?) The imprecision of such rhetoric strongly indicates that the legacies of these sweeping historic injustices aren’t the real action items on the agenda.