thenation--2020-11-12--We’ll Be Living In Trump’s America Long After He’s Gone

In 2016 as now , he was the candidate of chaos .
Yes , he was a billionaire ( or wanna-be billionaire or in-hock billionaire , not to mention a liar , a cheat , and a scoundrel ) , but from the beginning he appealed to the forces of order in America that were also , as it happened , the forces of chaos .
Donald Trump entered the presidential sweepstakes , or to be completely accurate rode an escalator into it , from stage right .
In another universe , he could have entered from stage left and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ damn either way .
After all , there never really was a left , right , or center for the king of apprentices .
There was never anything but the imposing figure known as The Donald , the man of the hour , any hour , past , present , or future .
Whatever his political position of the moment , he reflected one thing above all : the underlying chaos and bad faith of a world of wealth , power , and ever-growing inequality , a world , as it happened , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he ’ s defeated , count on one thing : he ’ ll take as much of this country with him as he can .
If he has his way , when he finally decides to jump ship , money in hand , he ’ ll leave the rest of us at a vast mask-less rally with death running wild in our midst .
From the beginning , he was always the orange-faced , yellow-haired personification of chaos .
Now , just as the Republican Party did in 2016 , this country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own and , in the wake of the recent election , one obvious question is : Are we , too , scheduled for the ventilator of history ?
Do I sound extreme ?
I damn well hope so .
We ’ re in a gridlocked , post-election moment of previously unimaginable extremity in an increasingly over-armed , ever more divided country that used to be known as the “ last superpower ” on Planet Earth .
It matters ( but not enough ) that that aged Democratic centrist Joe Biden has taken the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as previously expected , will make his way into the future White House .
Without a Senate majority , however , and with a reduced majority in the House , without the Democrats having taken a single state legislature from the Republicans , and with Donald Trump ’ s America still fully mobilized and ready for… well , who knows what… don ’ t count on good tidings ahead .
From the start , he was imperial America ’ s candidate of decline , even if few recognized it at the time .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ enough in 2016—it was to me anyway —that his trademark slogan , Make America Great Again , was nothing short of an admission that this “ exceptional , ” “ indispensable ” nation of ours , the greatest superpower in history ( or so this country ’ s politicians then liked to believe ) had , in fact , seen better times .
Donald Trump was then , and remains , a vengeful , preening peacock sent by god knows whom to make that reality obvious to one and all .
That was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , heartland , working-class America that decided to embrace the billionaire bankuptee and reality TV host .
In a land of already staggering inequality , he was the one who would somehow give them back their lost status , their lost sense of American wellbeing and of a future that they could embrace for their children and grandchildren .
And if he didn ’ t do that for them , he would at least be emotional payback when it came to all the loathed powers-that-be in Washington who had , they felt , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” as they came to be known in the media , whom he abhorred , adored , and played like an accordion , embraced the man who , in the end , was guaranteed to leave them holding the bag without the slightest compunction .
In those years , they became his property , his very own apprentices , like the political party he also absorbed without a second thought .
When it came to that base , he became , after a fashion , their god or perhaps their demon , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in defeat .
Of course , he won ’ t care if he ends up bankrupting them , leaves them in a ditch , or continues to rev them up at future rallies that , though they may spread death , leave him feeling whole and good and top of the line .
On the other hand , when Joe Biden , the definition of an old white man , finally limps into the Oval Office , he ’ ll represent a return to normalcy in Washington , the retrieval of an America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the America that was—if you ’ ll excuse the repetition of a verb—was an America in decline , even if its leaders didn ’ t know it .
It was a country on course for a previously un-American version of inequality and so instability that once would have been unimaginable .
Who can doubt that Donald Trump himself was the personification of hell on Earth ?
He was the witch in the wardrobe .
He was a satanic art-of-the-dealer ( every deal , by definition , meant only for himself ) .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the depths of its disturbed innards as a uniquely symbolic president .
From the moment he delivered that Inaugural Address of his on January 20 , 2017 , he would also be the personification of carnage .
And yes , goad me a little more , and believe me I could go on .
But you get the drift , right ?
And yet give Donald Trump the credit he deserves .
However intuitively , he grasped just where this country was and was going ( and , of course , how he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ understood its fault lines in a way no one else did .
He even understood how to run a campaign for—instead of against—a pandemic in a way that should have left him 20,000 leagues under the sea , not floating in a heated pool at Mar-a-Lago .
There couldn ’ t be a grimmer moral to the American story than this : He knew all of us so much better than we knew ourselves .
To so many Americans , he spoke what felt like reality itself .
It mattered not at all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and was a con man in a great American tradition , or that he had stiffed the government with those tax returns he ’ d never release .
After all , whatever he was , he was the genuine ( fraudulent ) thing in a world where increasing numbers of Americans already felt conned by the 1 % politics of a Washington that was filled with con artists of a different sort .
Now , despite the scads of lawyers he ’ s called into action to screw the works , Donald @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second round in the Oval Office and , as a result , rest assured , we ’ ll all be left holding the bag .
In the midst of the pandemic from hell—don ’ t doubt it for a second—this will be another kind of hell on earth .
Now , let ’ s look on the bright side , because at such a moment who wants to just read a screed of negativity ?
So here ’ s the good news : thanks to President Trump ’ s defeat in election 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ play out in court ) , the world will go down more slowly , though how much more slowly remains to be seen .
After all , there was one factor in any Trump second term that was going to be unlike any other .
Though it may not seem like it to us , the rest of what we would have seen from a Trump second term—autocratic behavior , raw racism , a red-hot version of nationalism ( white and otherwise ) , aggrieved masculinity , all amid the pandemic of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in human history .
In that long tale , autocrats and nationalists of every grim kind have been a dime-a-dozen and even nightmarish pandemics anything but unknown .
Give it a decade , a century , a millennium , and it would be as if nothing had happened at all .
Who but the historians ( if they still exist ) would even remember ?
Unfortunately , that ’ s not true of one factor in election 2020 , though it played the most modest of roles in the campaign itself .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of climate change , the human heating of the planet through the never-ending release into the atmosphere ( and the oceans ) of greenhouse gasses from the burning of fossil fuels .
Certainly , since the coal-fired industrial revolution began in England in the 18th century , the warming of this planet has been sparked and fed by us humans , but it is not , in fact , part of human history .
It will operate on a timescale likely to leave that history in the dust .
Once released , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( as is still possible ) , it ’ s a phenomenon that will stand , in the most devastating fashion imaginable , outside human history altogether .
Unlike any other Trumpian phenomenon , once it truly sets in , give it a decade , a century , even a millennium , and it will still be working to ensure that Earth , to one degree or another , becomes a distinctly unlivable planet for humanity .
It ’ s little short of passing strange—you might actually call it suicidal—that Donald Trump ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) would be quite so intent not just on ignoring or “ denying ” climate change , as is often charged , but on amplifying it by , in essence , actively setting this planet afire .
The president ’ s term for it was “ unleashing American Energy Dominance.
” How strange , however , that his intent to destroy a habitable planet proved quite so popular , not once , but twice—and who knows about a third time in 2024 ?
After all , a vote for Trump was , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ At some level , it wasn ’ t even complicated , but from a base that seemed to glory in those mask-less , chanting love fests for their One and Only , perhaps none of this should have been a surprise at all .
If Donald Trump has become something like a god to his supporters , then perhaps it ’ s worth asking what kind of a god would be quite so intent on setting fire to the planet ( and while he was at it murdering his own apprentices with Covid-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of him , in fact , as our very own boatman Charon on the river Styx , paddling us all to what someday could quite literally be a hell on Earth .
After all , I ’ m writing this piece in New York City on a November day when it ’ s 74 degrees outside ( and , no , that ’ s not a misprint ) .
Yet another fierce tropical storm in a record year of them has drenched parts of Florida , a place that ’ s no longer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , property of The Donald .
Meanwhile , parts of the West , having burned and smoked and flamed in a historic fashion across millions and millions of charred acres amid heat waves galore , are still smoldering ( though hardly noticed by anyone ) , and the world couldn ’ t be less together .
In a Senate controlled by Mitch McConnell , green new deals or two-trillion-dollar climate plans will become more fantastic than Donald Trump himself .
Still , with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at least partially running a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a pandemic and an economy that ’ s gone to hell , the pyromania will ease up somewhat .
Some modest steps might even be taken toward alternate forms of energy and some to save the environment , as well as a humanity in distress .
It won ’ t be what ’ s needed , but it won ’ t be a torch either and that ’ s the best thing to be said about our moment and why it truly mattered that Donald Trump was not reelected .
Now , return @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that other superpower , the Soviet Union , imploded .
America ’ s power brokers then ( including Joe Biden ) , believing themselves alone and powerful beyond imagining on Planet Earth , the inheritors of everything that had gone before , launched what would become disastrous forever wars , sure that this planet was theirs for the taking , even as history itself—just imagine— was ending .
Almost three decades later , that same last superpower is a democracy in decline , not to say chaos ; an imperial power in decline @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t find a winning war to fight ( even as Congress , no matter the president , appropriates yet more funding for the military-industrial complex ) .
We have a 78-year-old man getting ready to inhabit the Oval Office and another 78-year-old preparing to oppose him in the Senate , while an 80-year-old runs the House .
Doesn ’ t this tell you something about a country swept away by a pandemic—100,000 or more cases a day—and , despite assurances from Donald Trump , without a turnable “ corner ” in sight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end of the world , so to speak , if it weren ’ t for climate change .
Admittedly , Covid-19 has turned this country into a kind of hell on Earth , having been left to roam in an unprecedented fashion by a killer president .
Cases are soaring , hospitals overwhelmed , deaths rising , and almost half of America can ’ t think about anything but crowding together for presidential rallies , living mask-less lives , and “ opening ” the economy .
Trumpism has split America in two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been imaginable since the Civil War .
The president and the Senate are likely to be in gridlock , the judicial system a partisan affair of the first order , the national security state a money-gobbling shadow empire , the citizenry armed to the teeth , racism rising , and life everywhere in an increasing state of chaos .
Welcome to the ( Dis ) United States .
Donald Trump led the way and , whatever he does , I suspect that this , for at least the time being , is still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Joe Biden ’ s .
He was the man and , like it or not , we were all his apprentices in a performance of destructive power of the first order that has yet to truly end .

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.
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In 2016 as now, he was the candidate of chaos. Yes, he was a billionaire (or wanna-be billionaire or in-hock billionaire, not to mention a liar, a cheat, and a scoundrel), but from the beginning he appealed to the forces of order in America that were also, as it happened, the forces of chaos. Donald Trump entered the presidential sweepstakes, or to be completely accurate rode an escalator into it, from stage right. In another universe, he could have entered from stage left and he wouldn’t have given a damn either way.
After all, there never really was a left, right, or center for the king of apprentices. There was never anything but the imposing figure known as The Donald, the man of the hour, any hour, past, present, or future. Whatever his political position of the moment, he reflected one thing above all: the underlying chaos and bad faith of a world of wealth, power, and ever-growing inequality, a world, as it happened, just waiting to go down.
Now that he’s defeated, count on one thing: he’ll take as much of this country with him as he can. If he has his way, when he finally decides to jump ship, money in hand, he’ll leave the rest of us at a vast mask-less rally with death running wild in our midst. From the beginning, he was always the orange-faced, yellow-haired personification of chaos. Now, just as the Republican Party did in 2016, this country has taken on his chaos as our own and, in the wake of the recent election, one obvious question is: Are we, too, scheduled for the ventilator of history?
Do I sound extreme? I damn well hope so. We’re in a gridlocked, post-election moment of previously unimaginable extremity in an increasingly over-armed, ever more divided country that used to be known as the “last superpower” on Planet Earth. It matters (but not enough) that that aged Democratic centrist Joe Biden has taken the presidency and, if all goes faintly as previously expected, will make his way into the future White House. Without a Senate majority, however, and with a reduced majority in the House, without the Democrats having taken a single state legislature from the Republicans, and with Donald Trump’s America still fully mobilized and ready for… well, who knows what… don’t count on good tidings ahead. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
The Personification of Carnage
From the start, he was imperial America’s candidate of decline, even if few recognized it at the time. Still, it should have been obvious enough in 2016—it was to me anyway —that his trademark slogan, Make America Great Again, was nothing short of an admission that this “exceptional,” “indispensable” nation of ours, the greatest superpower in history (or so this country’s politicians then liked to believe) had, in fact, seen better times.
Donald Trump was then, and remains, a vengeful, preening peacock sent by god knows whom to make that reality obvious to one and all. That was certainly true of the slice of white, heartland, working-class America that decided to embrace the billionaire bankuptee and reality TV host. In a land of already staggering inequality, he was the one who would somehow give them back their lost status, their lost sense of American wellbeing and of a future that they could embrace for their children and grandchildren. And if he didn’t do that for them, he would at least be emotional payback when it came to all the loathed powers-that-be in Washington who had, they felt, taken them down.
His “base,” as they came to be known in the media, whom he abhorred, adored, and played like an accordion, embraced the man who, in the end, was guaranteed to leave them holding the bag without the slightest compunction. In those years, they became his property, his very own apprentices, like the political party he also absorbed without a second thought. Current Issue View our current issue
When it came to that base, he became, after a fashion, their god or perhaps their demon, and so he remains today, even in defeat. Of course, he won’t care if he ends up bankrupting them, leaves them in a ditch, or continues to rev them up at future rallies that, though they may spread death, leave him feeling whole and good and top of the line.
On the other hand, when Joe Biden, the definition of an old white man, finally limps into the Oval Office, he’ll represent a return to normalcy in Washington, the retrieval of an America that was. The only problem: the America that was—if you’ll excuse the repetition of a verb—was an America in decline, even if its leaders didn’t know it. It was a country on course for a previously un-American version of inequality and so instability that once would have been unimaginable.
Who can doubt that Donald Trump himself was the personification of hell on Earth? He was the witch in the wardrobe. He was a satanic art-of-the-dealer (every deal, by definition, meant only for himself). He was what this country vomited up from the depths of its disturbed innards as a uniquely symbolic president. From the moment he delivered that Inaugural Address of his on January 20, 2017, he would also be the personification of carnage.
And yes, goad me a little more, and believe me I could go on. But you get the drift, right?
And yet give Donald Trump the credit he deserves. However intuitively, he grasped just where this country was and was going (and, of course, how he could benefit from that). He understood its fault lines in a way no one else did. He even understood how to run a campaign for—instead of against—a pandemic in a way that should have left him 20,000 leagues under the sea, not floating in a heated pool at Mar-a-Lago.
There couldn’t be a grimmer moral to the American story than this: He knew all of us so much better than we knew ourselves. To so many Americans, he spoke what felt like reality itself. It mattered not at all that he looked like, felt like, and was a con man in a great American tradition, or that he had stiffed the government with those tax returns he’d never release. After all, whatever he was, he was the genuine (fraudulent) thing in a world where increasing numbers of Americans already felt conned by the 1% politics of a Washington that was filled with con artists of a different sort.
Now, despite the scads of lawyers he’s called into action to screw the works, Donald Trump has missed his chance for a second round in the Oval Office and, as a result, rest assured, we’ll all be left holding the bag. In the midst of the pandemic from hell—don’t doubt it for a second—this will be another kind of hell on earth.
A Vote for Doom
Now, let’s look on the bright side, because at such a moment who wants to just read a screed of negativity? So here’s the good news: thanks to President Trump’s defeat in election 2020 (however long it may take to play out in court), the world will go down more slowly, though how much more slowly remains to be seen. After all, there was one factor in any Trump second term that was going to be unlike any other.
Though it may not seem like it to us, the rest of what we would have seen from a Trump second term—autocratic behavior, raw racism, a red-hot version of nationalism (white and otherwise), aggrieved masculinity, all amid the pandemic of the century—would have been just another passing chapter in human history. In that long tale, autocrats and nationalists of every grim kind have been a dime-a-dozen and even nightmarish pandemics anything but unknown. Give it a decade, a century, a millennium, and it would be as if nothing had happened at all. Who but the historians (if they still exist) would even remember?
Unfortunately, that’s not true of one factor in election 2020, though it played the most modest of roles in the campaign itself. That was, of course, the phenomenon of climate change, the human heating of the planet through the never-ending release into the atmosphere (and the oceans) of greenhouse gasses from the burning of fossil fuels.
Certainly, since the coal-fired industrial revolution began in England in the 18th century, the warming of this planet has been sparked and fed by us humans, but it is not, in fact, part of human history. It will operate on a timescale likely to leave that history in the dust. Once released, and if not brought under some reasonable control (as is still possible), it’s a phenomenon that will stand, in the most devastating fashion imaginable, outside human history altogether. Unlike any other Trumpian phenomenon, once it truly sets in, give it a decade, a century, even a millennium, and it will still be working to ensure that Earth, to one degree or another, becomes a distinctly unlivable planet for humanity.
It’s little short of passing strange—you might actually call it suicidal—that Donald Trump (and the crew he brought to power) would be quite so intent not just on ignoring or “denying” climate change, as is often charged, but on amplifying it by, in essence, actively setting this planet afire. The president’s term for it was “unleashing American Energy Dominance.” How strange, however, that his intent to destroy a habitable planet proved quite so popular, not once, but twice—and who knows about a third time in 2024?
After all, a vote for Trump was, in essence, a vote for doom. At some level, it wasn’t even complicated, but from a base that seemed to glory in those mask-less, chanting love fests for their One and Only, perhaps none of this should have been a surprise at all.
If Donald Trump has become something like a god to his supporters, then perhaps it’s worth asking what kind of a god would be quite so intent on setting fire to the planet (and while he was at it murdering his own apprentices with Covid-19)? Perhaps we need to think of him, in fact, as our very own boatman Charon on the river Styx, paddling us all to what someday could quite literally be a hell on Earth.
After all, I’m writing this piece in New York City on a November day when it’s 74 degrees outside (and, no, that’s not a misprint). Yet another fierce tropical storm in a record year of them has drenched parts of Florida, a place that’s no longer a swing state but, like Mar-a-Lago, property of The Donald. Meanwhile, parts of the West, having burned and smoked and flamed in a historic fashion across millions and millions of charred acres amid heat waves galore, are still smoldering (though hardly noticed by anyone), and the world couldn’t be less together.
In a Senate controlled by Mitch McConnell, green new deals or two-trillion-dollar climate plans will become more fantastic than Donald Trump himself. Still, with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at least partially running a deeply divided country in the midst of a pandemic and an economy that’s gone to hell, the pyromania will ease up somewhat. Some modest steps might even be taken toward alternate forms of energy and some to save the environment, as well as a humanity in distress. It won’t be what’s needed, but it won’t be a torch either and that’s the best thing to be said about our moment and why it truly mattered that Donald Trump was not reelected.
Now, return for a moment to 1991, when that other superpower, the Soviet Union, imploded. America’s power brokers then (including Joe Biden), believing themselves alone and powerful beyond imagining on Planet Earth, the inheritors of everything that had gone before, launched what would become disastrous forever wars, sure that this planet was theirs for the taking, even as history itself—just imagine— was ending.
Almost three decades later, that same last superpower is a democracy in decline, not to say chaos; an imperial power in decline globally; a military power that can’t find a winning war to fight (even as Congress, no matter the president, appropriates yet more funding for the military-industrial complex). We have a 78-year-old man getting ready to inhabit the Oval Office and another 78-year-old preparing to oppose him in the Senate, while an 80-year-old runs the House. Doesn’t this tell you something about a country swept away by a pandemic—100,000 or more cases a day—and, despite assurances from Donald Trump, without a turnable “corner” in sight? And none of this would be the end of the world, so to speak, if it weren’t for climate change.
Admittedly, Covid-19 has turned this country into a kind of hell on Earth, having been left to roam in an unprecedented fashion by a killer president. Cases are soaring, hospitals overwhelmed, deaths rising, and almost half of America can’t think about anything but crowding together for presidential rallies, living mask-less lives, and “opening” the economy.
Trumpism has split America in two in a way that hasn’t been imaginable since the Civil War. The president and the Senate are likely to be in gridlock, the judicial system a partisan affair of the first order, the national security state a money-gobbling shadow empire, the citizenry armed to the teeth, racism rising, and life everywhere in an increasing state of chaos.
Welcome to the (Dis)United States. Donald Trump led the way and, whatever he does, I suspect that this, for at least the time being, is still in some sense his world, not Joe Biden’s. He was the man and, like it or not, we were all his apprentices in a performance of destructive power of the first order that has yet to truly end.


thenation--2020-11-13--Donald Trump Has Never Understood the Military—and He’s Not Going to Be Able to Co-opt It for a Coup

Every Veterans Day , my social media feeds fill with military content—photos of men and women I served with , decked out in various uniforms and reflecting on their pride in service and love of country .
On Wednesday , those posts were interrupted by another kind of military content : news that Trump had installed loyalists in several top Pentagon positions , in an apparent bid to consolidate control of the armed forces .
The irony—selfless service and service to self , juxtaposed—was palpable .
Perspectives in the media on what exactly Trump is up to range from petulant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to firm his grip on an instrument of federal power as he continues to reject his election defeat by former vice president Joe Biden .
It started Monday , with the abrupt ouster , via Twitter , of Defense Secretary Mark Esper .
Esper is reported to have been at odds with the president for months , in part because of his disagreement with Trump over the use of active-duty troops to quell racial justice protests this summer .
His firing nevertheless marked a remarkable fall from the president ’ s graces for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House of being dependably agreeable earned him the nickname “ Yesper.
” He is replaced in an acting capacity by Christopher Miller , previously the director of the National Counterterrorism Center and now the fifth person to serve under Trump in the Pentagon ’ s highest office .
Esper ’ s dismissal further prompted a spate of high-level resignations in the Defense Department , and on Tuesday the president filled the vacancies with political operatives and loyalists .
One , Ezra Cohen-Watnick , is 34 years old ; he replaces Joseph Kernan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as the undersecretary of defense for intelligence .
“ No one has seen anything like this , ” Martha Raddatz said Tuesday on ABC News .
“ Is the president planning a military operation or the use of federal troops , which Esper opposed ?
” The journalist David Sirota was more explicit in his concern , suggesting that Trump is posturing for “ a coup.
” How America Turned on Itself Can Kentucky Slip the Industry Ties That Prevent Change ?
These Big City Mayors Want Green Stimulus Spending to Counter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coup are not unfounded .
This is hardly the first time he ’ s experimented with dictator-like behavior , and one anonymous White House official told The Washington Post on Tuesday that the president has stated repeatedly that “ most of the military is Republican and will support him.
” But as a former military officer myself , I find it hard to imagine that Trump will be able to bend the armed forces to his will .
For one thing , the military might historically trend conservative , but most of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ An August Military Times poll—not that we should be particularly enamored of polls right now—found that Trump ’ s approval among active-duty service members has fallen considerably during his time in office , from 46 to 38 percent , and that more service members polled intended to vote for Biden than for him .
As media commentators rediscovered of many groups this election cycle , the military is not a monolith .
But forget partisan sensibilities .
The main reason we ’ re unlikely to see the military take part in a coup @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When headlines warn of a military takeover , it seems like people with little personal experience of the military imagine “ the troops ” as snapping dogs raring to get off-leash .
That describes literally no one I ever met in seven years of service , including on deployments to Afghanistan , East Africa , and elsewhere .
As Wednesday ’ s cascade of Veterans Day social posts reminded me , the military is composed of all kinds of Americans , from all corners of the country and every background you could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ diverse—for many , the military is a can ’ t-miss escalator to the middle class—but the vast majority of service members wear their uniform with dignity and humility .
The president might try repeatedly to drag them into the political mud—for his much-desired capital parade ; when he deployed troops to the southern border ; or this summer in Washington , D.C. , when he ordered the National Guard , along with police , to beat back protesters in Lafayette Square—but most service members I know take pride in the military ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to this country , not to party , nor to this president .
Are there some in the ranks who would follow Trump straight to hell ?
Of course .
Those kinds of people exist everywhere .
But for the president to wield the military as an instrument of domestic power , it would take senior leaders and operational commanders all across the armed services to go along .
Yes , the president is commander in chief of the armed forces , but service members swear their oaths first and foremost to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their oaths to refuse unlawful or immoral orders .
In other words , it was never Esper alone , or Jim Mattis before him , who stood in the way of Trump ’ s autocratic impulses .
And if the president believes a shake-up in the Pentagon is all it will take to let him do as pleases with the military , he has another thing coming .
His Pentagon allies are unlikely to find a cadre of sycophants among the generals and admirals like the one Trump has assembled in the White @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cover-Up and a Con Game None of this is to say that Trump ’ s maneuvering should be taken lightly .
As many in the media have observed , a presidential transition is a sensitive time , and tumult at the top of the armed forces could have serious national security consequences .
( An insufficient turnover between the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations was cited in the 9/11 Commission Report as a factor in America ’ s unpreparedness for the attacks on September 11 , 2001 . )
Moreover , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yet another alarm bell signaling America ’ s would-be descent into authoritarianism .
Already , Trump has a loyalist in place as the director of national intelligence , former Texas congressman John Ratcliff , who has used his position to spin narratives in the president ’ s favor and contradict his own intelligence community ’ s assessments regarding foreign interference in US elections .
And it seems likely Trump will move soon to unseat Gina Haspel , director of the CIA , and Christopher Wray , director of the FBI .
This subversion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , to be sure .
Fears that the military will aid the president ’ s power grab , though , are misplaced .
Trump might stand defiantly against the American people , but the military that I know will not .

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Every Veterans Day, my social media feeds fill with military content—photos of men and women I served with, decked out in various uniforms and reflecting on their pride in service and love of country. On Wednesday, those posts were interrupted by another kind of military content: news that Trump had installed loyalists in several top Pentagon positions, in an apparent bid to consolidate control of the armed forces. The irony—selfless service and service to self, juxtaposed—was palpable.
Perspectives in the media on what exactly Trump is up to range from petulant tantrum-throwing to a desire by the president to firm his grip on an instrument of federal power as he continues to reject his election defeat by former vice president Joe Biden. It started Monday, with the abrupt ouster, via Twitter, of Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Esper is reported to have been at odds with the president for months, in part because of his disagreement with Trump over the use of active-duty troops to quell racial justice protests this summer. His firing nevertheless marked a remarkable fall from the president’s graces for a person whose reputation in the White House of being dependably agreeable earned him the nickname “Yesper.” He is replaced in an acting capacity by Christopher Miller, previously the director of the National Counterterrorism Center and now the fifth person to serve under Trump in the Pentagon’s highest office.
Esper’s dismissal further prompted a spate of high-level resignations in the Defense Department, and on Tuesday the president filled the vacancies with political operatives and loyalists. One, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, is 34 years old; he replaces Joseph Kernan, a retired three-star admiral and Navy SEAL, as the undersecretary of defense for intelligence.
“No one has seen anything like this,” Martha Raddatz said Tuesday on ABC News. “Is the president planning a military operation or the use of federal troops, which Esper opposed?” The journalist David Sirota was more explicit in his concern, suggesting that Trump is posturing for “a coup.” More From Andrew McCormick Nations Are Nowhere on Their Climate Commitments, and Too Few Journalists Are Holding Them Accountable May 19, 2022 You Can’t Isolate the Food Crisis From the Climate Crisis April 1, 2022 Climate Looms Large Over Biden’s First State of the Union. Will the Coverage Say So? March 1, 2022
Fears that Trump might attempt a coup are not unfounded. This is hardly the first time he’s experimented with dictator-like behavior, and one anonymous White House official told The Washington Post on Tuesday that the president has stated repeatedly that “most of the military is Republican and will support him.” But as a former military officer myself, I find it hard to imagine that Trump will be able to bend the armed forces to his will. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
For one thing, the military might historically trend conservative, but most of the military does not expressly support Trump. An August Military Times poll—not that we should be particularly enamored of polls right now—found that Trump’s approval among active-duty service members has fallen considerably during his time in office, from 46 to 38 percent, and that more service members polled intended to vote for Biden than for him. As media commentators rediscovered of many groups this election cycle, the military is not a monolith.
But forget partisan sensibilities. The main reason we’re unlikely to see the military take part in a coup is because of who the military is. When headlines warn of a military takeover, it seems like people with little personal experience of the military imagine “the troops” as snapping dogs raring to get off-leash. That describes literally no one I ever met in seven years of service, including on deployments to Afghanistan, East Africa, and elsewhere. Current Issue View our current issue
As Wednesday’s cascade of Veterans Day social posts reminded me, the military is composed of all kinds of Americans, from all corners of the country and every background you could imagine. Their reasons for service are diverse—for many, the military is a can’t-miss escalator to the middle class—but the vast majority of service members wear their uniform with dignity and humility. The president might try repeatedly to drag them into the political mud—for his much-desired capital parade; when he deployed troops to the southern border; or this summer in Washington, D.C., when he ordered the National Guard, along with police, to beat back protesters in Lafayette Square—but most service members I know take pride in the military’s tradition of nonpartisanship. Their service is to this country, not to party, nor to this president.
Are there some in the ranks who would follow Trump straight to hell? Of course. Those kinds of people exist everywhere. But for the president to wield the military as an instrument of domestic power, it would take senior leaders and operational commanders all across the armed services to go along. Yes, the president is commander in chief of the armed forces, but service members swear their oaths first and foremost to the Constitution—and officers in particular are obligated by their oaths to refuse unlawful or immoral orders.
In other words, it was never Esper alone, or Jim Mattis before him, who stood in the way of Trump’s autocratic impulses. And if the president believes a shake-up in the Pentagon is all it will take to let him do as pleases with the military, he has another thing coming. His Pentagon allies are unlikely to find a cadre of sycophants among the generals and admirals like the one Trump has assembled in the White House. What’s Happening?! Not a Coup but a Cover-Up and a Con Game Jeet Heer
None of this is to say that Trump’s maneuvering should be taken lightly. As many in the media have observed, a presidential transition is a sensitive time, and tumult at the top of the armed forces could have serious national security consequences. (An insufficient turnover between the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations was cited in the 9/11 Commission Report as a factor in America’s unpreparedness for the attacks on September 11, 2001.) Moreover, Trump’s moves this week are yet another alarm bell signaling America’s would-be descent into authoritarianism. Already, Trump has a loyalist in place as the director of national intelligence, former Texas congressman John Ratcliff, who has used his position to spin narratives in the president’s favor and contradict his own intelligence community’s assessments regarding foreign interference in US elections. And it seems likely Trump will move soon to unseat Gina Haspel, director of the CIA, and Christopher Wray, director of the FBI.
This subversion of democracy before our eyes is frightening, to be sure. Fears that the military will aid the president’s power grab, though, are misplaced. Trump might stand defiantly against the American people, but the military that I know will not.


thenation--2020-11-13--Living in Borat’s America

Living in Borat’s America

When Sacha Baron Cohen sprang Borat on the American public in 2006 , a midterm election year , I thought I was clever to observe that nimble , improvisational , disrespectful laughter had won a landslide victory over the deep emotions and classical filmmaking of Clint Eastwood ’ s World War II diptych , Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima .
Like a blind seer , I had no idea how horribly right I was .
Since then , vast sectors of the audience have abandoned the movies—superhero sagas excepted—for the rapid , random snickers of meme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that I detected in the public ’ s embrace of Borat went on to transform the political landscape , though not as I ’ d hoped .
It was Donald J. Trump , rather than any tribune of The Nation ’ s fed-up legions , who rose to bestride our narrow world like a Colossus of the Raised Middle Finger .
For these reasons , the release of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm , 11 days before the 2020 elections , posed sharp questions .
In a political landscape where the presidency had become a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s insult comedy a weapon against Trump ’ s or more of the same ?
And could any movie—even if perpetrated with jumpy rhythms and delivered digitally—compete in a new audiovisual environment made for 60-second attention spans ?
To ask these questions is to fall , understandably , into the mountaineering fallacy : the notion that all works of art must rise to the challenge of their time .
In defiance of this error , I will later recommend three fascinating pictures that could be made to speak to the present moment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For now , let me acknowledge that Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is focused so intently on the 2020 presidential election that its end credits include the admonition , in the title character ’ s phraseology , “ Now Vote .
Or you will be execute.
” These are words to live by , always , but when read after November 3 , they stamp a best-if-used-by date on a production that was conceived to mock Trump and his allies during the campaign and then marketed so that its culminating gotcha scene , a humiliation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a teaser shortly before the final presidential debate .
I imagine Borat Subsequent Moviefilm might retain some life in years to come .
All the same , it ’ s a hybrid : part rollicking mockumentary and part get-out-the-base video , of a piece with Samuel L. Jackson ’ s “ Vote , dammit , vote !
” ad for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris .
Cohen remains as savvy as ever about reaching audiences where they live , so it ’ s no surprise that discrete chunks of the movie can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Within a day of the release , clips were already circulating on dozens of YouTube accounts and beyond , with leave from Amazon ’ s promotional department and to the benefit of the film ’ s electioneering .
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm proved it could fit easily into today ’ s smartphone competition for eyeballs , but if this picture is to be judged by mountaineering standards , let ’ s note that it does not have the field to itself nor is it alone in trying to win hearts and minds through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ acknowledges , in scenes about digital crap slinging and grassroots calls for violence—hey , can ’ t you take a joke ?
—Trumpworld has its own memes and sense of humor .
As a reality check , you might watch Daniel Lombroso ’ s documentary White Noise , produced by The Atlantic as a feature-length exposé of the alt-right and its normalization ( kind of ) through the rise of Trump .
Released on multiple streaming platforms a couple of weeks before the elections , the film offers a prolonged , close-up look @ @ @ @ @ @ @ young social media adepts and self-promoters : white-power loudmouth Richard Spencer , conspiracy theory peddler Mike Cernovich , and anti-feminist , anti-immigrant YouTube poser Lauren Southern .
I doubt you will think these specialists in short-form outrages are funny , but their followers do , finding mirth in the trio ’ s assaults on liberal propriety ( or , as you and I might put it , human dignity ) .
Unfortunately , I also doubt that you will learn much from White Noise , assuming you ’ re aware of basics such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pizzagate , or that you are likely to fall in love with the film ’ s shambling narration and editing .
The main achievement of White Noise is to engender a sense of dismay—as if you needed that .
Still , the film ’ s study of alt-right zanies has its uses .
It can confirm for you , by means of comparison , that Cohen ’ s insult comedy is not just more of the same .
Directed valorously by first-time-filmmaker Jason Woliner after a long career in television and scripted more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been written by Cohen with eight others , Borat Subsequent Moviefilm : Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is at heart a tender story of father-daughter love .
Never mind that the semi-feral Tutar ( Maria Bakalova ) is discovered under a layer of straw , rags , and facial grime in the corner of a barn , where Borat is astonished to learn she ’ s part of his , as he puts it , livestock .
When he undertakes his ensuing knockabout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the adolescent Tutar , the incidents may be designed , one by one , to deride Trump ’ s supporters , but the plot is machined to forge emotional ties between father and daughter , until the two transform Kazakhstan into “ a feminist nation , like US of A and Saudi Arabia.
” What unites the loose string of sketch-comedy episodes with the steady emotional arc ?
Satiric rage against the belittlement of women , which Cohen identifies as central to Trump ’ s strongman cult .
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm scatters its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enthusiasts , casual racists , Jew haters , Roma haters , and coronavirus deniers all get their lumps—but the main enemy throughout is male supremacy , whether in the imaginary Kazakhstan or the America whose attitudes Cohen prankishly exposes .
Among the actually existing people who are played for suckers this time by a disguised Cohen and Bakalova : a coach for young women who want to sell themselves to sugar daddies , the operator of one of those “ crisis pregnancy centers ” that intercept women seeking abortions , a plastic surgeon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ titties ” monumental , the guests of a debutante ball in Georgia ( whose gentility in declaring young women marriageable is mugged by a traditional Kazakh fertility dance ) , and for the finale , old lech Rudy .
The orange Sun King who reigns over this realm of pussy grabbing remains unseen , except for a Kazakh animated movie in Disney style and a full-body disguise worn by Cohen .
Trump ’ s influence , nevertheless , is omnipresent .
Which brings me to a contradiction .
The trick of the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , depraved Kazakhstan and then , through the title character ’ s adventures , show America as its mirror image .
The new Borat takes the same approach , but past a certain point the pattern breaks down .
Even the QAnon adherents who shelter Borat in one sequence insist that women in America have the same rights as men and can ’ t simply be sold or gifted .
Even the members of a Southern Republican women ’ s club , whose evening meeting is interrupted by a wandering Tutar , welcome @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and respect , until she drives them to wonder if they shouldn ’ t call her an Uber .
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm lays bare an American culture of misogyny , except when it doesn ’ t .
And then there are Jeanise Jones and Judith Dim Evans .
The first , who works as a babysitter , is hired by Borat to kennel Tutar for a day but instead decides to educate the young woman , convincing her with infinite patience that she is an independent human being with a mind of her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a synagogue , is a Holocaust survivor who offers Borat food and a kiss , while gently informing him that his Jew disguise is a little off .
( The talons , for example—too much . )
Watching these scenes , which provide contrasting images of a decent America , you might feel that middle-aged Black women and elderly Jews have problems of their own and should not bear the burden , as they do so often , of being deployed as exemplars of charity and understanding .
Yet these are the real @ @ @ @ @ @ @ film is dedicated ) , responding as themselves to ridiculous , constructed circumstances , and though they are far more developed in their fellow feeling than most butts of Cohen ’ s impostures , they don ’ t stand alone in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm .
This is where Cohen ’ s insult comedy departs from Trump ’ s and the alt-right ’ s .
( I should add Bakalova ’ s comedy as well .
Though seemingly runtish next to the elongated Cohen , she thwacks herself off him and everybody else in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ energy that knows no embarrassment , only joy . )
One side thinks it funny to demean and dehumanize .
The other gives people latitude to shame themselves but also allows glimpses of the better angels of our nature .
I ’ m not going to kid myself that audiences are watching Borat Subsequent Moviefilm for the sake of its passing visions of kindness .
People want to laugh their asses off at the dumb , the rude , and the grotesque , and they ’ re getting their money ’ s worth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movie , though , now that its electoral purpose is obsolete and even the most prominent of its political targets , such as Mike Pence and Giuliani , begin their inevitable fade-out from popular memory ?
After rising to the challenge of its moment , must this film fall off the peak and be forever buried in snow ?
I think something does remain alive after November 3 : hope in the power of decency , hope in women , and pride in constructing a fully thought-out 97-minute film , even if a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but clickbait .
That ’ s hardly enough of a foundation on which to rebuild America , but it ’ s more than we were owed by a British comedian and a young actress from Bulgaria , home of the world-famous Museum House of Humor and Satire .
If you can not remember the last time a film deeply excited you , please do yourself a favor and watch Pietro Marcello ’ s Martin Eden , now available through various virtual cinemas , including Film at Lincoln Center ’ s .
Marcello and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to have based their film freely on Jack London ’ s semiautobiographical novel , but except for relocating the action from Oakland , Calif. , at the turn of the 20th century to Naples , Italy , in the 1970s ( more or less ) , they ’ ve been stunningly faithful to London ’ s story of the intellectual and emotional awakening of a young proletarian writer and the personal and artistic catastrophe of his failure to awaken politically as well .
By cleverly mixing tinted archival footage from London ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Italy , Marcello implicitly expands the title character from an individual case to a recurring type : the working man of exceptional talent and energy who struggles against all odds to educate himself and win a daughter of the bourgeoisie , only to discover in the end that “ the world is stronger than me.
” Marcello deserves credit for the bold conceptual move , but the true author of the movie might be Luca Marinelli , who plays Martin .
With shoulders broad enough to bear the yoke of a two-ox team @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invites and offers confidences , Marinelli charges not only the character but the entire film with power , intelligence , and an allure that ultimately turns tragic .
Oliver Laxe ’ s Fire Will Come , available at virtual cinemas such as the Metrograph in New York and the Acropolis in Los Angeles , is a film of changing seasons and impressive yet fragile landscapes—including the facial topographies of the nonprofessional performers Amador Arias and Benedicta Sánchez , who play the main characters .
Amador , in the story , is a taciturn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could have been carved with a pocketknife .
Released from prison after serving a sentence for arson , he returns to his 83-year-old mother and her three-cow farm in the mountains of Galicia in Spain and settles into the annual round , meanwhile suffering abuse from townspeople who regard him as both an idiot and a threat .
In the first half of the film , the neighbors get ready to accuse him of starting the next of the devastating fires that rage each summer through the woods .
In the second half @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you hold your breath shot by shot to see Laxe and his crew daring to capture this inferno—while you wonder how any one man could be blamed for something so overwhelming .
Finally , moving on from the transhistorical drama of Martin Eden and the ecological cycle of Fire Will Come , you can go all the way to Neverland , otherwise known as the Three Treasures Temple , thanks to the new restoration of King Hu ’ s 1979 Raining in the Mountain .
One of only two films that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ South Korea , Raining in the Mountain places Hsu Feng , as a thieving adventuress , amid towering vistas , labyrinthine architecture , balletic chase sequences and fights , and massed ensembles in color-coded costumes , all assembled for the sake of a folkloric fable and synchronized to a bang-up musical score by Ng Tai Gong .
The experience is no more substantial than our transient world ( to adopt the viewpoint of the story ’ s Buddhist monks ) , so why not escape to it ?
Raining in the Mountain is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York ’ s Film Forum .

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When Sacha Baron Cohen sprang Borat on the American public in 2006, a midterm election year, I thought I was clever to observe that nimble, improvisational, disrespectful laughter had won a landslide victory over the deep emotions and classical filmmaking of Clint Eastwood’s World War II diptych, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Like a blind seer, I had no idea how horribly right I was.
Since then, vast sectors of the audience have abandoned the movies—superhero sagas excepted—for the rapid, random snickers of meme swapping. Meanwhile, the kiss-my-ass attitude that I detected in the public’s embrace of Borat went on to transform the political landscape, though not as I’d hoped. It was Donald J. Trump, rather than any tribune of The Nation’s fed-up legions, who rose to bestride our narrow world like a Colossus of the Raised Middle Finger.
For these reasons, the release of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, 11 days before the 2020 elections, posed sharp questions. In a political landscape where the presidency had become a 24/7 Don Rickles set, was Cohen’s insult comedy a weapon against Trump’s or more of the same? And could any movie—even if perpetrated with jumpy rhythms and delivered digitally—compete in a new audiovisual environment made for 60-second attention spans?
To ask these questions is to fall, understandably, into the mountaineering fallacy: the notion that all works of art must rise to the challenge of their time. In defiance of this error, I will later recommend three fascinating pictures that could be made to speak to the present moment only if subjected to critical torture. For now, let me acknowledge that Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is focused so intently on the 2020 presidential election that its end credits include the admonition, in the title character’s phraseology, “Now Vote. Or you will be execute.” These are words to live by, always, but when read after November 3, they stamp a best-if-used-by date on a production that was conceived to mock Trump and his allies during the campaign and then marketed so that its culminating gotcha scene, a humiliation of Rudy Giuliani, was revealed as a teaser shortly before the final presidential debate. I imagine Borat Subsequent Moviefilm might retain some life in years to come. All the same, it’s a hybrid: part rollicking mockumentary and part get-out-the-base video, of a piece with Samuel L. Jackson’s “Vote, dammit, vote!” ad for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Cohen remains as savvy as ever about reaching audiences where they live, so it’s no surprise that discrete chunks of the movie can be plucked off like grapes from the stem. Within a day of the release, clips were already circulating on dozens of YouTube accounts and beyond, with leave from Amazon’s promotional department and to the benefit of the film’s electioneering. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm proved it could fit easily into today’s smartphone competition for eyeballs, but if this picture is to be judged by mountaineering standards, let’s note that it does not have the field to itself nor is it alone in trying to win hearts and minds through transgressive laughter. As Borat Subsequent Moviefilm acknowledges, in scenes about digital crap slinging and grassroots calls for violence—hey, can’t you take a joke?—Trumpworld has its own memes and sense of humor. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
As a reality check, you might watch Daniel Lombroso’s documentary White Noise, produced by The Atlantic as a feature-length exposé of the alt-right and its normalization (kind of) through the rise of Trump. Released on multiple streaming platforms a couple of weeks before the elections, the film offers a prolonged, close-up look at three of the movement’s young social media adepts and self-promoters: white-power loudmouth Richard Spencer, conspiracy theory peddler Mike Cernovich, and anti-feminist, anti-immigrant YouTube poser Lauren Southern. I doubt you will think these specialists in short-form outrages are funny, but their followers do, finding mirth in the trio’s assaults on liberal propriety (or, as you and I might put it, human dignity). Unfortunately, I also doubt that you will learn much from White Noise, assuming you’re aware of basics such as the Unite the Right rally and Pizzagate, or that you are likely to fall in love with the film’s shambling narration and editing. The main achievement of White Noise is to engender a sense of dismay—as if you needed that.
Still, the film’s study of alt-right zanies has its uses. It can confirm for you, by means of comparison, that Cohen’s insult comedy is not just more of the same. Current Issue View our current issue
Directed valorously by first-time-filmmaker Jason Woliner after a long career in television and scripted more tightly than the original Borat despite having been written by Cohen with eight others, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is at heart a tender story of father-daughter love. Never mind that the semi-feral Tutar (Maria Bakalova) is discovered under a layer of straw, rags, and facial grime in the corner of a barn, where Borat is astonished to learn she’s part of his, as he puts it, livestock. When he undertakes his ensuing knockabout journey through America, unwillingly accompanied by the adolescent Tutar, the incidents may be designed, one by one, to deride Trump’s supporters, but the plot is machined to forge emotional ties between father and daughter, until the two transform Kazakhstan into “a feminist nation, like US of A and Saudi Arabia.”
What unites the loose string of sketch-comedy episodes with the steady emotional arc? Satiric rage against the belittlement of women, which Cohen identifies as central to Trump’s strongman cult. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm scatters its assaults against other targets, too—assault rifle enthusiasts, casual racists, Jew haters, Roma haters, and coronavirus deniers all get their lumps—but the main enemy throughout is male supremacy, whether in the imaginary Kazakhstan or the America whose attitudes Cohen prankishly exposes.
Among the actually existing people who are played for suckers this time by a disguised Cohen and Bakalova: a coach for young women who want to sell themselves to sugar daddies, the operator of one of those “crisis pregnancy centers” that intercept women seeking abortions, a plastic surgeon who proposes making Tutar’s “titties” monumental, the guests of a debutante ball in Georgia (whose gentility in declaring young women marriageable is mugged by a traditional Kazakh fertility dance), and for the finale, old lech Rudy. The orange Sun King who reigns over this realm of pussy grabbing remains unseen, except for a Kazakh animated movie in Disney style and a full-body disguise worn by Cohen. Trump’s influence, nevertheless, is omnipresent.
Which brings me to a contradiction. The trick of the first Borat was to concoct an impossibly crude, depraved Kazakhstan and then, through the title character’s adventures, show America as its mirror image. The new Borat takes the same approach, but past a certain point the pattern breaks down. Even the QAnon adherents who shelter Borat in one sequence insist that women in America have the same rights as men and can’t simply be sold or gifted. Even the members of a Southern Republican women’s club, whose evening meeting is interrupted by a wandering Tutar, welcome this strange, uncouth figure with gentleness and respect, until she drives them to wonder if they shouldn’t call her an Uber. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm lays bare an American culture of misogyny, except when it doesn’t.
And then there are Jeanise Jones and Judith Dim Evans.
The first, who works as a babysitter, is hired by Borat to kennel Tutar for a day but instead decides to educate the young woman, convincing her with infinite patience that she is an independent human being with a mind of her own. The second, encountered in a synagogue, is a Holocaust survivor who offers Borat food and a kiss, while gently informing him that his Jew disguise is a little off. (The talons, for example—too much.) Watching these scenes, which provide contrasting images of a decent America, you might feel that middle-aged Black women and elderly Jews have problems of their own and should not bear the burden, as they do so often, of being deployed as exemplars of charity and understanding. Yet these are the real Jones and Evans (to whom the film is dedicated), responding as themselves to ridiculous, constructed circumstances, and though they are far more developed in their fellow feeling than most butts of Cohen’s impostures, they don’t stand alone in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
This is where Cohen’s insult comedy departs from Trump’s and the alt-right’s. (I should add Bakalova’s comedy as well. Though seemingly runtish next to the elongated Cohen, she thwacks herself off him and everybody else in sight with a headlong mummer’s energy that knows no embarrassment, only joy.) One side thinks it funny to demean and dehumanize. The other gives people latitude to shame themselves but also allows glimpses of the better angels of our nature.
I’m not going to kid myself that audiences are watching Borat Subsequent Moviefilm for the sake of its passing visions of kindness. People want to laugh their asses off at the dumb, the rude, and the grotesque, and they’re getting their money’s worth. What will be left of the movie, though, now that its electoral purpose is obsolete and even the most prominent of its political targets, such as Mike Pence and Giuliani, begin their inevitable fade-out from popular memory? After rising to the challenge of its moment, must this film fall off the peak and be forever buried in snow?
I think something does remain alive after November 3: hope in the power of decency, hope in women, and pride in constructing a fully thought-out 97-minute film, even if a lot of people no longer want anything but clickbait. That’s hardly enough of a foundation on which to rebuild America, but it’s more than we were owed by a British comedian and a young actress from Bulgaria, home of the world-famous Museum House of Humor and Satire.
If you cannot remember the last time a film deeply excited you, please do yourself a favor and watch Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden, now available through various virtual cinemas, including Film at Lincoln Center’s. Marcello and his co-screenwriter, Maurizio Braucci, claim to have based their film freely on Jack London’s semiautobiographical novel, but except for relocating the action from Oakland, Calif., at the turn of the 20th century to Naples, Italy, in the 1970s (more or less), they’ve been stunningly faithful to London’s story of the intellectual and emotional awakening of a young proletarian writer and the personal and artistic catastrophe of his failure to awaken politically as well. By cleverly mixing tinted archival footage from London’s time into the re-creation of 20th century Italy, Marcello implicitly expands the title character from an individual case to a recurring type: the working man of exceptional talent and energy who struggles against all odds to educate himself and win a daughter of the bourgeoisie, only to discover in the end that “the world is stronger than me.” Marcello deserves credit for the bold conceptual move, but the true author of the movie might be Luca Marinelli, who plays Martin. With shoulders broad enough to bear the yoke of a two-ox team and a loose, slant-lipped smile that invites and offers confidences, Marinelli charges not only the character but the entire film with power, intelligence, and an allure that ultimately turns tragic.
Oliver Laxe’s Fire Will Come, available at virtual cinemas such as the Metrograph in New York and the Acropolis in Los Angeles, is a film of changing seasons and impressive yet fragile landscapes—including the facial topographies of the nonprofessional performers Amador Arias and Benedicta Sánchez, who play the main characters. Amador, in the story, is a taciturn, middle-aged man with sorrowful features that could have been carved with a pocketknife. Released from prison after serving a sentence for arson, he returns to his 83-year-old mother and her three-cow farm in the mountains of Galicia in Spain and settles into the annual round, meanwhile suffering abuse from townspeople who regard him as both an idiot and a threat. In the first half of the film, the neighbors get ready to accuse him of starting the next of the devastating fires that rage each summer through the woods. In the second half, as the screen explodes in flame, you hold your breath shot by shot to see Laxe and his crew daring to capture this inferno—while you wonder how any one man could be blamed for something so overwhelming.
Finally, moving on from the transhistorical drama of Martin Eden and the ecological cycle of Fire Will Come, you can go all the way to Neverland, otherwise known as the Three Treasures Temple, thanks to the new restoration of King Hu’s 1979 Raining in the Mountain. One of only two films that the master of martial arts sagas made in South Korea, Raining in the Mountain places Hsu Feng, as a thieving adventuress, amid towering vistas, labyrinthine architecture, balletic chase sequences and fights, and massed ensembles in color-coded costumes, all assembled for the sake of a folkloric fable and synchronized to a bang-up musical score by Ng Tai Gong. The experience is no more substantial than our transient world (to adopt the viewpoint of the story’s Buddhist monks), so why not escape to it? Raining in the Mountain is streaming exclusively at the virtual cinema of New York’s Film Forum.


thenation--2020-11-13--2020 Was the ‘Precarity Election’

2020 Was the ‘Precarity Election’

While Joe Biden will be America ’ s next president , the Democrats ’ narrow election victory hardly represented the vaunted “ blue wave ” predicted by many pollsters .
Indeed , the most striking takeaway from the 2020 result is how much it mirrored the profound splits of the 2016 election—literally , give or take the shift of a hundred thousand votes or so in a few key Rust Belt and Sun Belt states .
And despite charges of racism , more than a quarter of Donald Trump ’ s votes came from nonwhite Americans , the highest percentage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This may seem strange until one realizes that the issue of economic precarity—the elephant in the room seldom explicitly addressed by either party—transcends issues of ethnicity , gender , rural vs. urban , and race .
As one of us has observed , the phenomenon of economic precarity remains a hallmark of contemporary capitalism : The combination of automation , globalization , and cuts in social provision has generated massive economic instability for ordinary citizens—for men and women , young and old , Black and white , skilled and unskilled , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The challenge , therefore , is to build a more stable , secure , and sustainable society , which means explicitly addressing the issue of economic precarity that largely characterizes today ’ s capitalist system in the United States .
Democrats have long styled themselves champions of the working class , but until the party more credibly addresses this problem , blue waves are unlikely to be more than occasional blue ripples .
One key problem for Democrats remains their inability to counter the persisting working-class shift to conservatism .
This incapacity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s failure to diagnose the nature of economic precarity and its corresponding pathologies because it has largely focused its social justice campaigns on race- and gender-oriented issues , which in turn create a cultural disconnect for the more socially conservative working class .
The latter are increasingly ignored , rather than being seen as a building block in a larger coalition .
Good Riddance to Trump : A Political Obituary I Have Waited 5 Years to Write Since the days of the New Deal , Democrats have championed policies favorable to blue-collar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they are less engaged with the grievances of modern-day workers , especially when it comes to addressing the persistent anxiety that many face over the costs of health , housing , education , the quality of public services , and job security .
Indeed , in many instances , Democrats actually exacerbate these problems , thanks to the party leadership ’ s ongoing attachment to neoliberal economic policy solutions .
A case in point is California ’ s Proposition 22 , a neo-feudal piece of legislation from the bluest of blue states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a large chunk of that state ’ s workers by undermining the long-standing employee protections and benefits that exist in California ’ s labor laws .
Even though both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both publicly opposed Prop 22 , their message to the electorate was undoubtedly muddled by the fact that Harris ’ s brother-in-law and adviser , Tony West , led the campaign in favor of Prop 22 and is Uber ’ s chief legal officer ; her niece , Meena Harris , also works at Uber on its diversity and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s labor laws have been gutted , workers at gig economy firms will continue to be classified as contractors , without access to employee rights such as minimum wage , unemployment benefits , and health insurance .
No doubt , other states ( and oligarchs ) will take note .
If it is true that as California goes , so goes the country , that ’ s undoubtedly a worrying signal .
This kind of mixed messaging potentially creates a huge opening for the GOP—especially if it can also adapt to the new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policies its donors demanded of the party for the past 40 years .
That won ’ t be easy .
In fairness to the Democrats , the traditional industrial working class is rapidly disappearing , having been eviscerated through a combination of automation , globalization , attacks on private-sector unions , cuts in public services , and the rise of the gig economy .
Countervailing power for this cohort needs to be established in ways that can replicate the historic role of labor unions , even if unions themselves become the relics of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until the party realizes that work is nothing like what it was , and increasingly won ’ t be , it will be hard for it to offer credible solutions .
At the same time , if the Republicans are to become a more broadly based multiracial party of blue-collar conservatism , as Josh Hawley , for one , has advocated , they too will have to understand that what constitutes blue-collar work , life , existence , and identity are now quite different from the 20th century blue-collar workers of the New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be even more different in 10 or 20 years .
There are some recent indications that the GOP is beginning to recognize this—but the party still needs to consider a reversal of many policies that have long been part of its orthodoxy , notably supply-side tax policies heavily biased to favor society ’ s top earners , the ongoing support of “ right to work ” laws on the labor front , along with a tolerance of American manufacturers ’ proclivity to outsource production to low-cost labor jurisdictions , all of which have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both inequality and economic precarity .
The outrage against inequality has been a rallying cry for the Republican Party , especially in Rust Belt states such as Michigan and Ohio .
Here poverty is a result of broader industrial decay caused by automation and the offshoring of manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor , which has led to urban decay and rising criminality .
Those states responded well to Trump ’ s campaign rhetoric in 2016 and 2020 , with Ohio specifically becoming more of a red state , as opposed to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ More Than the Status Quo Beyond the Midwest , there are other regions suffering from economic stagnation ( as opposed to rising inequality per se ) , such as Alaska , Oklahoma , Wyoming , Iowa , and Utah .
These states all remained firmly red , because here too the Democrats still have no policies that address their specific pathologies : Alaska , Oklahoma , and Wyoming were 20th century resource-based economies that saw declines in reserves or devaluation from global competition .
Advocates for the Green New Deal have hitherto failed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those states , even though numerous studies illustrate that green manufacturing jobs are inextricably linked to higher quality employment and enhanced economic security .
Tellingly , the states where Trump made inroads among the working class ( Alaska , Oklahoma , Wyoming , Iowa , Utah , and Michigan ) , saw the smallest increases in inequality nationwide since 1989 , but their troubled economies have not generated good and stable employment .
This suggests that by focusing so strongly on inequality , while neglecting the broader issue of precarity—as the Democrats have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And the Republican Party is successfully capitalizing on this error .
Economic instability nurtures a psychological need for stabilization—which the cultural conservatism and law-and-order rhetoric of the GOP appear better fit to satisfy .
The capacity to attract the vote of the growing precariat has been crucial for the electoral fortunes of the Republican Party in the era of Trump .
The last two elections reveal a country that is profoundly divided , with the economic precariat being the most profound and tragic manifestation of collateral damage .
The GOP talks about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and religion—but seldom addresses economic insecurity .
The Democrats evince an interest in redistributing income in order to alleviate the worst aspects of economic precarity , but resist making the structural changes that gave rise to this problem in the first place .
Until the American precariat ’ s long-standing economic grievances—the lack of jobs , prohibitive cost of health care , absence of workplace safety , spreading pollution , a government detached from broader public purpose , and above all , the loss of stability and employment security over long periods of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will remain profoundly divided , and elections will continue to reflect this split .

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While Joe Biden will be America’s next president, the Democrats’ narrow election victory hardly represented the vaunted “blue wave” predicted by many pollsters. Indeed, the most striking takeaway from the 2020 result is how much it mirrored the profound splits of the 2016 election—literally, give or take the shift of a hundred thousand votes or so in a few key Rust Belt and Sun Belt states. And despite charges of racism, more than a quarter of Donald Trump’s votes came from nonwhite Americans, the highest percentage for a GOP presidential candidate since 1960.
This may seem strange until one realizes that the issue of economic precarity—the elephant in the room seldom explicitly addressed by either party—transcends issues of ethnicity, gender, rural vs. urban, and race. As one of us has observed, the phenomenon of economic precarity remains a hallmark of contemporary capitalism: The combination of automation, globalization, and cuts in social provision has generated massive economic instability for ordinary citizens—for men and women, young and old, Black and white, skilled and unskilled, for the middle classes and the poor alike. The challenge, therefore, is to build a more stable, secure, and sustainable society, which means explicitly addressing the issue of economic precarity that largely characterizes today’s capitalist system in the United States. Democrats have long styled themselves champions of the working class, but until the party more credibly addresses this problem, blue waves are unlikely to be more than occasional blue ripples.
One key problem for Democrats remains their inability to counter the persisting working-class shift to conservatism. This incapacity is itself rooted in the modern-day left’s failure to diagnose the nature of economic precarity and its corresponding pathologies because it has largely focused its social justice campaigns on race- and gender-oriented issues, which in turn create a cultural disconnect for the more socially conservative working class. The latter are increasingly ignored, rather than being seen as a building block in a larger coalition. Goodbye, Donald Good Riddance to Trump: A Political Obituary I Have Waited 5 Years to Write Sasha Abramsky
Since the days of the New Deal, Democrats have championed policies favorable to blue-collar workers. But many current indicators suggest that they are less engaged with the grievances of modern-day workers, especially when it comes to addressing the persistent anxiety that many face over the costs of health, housing, education, the quality of public services, and job security. Indeed, in many instances, Democrats actually exacerbate these problems, thanks to the party leadership’s ongoing attachment to neoliberal economic policy solutions.
A case in point is California’s Proposition 22, a neo-feudal piece of legislation from the bluest of blue states that has effectively entrenched economic precarity for a large chunk of that state’s workers by undermining the long-standing employee protections and benefits that exist in California’s labor laws. Even though both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both publicly opposed Prop 22, their message to the electorate was undoubtedly muddled by the fact that Harris’s brother-in-law and adviser, Tony West, led the campaign in favor of Prop 22 and is Uber’s chief legal officer; her niece, Meena Harris, also works at Uber on its diversity and inclusion team. Now that California’s labor laws have been gutted, workers at gig economy firms will continue to be classified as contractors, without access to employee rights such as minimum wage, unemployment benefits, and health insurance. No doubt, other states (and oligarchs) will take note. If it is true that as California goes, so goes the country, that’s undoubtedly a worrying signal. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
This kind of mixed messaging potentially creates a huge opening for the GOP—especially if it can also adapt to the new realities of work and relinquish trickle-down economics policies its donors demanded of the party for the past 40 years. That won’t be easy. Current Issue View our current issue
In fairness to the Democrats, the traditional industrial working class is rapidly disappearing, having been eviscerated through a combination of automation, globalization, attacks on private-sector unions, cuts in public services, and the rise of the gig economy. Countervailing power for this cohort needs to be established in ways that can replicate the historic role of labor unions, even if unions themselves become the relics of a bygone form of capitalism. But until the party realizes that work is nothing like what it was, and increasingly won’t be, it will be hard for it to offer credible solutions.
At the same time, if the Republicans are to become a more broadly based multiracial party of blue-collar conservatism, as Josh Hawley, for one, has advocated, they too will have to understand that what constitutes blue-collar work, life, existence, and identity are now quite different from the 20th century blue-collar workers of the New Deal coalition, and are going to be even more different in 10 or 20 years. There are some recent indications that the GOP is beginning to recognize this—but the party still needs to consider a reversal of many policies that have long been part of its orthodoxy, notably supply-side tax policies heavily biased to favor society’s top earners, the ongoing support of “right to work” laws on the labor front, along with a tolerance of American manufacturers’ proclivity to outsource production to low-cost labor jurisdictions, all of which have eroded labor’s position, accentuating both inequality and economic precarity.
The outrage against inequality has been a rallying cry for the Republican Party, especially in Rust Belt states such as Michigan and Ohio. Here poverty is a result of broader industrial decay caused by automation and the offshoring of manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor, which has led to urban decay and rising criminality. Those states responded well to Trump’s campaign rhetoric in 2016 and 2020, with Ohio specifically becoming more of a red state, as opposed to a traditional swing state. Time to Go Big Democratic Voters Want More Than the Status Quo Robert L. Borosage
Beyond the Midwest, there are other regions suffering from economic stagnation (as opposed to rising inequality per se), such as Alaska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Iowa, and Utah. These states all remained firmly red, because here too the Democrats still have no policies that address their specific pathologies: Alaska, Oklahoma, and Wyoming were 20th century resource-based economies that saw declines in reserves or devaluation from global competition. Advocates for the Green New Deal have hitherto failed to make the case among workers in those states, even though numerous studies illustrate that green manufacturing jobs are inextricably linked to higher quality employment and enhanced economic security.
Tellingly, the states where Trump made inroads among the working class (Alaska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Iowa, Utah, and Michigan), saw the smallest increases in inequality nationwide since 1989, but their troubled economies have not generated good and stable employment. This suggests that by focusing so strongly on inequality, while neglecting the broader issue of precarity—as the Democrats have done—is proving to be a diagnostic error. And the Republican Party is successfully capitalizing on this error. Economic instability nurtures a psychological need for stabilization—which the cultural conservatism and law-and-order rhetoric of the GOP appear better fit to satisfy. The capacity to attract the vote of the growing precariat has been crucial for the electoral fortunes of the Republican Party in the era of Trump.
The last two elections reveal a country that is profoundly divided, with the economic precariat being the most profound and tragic manifestation of collateral damage. The GOP talks about security in militaristic terms or via guns and religion—but seldom addresses economic insecurity. The Democrats evince an interest in redistributing income in order to alleviate the worst aspects of economic precarity, but resist making the structural changes that gave rise to this problem in the first place. Until the American precariat’s long-standing economic grievances—the lack of jobs, prohibitive cost of health care, absence of workplace safety, spreading pollution, a government detached from broader public purpose, and above all, the loss of stability and employment security over long periods of time—are adequately addressed, the United States will remain profoundly divided, and elections will continue to reflect this split.