newrepublic--2020-09-01--Could the United States Break Up?

Could the United States Break Up?

In the wake of Brexit and Trump ’ s election , many Americans began to ask if the United States might soon break apart .
In 2016 , progressive activists in Portland , Oregon , submitted a petition calling for a statewide vote on secession ; that same year , a poll showed that 26 percent of Texans supported state independence .
In a 2018 survey , 31 percent of Americans believed a civil war was possible within the next five years .
A cohort of national security experts put the chances of a civil war within the next 15 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has not entertained the possibility that , if Trump loses the election this fall , he might resist leaving office ?
Strange turnout patterns during the pandemic would certainly give both candidates a pretext for contesting the results—and what institution these days has the legitimacy to settle the question decisively ?
If the idea of the U.S. dissolving seems far-fetched , one reason is that we have been trained to think of secession and civil war as something long settled .
The South tried it , they lost , and ever since disunion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Richard Kreitner ’ s provocative 400-year history of America , Break It Up : Secession , Division , and the Secret History of America ’ s Imperfect Union , he argues that the nation ’ s foundations have always been fragile .
The threat of disunion has been raised or attempted in every region and by all political factions at some point in our nation ’ s past .
If we ignore this “ hidden thread ” in our history and choose to believe in a mythic past when unity actually existed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not less .
To build a truly equal and lasting multiracial democracy , he argues , we must stop papering over the constant threat of disunion that haunts our past .
From the first colonial settlement in Plymouth , separatism has been a feature of our political life .
The Puritans , Kreitner reminds us , called themselves Separatists , and founded their colony to escape Anglican control .
The 13 colonies that eventually formed the United States shared no common identity or purpose before the revolution .
“ Everybody cries , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Franklin bemoaned in 1754 , amid a failed attempt at unifying the colonies .
“ But when they come to the Manner and Form of the Union , their weak Noodles are presently distracted.
” The most earnest attempts to unify have come only amid external threats , real or perceived .
Fear , not patriotism , has historically bound the nation together .
When Franklin convened delegates to form a colonial congress—the failed Albany Plan of 1754—its main purpose was to better negotiate with the Iroquois .
Indeed , Franklin ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ own success , themselves a confederation of six once bitterly divided nations .
Witnessing the colonies ’ divisions in 1744 , the Iroquois leader Canasatego offered a bit of advice : “ We heartily recommend Union , ” he told a group of colonial officials .
“ Preserve a Strict Friendship for one another , and thereby you , as well as we , will become stronger.
” Franklin , reflecting the endemic racism of white settlers , used the Iroquois ’ example to shame the colonies into union .
“ If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capable of forming a Scheme for such a Union , ” he wrote in 1751 , “ we should be able to execute it ” as well .
Franklin ’ s dream for a unified colonial government only materialized when war with Britain seemed imminent .
Kreitner rightly sees the Continental Congress , formed in 1774 , as a “ spontaneous response to an emergency , ” not born from widely felt national bonds .
Like other recent historians , he depicts the War of Independence as being as much a “ civil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against Britain .
South Carolina and Virginia fervently opposed the boycotts on British goods favored by New Englanders , knowing that Britain would respond with boycotts on slave-grown tobacco and rice , the latter making up 65 percent of South Carolina ’ s exports .
There were fractures within each region , too .
In 1777 , colonists on the eastern border of upstate New York created an independent state—the Republic of Vermont—and flirted with joining the British province of Quebec .
The sense of betrayal led the nation ’ s founders to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1791 .

The key episodes Kreitner retells from 1787 through the Civil War will be familiar to many readers. There are vignettes on the Burr Conspiracy, the nullification crisis, Texas annexation, the Mexican-American War, the New York City Draft Riots, and much else. At times it feels like we’re in an AP U.S. history class, but Kreitner makes these episodes new and interesting by reinterpreting them to fit his broader disunion thesis. Few will be surprised to learn that the U.S. Constitution was a deeply divisive document that left unresolved the core issue—slavery—that led to the Civil War. But general readers might be less familiar with the argument, borrowed from the scholar David Hendrickson, that the Constitution was, above all, a “peace pact”—agreed to not out of a shared national identity, but to prevent foreign powers from retaking the newly independent states.
Break It Up is at its best when it highlights the vocal threats of disunion that emanated not from the proslavery South—a well-known story—but from the anti-slavery North. “The first popular disunion movement in American history developed in the North, not the South,” Kreitner writes. During the War of 1812, New England states held a convention at Hartford to debate whether to secede, out of opposition to the war with Britain. By contrast, Southerners craved war, and in large part because they felt Britain ran roughshod over slaveholders’ economic interests. In 1842, William Lloyd Garrison, the most prominent white abolitionist of the day, began to call for the “REPEAL OF THE UNION between the North and the South,” seeing the Constitution as a proslavery document. After Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which forced Northerners to help the federal government track down Black people who escaped slavery, Northern cities across the country passed “personal-liberty laws”—the equivalent of today’s sanctuary-city laws. Radical anti-slavery Northerners, not Southerners, Kreitner shows us, sometimes claimed the mantle of states’ rights themselves.
It is here, however, where the limitations of Kreitner’s argument become clear. Kreitner takes a kitchen-sink approach, one where every separatist movement, every prophecy of civil war, and every threat of disunion or secession, is given equal weight. What he does not do is assess the seriousness of each threat. As the historian Elizabeth Varon has shown, calls for disunion were certainly ubiquitous before the Civil War, from all sections, but most of these were rhetorical; popular support for secession was actually limited. Kreitner’s discussion of anti-slavery disunionism is a good example. While he is correct that Garrison advocated tearing up the union, he obscures the fact that most abolitionists rejected Garrison’s disunionism in favor of forming political parties. By the time the Republican Party was established as an anti-slavery party in the mid-1850s, most abolitionists—including Black abolitionists—supported ending slavery by working through the political process, not against it, sapping anti-slavery disunionism of what little support it had.


newrepublic--2020-09-01--The Bush Rehabilitation Trap

The Bush Rehabilitation Trap

Viewers who tuned in to the Democratic National Convention a few weeks ago could have been forgiven for assuming that the spectacle they saw unfolding on their screens wasn ’ t so much the coronation of their own party ’ s nominee but rather a homecoming bash for Republicans .
Democrats sure rolled out the welcome mat : Speakers at the event included GOP leaders like former Ohio Governor John Kasich and former George W. Bush officials such as Colin Powell and Christine Whitman .
The presence of the conservative figures was billed by media observers sympathetic to the Democrats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s time in office has divided the party and left decent Republicans out in the cold and without a home .
What it may actually be revealing , however , is an ideological divide in the Democratic Party—one that might have significant implications if it ’ s given the reins to guide the country out of the turmoil of the Trump Era .
To be engaged in an effort to rehabilitate the Republican Party while simultaneously reckoning with the damage it ’ s done to the country may be a contradiction impossible for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s GOP-laden lineup is just one example of what ’ s been a larger ongoing effort for the past four years to provide that rehabilitation to Bush and his cronies—an endeavor that comes despite the fact that Democratic Party orthodoxy just over a decade ago held that his administration was both a threat to the country and represented a force in U.S. politics that needed to be annihilated .
But these once doctrinal beliefs have been thrown over in favor of a new interpretation of reality that relies on a premise that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Party and its mouthpieces at media outlets like MSNBC for the past five years : that Bush , and other GOP leaders before him , were fundamentally decent people with compelling , though ideologically wrong , ideas about what ’ s best for the nation—and that Trump is somehow different from them in his core beliefs and behavior .
That version of why old GOP hands were welcomed into the convention—and , increasingly , within the party ’ s institutions writ large—is one that ’ s appealing to a certain stripe of liberal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heart , decent Americans who just have a simple difference of opinion in the best way to ensure peace and prosperity for the country .
It ’ s a view of politics that lends itself to a vision of America where a good argument and civil compromise can lead to a solution that works on some level for everyone .
One such liberal who has articulated this belief in recent years—to the point that he ’ s made it a central point in his appeal to voters—is Joe Biden .
The message is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ head into the third decade of the new millennium .
Bush , whose time in office set the U.S. on its current course of war , privatization , and financial ruin , is on the road to being absolved of his responsibility for the current chaos because Trump ’ s misrule has been a debacle sufficient to occlude the memory of those grievous sins .
More than a decade since he left office with a historically abysmal 22 percent approval rating , Bush is today treated not just as a statesman but even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , whose paintings of dogs and veterans and friendship with Michelle Obama have become the subject of fawning coverage in news media that elides the facts of his record .

But that record remains striking in its level of damage and destruction to American life and U.S. institutions. Bush started a series of wars across the global south under the rubric of combatting terror, codified torture and warrantless surveillance as U.S. policy, deregulated industries around the country with disastrous results, used the Justice Department to pressure prosecutors for favorable investigations, mismanaged a major natural disaster in Hurricane Katrina, and much, much more. All this was done in service of a right-wing ideology using the fear from the 9/11 attacks to drive an aggressive, messianic foreign policy and a domestic approach to lawmaking that masqueraded as “compassionate conservatism,” centering the redemptive language of Christian family values and using the president’s evangelical faith as a smokescreen for the cruelty of the administration.
Yet liberals remain incapable of letting go of the idea that the vision of conservatism offered by Bush still somehow creates a relevant contrast to Trump’s America. In the midst of the convention, as the Democrats celebrated their moderate tilt in the rise of Biden as the nominee, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas tweeted that he was overjoyed the Democrats could finally retake the mantle of “faith, family values, and national defense” from the GOP. “I’m all about rubbing it in GOP’s face that our nominee actually goes to church,” said Moulitsas, who rose to fame and power within the liberal establishment for his criticism of Bush in the early 2000s.
For those who recall how Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman’s rightward drift toward Bushian values during those years prompted the Moulitsas-led “Netroots” to become rabid bannermen of Ned Lamont, it was a head-snapping tweet. But the “rubbing it in their face” image speaks volumes. Still lost in a vision of politics that’s trapped in the past of 15 years ago, Moulitsas and his fellow Bush liberals see the GOP with whom they once sparred as a hypermasculine ideal and look at the rise of Trump as an opportunity for Democrats to finally shed their 97-pound weakling frame, read up on the Charles Atlas Dynamic Tension method, and become a buffer version of the GOP of two decades ago—in common cause with the same tough-talking Republican daddies they battled in previous decades.


newrepublic--2020-09-01--The Haunting of Joe Kennedy III

The Haunting of Joe Kennedy III

Much of the public discussion about Tuesday ’ s Democratic Senate primary in Massachusetts has focused on an unusual question : Why is four-term Congressman Joe Kennedy III attempting to unseat Senator Ed Markey , a local fixture whose uniformly liberal views offer almost no contrast with his own ?
This is a line of inquiry we rarely explore in campaign journalism .
If you assume that political power is a valuable—and perhaps even fun !
—form of influence , it makes sense that politicians would seek to attain it for its own sake .
They are all ambitious , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and with its parliamentary arcana and adorable hideaways , the U.S. Senate probably offers a safer outlet for their competitive drives than a return to illicit dueling .
Few pondered why then–Newark Mayor Cory Booker came after Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg in 2013 , even as the 89-year-old incumbent was expected to announce his retirement .
Nor was anyone surprised when Mississippi legislator and Confederate flag enthusiast Chris McDaniel narrowly missed taking down Senator Thad Cochrane that same cycle .
Politics , they say , is the art of the possible , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some geezer ’ s bones into the charnel pit a few years ahead of schedule , you do it .
“ Ah , ” the reader counters .
“ But these men were not Kennedys !
” That ’ s true enough .
The Kennedys still rank foremost among American political brands , vastly more exciting than the Bushes and several cuts above your Udalls , Tafts , and Cuomos .
As the dynasty ’ s square-jawed custodian , Joe III was free to wait for a clearer shot at statewide office ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the passage of just a few months , should Elizabeth Warren join a potential Biden Cabinet .
The congressman ’ s built-in advantages of fundraising and name recognition won ’ t dissipate by 2026 , though the stench of his overeagerness will .

But there is no guarantee that the future offers better odds than the present. Markey and Warren are both active legislators who show no inclination toward retirement. Governor Charlie Baker, a moderate Republican, is not so much admired in Massachusetts as he is lustily worshipped. Most observers believe that challenging Baker in 2022 would be a harder road than defeating Markey today.
Perhaps the least appreciated player is freshman Representative Ayanna Pressley, who has risen to Kennedy-like celebrity among progressive activists over the last few years. Massachusetts has always punched above its weight in producing national political figures (remember that Warren was one of four locals who ran for president this cycle), and Pressley is destined for statewide office at some point in the future. Kennedy would clearly prefer to establish himself as the Democratic Party’s future before she gets the chance to squeeze past him.
But you have to put aside the political calculus to arrive at the true rationale for Kennedy’s run, which is no different from that of his various forebears’. Why is not a question you pose to a Kennedy—it’s certainly not a question they ask themselves. Somewhat famously, Joe’s great-uncle Ted couldn’t say why he decided to challenge President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980, instead saluting our great natural resources in a country ramble of a response that kneecapped his bid before it even began.


newrepublic--2020-08-31--The Hell of Being a Black Cop

The Hell of Being a Black Cop

Bill Monroe , now 75 years old , completed his service in the U.S. Army in 1967 .
The same year , he joined the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department .
He told me about an altercation from those early years that has stuck with him and that has taken on a special resonance this year , in the midst of a once-in-a-generation debate over reforming American law enforcement .
“ I was leaving the old Eighth District station , ” he said , “ and two white officers were bringing this brother they had in custody into the station @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : double-knit slacks , silk shirt .
Our eyes met .
He said , ‘ Brother don ’ t leave , don ’ t leave me , they ’ re going to fuck me up.
’ But I went on and got in my car and drove off .
Then something hit me , something told me to go back , and I did .
Sure enough , they had beat him bloody , took off part of his ear , blood all over his slacks and shirt.
” Monroe lashed out against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ men , one white , one Black , fought right there in the station .
Monroe described a vicious fight while other officers looked on .
He later learned that the two white officers had stopped the Black man because he had been in a car with a white woman .
They didn ’ t like that .
It turned out she was his wife .
Monroe got a three-day suspension for the fight .
Those were different times , you might say .
But when I was a young officer in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had to physically restrain a white officer who had suddenly begun brutally assaulting a young Black man .
We were standing on his porch .
The young man was already injured , on crutches , leaning on them in the doorway of his home .
He had committed no crime ; he had merely refused the officer , who had no warrant , entry to his home .
So the officer decided to kick his Black ass .

Attorney General William Barr claims that American policing does not suffer from institutional racism. Any Black officer will tell you that isn’t true. And I’m not only talking about an unarmed Black man being murdered by the likes of Derek Chauvin—a murder so vicious, so reprehensible, that it precipitated anti–police brutality protests across the world this summer. I’m also talking about the racist abuse that police in this country participate in daily, covering a range of harmful acts: violence, intimidation, trumped-up charges, plain old meanness.
Attorney General William Barr claims that American policing does not suffer from institutional racism. Any Black officer will tell you that isn’t true
And I’m talking about the racism against Black officers themselves. Over the course of his career, Bill Monroe carried multiple guns for his own protection—mostly from his fellow officers. This tension between white and Black officers has always been there, mitigated only by the personal relationships that develop between colleagues in a common space. But when something happens, that camaraderie falls apart. Quick.
Black officers know all of this. Many are looking to fight it. Thanks to the George Floyd protests, and now the protests in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, there has been a lot of discussion about how to “reform” the police. People talk about sensitivity training and accountability and oversight. Some talk about defunding the police altogether. Black officers across this country are talking about something different: about how to fight institutional racism and white supremacy from within police departments; about how to hitch their efforts to the movement for Black Lives and for a true account of our national origins in slavery and genocide.


newrepublic--2020-09-01--Lake Charles Was Destroyed by Hurricane Laura. America Has Already Moved On.

When Hurricane Laura hit last week , all I could think about was Katrina .
The world considers August 29 the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina .
For New Orleans residents like myself , that date marks the mere beginning of a disaster that unfolded over the course of a week and then reverberated for years and years .
It ’ s a trauma we relive with each new storm .
And despite climate scientists ’ many warnings to prepare for more storms ahead , the fundamental pattern of human suffering and inequity seems to repeat itself .
Hurricane Katrina passed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2005 .
Over the next day or so , the area filled with water from the many breaches in the federally built levee system that was supposed to protect the city .
My neighbors then either died or were rescued from their roofs , as the Superdome and the Convention Center filled with the city ’ s most vulnerable residents .
Then drinking water ran out , and somehow no one could get water to my suffering neighbors for almost a week .
My partner and I , evacuated to Florida , learned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through the racist prism of national television .
Nancy Grace was the first talking head I watched shift focus from the information we really needed onto “ looting ” —as if the theft of TVs and diapers represented the worst things happening during that week of death and destruction .
“ I remember hearing these nightmare stories about what was happening in the Superdome , which turned out not to be true , ” Evlondo Cooper told me over the phone this week .
A senior writer and researcher for Media Matters who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s last several big hurricanes , Cooper ’ s also a native New Orleanian whom Katrina forced out .
“ The mainstream media definitely played up the angle , ‘ They ’ re animals , they ’ re killing and raping each other , ’ but none of those segments mentioned the disproportionate impacts of storms on communities of color , ” said Cooper .
“ And this ends up leading to public policies that don ’ t take into account the lived experienced and material needs of marginalized communities.
” Cooper ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in New Orleans in the 15 years since Katrina .
Today , a tourist could look around at the cleaned-up , renovated city and forget the flood ever happened .
Locals , though , don ’ t see an uplifting comeback story .
Racial inequity still poisons everything here .
Our public schools became union-busting charter schools , with community control swapped out for six-figure CEOs .
Airbnb arrived in New Orleans during Katrina ’ s protracted housing crisis , and soon the country ’ s “ oldest Black neighborhood , ” the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ newest white neighborhood , with whole blocks converted into short-term rentals—faux-tels in local parlance—that currently sit empty during the pandemic .

Commercial fisherman with strategic savings and insurance will survive, he added. “It’s the crabbers and shrimpers with no insurance, who pay bills by the seat of their pants. Those are the guys who will be killed off. But fishing is so far from my mind right now,” he admitted. “We’re on our third day now, and no one in Lake Charles has any electricity or water.”
Because, during Katrina, New Orleans Sheriff Marlin Gusman left prison inmates locked in their cells as the rest of the city evacuated, new hurricanes always make me worry for those incarcerated here in Louisiana, the world’s incarceration capital. Holly Hein Parker, who spoke to me from Houston, said her husband was evacuated by bus for Hurricane Laura from Gist State Jail in Beaumont, Texas, to nearby Ferguson. “They moved 3,400 incarcerated people in all. And if they’re moving that many people at once … I don’t see how they could be doing Covid prevention,” she said. “My husband says they were all packed in a gymnasium together like sardines.… When I asked if they were taking Covid protections, my husband just laughed.” The pandemic has already kept her husband from taking the special classes necessary for his parole, and kept him in jail for unnecessary extra months. Parker now fears Laura may keep him imprisoned even longer.
Lake Charles is also part of Louisiana’s famous Acadiana region, a central location for almost all of the zydeco bands in the world. “The entirety of Lake Charles, from Cameron on the Gulf Coast all the way up to DeQuincy, Deridder, and Shreveport, it’s complete and total destruction,” said Lake Charles native accordion player and bandleader Sean Ardoin, great-grandson of Creole accordionist Amédé Ardoin, grandson of famous Creole musician Bois Sec Ardoin, and son of Lawrence “Black” Ardoin, who led the Ardoin Brothers band. “At my house I have trees down, but I prayed so hard they wouldn’t hit the house that it worked,” Ardoin laughed. “I do have roof damage. And I had a really well-built gazebo, a very big structure, that’s now leaning against my house.”


newrepublic--2020-09-01--A Sister Souljah Moment to Rule Them All

In a major speech in Pittsburgh on Monday , Joe Biden condemned President Trump for fueling the last few months of unrest in cities across the country , including the murder of two protesters last week in Kenosha , Wisconsin .
“ This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country , ” he said .
“ He can ’ t stop the violence because for years he has fomented it .
He may believe mouthing the words law and order makes him strong , but his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you how weak he is.
” For the umpteenth time , Biden also condemned looting and property destruction by demonstrators .
“ I want to be clear about this , ” he said .
“ Rioting is not protesting .
Looting is not protesting .
Setting fires is not protesting .
None of this is protesting—it ’ s lawlessness—plain and simple .
And those who do it should be prosecuted.
” It goes without saying that President Trump and his allies will continue insisting that Biden supports riots anyway .
A more interesting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the moderate and conservative voices who spent the last week urging Biden to speak out against radical demonstrators .
On Friday , The Atlantic ’ s George Packer speculated that the unrest in Kenosha could doom Biden in November .
“ In the crude terms of a presidential campaign , voters know that the Democrat means it when he denounces police brutality , but less so when he denounces riots , ” he wrote .
“ To reach the public and convince it otherwise , Biden has to go beyond boilerplate and make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day , USA Today ’ s Chris Truax mused that Biden could use a “ Sister Souljah moment , ” a reference to then-candidate Bill Clinton ’ s denunciation of decontextualized , misinterpreted , and thus controversial remarks made by the rapper and activist Sister Souljah in 1992 .
“ In one stroke , he liberated himself from the extremes of his party and silenced claims that he couldn ’ t stand up to the far left , ” Truax wrote .
“ As the situation in the streets appears to be degenerating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his own Sister Souljah moment , if he ’ s willing to take it.
” Over at The Washington Post , George Will dedicated a whole column to the idea .
“ Candidate Bill Clinton ’ s criticism , not of extremism in general , but of her explicitly , reassured temperate voters that he was not intimidated by inhabitants of the wilder shores of American politics , ” he argued .
“ Today , even more than 28 years ago , the Democratic nominee needs to display similar independence.
” None of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data : Biden ’ s standing in the polls just hasn ’ t been affected in any obvious way yet by a backlash to protests .
Instead , the polling averages suggest that Biden ’ s lead against Trump widened once the demonstrations against the killing of George Floyd took off .
Even in Wisconsin , where widely circulated polling from Civiqs taken before the shooting of Jacob Blake showed support for Black Lives Matter had declined from its June peak , Biden ’ s lead has held steady .
Still , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a valid one .
Like Bill Clinton in 1992 , Biden really should consider showily denouncing divisive figures within Democratic politics to shore up his remaining vulnerabilities as a candidate .
In fact , Biden should denounce Bill Clinton .
The case is straightforward .
To begin with , Clinton isn ’ t especially popular with the general public , and the decline in his standing can be attributed partially to his political reemergence during the 2016 election .
By December 2017 , Gallup had him pegged at 52 percent disapproval among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from YouGov have him , a bit more respectably , at just two points above water—40 percent of Americans approve and 38 percent disapprove .
For reference , Civiqs places support for Black Lives Matter nationally at 49 percent of registered voters , with 38 percent opposing the movement—a net approval rating of 11 points .

Of course, the national figures matter far less than how a public repudiation of Clinton might boost Biden with the key constituencies commentators have been worried about this election. While Clinton has generally been popular among older black voters, welfare reform and the 1994 crime bill have become live issues in the Black community over the last several years, and the Trump campaign has been reaching out to younger Black men who might be disillusioned with Democratic politics. If Biden decides to formally address his past support for both policies again before November, a bold condemnation of the president who signed and championed them could help convince those voters that he’s serious, genuinely remorseful, and committed to changing the Democratic Party. The same general pitch might be made to however many Obama-Trump voters were genuinely driven right by the Clintons’ support for Nafta; policy entirely aside, rebuking Bill might at least capture the attention of persuadable Trump voters who simply loathe the Clintons as people. In the suburbs, Biden could potentially build on the impressive gains he appears to be making with moderate women by speaking out about Clinton’s assault allegations, potentially neutering a persistent talking point from Trump in the process.
Two remaining constituencies suggest two divergent approaches. On the one hand, Biden could choose a critique of Clintonian triangulation and centrism aimed at convincing more young progressives that he intends to continue moving in a more progressive direction. On the other, Biden could deepen his outreach to Never Trumpers and moderate Republicans by framing a denunciation of Clinton in anti-partisan terms—as a brave stroke, someone at The Atlantic will say, against political tribalism.
Whichever angle he chooses, it’s likely that the vast majority of Democrats—fully focused on beating Trump—wouldn’t mind the criticism at all; as wild political gambits go, it’s fairly low risk. Any way one slices it, Bill Clinton is practically begging to be thrown under the bus or onto the tracks of an express train from Wilmington to Washington.


newrepublic--2020-09-01--The Media Is Falling for Trump’s Law and Order Con

At last week ’ s Republican National Convention , the GOP made its election strategy very clear : It would do everything in its power to amplify violence and cheer on disorder in order to reelect Donald Trump .
“ The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence , the better it is for the very clear choice on who ’ s best on public safety , law , and order , ” senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News .
With over six million confirmed Covid-19 cases in the United States and the economy in tatters , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pray for mayhem .
Over the weekend , Republicans got their wish .
On Saturday evening , Jay Bishop was shot and killed in Portland , Oregon , after he and other supporters of the far-right group Patriot Prayer entered the city to antagonize left-wing protesters .
The president unleashed a torrent of tweets and retweets praising such groups as “ GREAT PATRIOTS ” and attacking anti–police brutality protesters as “ disgraceful anarchists.
” A week after Kyle Rittenhouse , a Trump-supporting teenager , killed two protesters in Kenosha , Wisconsin , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they were the only thing preventing the chaos in Portland from spreading throughout the country .
As The Washington Post reported in July , Trump sees civil unrest as “ a chance to appear as a field general in a wider American cultural conflict.
” The language of “ law and order ” is both a racist dog whistle and an Orwellian cover-up of the fact that he is actively encouraging violence and conflict for political gain .
The conservative media has played along , depicting a dystopian hellscape not only in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ occurred downtown , but also in Washington , D.C. , and New York City , much to the surprise of the people who live there .
That is to be expected .
But Trump ’ s message has also received a boost from mainstream outlets , which in the past week have turned left-wing unrest in Portland and Kenosha into the most important political issue facing the country with two months to go until the election—an election that should by all rights be a referendum on a catastrophic presidency .
Nowhere is this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this unrest might be “ bad ” for the Democratic nominee , Joe Biden .
The idea that left-wing political violence threatens Biden ’ s election efforts has been raised again and again , particularly by conservative Never Trump figures .
George Will , Max Boot , and Bret Stephens have all made the case that the situation in Portland will scare white voters into the arms of Donald Trump .
At the same time , the bizarre idea that Biden is secretly supportive of antifa is continuously floated both by the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was being controlled by people in “ dark shadows ” ) and by bad faith right-wing media figures .
All of this puts Biden in the odd position of having to condemn rioting and political violence even when he has already done so multiple times , declaring in a speech this week that , “ Rioting is not protesting .
Looting is not protesting .
Setting fires is not protesting .
”

At last week’s Republican National Convention, the GOP made its election strategy very clear: It would do everything in its power to amplify violence and cheer on disorder in order to reelect Donald Trump. “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety, law, and order,” senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News. With over six million confirmed Covid-19 cases in the United States and the economy in tatters, the GOP’s only hope was to pray for mayhem.
Over the weekend, Republicans got their wish. On Saturday evening, Jay Bishop was shot and killed in Portland, Oregon, after he and other supporters of the far-right group Patriot Prayer entered the city to antagonize left-wing protesters. The president unleashed a torrent of tweets and retweets praising such groups as “GREAT PATRIOTS” and attacking anti–police brutality protesters as “disgraceful anarchists.” A week after Kyle Rittenhouse, a Trump-supporting teenager, killed two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the president and his supporters pushed the message that they were the only thing preventing the chaos in Portland from spreading throughout the country.


newrepublic--2020-09-02--“The Whole Family Was Swept Away”

“The Whole Family Was Swept Away”

The 2016 West Virginia flood—considered a 1,000-year natural event with a 0.1 percent probability of happening in any given year—ravaged Greenbrier County on June 23 that year .
Torrential rain and thunder , rising 10 to 12 inches in 12 hours , turned quiet creeks into flash floods that ran down steep hills , alleyways , and streets , washing away roads , houses , and entire neighborhoods .
Twenty-three people lost their lives .
“ I heard the thunder and lightning all day , ” said Ronnie Scott , a resident of White Sulphur Springs in Greenbrier Valley .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ while it rained outside , he returned to the house he built for his family .
His wife , Belinda , was cooking supper as he took a cold drink from the fridge and went out to the porch .
In the time it had taken him to park the car and get that drink , “ the creek had risen like 15 feet , ” he said .
“ I told Belinda to take her car and leave the house immediately.
” Scott , in the meantime , tried to pull his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ safety .
“ The water was full across my street , ” he recalled .
“ Fences , trees , walls , and other debris were flooding down the creek .
I started beating doors , screaming and howling to get neighbors to come out and go up on the hill .
I got five of my neighbors out.
” One neighbor , a dad , refused to leave .
“ Soon the water was going through their windows .
The whole family was swept away .
The rescuers did not find their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ months later.
” Unbeknownst to Scott , Belinda had gone back to the house to rescue their dog and cat while he helped their neighbors .
She was trapped .

At first, Scott wanted to give up on White Sulphur Springs, where he was born 65 years ago and where he has lived all his life. “Some people rebuilt by the creek,” he said. “New coding was set into effect after the floods. Houses have to be two feet above the water line. If I had to sleep next to a creek again, I could never do that.” He got an offer to live in the city’s new flood-victim housing, called City of Hope. “I live there now, up on the hill. I feel safe.”
Scott is still troubled by memories—not just of his wife, but of how close he came to losing others as well. “My son, his wife, and their kids were able to escape to the attic, when their house flooded,” he said. “My son was paddling the water away with his hands to keep the family safe.”
Two months after the tragedy, Scott turned to religion. “I got baptized, and I knew why God was talking to me and why he sought me out.” He also took solace from the memorial, where he visits often to be with Belinda, and where the residents can gather to grieve the lost ones and dream for a better future.


newrepublic--2020-09-02--The Suburbs Are Still Hell

The Suburbs Are Still Hell

Before he vaulted to infamy in August for allegedly shooting three people and killing two in the streets of Kenosha , Wisconsin , Kyle Rittenhouse led a regular teenager ’ s life in the Illinois village of Antioch .
Its slogan is “ Authentic by Nature.
” It ’ s the type of slogan , and Antioch the type of town , that Donald Trump wants to put at the center of the 2020 election .
He recently tweeted that “ people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream ” would “ no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if they voted for him—an obvious appeal to white fears of Black people .
Those fears are so real that Rittenhouse had his mother drive him and his tactical gear across state lines to protect storefronts in danger of being harmed by those protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake .
The American suburbs , created by white flight from the cities , have long been the site of racialized terror .
They also have been an expression of this country ’ s capitalist creed , presenting the opportunity for millions of citizens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I ’ ve long believed one of the mainsprings of our own liberty has been the widespread ownership of property among our people , ” Ronald Reagan said in 1987 .
A year earlier , David Lynch gave the lie to the Suburban Lifestyle Dream in the first scene of Blue Velvet , with an indelible depiction of insects swarming under the surface of a manicured lawn .
The utopian sheen of American suburbia is a mere lick of paint over the dark forces of fear , greed , and violence .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in our era of rising income inequality and staggering student debt , and now the suburbs represent yet another fault line in American society : a generational one .
While almost half of America ’ s Baby Boomers snapped up their first home before the age of 35 , the prospect of buying a house has now zoomed preposterously out of reach for most young people .
Between 1960 and 2017 , the difference in homeownership rates between Americans under 35 and over 65 went from 25 to 44 percentage points .
One @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mortar , and their forebears own it .
The classic American family home has morphed from a symbol of success to one of deep injustice .
Two new books , Jason Diamond ’ s The Sprawl : Reconsidering the Weird American Suburbs and Eula Biss ’ s Having and Being Had , take this transformation as their prompt to ask : What does it mean to own a home in modern America ?
And might there be another way ?
Diamond ’ s book is a cultural history of American suburbia , embedded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shuttled between divorced parents in various identikit Illinois ’ burbs .
He is not concerned with the nitty-gritty of mortgages so much as the dominant myths of these places , particularly the quintessential vision of teen life John Hughes depicted in mid-1980s films like Sixteen Candles , Pretty in Pink , and Ferris Bueller ’ s Day Off .

Before he vaulted to infamy in August for allegedly shooting three people and killing two in the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Kyle Rittenhouse led a regular teenager’s life in the Illinois village of Antioch. Its slogan is “Authentic by Nature.” It’s the type of slogan, and Antioch the type of town, that Donald Trump wants to put at the center of the 2020 election. He recently tweeted that “people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream” would “no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood” if they voted for him—an obvious appeal to white fears of Black people. Those fears are so real that Rittenhouse had his mother drive him and his tactical gear across state lines to protect storefronts in danger of being harmed by those protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
The American suburbs, created by white flight from the cities, have long been the site of racialized terror. They also have been an expression of this country’s capitalist creed, presenting the opportunity for millions of citizens to own a bit of property. “I’ve long believed one of the mainsprings of our own liberty has been the widespread ownership of property among our people,” Ronald Reagan said in 1987. A year earlier, David Lynch gave the lie to the Suburban Lifestyle Dream in the first scene of Blue Velvet, with an indelible depiction of insects swarming under the surface of a manicured lawn. The utopian sheen of American suburbia is a mere lick of paint over the dark forces of fear, greed, and violence.


newrepublic--2020-09-02--The End of the Voter-Consumer

The End of the Voter-Consumer

With the conventions behind us , it ’ s clear that Republicans are running full speed ahead on consolidating our country ’ s lurch toward fascism , stoking fears of leftist-driven mass chaos engulfing American cities , and valorizing the armed guardians of property , both police and civilian .
Democrats , for their part , seem committed to 2016 ’ s failed playbook to appeal to affluent white suburban Republicans and offer vanishingly little in the way of a policy vision capable of addressing a pandemic and a devastating recession .
For those of us whose political mission is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world that prioritizes human life over the violent demands of capital , the coming months will be a familiar season of brutal fear and anxiety .
As always , we ’ re faced with the same question : What the hell do we do come November ?
Should we “ reward ” the Democrats with our votes despite their unflinching alignment with the donor class ?
Stay home ?
Vote for a marginal party or write in our displeasure with a noncandidate ?
But these are false choices mirroring the mainstream liberal framework @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consumer model of politics that presents elections as singular opportunities for us to make our individual voice heard—one person , one vote—and misses something crucial about the left ’ s project : building power through the strength of the collective .
Vote or don ’ t—really , it ’ s your choice .
But personal feelings aren ’ t the same thing as political positions ; a moment of individual self-expression isn ’ t political action .
If it ’ s not part of a collective effort , it pretty much doesn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousands still dying and millions still unemployed because of a pandemic response that has rejected political planning and collective solutions in favor of individual “ personal responsibility , ” the left must insist that , far from a personal act that expresses the hot feelings of one ’ s heart , voting is instead a stone-cold political tactic for achieving defined aims in a collectively waged struggle .
It ’ s easy to imagine tactical deployments of mass , organized threats of vote-withholding .
How many people in Pennsylvania , Wisconsin , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sit out the election together unless Biden endorsed Medicare for All and a Green New Deal , before extracting some concessions ?
Trump ’ s 2016 margin of victory in those states was a combined 80,000 votes , and there were nearly three times that many Bernie Sanders voters in Pennsylvania alone , which held its primary months after he dropped out of the race .

We should also be clear about the limits to our ability to move the Democrats left, which become clear when looking back at the Obama years, when righteous movements from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter and Indigenous-led climate justice activists extracted little more than lip service from a president elected in large part on his progressive bona fides as an opponent of the Iraq War. The funding, media, think-tank, and institutional centers of the Democratic Party have made it perfectly clear how hostile they are to our agenda: Ultimately, they will need to be defeated, not persuaded.
Still, there were exceptions, probably none as impressive as undocumented young people’s victory in forcing President Obama’s hand on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals after a series of confrontational direct actions in the lead-up to the 2012 election. Critically, our movement is much stronger now than it was then, with a greater degree of programmatic alignment and self-awareness as a political left. This doesn’t make the work ahead easy—only more possible. The only solution, then as now, is organizing.
Voting is the copper penny of political activity. The bare minimum. Those of us who seek revolutionary political-economic transformation should know that we have to join organizations and take courageous action and go to protests and write letters to the editor and talk to strangers about joining fights with powerful interests over things that matter to lots of people. Voting alone does next to nothing. Likewise, the voters for whom casting a ballot and posting on social media is the extent of their political engagement clearly have no business judging others who don’t vote or who vote in a way they don’t like. If they lose, clearly, the one they’ll actually be disappointed in is themselves.


newrepublic--2020-09-02--Elon Musk Thinks His Treatment of Workers Is a “Trade Secret”

Leave it to Elon Musk and his ilk to show that paying companies to create good , green jobs is easier said than done .
Right now , his companies are opposing a California bill that will allow the public to access data on wages , benefits , and working conditions that they already provide to the state as a condition of public subsidy and procurement contracts .
From the Green New Deal to Joe Biden ’ s campaign platform , any measures proposing to pay corporations to create well-paid clean energy jobs would need public oversight to ensure follow-through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fight in the Californian statehouse is showing , even the greenest parts of Corporate America may not be up for such transparency .
Until now , companies with state and local contracts in California have claimed that wages , working conditions , and other hiring and employment information constitute proprietary “ trade secrets ” exempt from state disclosure rules and the California Public Records Act , or CPRA .
Senate Bill 749 aims to close that loophole , making the information companies already provide to state agencies as a condition of public subsidies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ requests .
The bill was too far down the docket to come up for a vote before the state ’ s legislative session drew to a close Monday .
In a statement sent to The New Republic , State Senator and SB 749 sponsor María Elena Durazo said she was “ disheartened ” but indicated an intention to press forward in the next legislative session , which begins in early December .
“ I still firmly believe in the need for increased transparency when public dollars are awarded to companies in California.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hiring practices , wages , and health and safety information is not , in fact , a trade secret and should be subject to public records requests .
The bill has been strongly backed by state unions .
“ These subsidies and incentives are provided by tax dollars and public programs , and as such there should be accountability to ensure the employers are taking the high road to provide good-paying jobs to Californians , ” Gretchen Newsom , political director for International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 569 , said in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been led by the California Manufacturers Technology Association , a trade lobby including Musk ’ s Tesla , as well as the California Chamber of Commerce , SpaceX , and several defense contractors , including Raytheon and Northrop Grumman .
In addition to complaints about making alleged trade secrets public , they ’ ve argued through public letters and calls to legislators that such rules could require companies to disclose “ potentially dangerous information related to the supply chains , staffing , and even the location of specific projects with national defense implications @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about SB 749 sent to legislators by groups opposed to the bill .
But the state ’ s public records rules already include several protections against disclosing information with national security implications , which aren ’ t under the purview of the trade secrets loopholes contested by SB 749 .
“ SB 749 is a narrow approach to increasing access to public information about public contracts and providing transparency in how hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars are spent , ” said Fredy Ceja , communications director for Durazo .
“ This bill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public contract—in the possession of a public agency—pertaining to job creation , job quality , and job retention , as well as Buy America laws compliance , is not a trade secret ” under the CPRA .

In the last decade, California has adopted a range of policies to incentivize and scale up clean energy throughout the state, from public transit to the power sector to electric vehicles, to meet its target of net-zero carbon emissions by midcentury. Elon Musk’s companies have benefited from this economy-wide push. Tesla, for instance, collected at least $100 million worth of sales tax exemptions under the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority, a program created in 2009 to encourage renewable energy development throughout the state. SpaceX and SolarCity have taken advantage of the program, too.
As a result of legislation passed last year, pushed by the state’s labor unions, CAEATFA and other subsidy programs now include reporting requirements that direct state officials to “evaluate a project application based on specified criteria, including, among others, the extent to which the project will create new, permanent jobs in the state.” SB 749 would make that reported information public, subjecting Musk’s empire to additional scrutiny. The desire for increased oversight of public clean energy spending has also ruffled feathers, which SB 749 advocates say may be a factor in Musk’s companies’ opposition to the bill. Most recently, in May, the California Employment Training Panel rejected SpaceX’s request for $655,500 in job and training funds through another program, citing Musk’s threats to move Tesla production out of state amid Covid-19 shutdowns.
Unions have good reason to be concerned about clean energy companies’ track record as employers. Musk himself has been fiercely critical of unionization efforts at his nonunion plants, which have come under fire for their dangerous working conditions. He’s hardly alone, though. When the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or L.A. Metro, entered into a $500 million contract with New Flyer of America to provide up to 900 buses, the company pledged to create 50 full-time jobs paying between $11 and $50 an hour. Disclosures later revealed that those promises never materialized. While the company promised new jobs would pay at least $18.75 an hour, quarterly reports years into the contract found that most workers were making less than $17 an hour. In response, Jobs to Move America filed a complaint against New Flyer and has created a framework for transportation authorities in other cities to demand certain labor protections through its procurement contracts. Essentially, SB 749—which Jobs to Move America is supporting—would simply ensure that companies that take advantage of California’s generous state subsidies and procurement programs are subject to public oversight.


newrepublic--2020-09-02--The Republicans’ Absurd Quest to Turn Biden Into Trump

Earlier this week , Joe Biden spoke about the recent protests and violence in Kenosha , Wisconsin .
The crux of his remarks—and an emerging theme of his campaign—was a simple question : “ Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected ?
” he asked .
Conservative commentators leapt into action .
“ The ‘ blackmail Americans into voting for me by threatening more violence unless I win ’ strategy is so impossibly evil and strategically unwise , ” The Federalist ’ s Mollie Hemingway opined .
“ Vote Biden or there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Erick Erickson , a Trump critic turned enthusiast , paraphrased .
“ He ’ s embracing the left ’ s extortion campaign.
” ( It ’ s unclear which extortion campaign he meant . )
“ If you ’ re willing to be blackmailed by Joe Biden , vote for him , ” radio host Ben Shapiro added .
National Review ’ s David Harsanyi claimed Biden ’ s comments were “ despicable ” and “ essentially endorsing extortion.
” None of them said Biden was wrong .
Biden obviously wasn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Anarchists in Portland , Oregon , are hardly a core part of his political coalition , and it ’ s highly doubtful that he could exert any influence over them , Republicans ’ efforts to paint him as the secretary-general of antifa notwithstanding .
His comments were a fairly straightforward assessment of violent unrest in America over the last few years—and Trump ’ s eagerness to pour rhetorical fuel on the fire for partisan gain .
Indeed , Trump proved Biden right soon thereafter by declining to condemn the 17-year-old right-wing gunman who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden ’ s remarks .
Ironically , if there is an extortionist in the race , it ’ s the candidate that Biden ’ s critics support .
Trump became the third president in American history to be impeached after Congress discovered last year that he withheld military aid from Ukraine in a scheme to coerce the Ukrainian government into smearing Biden .
Since his Senate acquittal , he ’ s applied the same strategy on the domestic front : threatening to deny federal funds to Michigan if it mailed absentee ballot applications @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and using moblike tactics to cajole praise from Democratic governors who sought federal pandemic aid .
Extortion isn ’ t a crime or a sin for Trump : It ’ s a routine political strategy .
But the effort to paint Biden as some sort of criminal kingpin isn ’ t an isolated incident .
Over the last month , Trumpworld has coalesced around a dark character sketch of Joe Biden .
The Democratic nominee is , in their eyes , a man who does not feel bound by the rule of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perceived enemies , who regularly aligns himself with militant extremists , who can be easily manipulated by those around him , and who even shows public signs of cognitive deterioration .
In trying to build a palatable case against Biden , conservatives are effectively running against a Bizarro version of Donald Trump .

Biden, for his part, unequivocally condemned riots and looting during his speech in Pittsburgh. “Rioting is not protesting,” he said. “Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted. Violence will not bring change, it will only bring destruction. It’s wrong in every way. It divides instead of unites, destroys businesses, only hurts the working families that serve the community. It makes things worse across the board, not better.”
None of this was a stretch for Biden, who has spent a considerable portion of his political career championing tough-on-crime policies and taking credit for some of the major federal anti-crime laws of the 1980s and 1990s. During the primaries, these bare facts were no small political liability. Activists and organizers on the left lacerated him for his role in championing policies that contributed to mass incarceration, which had particularly dire consequences for communities of color. To the extent that the hard left of the Democratic Party (and beyond it) has rallied around Biden, it’s because they fear the existential consequences of his defeat far more than the frustrations they would experience under his presidency.
Those fears are well founded. Trump, as I’ve noted before, is more comfortable with political violence against his perceived foes than any other president in living memory. Multiple Trump supporters have already been arrested for plotting or attempting mass assassinations against top Democratic lawmakers and major news organizations. In recent years, the Republican Party has also embraced a grim vision of armed citizens who resist whatever they define as “tyranny,” whether it’s Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his opposition to Bureau of Land Management grazing fees or the St. Louis couple who brandished firearms at peaceful Black Lives Matters protesters from their front lawn.


newrepublic--2020-09-02--Covid Patients Are Receiving Eye-Popping Bills. It’s Not All Trump’s Fault.

Stop the presses : A Trump administration program is being badly run and failing to do what it promised .
It may be shocking , but it ’ s true ; collect yourself from the floor and steel yourself to read about this unforeseeable turn of events , courtesy of a New York Times article on the administration ’ s bungled program to pay for the hospital bills of uninsured coronavirus patients .
According to the Times , the program has not prevented uninsured Americans from receiving massive bills for their care , either because they don ’ t qualify @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ever-present mistakes in hospital billing .
Beyond that , many patients simply don ’ t know that this program even exists .
But for all the real and unnecessary failures of this scheme , it bears noting that no hastily developed program of this nature would have successfully guided needy patients over the cracks in our health care system .
It was destined to fail—no matter who was president .
All the same , let ’ s be clear about Trump ’ s hospital repayment plan , which was awkwardly rolled out in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , cruelly managed , and poorly thought-out , on top of all the underlying problems of our health care system .
As the Times noted , patients had to have Covid-19 as their “ primary diagnosis ” to qualify , leaving out many patients with the kinds of comorbidities that made them more likely to be hospitalized in the first place ; the program also doesn ’ t cover the cost of treating those preexisting conditions .
The American Hospital Association told the paper it estimates that up to 70 percent of uninsured @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this wrinkle .
This could have been done differently , and wasn ’ t .
But many of the biggest problems with this program were simply the inevitable consequences of our health care system , working as intended .
Scratch a little at every aspect of how Trump ’ s program works , and it reveals yet another inefficient , cruel , or just plain stupid facet of how America provides care to its citizens .
The basic fact that it was even necessary to create a program to cover uninsured people in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indictment of our system .
The fact that hospitals , in addition to patients , have to eat the cost of treating their uninsured patients was a routine problem with our system long before the need for a Covid-19 stopgap became necessary ; that many hospitals have chosen to bill their patients for amounts they ’ ll never be able to pay is even worse .
Other health care providers have even entirely shunned participation in the program , instead charging the uninsured full price for coronavirus testing .
According to the Times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spent so far by the Provider Relief Fund has instead been used to replace lost revenue from the decline in patients seeking care during the pandemic , not to pay for the cost of Covid-19 treatment .
Again , it does not need to be this way : In other countries , hospitals do not go out of business because not enough patients get sick .
Hospitals should not need to try to attract patients the way a Denny ’ s attracts diners with its “ Signature Slams.
” The true horror of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all of its failures and gaps just leave the American health care system working in its normal , inept state .
The frightening stories relayed by patients to the Times of their experience with this coronavirus program are exactly the kind of conversations that have happened every day for uninsured patients with other conditions for decades .
One patient , whose Covid-19 bill totaled $ 85,000 , told the paper that the hospital ’ s financial aid office “ wanted me to go back to work , like , tomorrow , so I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case , seemingly thanks to the Times ’ intervention , the hospital acknowledged the bill was sent “ in error ” and will be covered by the program .
But what if the patient in question was one of many whose primary diagnosis wasn ’ t Covid-19 , or who simply had an entirely different illness ?
If the patient had been hospitalized for a stroke instead , the government wouldn ’ t be there to save him , and he would be alone with his bill and a voice on the other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suck it up and get back to work .

Hospitals make mistakes in billing every day, and it’s often the patients who end up paying for them. This is a natural consequence of a system with so many confusing layers and moving parts, and it was undoubtedly inevitable that this would affect uninsured Covid-19 patients, however this program was managed. There are thousands of different insurance plans, with different benefit levels, and each will pay the hospital different amounts. Large hospitals might have literally hundreds of millions of different price points for all the insurance plans they accept. For patients to receive the correct bill that only reflects the money they actually owe requires many people to do their jobs right. And even a “correct” bill might include charges that are essentially fraudulent, yet entirely legal. If mistakes are made, the patient has to understand the bill and have the knowledge, resources, and time to challenge it. And imagine having to fight over a hospital bill while recuperating from Covid-19—or any similar lingering, debilitating illness, for that matter.
As an example: At the beginning of 2018, I switched insurance plans from one with a deductible to one without (and with higher premiums; I have no idea whether that decision really saved me money). When I went to the neurologist for a routine appointment, I was told I had to pay several hundred dollars on the spot, because the hospital didn’t know my benefit levels had changed and it thought I owed money for the deductible. It took weeks and several calls to the hospital and my insurance company to get the money back. If I didn’t have a credit card to put that charge on or money in my bank account to cover it—if I was like millions of Americans, in other words—I would have had little choice but to leave, and not receive the care I needed. There are undoubtedly thousands of worse instances of this every day; this is just one example of how even financially comfortable people with fancy, employer-provided insurance can get unexpectedly buffeted by this patchwork system.
Being poor in America requires constant negotiation with dumb, hostile bureaucracies. You are expected to have all your documents, to never miss a piece of mail at an address you might have left or a phone call to a disconnected number. You must have everything at your disposal to fight for the benefits that the government owes you. If they make a mistake, you pay, not them—in time spent rectifying it, in debts and interest incurred, in stress and anxiety. The more money you have, the less time and effort you have to devote to these nightmarish exercises, and the more options you have to fight them. This is routine, daily, expected in America: It was never going to be any other way for the nation’s uninsured. We were never going to do anything other than let them down, pandemic or no.


newrepublic--2020-09-03--The Battle of Portland

The Battle of Portland

The downtown protests weren ’ t marked so much by leadership as they were by infrastructure .
Rallies and marches that happen in other parts of the city are planned and executed intentionally by a group of organizers ; however , the protest downtown was often “ led ” by whoever happened to have a microphone or a bullhorn .
But the person holding the microphone rarely had any control over—and sometimes very little insight into—the logistics of the protest .
Volunteer crossing guards in high-visibility vests directed automobile traffic at the intersections when dusk fell .
“ Security ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for threats to protesters , defusing intra-protest conflicts , and occasionally ejecting someone from the crowd .
A medic station provided hand sanitizer , face masks , and earplugs ; in the event of tear gas , medics roamed the crowd offering people saline rinses .
( For skeptics of traditional Western medicine , a group of witches also provided free remedies . )
As the weeks progressed , the offerings on hand grew increasingly dystopian : free shields , free respirators , free respirator filters , free umbrellas , free lacrosse sticks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( The umbrella is to shield from gas and munitions ; the lacrosse stick is to catch a tear gas canister and then fling it back . )
The Wall of Moms first showed up on July 18 .
On July 19 , they emerged as a bigger , more visible bloc .
At this point , the use of tear gas and munitions by federal agents had become so indiscriminate that the moms brought helmets and respirators .
They wore yellow , and some carried sunflowers .
Many were from the suburbs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , solid metal fence also made its debut on July 18 .
It was much heavier than the jury-rigged chain-link partitions that the crowd had played with the day before .
It turned out that the fence was a rental that could cost upward of $ 200,000 .
Nevertheless , protesters managed to dismantle the entire thing in less than two hours , stacking its constituent parts against the entrance of the courthouse .
It was reassembled the next day in pretty much the same form .
As had been the case with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Justice Center fence in June , cops and protesters alike began to fixate on the fence .
The nights of protest began to follow a ritualized formula .
The moms would show up .
The moms would line up .
Someone would chuck something over the fence .
The moms would get gassed .
The crowd would go berserk .
The fence would come crashing down .
By July 22 , the fence was reconfigured so the segments were welded together , and the base was pinned to the ground with concrete barriers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tear gas and rubber bullets , protesters figured out how to break open the door in the fence .
A handful of daring protesters took advantage of this point of vulnerability to run inside , dance , strike a pose , or even smoke a cigarette .
The majority stayed outside , waiting for the feds to come gas them .
They didn ’ t have to wait very long .
The feds kept having to reassemble the fence to make it harder to enter and harder to destroy—and in doing so , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of their own making .
Every night , more people showed up with umbrellas and leaf blowers to shield themselves from the fed offensive , and blow the tear gas back .
Protesters got better and better at grabbing and flinging back the canisters of tear gas lobbed at them .
Soon , the fence had turned into a cage , and at times the feds were trapped in a cloud of their own gas .
Nothing the feds did seemed to deter the protesters—indeed , every night brought with it even more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , so a bloc of dads , clad in orange and wielding leaf blowers , showed up .
The dads , too , got gassed , so a Wall of Vets in white started lining up in front of the fence , standing defiantly at parade rest .
The feds were never popular in the city , but now they were on the local news teargassing middle-aged white women and beating veterans .
On weekends , downtown was thick with thousands of people protesting on behalf of Black lives .
If they weren @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the dads or the vets , many marched in blocs designated by profession—lawyers , doctors , nurses , and teachers .
Each night , I came up with some plausible reason why federal officers would restrain themselves from gassing the crowd this time—yet each night I was proved wrong .
My rationale was based on common sense : If they kept gassing people , more people were going to show up the next day .
This , indeed , is the general principle behind counterinsurgency strategy—the idea that you have to be extremely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Some days later , a protester with rifle armor and an ex-military background would rant at me at great length about Field Manual 3-24 .
“ Literally everyone that has gone through military training knows that one thing about counterinsurgency operations , ” James D. told me .
“ But Chad Wolf doesn ’ t fucking know .
Chad Wolf doesn ’ t need to be fired , he needs to be publicly whipped through the streets for being a fucking moron.
” Field Manual 3-24 is a U.S. Army manual on countering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ War under the direction of General David Petraeus .
At points , the 200-page manual goes into considerable detail in outlining logistics of counterinsurgency operations .
At other times , it traffics in general rules of thumb , inviting readers to use their own judgment in determining the right amount of force to quell an insurgency , while cautioning them about the “ paradoxes ” involved .
“ Sometimes , the More Force Is Used , the Less Effective It Is ” is one such paradox , from Chapter 7 .
“ Any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not all of which can be foreseen , ” the manual explains .
“ Using substantial force also increases the opportunity for insurgent propaganda to portray lethal military activities as brutal.
” Other paradoxes scan almost as New Age aphorisms : “ Doing Nothing Is Sometimes the Best Action , ” and “ Some of the Best Weapons for Counterinsurgents Do Not Shoot.
” Most strikingly of all for the battle of Portland , the manual counsels that no successful counterinsurgency should count on hiding behind a fence : “ Ultimate success in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the population , not the counterinsurgency force .
If military forces remain in their compounds , they lose touch with the people , appear to be running scared , and give the initiative to the insurgents.
” Of course , the Portland protests were a far cry from an insurgency—just for starters , they had none of the top-down leadership that characterizes such campaigns , by the lights of Field Manual 3-24 .
But if the Department of Homeland Security truly believed that Portland was in the grip of violent anarchists , why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ manual ?
Even before the Wall of Vets assembled , I noticed the presence of military veterans at the Portland protests .
Much of that has to do with my partner , John , an Iraq veteran , who spent many nights in July nagging me about everything from putting on a gas mask correctly to paying attention to lines of sight .
One night , after we had been gassed and the police had retreated , we sat on a curb while I typed out my notes on my phone .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reviewed the timestamps in my notes—the feds ’ first appearance , the first flash bang , the first gas canister .
The events that constituted my memory of the entire night for me had all happened in the last 20 minutes .
John nodded when I explained .
“ It ’ s almost like those 20 minutes are in color , and the rest of the night is in black and white , right ?
” He smiled wryly .
“ Be careful of that feeling .
Try not to start chasing it.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ staff psychologist at the Veterans Administration of Portland , a constant state of alertness becomes necessary to survive in a combat zone .
But the body does not necessarily understand when you ’ ve removed yourself from a life-threatening situation .
Normal doesn ’ t feel normal anymore , often because the adrenaline no longer pumps at the same frequency it used to .
Some veterans who suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder will engage in risky behavior in order to “ feel alive.
” Sometimes that means taking up skydiving ; other times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me that while she hadn ’ t heard of any veterans using the protests as a way to chase the adrenaline high , she said it wouldn ’ t surprise her if some were .
This isn ’ t to say that their motives were somehow crass—sometimes personal trauma coincides with deeply held personal beliefs .
She herself had spoken to veterans who had attended the protests , and in her view they were driven by the same values that had led them to join the service in the first place—in her words @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better and help society.
” ( Veterans I spoke to echoed this sentiment ; a common refrain was that there was no expiration date on their oath to the Constitution . )
The VA was understandably very wary of saying that getting shot at by DHS agents in military camouflage was likely to be triggering to a veteran with PTSD .
But this is a fairly commonsense deduction .
It ’ s also no great leap to conclude that a large number of protesters on the ground are likely currently experiencing , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ PTSD .
On July 21 , a federal agent shoved me down the steps leading up to the federal courthouse , and I went flying , landing hard on my back .
I scrambled back up onto my feet with the help of a scared-looking girl with a homemade shield , even as the feds launched munitions into the crowd .
About an hour later , John and I were chased up a street by a cloud of tear gas .
When I turned the corner , I saw a man bleeding from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ done , I ’ m done , ” Andre Miller was repeating to himself , as his fiancée tried to help him .
A street medic stabilized him on the sidewalk while two other protesters in gas masks guarded them with homemade shields .
Once his head was bandaged , two protesters hoisted Miller up on their shoulders and began to pull him toward a medic van parked a block away .
Protesters scattered left and right when medics called for them to “ make a hole.
” Miller , who is very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point .
He was slumped against the shoulders of his friends , and his feet dragged against the sidewalk as they carried him to the van .
After they loaded him into the van , the medics were visibly shaking .
Adrenaline governed the nights in Portland .
A night of unrest might begin with a little bit of reckless behavior from a small contingent in the crowd .
One flash bang , and hundreds of furious people would be shouting and screaming at the police .
While I would be hard-pressed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a guy with a leaf blower , let alone a line of moms linking arms , I could see the resentment and frustration in their faces as the protesters returned night after night .
When the tear gas popped and their own adrenaline flowed , the crowd blurred into an undifferentiated mass of threats that had to be put down .
A single teenager scaling the fence became an adversary breaching the perimeter ; a protester holding up a boom box became an enemy with an unidentified payload .
The responsibility to de-escalate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had the guns , rather than the side that was hurling eggs by the carton .
But the feds were being directed by officials who were ranting at Congress about violent anarchists and a president who was calling the dweebiest city in America a “ beehive of terrorists.
” I began to think that there was no way for the conflict to end without live rounds being fired on the crowd .
I recognize now that this was the adrenaline talking—but the warped reality I was living was the same warped reality that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ downtown Portland , including more than 140 federal law enforcement officers .
Perhaps it ’ s no surprise that the conflict ended because someone who had never set foot in the downtown siege zone finally intervened .
On July 29 , Governor Kate Brown announced a “ phased withdrawal ” of federal forces from Portland .
Despite posturing from both Secretary Wolf and President Trump around how the withdrawal would not happen if the state of Oregon could not secure federal property , Governor Brown got her way .
The next night , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and helmets , experimentally rattling the fence and setting off a couple of fireworks .
No one came out .
No one gassed them .
The feds were nowhere to be found .
The day after her arrest , Demetria Hester walked out of the Justice Center , free of all charges .
The next day , newly elected District Attorney Mike Schmidt announced that the majority of charges against protesters would be dropped .
No one is getting dragged off the street into unmarked vans , but normalcy has not really returned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against the police continued almost every night .
Protesters were still being beaten , maced , and arrested by the Portland police .
The absence of federal authorities on the streets may have even given way to right-wing vigilantism .
A week after the withdrawal , pipe bombs were thrown at protesters in Laurelhurst Park .
Right-wing groups began to descend on Portland on the weekends , macing and pointing firearms at Black Lives Matter supporters .
Danielson was shot to death on August 29 .
The thousands of people who thronged downtown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ occupation have not returned to the streets , and in the wake of Danielson ’ s death , the BLM protests may very well discontinue out of fear of vigilante retribution .
But there is meaning and poignancy in the sheer number of Portlanders who have now tasted police aggression , courtesy of the feds .
This is a city that has been altered forever .
The wounds , both visible and invisible , from weeks of flash bangs and rubber bullets remain .
The body remembers , and the body politic will @ @ @ @

The downtown protests weren’t marked so much by leadership as they were by infrastructure. Rallies and marches that happen in other parts of the city are planned and executed intentionally by a group of organizers; however, the protest downtown was often “led” by whoever happened to have a microphone or a bullhorn.
But the person holding the microphone rarely had any control over—and sometimes very little insight into—the logistics of the protest. Volunteer crossing guards in high-visibility vests directed automobile traffic at the intersections when dusk fell. “Security” often roamed the perimeter, looking out for threats to protesters, defusing intra-protest conflicts, and occasionally ejecting someone from the crowd.
A medic station provided hand sanitizer, face masks, and earplugs; in the event of tear gas, medics roamed the crowd offering people saline rinses. (For skeptics of traditional Western medicine, a group of witches also provided free remedies.) As the weeks progressed, the offerings on hand grew increasingly dystopian: free shields, free respirators, free respirator filters, free umbrellas, free lacrosse sticks, even free combination umbrella-lacrosse sticks. (The umbrella is to shield from gas and munitions; the lacrosse stick is to catch a tear gas canister and then fling it back.)
The Wall of Moms first showed up on July 18. On July 19, they emerged as a bigger, more visible bloc. At this point, the use of tear gas and munitions by federal agents had become so indiscriminate that the moms brought helmets and respirators. They wore yellow, and some carried sunflowers. Many were from the suburbs. Most were white.
An ugly, solid metal fence also made its debut on July 18. It was much heavier than the jury-rigged chain-link partitions that the crowd had played with the day before. It turned out that the fence was a rental that could cost upward of $200,000. Nevertheless, protesters managed to dismantle the entire thing in less than two hours, stacking its constituent parts against the entrance of the courthouse.
It was reassembled the next day in pretty much the same form. As had been the case with the Portland Police Bureau’s ill-fated Justice Center fence in June, cops and protesters alike began to fixate on the fence. The nights of protest began to follow a ritualized formula. The moms would show up. The moms would line up. Someone would chuck something over the fence. The moms would get gassed. The crowd would go berserk. The fence would come crashing down.
By July 22, the fence was reconfigured so the segments were welded together, and the base was pinned to the ground with concrete barriers. As the night progressed, despite tear gas and rubber bullets, protesters figured out how to break open the door in the fence. A handful of daring protesters took advantage of this point of vulnerability to run inside, dance, strike a pose, or even smoke a cigarette. The majority stayed outside, waiting for the feds to come gas them. They didn’t have to wait very long. The feds kept having to reassemble the fence to make it harder to enter and harder to destroy—and in doing so, they gradually sealed themselves into a pen of their own making. Every night, more people showed up with umbrellas and leaf blowers to shield themselves from the fed offensive, and blow the tear gas back. Protesters got better and better at grabbing and flinging back the canisters of tear gas lobbed at them. Soon, the fence had turned into a cage, and at times the feds were trapped in a cloud of their own gas.
Nothing the feds did seemed to deter the protesters—indeed, every night brought with it even more people. The feds gassed the moms, so a bloc of dads, clad in orange and wielding leaf blowers, showed up. The dads, too, got gassed, so a Wall of Vets in white started lining up in front of the fence, standing defiantly at parade rest.
The feds were never popular in the city, but now they were on the local news teargassing middle-aged white women and beating veterans. On weekends, downtown was thick with thousands of people protesting on behalf of Black lives. If they weren’t already with the moms or the dads or the vets, many marched in blocs designated by profession—lawyers, doctors, nurses, and teachers. Each night, I came up with some plausible reason why federal officers would restrain themselves from gassing the crowd this time—yet each night I was proved wrong. My rationale was based on common sense: If they kept gassing people, more people were going to show up the next day.
This, indeed, is the general principle behind counterinsurgency strategy—the idea that you have to be extremely discriminating in your use of force. Some days later, a protester with rifle armor and an ex-military background would rant at me at great length about Field Manual 3-24. “Literally everyone that has gone through military training knows that one thing about counterinsurgency operations,” James D. told me. “But Chad Wolf doesn’t fucking know. Chad Wolf doesn’t need to be fired, he needs to be publicly whipped through the streets for being a fucking moron.”
Field Manual 3-24 is a U.S. Army manual on countering insurgency and was compiled during the Iraq War under the direction of General David Petraeus. At points, the 200-page manual goes into considerable detail in outlining logistics of counterinsurgency operations. At other times, it traffics in general rules of thumb, inviting readers to use their own judgment in determining the right amount of force to quell an insurgency, while cautioning them about the “paradoxes” involved. “Sometimes, the More Force Is Used, the Less Effective It Is” is one such paradox, from Chapter 7. “Any use of force produces many effects, not all of which can be foreseen,” the manual explains. “Using substantial force also increases the opportunity for insurgent propaganda to portray lethal military activities as brutal.”
Other paradoxes scan almost as New Age aphorisms: “Doing Nothing Is Sometimes the Best Action,” and “Some of the Best Weapons for Counterinsurgents Do Not Shoot.” Most strikingly of all for the battle of Portland, the manual counsels that no successful counterinsurgency should count on hiding behind a fence: “Ultimate success in counterinsurgency operations is normally gained by protecting the population, not the counterinsurgency force. If military forces remain in their compounds, they lose touch with the people, appear to be running scared, and give the initiative to the insurgents.”
Of course, the Portland protests were a far cry from an insurgency—just for starters, they had none of the top-down leadership that characterizes such campaigns, by the lights of Field Manual 3-24. But if the Department of Homeland Security truly believed that Portland was in the grip of violent anarchists, why didn’t it just follow the manual?
Even before the Wall of Vets assembled, I noticed the presence of military veterans at the Portland protests. Much of that has to do with my partner, John, an Iraq veteran, who spent many nights in July nagging me about everything from putting on a gas mask correctly to paying attention to lines of sight.
One night, after we had been gassed and the police had retreated, we sat on a curb while I typed out my notes on my phone. I began to sputter in disbelief as I reviewed the timestamps in my notes—the feds’ first appearance, the first flash bang, the first gas canister. The events that constituted my memory of the entire night for me had all happened in the last 20 minutes. John nodded when I explained. “It’s almost like those 20 minutes are in color, and the rest of the night is in black and white, right?” He smiled wryly. “Be careful of that feeling. Try not to start chasing it.”
According to Trisha Vinatieri, a staff psychologist at the Veterans Administration of Portland, a constant state of alertness becomes necessary to survive in a combat zone. But the body does not necessarily understand when you’ve removed yourself from a life-threatening situation. Normal doesn’t feel normal anymore, often because the adrenaline no longer pumps at the same frequency it used to. Some veterans who suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder will engage in risky behavior in order to “feel alive.” Sometimes that means taking up skydiving; other times it results in self-harm.
Vinatieri told me that while she hadn’t heard of any veterans using the protests as a way to chase the adrenaline high, she said it wouldn’t surprise her if some were. This isn’t to say that their motives were somehow crass—sometimes personal trauma coincides with deeply held personal beliefs. She herself had spoken to veterans who had attended the protests, and in her view they were driven by the same values that had led them to join the service in the first place—in her words, “to do better and be better and help society.” (Veterans I spoke to echoed this sentiment; a common refrain was that there was no expiration date on their oath to the Constitution.)
The VA was understandably very wary of saying that getting shot at by DHS agents in military camouflage was likely to be triggering to a veteran with PTSD. But this is a fairly commonsense deduction.
It’s also no great leap to conclude that a large number of protesters on the ground are likely currently experiencing, or will soon be experiencing, symptoms of PTSD.
On July 21, a federal agent shoved me down the steps leading up to the federal courthouse, and I went flying, landing hard on my back. I scrambled back up onto my feet with the help of a scared-looking girl with a homemade shield, even as the feds launched munitions into the crowd. About an hour later, John and I were chased up a street by a cloud of tear gas. When I turned the corner, I saw a man bleeding from his forehead. “I’m done, I’m done,” Andre Miller was repeating to himself, as his fiancée tried to help him. A street medic stabilized him on the sidewalk while two other protesters in gas masks guarded them with homemade shields. Once his head was bandaged, two protesters hoisted Miller up on their shoulders and began to pull him toward a medic van parked a block away. Protesters scattered left and right when medics called for them to “make a hole.” Miller, who is very tall, was losing consciousness at this point. He was slumped against the shoulders of his friends, and his feet dragged against the sidewalk as they carried him to the van. After they loaded him into the van, the medics were visibly shaking.
Adrenaline governed the nights in Portland. A night of unrest might begin with a little bit of reckless behavior from a small contingent in the crowd. One flash bang, and hundreds of furious people would be shouting and screaming at the police.
While I would be hard-pressed to imagine a DHS agent feeling threatened by a guy with a leaf blower, let alone a line of moms linking arms, I could see the resentment and frustration in their faces as the protesters returned night after night. When the tear gas popped and their own adrenaline flowed, the crowd blurred into an undifferentiated mass of threats that had to be put down. A single teenager scaling the fence became an adversary breaching the perimeter; a protester holding up a boom box became an enemy with an unidentified payload.
The feds were being directed by a president who was calling the dweebiest city in America a “beehive of terrorists.”
The responsibility to de-escalate the conflict lay on the side that had the guns, rather than the side that was hurling eggs by the carton. But the feds were being directed by officials who were ranting at Congress about violent anarchists and a president who was calling the dweebiest city in America a “beehive of terrorists.” I began to think that there was no way for the conflict to end without live rounds being fired on the crowd. I recognize now that this was the adrenaline talking—but the warped reality I was living was the same warped reality that had sucked in thousands of people in downtown Portland, including more than 140 federal law enforcement officers.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that the conflict ended because someone who had never set foot in the downtown siege zone finally intervened. On July 29, Governor Kate Brown announced a “phased withdrawal” of federal forces from Portland. Despite posturing from both Secretary Wolf and President Trump around how the withdrawal would not happen if the state of Oregon could not secure federal property, Governor Brown got her way.
The next night, protesters showed up with their gas masks and helmets, experimentally rattling the fence and setting off a couple of fireworks. No one came out. No one gassed them.
The feds were nowhere to be found.
The day after her arrest, Demetria Hester walked out of the Justice Center, free of all charges. The next day, newly elected District Attorney Mike Schmidt announced that the majority of charges against protesters would be dropped.
No one is getting dragged off the street into unmarked vans, but normalcy has not really returned to Portland. For weeks, protests against the police continued almost every night. Protesters were still being beaten, maced, and arrested by the Portland police. The absence of federal authorities on the streets may have even given way to right-wing vigilantism. A week after the withdrawal, pipe bombs were thrown at protesters in Laurelhurst Park. Right-wing groups began to descend on Portland on the weekends, macing and pointing firearms at Black Lives Matter supporters. Danielson was shot to death on August 29.
The thousands of people who thronged downtown Portland at the height of the federal occupation have not returned to the streets, and in the wake of Danielson’s death, the BLM protests may very well discontinue out of fear of vigilante retribution. But there is meaning and poignancy in the sheer number of Portlanders who have now tasted police aggression, courtesy of the feds. This is a city that has been altered forever. The wounds, both visible and invisible, from weeks of flash bangs and rubber bullets remain. The body remembers, and the body politic will remember as well.


newrepublic--2020-09-03--Wall Street’s Greedy Indifference to Human Misery

With Labor Day fast approaching , unemployment stands at 10.2 percent , Gross Domestic Product ( GDP ) is down 31.7 percent , and the stock market is at or near record highs .
The economy , as it ’ s commonly understood , is a smoking ruin , and Wall Street doesn ’ t care .
We ’ ll get a new unemployment report on Friday , and judging from a sort of preview issued every month by the private payroll firm ADP , it ’ s going to fall short of expectations , which aren ’ t high @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fear & Greed Index ( its delightfully blunt term for the put/call ratio ) , the bull market currently scores 75 out of 100 , registering as “ extreme greed , ” and close to a two-year high .
A year ago , when unemployment stood at 3.7 percent—close to a 20-year low—and when GDP was increasing rather than shrinking , the Fear & Greed Index was 25 , registering as “ Extreme Fear.
” All this has me thinking back to a term , “ plutonomy , ” that was in vogue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ workforce was still struggling to recover from the Great Recession of 2007-9 .
As I noted at the time ( “ Brooks Brothers Bolshevism , ” Sept 24 , 2011 ) , the word “ plutonomy ” sounded like agitprop straight out of The Daily Worker .
But this cartoonish term was coined by three Citigroup analysts to describe a U.S. economy in which the bottom 99 percent in the income distribution had , for all practical purposes , ceased to participate .
“ Economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ study declared .
“ The earth is being held up by the muscular arms of its entrepreneur-plutocrats.
” Although they sounded like sans-culottes , the Citibank analysts were actually pro-plutonomy—that is to say , they were advising rich people not to invest in anything that depended too much on the well-being of the great unwashed .
We ’ re often told not to mistake the stock market for the economy .
The economy reflects the level of prosperity within the larger society .
The stock market reflects merely the mood of the investor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and changeable .
If the larger society , and especially workers , are hurting , then eventually the stock market is going to hurt , too , but it ’ s not going to be a direct line from A to B .

Well sure, you may reply. The economy has been financialized; everybody knows that. But at some point, those pixels on Bloomberg screens intersect with actual human experience, right?
That, after all, would appear to have been the lesson of the Great Recession of 2007–9: You had an out-of-control run-up in the value of financial instruments that were linked to mortgages sold by con artists to people who couldn’t afford them. Eventually, rising mortgage defaults caused the worst financial setback since the Great Depression (until now). Even during the Great Recession, though, the financial sector recovered with astonishing rapidity. The Dow was back to its pre-recession level by 2013, even as what we quaintly consider “the economy” was still gasping for breath. The housing market took longer to recover, and wages still longer.
At some point, you’d think the damage done by Covid-19 ought to tank the stock market, if only because unemployed workers who can’t pay mortgages and rent will topple the real estate market, to which the financial sector remains linked. But for the moment, the U.S. housing market is eerily robust. Purchases and sales of new homes rose in June. The overall rate of homeownership actually increased, to 67.9 percent, from April to June, up from 64.1 percent the year before, when many fewer people were wondering how the hell they were going to keep a roof over their heads. The likely reason is that interest rates are down—the only visible concession the financial sector has made to the current unpleasantness. And even that prominent indicator demonstrates that the banks are all that really matter.