newrepublic--2020-09-10--Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi Is a Hall of Wonders

Susanna Clarke is the author of two literary legends .
The first is fictional .
In Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell , her 2004 debut novel , Clarke created an alternative England where magicians conjure warships out of the rain and walk through mirrors .
The eponymous Strange and Norrell are gentleman scholars ( and rivals ) who restore the lost art of practical magic to early nineteenth-century England , only to find that they have unleashed forces beyond their control .
This first , fictional legend gave rise to a second , true one : the unlikely story of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all .
In a 2004 interview with The New York Times Magazine , Clarke recalled that she was teaching in Bilbao , Spain , when she had “ a kind of waking dream ” about a man who had “ been dabbling in magic , and something had gone badly wrong.
” After returning to the U.K. in 1993 , she took a short writing workshop with the fantasy and sci-fi writers Colin Greenland and Geoff Ryman .
She showed them a story called “ The Ladies of Grace Adieu , ” which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mr. Norrell universe but concerns the lives of Regency lady magicians .
Greenland sent the story to the author Neil Gaiman , a friend .
“ It was terrifying from my point of view to read this first short story that had so much assurance , ” Gaiman told the Times .
“ It was like watching someone sit down to play the piano for the first time and she plays a sonata.
” When Clarke eventually finished the novel and engaged an agent , in 2003 , the book ’ s heft @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Bloomsbury ’ s eyes .
The Harry Potter craze was then in its ascendancy , and with its close-enough magical topic , Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell earned Clarke a huge advance and an international publicity rollout .
Upon its publication , Strange & Norrell sat on the New York Times bestseller list for over two months .
Clarke exploded into literary celebrity , then vanished .
She published The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories in 2006 , a collection of tales expanding upon the original piece that caused Greenland @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that was it .
Now Clarke has explained the reason : 15 years ago , she fell down for no good reason .
Ever since , she ’ s been affected by a difficult-to-diagnose fatigue syndrome causing migraines , exhaustion , and photosensitivity .
After very dark years in the late 2000s , and extensive therapies , Clarke has now finished Piranesi , a novel whose title keen readers will recognize from her first book and which picks up the loose ends left in Strange & Norrell ’ s world .
Clarke ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into one .
Having gone from the hustle and bustle of publishing a hit to living in seclusion , she has written a dreamlike follow-up to her busy , involved debut .
From within the universe she constructed decades ago in her first writings , Clarke has taken the toughest problem of her own creation—what to do with all the otherworldly architecture she ’ s made possible—and turned it into an opportunity to explore the effects of trauma and dissociation on memory and identity .

In her 2004 Times interview, Clarke pointed out the difficulty in picking up where she left off, with Jonathan Strange traveling through a magical dimension of interconnected passageways called “the King’s Roads.” “I have a bit of a problem now that the fairy roads are all open,’’ she said. “What do I do with them?’’ Her answer, seemingly inspired by her years of seclusion, is an abstract and deeply moving story that begins with the idea of reading this magical system of passages as a metaphor for the human mind.
The title of her new book is a reference to Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who pops up in Strange & Norrell when Jonathan Strange commissions engravings of the King’s Roads. “They shewed great corridors built more of shadows than any thing else,” Clarke writes. “Dark openings in the walls suggested other corridors so that the engravings appeared to be of the inside of a labyrinth or something of that sort. Some shewed broad steps leading down to dark underground canals. There were drawings of a vast dark moor, across which wound a forlorn road.” These engravings, Strange complains, look too classical, and are too much “like the works of Palladio and Piranesi.” The first was a Renaissance architect and the second an artist of eighteenth-century Italy renowned for his etchings of surreal and infinite-seeming built environments, popularly known as his “prisons.”
Piranesi opens with a note dating a diary entry: “When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule.” A man named Piranesi lives within these halls, which he numbers in detail in this journal. Tides of water rise and fall through them at fixed intervals, leaving mussels and seaweed in their wake, which he eats. He spends his time contemplating the only other people he knows to exist—several piles of bones, himself (“I believe that I am between thirty and thirty-five years of age. I am approximately 1.83 metres tall and of a slender build”), and a man “between fifty and sixty” whom he calls The Other. Clarke has Piranesi capitalize odd words—“I pictured Myself transformed into an osprey,” he recalls, for example, “flying with the other ospreys over the Surging Tides”—but her language here is more Samuel Beckett than Jane Austen, and the effect is unsettling.


newrepublic--2020-09-11--The New York Times Discovers a Manhattan Makeover for Nu-Tenant Farming

It all starts out harmless enough : A Manhattan couple , after years spent frequenting the city ’ s farmers ’ markets , became increasingly focused on eating local and understanding where their food came from .
They had visions of leaving behind their towering steel surroundings and starting their own farm upstate .
Problem was , neither of them—one an architect and the other an executive at a cheese company—knew anything about farming or the agriculture industry .
So , a novel idea popped into their heads , according to The New York Times ’ Style section : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much of it to a young farmer and build a two-family house where they could all live together ?
” And so Claire Ko and Eugene Kwak bought a plot of land , gave their idea a name—Togather—and found their ideal candidates to work the fields .
But they didn ’ t exactly “ give ” much to the young couple who would be doing the farming : If this sounds familiar , it is .
The correct term for what the Manhattan couple invented is tenant farming .
It ’ s a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In America , tenant farming is inextricably tied to the Jim Crow South , where it was the most direct way for wealthy white land owners to continue blocking the social mobility of formerly enslaved Black workers along with other non-white and poor people .
( My grandfather and great-grandfather , both Sappony men , worked as tenant farmers ; it was not until the 1930s that my grandfather , James Coleman , became one of the first tribal members to actually own and operate a Sappony farm . )
As Dr. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former farmworker , pointed out in response to the piece , tenant farming and the adjacent practice of sharecropping—in which the land owner takes a percentage of the crop or profit—was not limited to the South , having a strong presence in the Midwest and North .
Because the Times style section is essentially a high-minded troll blog , the story blew up .
( “ I see the NYT Real Estate section discovered sharecropping , ” one reader wrote . )
But , like similar tales of liberals gone bad , like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the story ends up signifying something bleak about what reads as altruism or even basic fairness in our present moment .
This couple , probably with honestly good intentions , is now magnanimously allowing a pair of workers to pay them $ 12,000 in annual rent while also spending their life savings to prepare land they don ’ t own .
The black marble countertops in the bespoke farmhouse are just the highly stylized trappings of a larger trend : A salt-the-earth approach to labor that increasingly forces workers to shoulder all risks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s sitting back and cleaning up .
Call it Togather or Uber or whatever you ’ d like , but it ’ s all the same con .

American farming is, by design and not by nature, an exploitative shell game, run by those wealthy enough to write the rules. It’s why the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act of the 1930s both included carve-outs that provided landowners relief from following labor protections and minimum wages set for nearly every other industry. It’s why American farming, today, in 2020, still depends heavily on underpaid and underprotected undocumented workers. It’s why the tenants that Kwak and Ko currently have working the farm admitted to the Times that they burned through their life savings in the first year because they had to install a well, build greenhouses, put in fencing, and replenish the soil. Should they fall behind on their 30-year lease and get evicted, all of these improvements would ultimately bolster the long-term finances of one group: their landlords.
This is the way that land ownership has been trending for decades now, with a select few claiming ownership over large swaths of the available private property: As of 2017, 100 individuals own a New England–size chunk of the nation’s land. The oft-mentioned “small family farms” that dominate the political ad cycle are more often than not farms operated by families but owned by massive agriculture corporations. This is the kind of scenario—no real route to ownership for your average person—that might make subsidized rent in a nice house seem like a dream deal. Still, in an interview with The Alchemist’s Kitchen in April, one of the tenant farmers from the Times story admitted that he and his wife had to find additional employment at a seed company during the off-season to cover their bills.
But this isn’t just about farming. In reality, the nu-tenant farming idea at the center of Togather is more akin to the Silicon Valley tendency to shift as many of the operational costs and risks onto individual workers as is legally possible. Think about how Uber and Lyft “discovered” that it was in fact cheaper to take a hefty percentage of their drivers’ meters while asking them to cover all car-related costs and not offering them health insurance. Or take this recent piece on Mars colonization by CNN Business reporter Jackie Wattles, in which Elon Musk described his plan to colonize the red planet as “life insurance for life,” while his business ally Robert Zubrin casually floated the idea of “indentured servitude” as a way working and middle-class people could afford the trip. “If somebody says, ‘But won’t there be exploitation there?’ Well sure,” Zubrin told CNN, “that’s what people do to each other all the time.”


Black Cinema Matters

In the fall of 1960 , Melvin Van Peebles stood on the Champs-Élysées , with two wet cheeks and three reels of film under his arm .
His life was in shambles .
Hours before , the aspiring film director was lauded during a screening of his films at the famed Cinémathèque in Paris .
He was the guest of its founder , legendary cinephile Henri Langlois .
After the event , Langlois kissed Van Peebles on both cheeks and drove away .
As the afterglow of the applause faded , Van Peebles realized he was alone—stranded in France , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He spoke no French and had no friends .
What was he to do ?
He stayed , and in so doing altered the course of cinematic history .
Like other Black intellectuals and artists from America , from Richard Wright and James Baldwin to Miles Davis and Dexter Gordon , Van Peebles found a refuge in Paris from the hostile racial climate back home .
That alone was enough to keep him going .
He started life in his adopted country as a homeless street performer , taught himself to speak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a respected magazine journalist .
When he learned of a law that subsidized French writers to adapt their books into films , Van Peebles transformed himself once more , eventually publishing four novels in French .
He was then awarded financing to direct a movie based on his novel , La Permission .
The resulting adaptation , entitled The Story of a Three-Day Pass ( 1967 ) , combines French and English dialogue .
It portrays a Black U.S. soldier stationed in France who , on a weekend pass from the army , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a white French woman .
Van Peebles experimented with jump cuts and freeze frames to express the social anxieties that presided over interracial dating in the 1960s .
His stylistic choices clearly situate the picture within the French New Wave , a movement popularized by François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard .
But , tellingly , one seldom sees Van Peebles ’ s name mentioned in discussions of that lively cinematic chapter .
When The Story of a Three-Day Pass won the top prize at the San Francisco Film Festival that year , audiences @ @ @ @ @ @ @ director of that marvelous French film was actually ... a soul brother from Chicago .
Van Peebles ’ s festival triumph generated buzz and garnered him a shot in Hollywood .
In 1970 , he helmed a successful picture , Watermelon Man , and became the first Black director to receive a multi-picture deal with a major studio .
But if you were to ask the average movie buff today to identify Van Peebles or any of his films , even amidst an unprecedented commercial effort to expose audiences to Black directors , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The story of Melvin Van Peebles speaks to a larger problem .
Many Americans , in the face of public outrage over the high-profile police killings of unarmed Black citizens like George Floyd , Ahmaud Arbery , Breonna Taylor , and Rayshard Brooks , are struggling to make sense of this country ’ s appalling racial violence .
Some have looked to Black films for answers .
Numerous media outlets and streaming services have compiled lists of films that reduce Black cinema , a heritage filled with strange twists and fascinating personalities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Spike Lee and a couple other big names .
This is what happens when you combine corporate incentives with performative “ wokeness.
” These campaigns leave the public imagining an enjoyable stay-at-home movie night : “ Learn About the Black Struggle and Chill .
”

In the fall of 1960, Melvin Van Peebles stood on the Champs-Élysées with wet cheeks and three reels of film under his arm. His life was in shambles. Hours before, the aspiring film director had been lauded during a screening of his films at the famed Cinémathèque in Paris. He was the guest of its founder, legendary cinephile Henri Langlois. After the event, Langlois kissed Van Peebles on both cheeks and drove away. As the afterglow of the applause faded, Van Peebles realized he was alone—stranded in France, with no money and no way home. He spoke no French and had no friends. What was he to do?
He stayed, and in so doing altered the course of cinematic history. Like other Black intellectuals and artists from America, from Richard Wright and James Baldwin to Miles Davis and Dexter Gordon, Van Peebles found a refuge in Paris from the hostile racial climate back home. That alone was enough to keep him going. He started life in his adopted country as a homeless street performer, taught himself to speak French, and went on to become a respected magazine journalist. When he learned of a law that subsidized French writers to adapt their books into films, Van Peebles transformed himself once more, eventually publishing four novels in French. He was then awarded financing to direct a movie based on his novel La Permission.


newrepublic--2020-09-11--The Problem With Redemption for Wagner

The Problem With Redemption for Wagner

At the beginning of Siegfried , the third opera in Richard Wagner ’ s Ring of the Nibelung cycle , the dwarf Mime is trying to repair a magic sword that was broken to pieces in the previous installment .
But every time he offers the sword to Siegfried , the young hero easily shatters it again : “ What use is this shiny sharpness / If the steel ’ s not hard and true !
” he complains .
Finally Siegfried takes matters into his own hands : Instead of welding the pieces back together , he grinds them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Armed with a weapon that is both old and new , he is able to slay the dragon Fafnir and rescue Brünnhilde from her prison of fire .
Wagner wrote several manifestos , but this scene offers the best defense of his artistic philosophy : In order to carry on the great tradition of German music , he had to remake it completely .
Wagner worshipped Beethoven , but he didn ’ t follow Beethoven ’ s example by writing symphonies and string quartets .
Instead he aspired to create a Gesamtkunstwerk , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drawing on the resources of music , poetry , drama , and the visual arts .
Music-dramas like Tristan und Isolde , the Ring cycle , and Parsifal used new harmonies and musical structures to create unprecedented effects .
Never before had there been a musical evocation of sexual passion like the Prelude to Tristan , or of martial frenzy like the “ Ride of the Valkyries.
” But it wasn ’ t only his music that made Wagner the favorite composer of radicals and avant-gardists in the nineteenth century .
It was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and philosophical ideas .
In 1848 , when he was 35 , Wagner took such an active part in the democratic revolution sweeping Germany that he was exiled , like his near-contemporary Karl Marx .
In his essay “ Art and Revolution , ” Wagner explained that political renewal depended on artistic renewal and vice versa .
Both aimed at the creation of a new human type , “ the strong fair man , to whom revolution shall give his strength , and art his beauty !
” The “ Ring ” is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of revolution , in which Siegfried , a free man , challenges the corrupt rule of the god Wotan .
It ’ s also the work in which Wagner went furthest toward making music a vehicle for narrative and ideas .
The philosopher Susanne K. Langer argues in her 1942 book , Philosophy in a New Key , that music , like myth , carries non-semantic meanings that are no less real for being impossible to paraphrase .
Beethoven ’ s late quartets are a profound experience of thought , even though one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thinking “ about.
” But this non-semantic quality makes classical music a difficult topic for discourse .
Listening to it was a private , interior experience long before technology made it possible to hear it in literal isolation , far from performers or audience .
For Wagner , this kind of “ absolute music ” was retrograde both artistically and politically .
The music of the future , which he meant to write , would overcome abstraction and separation .
It would be a total experience shared by an organic community , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And a communal art-form requires language , which is why the music-drama must supersede the symphony .
Wagner sees this historical process at work in the last movement of Beethoven ’ s Ninth Symphony , where a chorus joins the orchestra to sing the words of Schiller ’ s “ Ode to Joy.
” “ The continuation of the musical poetry demands resolution , a resolution that can only be articulated in human speech , ” Wagner wrote in a program note for a performance of the Ninth .

Mozart’s music wants to be music, while Wagner’s wants to be a national myth, a fatal trance, a utopian vision.
As Wagnerism travels further from the composer’s own time and place, his influence becomes more diffuse, having less to do with his actual ideas and context than with what he came to represent. In the United States, Wagnerites saw the sublimity of his music as a rebuke to the materialism and philistinism that surrounded them. One of the longest sustained analyses in the book is devoted to Willa Cather, who is usually thought of as a regionalist, a chronicler of hard lives on the desolate Plains. But she was also, Ross argues, one of the most important literary Wagnerites: “Among major authors, only Thomas Mann knew his Wagner better.” The influence is clearest in her 1915 novel, The Song of the Lark, whose heroine Thea Kronborg is based on the soprano Olive Fremstad, Cather’s friend. The novel traces the development of Thea’s artistic calling, which carries her from barren Moonstone, Colorado, to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, where she triumphs in Wagnerian roles. But Cather suggests that this distance isn’t as far as it seems: Thea’s experience of the rugged landscapes of the American West helps her to understand Wagner’s primal, mythic characters. For Cather, as for other gay and lesbian writers, Wagner’s operas also offered models of what would now be called gender fluidity: Brünnhilde is a woman playing the traditionally masculine role of warrior, while Parsifal rejects the seductress Kundry in favor of the male society of the Grail Knights.
A dozen years before The Song of the Lark, W.E.B. Du Bois devoted a chapter of The Souls of Black Folk to a fictional sketch in which a young African American, John Jones, attends a Wagner concert in New York and has a profound experience of the meaning of freedom:
A deep longing swelled in all his heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that low life that held him prisoned and befouled. If he could only live up in the free air where birds sang and setting suns had no touch of blood! Who had called him to be the slave and butt of all? And if he had called, what right had he to call when a world like this lay open before men?
Ross calls this kind of fictional moment, in which a character reaches an epiphany thanks to the power of Wagner’s music, a “Wagner Scene,” and he finds many of them in the literature of the period. For John Jones, however, the epiphany is shattered when he feels an usher’s tap on his shoulder. He is being evicted from the concert, ostensibly because he was sold someone else’s seat by mistake, but the real reason is obvious. “John Jones, you’re a natural-born fool,” he tells himself—foolish for believing that the freedom of art could prevail over American racism.


newrepublic--2020-09-11--There Is No Such Thing as a Conservative Workers’ Movement

The “ statement on a conservative future for the American labor movement , ” released just before Labor Day by the fledgling think tank American Compass , opens , naturally , with a celebration of “ economic freedom , ” “ limited government , ” and markets .
All of these things are good , American Compass claims , but something has nevertheless gone bad .
“ As we advocate for owners and managers in their pursuit of profit , and celebrate the enormous benefits their efforts can generate for us all , we must accord the same respect to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they too have a seat at the table , ” the statement—signed by Marco Rubio , Jeff Sessions , and Hillbilly Elegy author J.D .
Vance , among others—explains .
“ In a well-functioning and competitive market , participants meet as equals able to advance their interests through mutually beneficial relationships.
” Sounding very much at one point like Bernie Sanders , the statement ’ s authors continue , “ Strong worker representation can make America stronger.
” What follows is a truncated history of the decline in union membership in the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a mysterious ex nihilo occurrence , and an amicable vision of the future of the worker-employer relationship built on mutual respect and benevolence .
It all feels fairly harmless , if a little deluded .
The prospect of a right-wing workers ’ movement has terrified the left and titillated nationalists for decades because it tends to evoke the specter of a salt-of-the-earth white majority rising up to , if I can borrow a phrase , make America great again .
But despite the recurring fascination with this idea on both sides of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pro-worker conservatism , for all its pretenses of mass appeal , is a fleeting thought-exercise cooked up by pundits and think tanks more than a movement with any significant constituency .
This is Mitch McConnell ’ s party , after all .
Earlier this spring , for instance , as American Compass was just launching with blogs about family life in a work-obsessed culture , McConnell—who ’ s opposed increasing the minimum wage and heartily cheered the Supreme Court ’ s undermining of public sector unions—blocked federal aid to states struggling to cover @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And though Donald Trump ’ s thundering about jobs and trade may have helped him win around 43 percent of union households in 2016 , his presidency ( like most other Republican administrations ) has been defined by handouts to corporations and the wealthy .
Whatever support he once had among working-class voters now appears to be crumbling .

“If you go to parts of the upper Midwest or the middle of Pennsylvania, you’ll find plenty of Republican state representatives that have a voter base of blue-collar workers, who broadly believe in their unions and want them to do well,” Dustin Guastella, the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623, told me. “Those Republicans are fine being more pro-labor because their voters are pro-labor.” But if conservatives bent on moving the Republican Party in a worker-friendly direction are hoping to revitalize or scale up these types of limited alliances, it’s unlikely to happen at a national level. “On a federal level, the sheer concentration of union votes is so diluted that there’s rarely a Republican in Congress that needs to rely on the union vote,” Guastella said.
And while American Compass–style conservatives might say they support the “reform and reinvigoration of the laws that govern organizing and collective bargaining,” their approach to strengthening labor—which they seem to envision as a means to restoring a traditional social order, rather than a check on the power of capital—also has clear limits. According to Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, conservatives’ efforts to shore up labor often simply amount to “worker management strategies” designed to defang labor militancy.
“Are they pro-worker, or are they just worried that we might get a labor movement that’s even more militant?” she asked. “Right now we have a lot of strikes going on and we have organizing happening at some of the largest corporations in the country. Business is worried about the enormous gap between the rich and the poor, because in the past, when labor militancy has increased, it’s happened at times like this.”


newrepublic--2020-09-11--Trump’s OSHA Is Fining Companies Pennies for Pandemic Violations

“ This is essentially telling the country that a pork shoulder is worth more than a worker ’ s life , ” said David Michaels , who ran OSHA under President Barack Obama and teaches now at the George Washington University School of Public Health .
OSHA claims that $ 13,494 is the maximum penalty it ’ s permitted to impose under the law .
That may strike you as implausible , and so it is—it ’ s not true at all .
The $ 13,494 fine is OSHA ’ s ceiling for a single serious violation , but there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ past when OSHA derived multiple “ willful ” violations out of one bad action .
The only reason OSHA regulators couldn ’ t , in this instance , was because they were operating under the agency ’ s “ general duty clause.
” That clause is embedded in the 1970 statute that created OSHA : It holds that employers must keep workers “ free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.
” For complicated reasons , OSHA can ’ t easily charge multiple “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ using the general duty clause .
Hence the paltry Smithfield fine of $ 13,494 .
So why was OSHA relying on the general duty clause ?
Good question !
OSHA ’ s enforcement officials consider the clause one of its weakest enforcement tools and have seldom used it in the past , even under Trump .
( In fiscal year 2018 , the general duty clause was applied in only 1.5 percent out of a total of roughly 60,000 OSHA citations . )
If the Trump Labor Department , which oversees OSHA , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ safety during the pandemic , then six months ago it would have issued an “ emergency temporary standard ” to establish clear rules about what employers must do to protect workers during this emergency .
But OSHA refused to , probably at the direction of the White House .
Now the Trump administration has the nerve to claim that its hands are tied .
That ’ s nonsense .
When OSHA uses more effective enforcement tools at its disposal , it can collect upward of $ 1 million .
Under Michaels , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a $ 1.4 million fine in 2016 at a Wisconsin shipyard for multiple “ willful egregious ” violations of lead safety standards .
The state of California this week levied a $ 200,000 fine for Covid-19 workplace violations that it said were committed by a frozen food manufacturer called Overhill Farms .

The first citation, issued in mid-May, went to Winder Nursing, Inc., a retirement home in Winder, Georgia, where six workers were hospitalized. OSHA cited the facility for not reporting the hospitalizations in a timely fashion. An initial fine of $6,506 was later negotiated down to $3,904.
The second citation was issued in July against three nursing home facilities owned by OHNH LLC, an Ohio-based holding company. Seven employees were hospitalized. OSHA wrote up the company for poor face protection. For example, workers were wearing the same N95 masks for as long as seven days. The fine, which will likely be negotiated downward, was $40,482.
The third citation, and the first to any business that wasn’t a nursing home, went this week to a Smithfield pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Smithfield did such a lousy job protecting its workers from exposure to Covid-19 that it became a national scandal. The latest count is that 1,294 workers contracted Covid at the pork plant, of whom four died. The company was uncooperative with OSHA’s investigation, initially going to court to block the agency from examining workers’ medical records. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention later issued a blistering report on the company’s negligence. Smithfield was a classic bad actor.


newrepublic--2020-09-11--America’s Callous Indifference to Death

America’s Callous Indifference to Death

If one thing is clear about American history and politics , it is this : The United States has never honored the idea that everyone is created equal .
It has never valued every human life the same , and it ’ s hard to find a better recent reminder of this than the coronavirus pandemic , in which poor people of color have been more likely to be exposed , more likely to lose their jobs , and more likely to die .
There are large groups of people about whom this country simply does not care , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s election , however it shakes out , will represent the end of this shameful period .
Today , we will watch as Joe Biden and Mike Pence offer their versions of September 11–themed mourn-pomp as they “ cross paths ” in New York City .
We will also spend another day hearing news about the immediate impact of the pandemic ’ s explosion , as it disproportionately affects people of color and the poor .
Further tragedies await us in the weeks , months , and years to come , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will persist and widen those ever-greater economic gaps between rich and poor .
But it will affect bodies , as well .
It is too soon to know exactly what the long-term health impact will be—it is , after all , a novel virus—but it ’ s clear that there will be ongoing problems for some people who have had the virus , many of whom had symptoms for weeks on end .
We do not know if lung scarring from the disease will be permanent , or if these patients will continue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clots and strokes .
The most recent thing we ’ ve learned about the virus is that we don ’ t have any idea what it ’ s doing to our hearts .
At least a third of college athletes who had coronavirus have myocarditis , an inflamed heart muscle , and a German study of 100 recently recovered coronavirus patients , most of whom recovered at home , found that 60 percent have ongoing myocardial inflammation .
One third reported “ ongoing exhaustion.
” Many patients have exhibited neurological symptoms , such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have devastating long-term effects that we barely understand , and new evidence suggests the virus can enter the brain itself .
The BBC noted in June that survivors of twentieth-century flu pandemics experienced a kind of lingering depression that left them “ in a state of suspended animation ” ; Oliver Sacks described these sad patients as “ insubstantial as ghosts , and as passive as zombies.
” Try to imagine how a health care system that is already awful , not to mention prejudiced and unequal , will handle this influx of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very bad at preventing illness , and preventing deaths from those illnesses , compared to other countries .
We have far more obesity , leading to complications like diabetes and heart disease .
We also have hunger , which , contrary to the childlike assumptions of callous conservatives , is not a paradox : It is very possible for people to be both malnourished and overweight .
And now think of how coronavirus has spread among the poor , people who are already less likely to have health insurance or be able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well as being more prone to such conditions .
These people will be less able to weather the long-term physical effects of the virus—if we don ’ t do something about it—but also the mental health effects .
Such problems are already affecting Black and Latino people more .
The state of mental health access in this country is a complete joke , an utter disaster , even for people with insurance .
People will suffer and die without being able to see therapists , as they already do .
In June , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suicidal thoughts in the last month .

People who suffered worse effects from coronavirus, who were more likely to already have preexisting health problems, will suffer even more in the future—and we do not have a system to handle it. Not even close. Health insurance companies can’t even handle covering bills for their customers that the government mandated they pay, and those are the lucky ones who have insurance. It is guaranteed, as inevitable as the heat death of the universe, that insurance companies will fail to cover costs for people whose brains or lungs or hearts were damaged by Covid-19, by a virus that our government allowed to spread, wantonly, through the population. (With Medicare for All, there would still be people whose access to a doctor is not as good as your average millionaire’s, but there would be far, far fewer, and it would at least take out the unnecessary step of having someone in an office in Minnesota decide whether your test in Kentucky was covered—and getting it wrong.)
Is there any help on the horizon, any sense that we might avoid this unnecessary pain? Is it a coincidence that the moment the divergent impact of the virus became apparent, the political choices shifted hard in the direction of “reopening” the country and “saving” the economy, instead of people? It would certainly be shocking if this case represented the first time we broke away from the terrible pattern of devaluing certain lives. America has always valued the lives and work of rich, white, American men more than every other class of people; there have always been groups of people whose lives and deaths are treated as simply less important.
We send our Honored Troops abroad to die, in pointless forever wars; not only are the lives of those we kill abroad forgotten, but their deaths are explicitly justified as “worth it,” even when they are children. Corrupt police are given a license to kill and to edit major newspapers, which will dutifully obscure their victims’ lives in a shroud of passive voice. And then there are deaths that are just a permanent fixture of American life: the homeless people who freeze on winter nights; the mass (and regular) shootings that simply pass us by; the “diseases of despair” like opioid deaths and suicides; the deaths caused by lack of health insurance, or by pollution, or by malnutrition; tragic deaths that happen quietly in unregulated nursing homes.


newrepublic--2020-09-11--What If Democrats Just Promised to Make Things Work Again?

Writing for The New Republic , Clio Chang recently described her three-month attempt to receive unemployment benefits in New York after being laid off from her job at Vice .
As a journalist who had been covering unemployment until the moment she needed to apply for it , she was better positioned than most Americans to navigate the system .
And yet , despite living in a deep-blue state , she had to jump through hoops for an entire summer just to get a benefit she very clearly qualified for .
It is true , as Chang notes , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unemployment systems were intentionally broken or neglected in order to discourage their use .
But that is not really the case in New York , a high-tax , ostensibly high-service state run for many years now by conventional liberal Democrats .
Here , it didn ’ t work because none of those conventional liberal Democrats have invested enough time and energy and care into making sure the machinery of government simply works .
New York lawmakers and political leaders can blame an unprecedented unemployment crisis caused by a global pandemic for the brokenness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of their chronic underinvestment and negligence predates Covid-19 .
The New York City subway system was allowed to degrade and break over a period of many years .
It wasn ’ t until it reached a crisis point of unreliability that anyone in power decided to take responsibility for fixing it , though successive administrations and legislatures could ’ ve at any point decided to run it effectively .
Nor is this remotely a problem limited to New York .
Chang ’ s piece inspired countless people on Twitter and elsewhere to share @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state unemployment systems throughout the country .
We ’ ll probably never know how many Americans were falsely denied benefits because of this dysfunction ; as of late April , the Economic Policy Institute found that , for every 10 people who successfully filed , three or four couldn ’ t get through the system , and an additional two didn ’ t even try .
The federal failure to send money to newly jobless citizens was just the most widespread evidence this year that American governance at every level is hollowed out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The government ’ s inability to carry out fair or orderly elections has been evident for years ; it has not improved this year .
It took a shockingly short amount of time for right-wing goons to completely sabotage the U.S .
Postal Service .
State investment in public higher education never fully recovered after the 2008 financial crisis , and the pandemic may destroy the institution as we know it .
Parents of younger children across the country don ’ t know where or whether or when their kids will see the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in some parts of the country , people have just been abandoned to fend for themselves .
One can already , in the words of The Washington Post , visit places where it is possible to get “ a glimpse of what a complete social and economic collapse might look like in America .
”

Perhaps the argument’s rarity comes from an unwillingness to acknowledge that almost nothing in American life is working as intended. Or perhaps, more charitably, it’s ignorance: Many in the political class don’t know how bad it’s gotten. (New York’s political leadership is notorious for never setting foot on the public transit system that most of New York City relies on daily.) Whatever the reason, politicians rarely appeal to the untapped need for things to function better.
It’s not unheard of, of course, for someone to run on that argument. It was Michael Bloomberg’s promise when he won three mayoral elections in New York. The common Republican promise to run government “like a business” is effectively a bait and switch based on this appeal. Voters take it to mean that these politicians will make things work—they will replace a kludge of bureaucracy with efficiency and deliver services to consumers as painlessly as Amazon—rather than that they will slash everything to the bone while ensuring a privileged class extracts whatever value there was to be extracted.
Most Americans, like most people, simply want things to work.
Some political operatives have mistaken the appeal and success of that message, about running things like a business, for a general American preference for smaller government or for “market-based solutions” as opposed to “government” ones. This is nonsense (though it is, for a privileged few, politically useful nonsense). Most Americans, like most people, simply want things to work. They want, when they lose their job, to call the unemployment office, apply for unemployment, and then receive unemployment. They want their mail delivered on time and voting to be easy. They don’t want “choice” in their health care; they want it to be easy to get health care. People might like to take the bus to work, if it ran frequently, along well-designed routes, without getting stuck in slow-moving traffic.


newrepublic--2020-09-11--What Is Covid-19 Doing to Our Hearts?

What Is Covid-19 Doing to Our Hearts?

Brady Feeney hadn ’ t even taken any classes at Indiana University when he fell ill with Covid-19 .
Three weeks after he moved to Bloomington , the incoming freshman was in the emergency room , struggling to breathe .
Before his illness , Feeney had been a perfectly healthy teenager , with no preexisting conditions .
In high school , he was a three-time all-state football player and won two state titles in Missouri .
But after two weeks of “ hell ” fighting the virus , his mother said , his bloodwork indicated possible heart problems .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the medical community had two working assumptions : First , this was primarily a respiratory disease , and second , it seemed to hit older people much harder than younger people , with eight out of 10 confirmed Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. happening in adults 65 or older .
But now , new research is challenging both of these assumptions .
Growing evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2 doesn ’ t only infect the lungs .
It also affects the brain , kidneys , and heart .
At first , doctors and researchers wondered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just from the stress of having Covid-19 and being on a ventilator or life support .
But increasingly , research indicates that the virus may be attacking other organs in the body directly—and this may be more common than previously thought , even among those who aren ’ t sick enough to be hospitalized .
Some have suggested that Covid-19 is actually a blood vessel disease ; the lungs are merely the way the virus enters the body , but from there it gets into the bloodstream and takes up residence in major @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long-lasting symptoms .
Moreover , experts now believe , healthy young people can get mild cases of the coronavirus—even not knowing they were sick—that could leave them with lasting cardiovascular damage .
Even those who seem to have recovered from the deadly respiratory illness are not free of its complications .
Heart failure could be “ the next chapter ” of the coronavirus illness , Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow , interim chief of UCLA ’ s Division of Cardiology , recently argued in a co-authored editorial in the journal JAMA Cardiology .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not be fatal , there still may be important health consequences , ” he told me .
Myocarditis , or inflammation of the heart , is usually a rare condition that can occur with viral infections , including the flu .
But from the start of the pandemic , doctors were seeing heart inflammation among patients hospitalized with serious cases of Covid-19 , Fonarow said : Early research showed that 20 to 30 percent of those hospitalized had heart issues .
Left untreated , myocarditis can damage the heart and lead to heart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

Other research on Covid-19 and hearts, some of it preliminary, is even more troubling. It’s possible that some of the cardiovascular change is actually cell death, similar to what happens in a heart attack. One study from Germany published in July, for instance, found that 24 of 39 autopsied patients who died from Covid-19 had heart cells heavily infected with the coronavirus.
“I am way more scared of this virus now than I was four months ago.”
That result made sense, said Todd McDevitt, when he saw what happened to heart cells ravaged by SARS-CoV-2 in a petri dish. McDevitt was part of a team of researchers at the Gladstone Institutes that in late August posted a preprint study, which has not been peer-reviewed or published by a journal, to further the discussion of the ways the coronavirus affects heart cells and to see what other researchers were finding.* “We started to see some very odd behaviors,” he told me. “It’s not that all the cells are gone right away. They’re undergoing this process where their insides are being chewed up.” From the outside, the cells looked mostly fine. But inside, they were shredded—“chopped up,” McDevitt said.
A petri dish of heart stem cells is not the same as a real organ in a real human body, so there are limitations to their study. But the consistent damage to the cells in the lab, McDevitt said, aligns with the research on patients and suggests that if the coronavirus finds its way to your heart, it doesn’t seem to let go easily. “This could explain why someone who maybe initially didn’t have signs of heart damage recovers, but then months later is complaining of either chest pains, racing heart, some of the things that are starting to become noticed,” McDevitt said.


newrepublic--2020-09-12--Does Trump Care That the American West Is Aflame?

I spend a lot of time writing about what President Donald Trump says .
But sometimes I have to write about what he ’ s not saying : In this case , he ’ s saying virtually nothing about the wildfires engulfing the Western United States right now .
At least 15 people have died so far in the ongoing seasonal blazes across the West Coast , while hundreds of homes have been destroyed and millions of acres have burned .
As a series of wildfires in northern Oregon merge and move toward the outlying communities surrounding Portland , things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while the worst fires are in California , Oregon , and Washington , every state west of the Rockies has been affected .
Even in communities not directly affected by the fires , clouds of smoke have lowered the air quality to dangerous levels .
The White House hasn ’ t completely ignored the ongoing crisis .
The administration quietly approved disaster declarations for California last month and Oregon this month , freeing up federal funds for relief in those states .
But the president himself is quiet on the disasters themselves .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the wildfires in any of Trump ’ s recent public remarks and noted that the Oregon disaster declaration was even announced by a member of Congress , not the White House itself .
Trump ’ s personal Twitter feed is similarly devoid of any words of comfort or consolation for those affected by the fires , even as he warned of dire consequences should he lose the November election .
“ If I don ’ t win , America ’ s Suburbs will be OVERRUN with Low Income Projects , Anarchists , Agitators @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ Friendly Protesters , ’ ” he wrote on Twitter on Thursday , as flames overran at least two small towns in Oregon , leaving mostly ashes in their wake .
Trump is not wholly alone when it comes to underappreciating the impact of Western wildfires , of course .
Most of the nation ’ s political and media infrastructure is located in New York City and Washington , D.C. , so matters affecting the East Coast receive a disproportionate amount of attention in the public sphere .
Indeed , it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in American climate discourse are of superstorms that might hit the Gulf of Mexico and the Eastern Seaboard in 20 years , not the blazes that annually ravage the West right now .
The New York Times ’ Charlie Warzel noted earlier this week how his own perception of the annual fire season changed dramatically when he relocated from the East Coast to Montana , a few years ago .

“Since I moved West, I’ve been preoccupied with this question: Would Americans feel a greater sense of alarm about our rapidly warming planet and the disastrous, perhaps irreversible effects of climate change if everyone could experience a fire season in person?” he asked. “Would cable news hosts devote the same nonstop coverage to fires as they do for hurricanes if more of their executives woke up each morning to falling ash? Would more lawmakers care if it looked like this outside the Capitol at high noon?” As a Westerner who moved east in 2013, I have no doubt that the answer to each of Warzel’s questions is yes.
Even in that context, however, Trump’s disinterest is exceptional. When fires ravaged California in 2017, Trump drew the ire of state leaders and local firefighters by falsely attributing the state’s losses to its own purported mistakes. “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” he wrote on Twitter. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!” When disaster strikes, Trump’s first question appears to be “Who can I blame?” and not “How can I help?”
It’s hardly news to note that empathy is a trait that the president lacks. He has made virtually no public expressions of grief or sorrow about the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic, even as it nears 200,000 lost Americans—the equivalent of 67 September 11s. “A thousand Americans are dying every day,” Axios’s Jonathan Swan told Trump in an interview in August. “They are dying, that’s true,” Trump replied. “It is what it is.” That callousness can have a dire effect on public policy. Earlier this week, The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward reported that Trump privately remarked about the potential deadliness of the virus weeks before he publicly downplayed its effect for political gain.


newrepublic--2020-09-14--The Rhetorical Weapons of Liberal Nimbyism

The West Side Community Organization describes its mission as twofold : to “ advocate for a restored quality of life for residents , visitors , and the small business community ” and “ advance safer and more compassionate policies regarding New Yorkers who are struggling with homelessness , mental illness , and drug addiction.
” As its first official order of business , the hastily assembled 501 ( c ) 4 launched a slick campaign to vilify 300 unhoused men in its Upper West Side neighborhood as dangerous criminals , then succeeded in evicting them from the hotel the city @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the pandemic .
Apparently it was the $ 123,000-median-income families of the liberal Manhattan neighborhood who were the real New Yorkers struggling with ( the sight of ) homelessness .
Now the men will be going somewhere else .
According to The New York Daily News , the city is in the process of relocating other unhoused people , many with disabilities , from a Midtown shelter in order to make room for the newly placeless former residents of the Upper West Side .
In a statement on the city ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attorney Randy Mastro called it “ a testament to community organizing.
” The group that came together under the banner of WSCO had started out as strangers , he continued , but came together as a stronger whole “ dedicated to saving their neighborhood.
” The inviolable power of private property defines the actions and attitudes that can create and destroy communities ; in liberal enclaves like New York , this is done with language .
Slippery terms like neighborhood and community are quietly and expertly carved out to exclude the people—nonwhite or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Evictions driven by wealthy residents and property owners become actions taken for the community , and for neighbors , rather than against them .
The community “ came together ” rather than was torn apart .
By cloaking the language of profit in the language of safety , these efforts are able to write out the poor and unhoused—those for whom the city is the most hostile and unsafe—from these most basic human identities .
One member of the neighborhood Facebook group that became WSCO told The New York Post that “ our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Their fear was “ palpable.
” Another resident who opposed sharing her neighborhood with unhoused others asserted that “ we ’ re a progressive-minded community and we tend to be sympathetic to the homeless , but with sex offenders , draw the line.
” Elsewhere in New York , a woman whose neighborhood also saw an influx of unhoused people during the pandemic claimed that she never left her house without pepper spray .
The founder of a civilian patrol group complained of “ all kinds of chaos … assaults , vandalism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” More than 160 business executives wrote to the mayor that “ there is widespread anxiety over public safety , cleanliness , and quality-of-life issues that are contributing to deteriorating conditions in commercial districts , ” demanding a restoration of the “ security and the livability of our communities.
” An Upper West Side petition declared , “ This situation is making life uncomfortable for residents and putting families , children , and the elderly in harm ’ s way .
”

It is typical of respectable liberal discourse that any talk of homelessness is really talk of those affected by others’ homelessness. (Earlier this summer, the Times published a 1,769-word report on the homeless encampment at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis, out of which 71 words were dedicated to an actual resident of the encampment and the rest to the housed people around it who were coping with this struggle with varying shades of gallantry or concern.) The bullshit liberal politics of decency dictate that to believe in a mechanized and fully functioning system is to acknowledge that homelessness does exist—and we care about it!—but that it has to be dealt with somewhere else where we don’t have to look at it. Then a global pandemic happens and suddenly we are forced to look at poverty, and it appears there is a malfunction in this system, so we start short-circuiting as well, and demand to speak to the manager.
Luc Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, lived on the Upper West Side in the 1970s and remembers a significant enough class difference within the neighborhood then—rotating Columbia students, residents of welfare hotels, cult groups—but never felt a sense of threat. “They spent their days on the benches in the traffic islands on Broadway drinking, perfectly benign,” he told me. (And then, as now, there are many housed residents of the Upper West Side who have organized against the eviction and in support of the unhoused residents.)
Property ownership in such an expensive city changes a relationship to a home, forcing questions about a return on investment and what money is meant to secure you. “It’s not about threat,” Sante said of what’s changed in the ensuing years, “it’s about property values. In those days, it wasn’t that expensive to live on the Upper West Side.”


newrepublic--2020-09-14--The Democrats’ Excessive Bed-Wetting Over Joe Biden’s Campaign

After Ronald Reagan ’ s meandering performance in his initial 1984 debate with Walter Mondale , the political press corps responded with the joyous discovery that there was indeed a horserace .
A front page New York Times story by Howell Raines was headlined , “ Chance of Revival Seen for Mondale After TV Debate.
” Reagan went on to carry 49 states , while Mondale spent the entire fall campaign trailing by double-digit margins in the Gallup poll .
But the incident illustrates the biggest built-in bias in mainstream media coverage of politics : a vested interest in creating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grown since the Reagan era .
In 2012 , at the end of an unusually stable campaign in which polls foretold Barack Obama ’ s victory over Mitt Romney , Tim Murphy in Mother Jones identified 68 separate events that had been breathlessly described as “ game changers.
” This year , political journalists have found that the surest way to concoct campaign drama is to exploit Democrats ’ fears that once again Donald Trump will defy the polls and the projections .
The polls seem embedded in amber .
Since October 2019 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ average has shown Biden with a healthy lead in head-to-head matchups with Trump .
And that edge has been large enough to overcome any built-in Republican advantage in the Electoral College .
Similarly , Biden ’ s odds of winning in the regularly updated election forecast at Nate Silver ’ s website , FiveThirtyEight , have almost always been in the 70-to-75 percent range since June .
As CNN polling analyst Harry Enten put it last week , “ The stability of this race is record breaking when looking at polling dating back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t the impression that you would have gotten over the past six months from reading or watching the political news .
Almost every other story seemed to concoct a new rationale why a Trump comeback was inevitable .
At the beginning of the pandemic , Democrats panicked when Trump ’ s popularity bounced up a few points because of a short-lived rally-around-the-president effect .
After a cash-strapped Biden swept the Super Tuesday primaries , NBC News stressed that , in contrast , “ the Trump camp is counting its cash after hitting some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ months.
” As Bernie Sanders continued his no-hope campaign throughout March , the Times reported , “ Establishment Democrats are desperately hoping to avoid a reprise of 2016 , when Mr. Sanders battled to the bitter end against Hillary Clinton .
”

Both journalists and party activists are motivated by the same chilling memories of 2016, when blithe overconfidence in a Clinton victory collided with the returns from the blue-wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. For campaign reporters still dealing with PTSD from that election, this leads to a tendency to confuse remote possibilities (say, shy Trump voters who supposedly won’t tell the truth to pollsters) with probabilities. As a result, Biden’s consistent lead in swing-state polling and the lack of serious third-party options in 2020—like Libertarian Gary Johnson in 2016—do not get the attention they deserve.
Those are also, to be fair, evergreen stories that can only be told so many times. But the notion of another surprise Trump victory is inherently dramatic, guaranteed to get readers’ attention, and easy work thanks to an abundance of skittish Democrats willing to express their fears to reporters, often on background or off the record. Many of these hand-wringers are attention-seeking, erstwhile strategists who can’t seem to get their phone calls returned by the Biden high command. Others are ideologues who wish Biden would embrace their pet issue. A few, perhaps, adopt a downbeat tone for a more understandable reason: to ensure that voters don’t stay home out of over-confidence.
Since the spring, for instance, Democrats have privately been sounding the alarm bell every time another poll shows that—despite the high jobless rate—voters still narrowly prefer Trump on the economy, even if they disdain the president’s handling of the pandemic. Now Bernie Sanders is dropping heavy-handed hints that Biden has to veer to the left or else. As The Washington Post reported over the weekend, “Sanders has told associates that Biden is at serious risk of coming up short in the November election if he continues his vaguer, more centrist approach.” A key Sanders recommendation is that Biden campaign with left-wing figures like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, even if such play-to-the-base tactics are likely to be counterproductive among older, college-educated voters in upscale suburbs.


newrepublic--2020-09-14--How Corporations Pillaged the Free Market

Nevertheless , well into the twentieth century , the idea was that corporations were only permitted to exist and enjoy benefits unavailable to other forms of business because they served some sort of public purpose .
Corporations commonly deferred to the interests of the communities in which they operated and to other stakeholders—including customers , employees , and suppliers , in addition to shareholders and communities .
Defenders of the rising new corporate order adopted this broader notion of a corporation ’ s true client base as a key justification of corporations ’ greatly expanded privileges .
This all began @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an influential article published in The New York Times Magazine on September 13 , 1970 , University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman fired the first salvo against the traditional view of corporate responsibility as being divided among various stakeholders .
He argued instead that the corporation has one and only one responsibility : to the shareholder , who is the owner of the business .
In Friedman ’ s view , “ ownership ” confers an absolute right to use whatever property is owned in whatever way the owner chooses , subject only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shareholders are the owners , they are entitled to 100 percent of the profit , minus taxes .
It therefore followed for Friedman that any benefits the corporation confers upon nonshareholders that do not serve the ultimate purpose of profitability are , in essence , theft of money that belongs to the shareholder .
Friedman believed that narrowing the focus of the corporation to the single goal of maximum profitability would increase productivity and efficiency , and thereby raise economic growth and improve social well-being to the greatest extent that corporations could do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1976 , University of Rochester economists Michael Jensen and William Meckling amplified the Friedman doctrine .
They argued that shifting the focus of management solely toward the maximization of shareholder value offered a solution to the long-standing problem of ownership and control of the big corporation .
Since at least the 1930s , economists and legal scholars had been concerned about the new powers wielded by large modern corporations .
Under the modern model of corporate governance , shareholders had little control over the assets that they owned .
In reality , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In theory , managers were just employees working for the shareholders , who were represented by the corporation ’ s board of directors to look out for their interests .
But in practice , boards did a poor job of doing so .
Being a board member was not a full-time job , and boards might only meet a couple of times a year and were often hand-picked by senior management .
Moreover , boards lacked the information and detailed expertise necessary to really understand what the company was doing on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whatever the CEO was doing , as long as he was doing reasonably well .

Nevertheless, well into the twentieth century, the idea was that corporations were only permitted to exist and enjoy benefits unavailable to other forms of business because they served some sort of public purpose. Corporations commonly deferred to the interests of the communities in which they operated and to other stakeholders—including customers, employees, and suppliers, in addition to shareholders and communities. Defenders of the rising new corporate order adopted this broader notion of a corporation’s true client base as a key justification of corporations’ greatly expanded privileges.
This all began to change in the 1970s. In an influential article published in The New York Times Magazine on September 13, 1970, University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman fired the first salvo against the traditional view of corporate responsibility as being divided among various stakeholders. He argued instead that the corporation has one and only one responsibility: to the shareholder, who is the owner of the business. In Friedman’s view, “ownership” confers an absolute right to use whatever property is owned in whatever way the owner chooses, subject only to the constraints of law. Since shareholders are the owners, they are entitled to 100 percent of the profit, minus taxes. It therefore followed for Friedman that any benefits the corporation confers upon nonshareholders that do not serve the ultimate purpose of profitability are, in essence, theft of money that belongs to the shareholder. Friedman believed that narrowing the focus of the corporation to the single goal of maximum profitability would increase productivity and efficiency, and thereby raise economic growth and improve social well-being to the greatest extent that corporations could do so.
In an extraordinarily important article in 1976, University of Rochester economists Michael Jensen and William Meckling amplified the Friedman doctrine. They argued that shifting the focus of management solely toward the maximization of shareholder value offered a solution to the long-standing problem of ownership and control of the big corporation.


newrepublic--2020-09-14--The Ridiculous Wargaming of the 2020 Election

Commentators have worried from the moment his presidency began that Trump might challenge the 2020 election results or even stay in the White House in the event of a loss ; anxieties about this are so palpable in the press that Trump has joked about it from time to time .
The impact the coronavirus pandemic has already had on the election—the innate challenges of the attempted transition to mass vote by mail , mismanagement and suspected shenanigans at the intentionally underfunded Postal Service , the fact that the results might be unclear for days or even weeks after Election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only compounded Democratic concerns about how November will play out .
On Tuesday , The Daily Beast reported that a coalition of progressive groups calling itself the “ Democracy Defense Nerve Center ” met last week to develop a game plan .
“ Over the course of two hours , participants broached the question of what the progressive political ecosystem can functionally do in a series of election scenarios , ” the Beast ’ s Sam Stein wrote .
“ They began charting out what it would take to stand up a multi-state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ training program for nonviolent civil disobedience , and the underpinnings of what one official described as ‘ mass public unrest.
’ ” In a Thursday piece , Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green similarly told The Atlantic ’ s Ron Brownstein that post-election protests defending a full vote count might resemble “ the Black Lives Matter protests on steroids , as people come into the streets to defend their democracy and to defend the counting of votes.
” Support for direct and dramatic action is coming from at least a few unlikely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The New York Times last week , “ What Will You Do if Trump Doesn ’ t Leave ?
” expressed hope that our democracy might be saved , if push comes to shove , by “ a group of sober people who are militant about America , who can see reality unblinkered by the lens of partisanship , and who are finally compelled to organize.
” But a call to arm the moderate columnists this was not : Brooks envisions a massive , peaceful democratic uprising like those we ’ ve seen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ several years .
“ If Trump claims a victory that is not rightly his , a few marches in the streets will not be an adequate response , ” he wrote .
“ There may have to be a sustained campaign of civic action , as in Hong Kong and Belarus , to rally the majority that wants to preserve democracy , that isolates those who would undo it.
” It should be said that there ’ s no real way for Trump to meaningfully hold onto power if it ’ s determined @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is said and done .
Legal experts and scholars of the presidency have been trying to reassure the public about this for some time .
Unless Trump can persuade the entire federal government and its law enforcement to do his bidding , he will no longer be president on Inauguration Day , even if he sits at the Resolute Desk with his arms crossed and refuses to leave the White House .
It also shouldn ’ t be forgotten that there was intense concern about Trump refusing to concede the election in 2016 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not at the last presidential debate .
“ Democracies require public legitimacy for their survival , ” The Atlantic ’ s Peter Beinart wrote that night .
“ When powerful actors withhold that legitimacy , the system crumbles.
” Later that month , Harvard ’ s Steven Levitsky told The New York Times that Trump ’ s comments resembled strongman rhetoric from developing and pseudo-democratic countries .
“ This is the stuff that we see in Russia and Venezuela and Azerbaijan and Malawi and Bangladesh , and that we don ’ t see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this discourse and its presumptions about the state of the race make for some bleak comedy in hindsight .
“ Trump , ” The Washington Post ’ s Chris Cillizza warned in one October column , “ isn ’ t going to simply disappear on Nov. 9.
” How right he was !

This is practically surrealism. Joe Biden and Democratic states are not going to threaten the break up of the United States this November, and those who participated in the scenario knew it. Secession was proposed because secession was, evidently, the only means they could conceive of for extracting structural concessions from Republicans after a Trump victory; it’s the kind of idea one puts out and teases out when there are no others left. There’s something inescapably risible about this: The notion that major political figures who’ve done absolutely nothing whatsoever over the last four years to advance the cause of eliminating the Electoral College would, in a strategy session just months before the election, finally address the Electoral College as a problem by imagining, in a deranged game of make-believe, the Democratic nominee bravely instigating an epic constitutional crisis on the behalf of reforms he’s publicly criticized and opposed.
It’s all well and good to have a “Democracy Defense Nerve Center.” But where has the Electoral College Nerve Center been?
The words “Electoral College” do not appear in this year’s Democratic Party platform, just as they didn’t in 2004, 2008, 2012, or 2016. It’s all well and good to have a “Democracy Defense Nerve Center.” But where has the Electoral College Nerve Center been? How do they actually intend to solve this problem? Do they intend to solve it? What would they be doing if they did? This last question has a straightforward answer.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, or NPVIC, is a proposed agreement that would have each state give its Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Once states with a total of the 270 votes needed to win an election agree, the Electoral College will be functionally abolished. No Constitutional amendment would be required—the Supreme Court affirmed just this year that states can govern their electors however they please—although it’s possible that a Democratic Congress would have to ratify the compact before it took effect. So far, states with a total of 187 votes have joined the compact. Eighty-three more are needed. There would surely be legal challenges from the right if the compact were ever completed and the rest of the road to 270 runs, in the first place, through less Democratic and more challenging states than the ones that have already ratified it. Neither of these are reasons not to try—if the Democratic Party and progressive groups establish a national popular vote as a policy priority, organize around it, and invest heavily in pushing it, the compact will have a chance. If they don’t, it won’t. The independent resources simply aren’t there.


newrepublic--2020-09-14--The Ridiculous War-Gaming of the 2020 Election

Commentators have worried from the moment his presidency began that Trump might challenge the 2020 election results or even stay in the White House in the event of a loss ; anxieties about this are so palpable in the press that Trump has joked about it from time to time .
The impact the coronavirus pandemic has already had on the election—the innate challenges of the attempted transition to mass vote by mail , mismanagement and suspected shenanigans at the intentionally underfunded Postal Service , the fact that the results might be unclear for days or even weeks after Election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only compounded Democratic concerns about how November will play out .
On Tuesday , The Daily Beast reported that a coalition of progressive groups calling itself the “ Democracy Defense Nerve Center ” met last week to develop a game plan .
“ Over the course of two hours , participants broached the question of what the progressive political ecosystem can functionally do in a series of election scenarios , ” the Beast ’ s Sam Stein wrote .
“ They began charting out what it would take to stand up a multi-state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ training program for nonviolent civil disobedience , and the underpinnings of what one official described as ‘ mass public unrest.
’ ” In a Thursday piece , Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green similarly told The Atlantic ’ s Ron Brownstein that postelection protests defending a full vote count might resemble “ the Black Lives Matter protests on steroids , as people come into the streets to defend their democracy and to defend the counting of votes.
” Support for direct and dramatic action is coming from at least a few unlikely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for The New York Times last week , “ What Will You Do if Trump Doesn ’ t Leave ?
” expressed hope that our democracy might be saved , if push comes to shove , by “ a group of sober people who are militant about America , who can see reality unblinkered by the lens of partisanship , and who are finally compelled to organize.
” But a call to arm the moderate columnists this was not : Brooks envisions a massive , peaceful democratic uprising like those we ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last several years .
“ If Trump claims a victory that is not rightly his , a few marches in the streets will not be an adequate response , ” he wrote .
“ There may have to be a sustained campaign of civic action , as in Hong Kong and Belarus , to rally the majority that wants to preserve democracy , that isolates those who would undo it.
” It should be said that there ’ s no real way for Trump to meaningfully hold onto power if it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all is said and done .
Legal experts and scholars of the presidency have been trying to reassure the public about this for some time .
Unless Trump can persuade the entire federal government and its law enforcement to do his bidding , he will no longer be president on Inauguration Day , even if he sits at the Resolute Desk with his arms crossed and refuses to leave the White House .
It also shouldn ’ t be forgotten that there was intense concern about Trump refusing to concede the election in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might not at the last presidential debate .
“ Democracies require public legitimacy for their survival , ” The Atlantic ’ s Peter Beinart wrote that night .
“ When powerful actors withhold that legitimacy , the system crumbles.
” Later that month , Harvard ’ s Steven Levitsky told The New York Times that Trump ’ s comments resembled strongman rhetoric from developing and pseudo-democratic countries .
“ This is the stuff that we see in Russia and Venezuela and Azerbaijan and Malawi and Bangladesh , and that we don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hubris of this discourse and its presumptions about the state of the race make for some bleak comedy in hindsight .
“ Trump , ” The Washington Post ’ s Chris Cillizza warned in one October column , “ isn ’ t going to simply disappear on Nov. 9.
” How right he was !


newrepublic--2020-09-15--The Era of Disaster Militiaism in America

Sunday night , wildfires still had most of Clackamas County , Oregon , under a “ level 3 ” evacuation order—which comes with the guidance of “ Go !
Evacuate now !
” —while the sheriff ’ s office has been juggling multiple crises .
Its sworn officers were seemingly at odds with one another , some promoting unfounded conspiracy theories , like claiming “ antifa ” was intentionally lighting fires and looting , and others pleading with people who had set up militia-style checkpoints and were stopping drivers they deemed unfamiliar or suspicious at gunpoint , to go home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The county drew national media attention as a hotbed of social media–driven misinformation , serving as yet another example of how plodding those platforms were in the face of dangerous rumors .
But more harrowing is how swiftly militia types and right-wing armed freelancers mobilized in response , as they have in other moments of unrest in Oregon and across the country .
Though such activity has drawn more scrutiny in recent months , the groundwork for militias to exploit crises and uprisings has been laid over the past several years , resulting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such organized groups , along with the threat of violence .
When corporations and governments turn a moment of crisis into an opportunity , Naomi Klein has called it disaster capitalism .
When survival is on the line , they have learned , people may be willing to go along with what they may not otherwise .
The same dynamic is useful to those in much smaller , more extreme formations , like militia groups , who see disaster as a chance to change public perceptions of themselves—that they ’ re not racists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law and order.
” In a crisis , they can act out and gain ground .
Oregon journalist Alissa Azar helped put the militia activity on the national radar while out covering the wildfires in Clackamas County on Thursday .
In the photos she posted to Twitter , the abandoned properties and emergency vehicles were all filtered through a poisonous amber haze , smoke hanging in the air .
With her were two other journalists , Sergio Olmos and Justin Yau .
Azar posted later that afternoon , “ We got 3 guns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ checkpoint … none of us are white.
” A few minutes later , she added , “ We ’ re safe .
It ’ s scary knowing there are people who legitimately think ‘ antifa liberals ’ are setting these towns on fire … we are very clearly documenting and interviewing folks .
Our pictures were taken and so was the car and license plate.
” As people fled their homes , the phantom threat of antifa arson and looting and the very real presence of an armed response emerged together .
These @ @ @ @ @ @ @ era of massively networked disinformation , of Trump and QAnon , the pandemic and its attendant moral panics over masks and vaccines .
The Oath Keepers , “ today ’ s Blackshirts ” as Casey Michel described them in The New Republic , was founded in 2009 , in response to the election of President Barack Obama .

While law enforcement agencies, from the FBI to local sheriffs, attempt to get the public to put these antifa rumors and militia responses to rest, their own members have been just as susceptible. In an emergency Clackamas County Board of County Commissioners meeting last Thursday, Captain Jeff Smith, a 25-year law enforcement veteran who has represented the county sheriff’s office on a Homeland Security Taskforce, claimed there were “reports” of “extremist groups—and it’s not confirmed antifa, but suspected antifa” trying to “start further fires.” One member pushed back, almost bemused, saying it was “some media thing” and hadn’t been confirmed. Smith claimed again that there had been “reliable sightings” of antifa.
The sheriff’s office representative was making these claims to county officials on the same day the three reporters were stopped by an armed militia. That kind of threat was not mentioned. A Clackamas County deputy was recorded in a video time-stamped that day—September 10—saying much the same thing, but his riff was more profane. “Antifa motherfuckers are out causing hell,” deputy Mark Nikolai said. “There’s a lot of lives at stake.” He was later put on leave.
As some members of law enforcement put down rumors and conspiracy theories, others are helping to drive the militias’ narrative for them—though it is not unique to them. This idea of antifa comports with the terrifying vision of the country played on repeat just a few weeks ago at the Republican National Convention, a promised disaster. Trump continues to rail against antifa, while his administration suppresses reports showing the actual threat posed by far-right extremists. Perhaps the idea of a militia coming to save good Americans from anti-fascists while their town burned down around them is meant to seem less insane with the actual horizon on fire. It is not.


newrepublic--2020-09-15--How White-Collar Criminals Get Away With It

Over a decade since the financial crisis revealed an unimaginable level of white-collar crime by some of the highest-status people in our society , a major question remains unanswered .
Why did no one go to jail in the United States ?
Actually , two people did go to jail .
The first is a well-known story : Kareem Serageldin , the Egyptian-born banking executive who ended up being sentenced to 30 months in low-security prison .
The other was a loan officer named Ken Yu at a small , family-run bank in Manhattan ’ s Chinatown called Abacus Federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ six months in jail in 2015 .
But the strange thing about Ken Yu was that before he was sentenced , he was the star witness for the Southern District of New York ’ s first and only attempt to hold a bank systematically responsible for mortgage fraud .
Abacus was a baffling target because it was a bank that lent mainly to the Chinese immigrant community in the neighborhood .
The crime , at least at first , appeared to be that Ken Yu , a low-level loan originator , fraudulently made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kickbacks , and stole money from the bank .
Seven other employees did similar things .
The executives at Abacus knew about this , because they had discovered it themselves and had fired Yu .
Yet in May 2012 , District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.. brought a jaw-dropping 240 counts of grand larceny , conspiracy , mortgage fraud , and falsifying business records against the entire bank .
It was unprecedented to charge an institution for fraud , and it was clear that Vance thought of this case as somehow fitting into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crisis .
“ If we ’ ve learned anything from the recent mortgage crisis , ” he told The New York Times , “ it ’ s that at some point , these schemes will unravel and taxpayers could be left holding the bag.
” Yet it was all for naught .
In 2015 , the grand jury acquitted Abacus on all counts .
“ Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. had all of Wall Street in his jurisdiction for enforcing New York state law , ” writes Jennifer Taub in her new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but the sole bank his office chose to prosecute was Abacus Federal Savings Bank.
” Why is that ?
It might be because Abacus was an easy target or because there really was evidence that the bank executives were involved .
Either way , if Vance was trying to make a larger statement , his tactic was extremely flawed ; it wasn ’ t the kind of institution the public was angry about .
The public cared about the fat cats on Wall Street .
Taub , a law professor , thinks the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a skewed premise .
White-collar criminal cases fail to target the most privileged people .
To understand why that is , we have to understand something fundamental : We don ’ t even have a mutually agreed-upon definition of what “ white-collar crime ” is .
Sure , illicit payments , tax evasion , intellectual property theft , and fraud come to mind , but what about corporations that dump toxic waste into canals or banks like Wells Fargo that encourage their employees to open fake accounts at the expense of their customers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counterfeit $ 10 bill ?
As Professor David O. Friedrichs , a scholar of white-collar crime , has written , coming up with “ a single , coherent , and universally accepted and invoked definition of white collar crime is an exercise in futility.
” With no clear definition , there ’ s also no official measurement of white-collar crime .
While the FBI obsessively measures other crime , it does not have a comprehensive gauge of corporate fraud , executive fraud , tax evasion , or embezzlement .
It ’ s not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wealthy professionals inflict less harm .
Taub , a law professor , finds that white-collar crime probably costs victims between $ 300 and $ 800 billion per year , while street-level crimes like burglary , larceny , and theft cost victims around $ 16 billion .
We live in what some call a golden era of white-collar crime .
If we ever hope to do more than toss a heap of weak charges at low-level offenders like Abacus , we ’ ll have to come to a better definition of what it is @

The mistake the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office made when it decided to go after Abacus Federal Savings Bank for its white-collar crime was that it went after a low-status offender (and still lost). Abacus employees committed crimes, yes, but they are not the problem. This is the overall error with white-collar crime enforcement in the U.S.: It actually targets the middle class. According to an FBI report in 2000, over the course of three years, the average value of property lost in a white-collar crime was $210. “While there are tremendous white collar heists,” Taub writes, “the most commonly charged defendants were involved in small dollar crimes.” This was the problem outlined in Jesse Eisinger’s 2017 book about why high-status white-collar crime is not prosecuted, The Chickenshit Club. Eisinger found that prosecutors belong to the same class as the people who commit the most egregious white-collar crime, are frequently enmeshed in the same alumni and professional networks, and are loath to betray their own. They’d much rather go for the easy kill.
All this only furthers Sutherland’s argument, made 80 years ago: We need to directly address the crimes of high-status individuals, especially when they are systemic, as they were prior to the 2008 crisis. For too long, we’ve focused on an “offense-based” definition of crime, without regard to the status of the offender. But Taub thinks that “by ignoring an offender’s social or corporate status (or what some deem an agnostic view), we are catching a lot of small fish in the net while letting giant individual and corporate predators swim free.”
This is the overall error with white-collar crime enforcement in the U.S.: It actually targets the middle class.
Taub suggests we first attempt to measure white-collar crime as a whole. Then we need to measure the harm to victims in terms that go beyond the economic costs. What happens when a group of wealthy bankers fraudulently bring foreclosures on an entire class of people, as they did after the crash of 2008? How can we measure the social and political costs of mass dispossession? Unlike a loss of, say, $210, the loss of a person’s home affects their life and well-being in ways that cannot be assigned a dollar amount. Thousands of people have spent the years since the recession uprooted from their communities. Studies show that depression is exceedingly common for those undergoing foreclosure. It’s even more bleak for those evicted from their homes. An NYU study found that evictions lower earnings and increase emergency room use. Matthew Desmond and Rachel Tolbert Kimbro’s research suggests that, in addition to losing most of your possessions, being displaced from your community and school district, and having your credit ruined, the stress of eviction causes psychological harm that we are only recently coming to understand. Depression lingers for years after the fact, and performance at work and school can be severely impaired. One of the most violent ways you can hurt someone is to make them homeless. So while proper measurement of white-collar crime’s harms might be a difficult task, it is well worth pursuing.


newrepublic--2020-09-15--The Most Hysterical Worst-Case Election Scenario

Shadi Hamid , a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution , has surveyed the state of the 2020 election and drawn an unusual conclusion from it .
“ As someone who has argued against catastrophism—I don ’ t believe Donald Trump is a fascist or a dictator in the making , and I don ’ t believe America is a failed state—I find myself truly worried about only one scenario : that Trump will win reelection and Democrats and others on the left will be unwilling , even unable , to accept the result , ” he wrote on Saturday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s peace of mind .
I am personally worried about a great many scenarios that could arise between now and Inauguration Day , especially if the results after Election Day are close or contested .
I worry about protracted legal battles , spasms of political violence , foreign meddling , constitutional crises , and would-be authoritarians who salivate at the chance to suppress their purported enemies .
I hope that the United States will maintain its two-century record of peaceful transitions of presidential power , but I can ’ t guarantee it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrestling with the underlying premise of this question .
If Trump is sworn in for a second term by Chief Justice John Roberts on January 20 , 2021 , how would his critics on the left handle another four years ?
Hamid fears mass disillusionment with electoral politics .
“ A loss by Joe Biden under these circumstances is the worst case not because Trump will destroy America ( he can ’ t ) , but because it is the outcome most likely to undermine faith in democracy , ” he warned , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ riots and protests like those in Portland and Seattle in recent months .
I take issue with two premises laid out here : that liberals ’ disillusionment with the democratic process wouldn ’ t be justified , and that it would also be the worst-possible result in November .
Hamid ’ s question flows from a number of conclusions he ’ s drawn about the past few years .
He correctly notes that many of Trump ’ s critics have struggled with the 2016 results , while suggesting that their concerns about Russian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ misplaced .
Hamid argues that since Trump is a far more well-known quantity now than he was four years ago , and Biden is a less polarizing candidate than Hillary Clinton was , the psychic shock of a second Trump victory would be even greater than the first .
But what does it mean for a political party—or any person , for that matter—to “ not accept the result ?
” Does it mean Joe Biden won ’ t admit defeat if he receives fewer votes in key states ?
Calling ( or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a pure formality that doesn ’ t actually carry any legal weight .
Biden could vent and complain and denounce the results from November until the sun burns out , and it wouldn ’ t change the vote totals or affect the state-by-state Electoral College count .
Any legal challenges would be resolved by the Supreme Court ; perhaps with the benefit of hindsight after Bush v. Gore , or perhaps not .

There is no question that Trump is the lawful president of the United States right now. But whether he carries a democratic mandate is an entirely different matter. A majority of Americans rejected him at the ballot box in 2016, and he only assumed power through a flaw in the Constitution that occasionally hands the presidency to someone who doesn’t receive the most votes. Trump has never enjoyed a majority of public support in polling averages since that fateful November night. His efforts to pass major legislation through Congress on immigration or health care largely failed because lawmakers from both parties realized how deeply unpopular they would be if implemented, and he’s largely given up on trying to enact sweeping policy changes through anything but executive order.
If Trump somehow wins in November, it will also matter how he reaches that victory. (I’ll assume for this column that he didn’t use federal agents or the military to seize ballot boxes in key states or engage in any other extra-legal skullduggery, since that would raise a host of other issues.) It’s almost axiomatic among observers, even on Trump’s side, that he won’t win the popular vote. As Hamid acknowledges, the president’s path to victory runs once again through a narrow gauntlet of states that might provide him with an Electoral College majority. “That will fuel disillusion not just with the election outcome but with the electoral system,” Hamid wrote. “The popular-vote numbers will be used to argue that Trump won without winning—again.” He continues:
Liberals have convinced themselves that Republicans are, in one way or another, cheating. In addition to all of Trump’s norm-breaking, the GOP is gerrymandering, purging voter rolls, and shutting down polling places in Black neighborhoods. Yet Republicans wouldn’t have been able to do these things if they hadn’t won enough statewide and local offices in the first place. They have put themselves in a position to enact their favored redistricting and election procedures by finding candidates and pursuing policies that made them competitive in formerly Democratic states, demanding a level of party discipline that Democrats can seldom muster, and getting their supporters to turn out for down-ballot races. Republican manipulation is what the democratic process itself has produced, however unfair, and it can be undone only through that same process, however flawed. To some degree, this is just how the game is played, and Democrats need to play it better if they want to win the Electoral College. Having won the presidency twice in the recent past, Democrats are surely capable of prevailing via normal means, but promising voters a slightly improved version of the present may not necessarily be the best way to do it.
Here is where Hamid’s argument starts to fall apart. His fear is not that Republicans will reengineer the electoral system so Democrats can’t win, but that Democrats won’t accept the legitimacy of such a system. Closed polling places in Black neighborhoods and lawmakers who immunize themselves from ordinary electoral consequences are taken as a valid outcome of the democratic process instead of a fundamental corruption of it. The long right-wing campaign to suppress voters to secure power is chalked up to “party discipline” and “how the game is played.” Hamid claims that Obama’s 2008 and 2012 victories show how Democrats can win the presidency “via normal means,” without considering that many Republicans are fighting tooth and nail precisely to prevent that from ever happening again.