thenation--2020-08-04--Biden’s Running Mate Matters. So Does His Cabinet.

Joe Biden ’ s choice of running mate will undoubtedly be both important and historic , given Biden ’ s commitment to choose a woman , and the many women of color in contention .
But it ’ s not the only decision—or position—that matters , nor is it the only chance to make history .
Biden ’ s choices of cabinet members and agency heads will provide another chance to reimagine the leadership we need moving forward .
These appointees run agencies that influence everything from health care costs to school safety to workplace protections .
In that way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ daily lives might be as great , or even greater , than the vice president ’ s .
For too long , presidents of both administrations have filled key cabinet and agency positions with men and women who boast K Street , Pennsylvania Avenue , and Wall Street connections and loyalties .
Over the past four years , we ’ ve seen that tendency taken to the extreme , with devastating results .
Top Trump administration officials have overseen an unprecedented era of federal deregulation and destabilization .
The Environmental Protection Agency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Andrew Wheeler , has rolled back regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from cars and power plants .
As secretary of the Education Department , Betsy DeVos has gutted key provisions allocating much-needed funding to high-poverty schools .
Under the direction of five different commissioners ( some in acting roles ) , the Food and Drug Administration ’ s regulatory enforcement activity has declined drastically , threatening public health and safety .
And in the midst of this pandemic , the Department of Health and Human Services , led by Alex Azar , ordered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
Read the full text of Katrina ’ s column here .

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
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Joe Biden’s choice of running mate will undoubtedly be both important and historic, given Biden’s commitment to choose a woman, and the many women of color in contention. But it’s not the only decision—or position—that matters, nor is it the only chance to make history. Biden’s choices of cabinet members and agency heads will provide another chance to reimagine the leadership we need moving forward.
These appointees run agencies that influence everything from health care costs to school safety to workplace protections. In that way, cabinet members’ influence on Americans’ daily lives might be as great, or even greater, than the vice president’s. For too long, presidents of both administrations have filled key cabinet and agency positions with men and women who boast K Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, and Wall Street connections and loyalties. Over the past four years, we’ve seen that tendency taken to the extreme, with devastating results.
Top Trump administration officials have overseen an unprecedented era of federal deregulation and destabilization. The Environmental Protection Agency, first under Scott Pruitt and then Andrew Wheeler, has rolled back regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from cars and power plants. As secretary of the Education Department, Betsy DeVos has gutted key provisions allocating much-needed funding to high-poverty schools. Under the direction of five different commissioners (some in acting roles), the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory enforcement activity has declined drastically, threatening public health and safety. And in the midst of this pandemic, the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Alex Azar, ordered hospitals to stop sharing daily coronavirus data with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.


thenation--2020-08-04--N.K. Jemisin Wrote a Sci-Fi Ode to New York City—Then It Became Reality

The people of New York City have long been considered its heart , their energies an undercurrent rippling beneath every block .
But what if the city itself was a living , breathing entity with a soul so distinct it threatened the existence of other universes ?
In N.K .
Jemisin ’ s latest book , The City We Became , New York is on the brink of being “ born , ” fighting to claim its own corner of the cosmos .
Her characters represent each of the five boroughs plus one primary figure ; the city is them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In the first book of what she is calling the Great Cities trilogy , the avatars , Manny ( Manhattan ) , Brooklyn ( Brooklyn ) , Bronca ( The Bronx ) , Padmini ( Queens ) , and Aislyn ( Staten Island ) discover that they must work together to find the unnamed primary figure of New York and defeat the Woman in White , the book ’ s antagonist , who wants to see the city obliterated .
While the book is a work of fantasy , many of the Woman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take the form of real-world harms , such as gentrification , white supremacist propaganda , and police violence .
New York City , once the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak in this country , is battling an eerily similar contagion in the book .
The villain mobilizes hate and fear within New Yorkers by attaching “ long , feathery white tendrils ” to them that behave like a virus , rapidly multiplying with the goal of “ infecting ” as much of the city as possible .
Like the coronavirus , the book @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people in the city .
As the real city was adjusting in late May to a new reality of masks , massive unemployment , and grief , a white police officer killed a Black man named George Floyd in Minneapolis , sparking nationwide Black Lives Matter demonstrations and calls to abolish the police and the carceral state .
The activism , mutual aid , and collectivism on display in the city then—and even now—feels “ more like real New York for the last few months than it has in a while , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phone roughly one month after the protests began about how a book she wrote almost two years ago turned eerily prescient , what makes someone a New Yorker , and why she hasn ’ t lost hope that the city she loves is too far gone to be reclaimed .
Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length .
essica uriano : What has it been like to have this book come out right now , especially because a lot of events in the book feel like more like reality than fantasy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ almost two years ago , so it wasn ’ t like I intended for that congruity to be there .
The pandemic is a new thing , obviously , but what The City We Became is talking about is almost plague-like afflictions that have been attacking the city for a long time now , that are not new things .
What I think is really happening is that I described things like gentrification as viral , or as infectious , or using disease terminology .
Then I decided to literalize that , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and so the parallel is there .
The pandemic has really exacerbated a lot of existing issues within our society that have been like a slow-motion plague , or a terminal disease , or any number of metaphors that you want to evoke here .
It ’ s just really made that more visible and acute .
JS : In a specific scene in the book , where a white woman calls the cops on Manny and his roommate Bel in the park , it ’ s kind of crazy how similar that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ NJ : Last year this happened 99,000 times with a Barbeque Becky , and all of the different iterations of that .
We ’ ve seen so many versions of this for so long .
It ’ s easy to write something that has some congruity .
I guess I almost should have expected that something like this would occur during the time that the book was out .
JS : Are there any parts of the book that you would have written differently now , knowing what has happened in 2020 so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have used the disease metaphor or the infection-contagion metaphor , simply because , now , there are some people who find that useful , and some people find it kind of comforting , but it ’ s also re-traumatizing to a lot of readers who were not prepared to encounter the pandemic that they were trying to escape in the middle of their supposedly escapist fiction .
That ’ s probably it .
JS : Why do you think that the common portrayal in media of the city is very opposite to what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media , many of the people who write the TV shows and plays—we commonly get to see people live in penthouses and things like that .
In a large part , we ’ re seeing New York as they see it , and that ’ s not a false New York .
That is also New York .
It ’ s just that , until Lin Manuel Miranda puts his very , very fantasized historical version of New York into a place , we saw nothing but the New York as written by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I think a lot of it is just simply , we haven ’ t seen a lot of New Yorks written by people who lived in Black New York , which is the New York that I grew up in .
I grew up [ around ] artists of color and queer artists and in general , Art New York , which tended to be very multiracial and a bunch of other things .
What we simply need is a multiplicity of viewpoints .
I ’ m not doing anything that 99,000 New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We all write what we know , to the degree that applies in science fiction and fantasy .
That ’ s really what it comes down to .
What I know is very different from a typical New York playwright , or a person who ’ s only visited New York and they actually live in LA and write sitcoms .
JS : In the book , gentrification and racism are all embodied in the Woman in White .
Does the fantasy genre make it easier to put a face and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can ’ t just assign a single person to be the only source of those problems in reality ?
NJ : I don ’ t know that that ’ s a genre thing , but it is a “ me ” thing .
Fantasy does tend to reduce evil to a singular manifestation .
It ’ s a lot easier to go and track down a Sauron in Mordor and attack it with an army .
Everybody understands that Sauron is bad .
You don ’ t have to spend a whole lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sauron is a real thing and that elf lives matter .
You don ’ t have to spend a lot of time convincing people of the basics in fantasy , and it ’ s a simple matter of you kill the bad guy , and it ’ s over .
That is not like evil in the real world , and there is a comfort in that .
Fantasy is often considered to be escapist literature , and it is in that sense .
We often keep it abstract—just “ evil ” —and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or the evil of classism , or the evil of simply believing that some people deserve to be mistreated , or that some people are less important than others and can be discarded with impunity .
In that sense , yes , I would say fantasy is probably part of that .
But the choice of what I am embodying in this singular , boiled-down version of reality is specific to me .
JS : Are there any places in New York that you think are particularly sacred or , on the other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ infected ” ?
NJ : Right now , all of New York is particularly infected .
Unfortunately , we are dealing right now with the pandemic .
We ’ ve been fortunate in some ways in that the politicians that are centered around New York City , the mayor and the governor , have at least handled the pandemic as well as they could , considering the federal government is effectively antagonistic towards people surviving this .
And at least that New York spirit of cooperation , for the most part , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some cases of people pulling a “ Karen ” at some small business and refusing to wear a mask and pitching a fit about it , but for the most part , that ’ s not New York .
That ’ s not the way that we ’ ve ever really done things .
What Science Fiction Teaches Us About Reality This is a city where , when there ’ s a blackout , people jump out in the street and play traffic cop because otherwise nobody will ever get home , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just spontaneously showed up and tried to help to the degree that they could .
Yeah , people will curse you out in a heartbeat , but they will also bend over backward to try and help you figure out where you ’ re going if you ’ re lost .
That is as much a part of New York—the altruism and the beauty and the competence and the kindness—as the rudeness and all of the things that popular culture likes to latch onto .
New York is a symbol , and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about in the book .
New York has reached the point where it has meaning far beyond just a city .
We have seen this throughout the pandemic .
Florida ’ s kind of sneering that “ we ’ re not New York , ” as they deliberately institute procedures that have led to the uptick that is showing no signs of slowing down of Covid cases in their state .
They did it almost in defiance of the fact that New York was doing distancing measures .
That is just simply because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point , and that is the nature of New York as well .
We are a bludgeon ; we are a weapon ; we are a legend .
We are the beacon that some people hold up in front of themselves as a motivation .
JS : Would you say that the majority of this book was written out of a love for New York , or a frustration , or both ?
NJ : Love for New York and fear for New York .
I ’ m 47 ; I ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was 5 .
I have lived here enough to see New York go through massive changes .
Around the time that I was born , the city was going through white flight as a result of desegregation .
And then the city almost went bankrupt .
Then there was a crack epidemic and all of these things .
There was a period in the ’ 90s where the city was finally free of crack , but the drug war was still a huge problem .
The police were a huge problem .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and neighborhoods were being built instead of burned down .
A lot of New Yorkers started to feel hope .
And then a different kind of plague began to hit , which was housing prices ’ going so far beyond affordable that there ’ s effectively no middle class in New York anymore .
Suddenly when new people came in , the city became beholden to real estate developers .
Suddenly , we started to not get the funding that we needed for infrastructure and repair and things like that .
What I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and health being sapped by people that don ’ t seem to understand what the city needs to thrive .
They ’ re happy to take what they want from it and go , but they ’ re not giving anything back .
But also , part of New York is fighting back when the city starts to become a place where the poor can not live , or where Black people can not just simply walk down the street and be themselves , or where disabled people can ’ t get around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to impose on the public transportation system haven ’ t been funded , and so on .
New York fights .
New York sees a threat and begins to work against it , and that is also what I wanted to capture .
JS : Is there an avatar for one of the boroughs that you feel most connected to ?
NJ : I actually tried to deliberately sever that sense of connection .
I split it amongst all of the avatars .
Why Science Fiction Is a Fabulous Tool in the Fight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ embodying my sense of wonder , I suppose .
Brooklyn is probably my closest physical analog , but she ’ s an old school New Yorker , and I ’ m not .
I am , in many ways still , a newcomer here , even though I ’ ve been here half of my life .
I ’ m not a tried and true , do or die , Bed-Stuyer .
I just moved here .
She ’ s what I guess I ’ d like to grow up to be .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ I grew up in , Art New York , and she ’ s modeled on actually the fact that my father was the director of the Bronx River Art Center for part of my childhood .
I ’ ve seen what art and nonprofit New York is like , and I just wanted to speak to that .
So different people have different pieces of me , I guess .
The one that probably doesn ’ t have anything of me is Aislyn .
You know what ?
Let me break that down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one ’ s identity is almost a universal thing .
I think that ’ s something that everyone feels .
So , in that sense , she ’ s probably a bit of me too .
JS : One passage that really stuck with me was when Mrs. Yu tells the avatars that “ Gods are people.… They do jobs—bring fortune , look after people , make sure the world works as it should .
They fall in love .
Have babies .
Fight .
Die .
It ’ s duty .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” It made me think about all of the activism that we ’ re seeing right now—and have been seeing , since activists have been doing this work for decades and decades .
I wonder if that line had any sort of other meaning for you when you wrote it .
NJ : That ’ s an interesting interpretation , and I like that one , but that was not what I was thinking .
The idea that the community activists who I see doing incredible things , especially now in this crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in their own ways , gods—I love it .
What I was more thinking was just decentering a Christian focus on the world .
The Christian way of looking at the world tends to be sort of all-encompassing and implying that this is the only way to think of a religion , or a faith , or a God , and that ’ s not how I think .
Effectively , what ’ s happening in The City We Became is a kind of animism .
It ’ s a piece of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or focuses in life develop their own energy and their own life .
The idea that God is this numinous thing that is an old man in the sky , or whatever you want to call it , is not universal , and I just wanted to get at that .
That ’ s a fascination I ’ ve had pretty much since my first published novels , the Inheritance Trilogy .
I just wanted to pull people away from thinking that the there ’ s going to be a binary good-evil way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : This is maybe an existential question , but what makes someone a New Yorker ?
NJ : Oh , that ’ s deeply existential .
I think there comes a moment after you ’ ve been here for like a year or so , when all of the sudden there ’ s this moment where you just suddenly realize this is your city , that you don ’ t want to live anywhere else .
Once that moment comes , you understand that this is part of you now .
Even if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re always going to be a New Yorker on some level .
You ’ re going to miss it .
You ’ re going to feel it .
That ’ s when you become a New Yorker .
New Yorkers are chosen , New Yorkers choose themselves .
And then New York tests them to kind of make sure it ’ s real .
And if they can handle that , then yeah , they become New Yorkers in that moment .
You don ’ t have to be born a New Yorker @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s hungry for new people .
JS : What was your moment ?
NJ : Two thousand and seven was when I moved here , but I lived in New York on and off for much of my life .
I thought of myself already as a New Yorker , but I hadn ’ t done the daily commute .
I had not had to deal with New York snow other than to play in it when I was a child .
I had not walked through sweltering streets where the heat is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the sidewalks have soaked up so much sunlight .
It was not a specific thing , but I remember that I was walking down the street in my neighborhood .
At the time I lived in Flatbush , across from the bottom edge of Prospect Park .
It was evening .
I was coming back from work .
I was exhausted .
The light was slanting down just so , and it was hitting the bricks of the buildings that I was passing .
It was making the leaves on the trees and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a ringing sensation .
Maybe that means that I ’ m hallucinating , but it was just a moment when I was like , “ Oh , now I ’ m a New Yorker.
” And I ’ ve heard other New Yorkers , other transplants , describe a moment like that .
I don ’ t know if you ’ re a transplant yourself ?
NJ : I can ’ t say if it ’ s true for everyone else , but like I said , I ’ ve talked to some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Did you have that moment yourself ?
JS : I don ’ t think so .
I ’ ve only been here since January .
NJ : It takes about a year , from what I hear .
Also , you came in an interesting time .
Oh my gosh .
This has been your only experience of New York .
These are New York experiences you ’ re having in these six months that you ’ ve been here .
It ’ s a hell of an intro , but you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York than I have in the last 10 years or so of living here , because it ’ s felt more like real New York for the last few months than it has in a while .
And I ’ m glad to see it .
I had begun to fear that the old New York ’ s dead .
It is not dead .
In a few months you ’ re going to start to see this massive wave of gentrification , almost in defiance of the New York that is fighting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in specifically Black neighborhoods .
We ’ re going to see pushback , and you ’ re going to see attempts to , once again , gloss over the real New York .
But that is a useful education to have when , now that you know what the real New York looks like , you start to see it be slowly obscured or slowly , deliberately hidden .
That is what I was writing this book to show .
JS : Will everything that ’ s happened in the last six months @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
NJ : It has , because I had intended to do some things in later volumes that got stolen by reality .
You can kind of see in the first book that I had been planning to explore an angle with NYPD , which I suspect you can now guess where I was going to go with that .
I may still go with that because NYPD is still going to be NYPD .
They didn ’ t get defunded ; nothing has changed .
I don ’ t know exactly how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was for book three and , once again , thanks America , for stealing my ideas .
That ’ s where I am right now .
JS : I think I had read in another interview you had done about the book that you were considering putting in characters that were very similar to some New York politicians .
Is that still happening ?
NJ : That ’ s still happening .
I ’ ve actually had a great time lately having research conversations with community activists , and City Council people , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who have been helping me understand : How do you run for mayor in New York City ?
So , there ’ s that , if that is not a clue .
( It is a clue . )
JS : What have you been doing to pass time or stay interested in things while being under lockdown ?
NJ : I think the most useful thing that I ’ ve done is I have started to ration my social media so that I am basically only on Twitter for about an hour @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mornings , and then I ’ m done .
If I continue to look at Twitter , it ’ s so enraging that there ’ s nowhere to go from that .
I don ’ t have the creative energy left after it ’ s been swallowed by anger .
I ’ ve always been a biker .
I was actually just out there today , just tooling around the neighborhood , trying to see what ’ s changed , worried that one of my favorite little Haitian coffee shops might be closing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s as much self-therapy as research .
I have to keep my own sense of New York intact if I am to write about it accurately .

This article appears in the September 7/14, 2020 issue.
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The people of New York City have long been considered its heart, their energies an undercurrent rippling beneath every block. But what if the city itself was a living, breathing entity with a soul so distinct it threatened the existence of other universes? In N.K. Jemisin’s latest book, The City We Became, New York is on the brink of being “born,” fighting to claim its own corner of the cosmos. Her characters represent each of the five boroughs plus one primary figure; the city is them, and they are the city. In the first book of what she is calling the Great Cities trilogy, the avatars, Manny (Manhattan), Brooklyn (Brooklyn), Bronca (The Bronx), Padmini (Queens), and Aislyn (Staten Island) discover that they must work together to find the unnamed primary figure of New York and defeat the Woman in White, the book’s antagonist, who wants to see the city obliterated. While the book is a work of fantasy, many of the Woman in White’s weapons of destruction take the form of real-world harms, such as gentrification, white supremacist propaganda, and police violence.
New York City, once the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak in this country, is battling an eerily similar contagion in the book. The villain mobilizes hate and fear within New Yorkers by attaching “long, feathery white tendrils” to them that behave like a virus, rapidly multiplying with the goal of “infecting” as much of the city as possible. Like the coronavirus, the book’s fictional virus disproportionately endangers Black people in the city. As the real city was adjusting in late May to a new reality of masks, massive unemployment, and grief, a white police officer killed a Black man named George Floyd in Minneapolis, sparking nationwide Black Lives Matter demonstrations and calls to abolish the police and the carceral state. The activism, mutual aid, and collectivism on display in the city then—and even now—feels “more like real New York for the last few months than it has in a while,” Jemisin said.
We talked on the phone roughly one month after the protests began about how a book she wrote almost two years ago turned eerily prescient, what makes someone a New Yorker, and why she hasn’t lost hope that the city she loves is too far gone to be reclaimed. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
—Jessica Suriano
J essica S uriano: What has it been like to have this book come out in late March, especially because a lot of events in the book feel like more like reality than fantasy?
N.K. Jemisin: Well, I wrote the book almost two years ago, so it wasn’t like I intended for that congruity to be there. The pandemic is a new thing, obviously, but what The City We Became is talking about is almost plague-like afflictions that have been attacking the city for a long time now, that are not new things. What I think is really happening is that I described things like gentrification as viral, or as infectious, or using disease terminology. Then then we have a literal plague, and so the parallel is there. The pandemic has really exacerbated a lot of existing issues within our society that have been like a slow-motion plague, or a terminal disease, or any number of metaphors that you want to evoke here. It’s just really made that more visible and acute. 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
JS: In a specific scene in the book, where a white woman calls the cops on Manny and his roommate Bel in the park, it’s kind of crazy how similar that was to the Amy Cooper incident. Current Issue View our current issue
NJ: Last year this happened 99,000 times with a Barbeque Becky, and all of the different iterations of that. We’ve seen so many versions of this for so long. It’s easy to write something that has some congruity. I guess I almost should have expected that something like this would occur during the time that the book was out.
JS: Are there any parts of the book that you would have written differently now, knowing what has happened in 2020 so far?
NJ: I might not have used the disease metaphor or the infection-contagion metaphor, simply because, now, there are some people who find that useful, and some people find it kind of comforting, but it’s also re-traumatizing to a lot of readers who were not prepared to encounter the pandemic that they were trying to escape in the middle of their supposedly escapist fiction. That’s probably it.
JS: Why do you think that the common portrayal in media of the city is very opposite to what you wrote?
NJ: In popular media, many of the people who write the TV shows and plays—we commonly get to see people live in penthouses and things like that. In a large part, we’re seeing New York as they see it, and that’s not a false New York. That is also New York. It’s just that, until Lin Manuel Miranda puts his very, very fantasized historical version of New York into a place, we saw nothing but the New York as written by wealthier, Upper East Side writers. I think a lot of it is just simply, we haven’t seen a lot of New Yorks written by people who lived in Black New York, which is the New York that I grew up in.
I grew up [around] artists of color and queer artists and in general, Art New York, which tended to be very multiracial and a bunch of other things. What we simply need is a multiplicity of viewpoints. I’m not doing anything that 99,000 New York artists have not done before me. We all write what we know, to the degree that applies in science fiction and fantasy. That’s really what it comes down to. What I know is very different from a typical New York playwright, or a person who’s only visited New York and they actually live in LA and write sitcoms.
JS: In the book, gentrification and racism are all embodied in the Woman in White. Does the fantasy genre make it easier to put a face and a name on systemic problems, whereas we can’t just assign a single person to be the only source of those problems in reality?
NJ: I don’t know that that’s a genre thing, but it is a “me” thing. Fantasy does tend to reduce evil to a singular manifestation. It’s a lot easier to go and track down a Sauron in Mordor and attack it with an army. Everybody understands that Sauron is bad. You don’t have to spend a whole lot of time trying to convince people that Sauron is a real thing and that elf lives matter. You don’t have to spend a lot of time convincing people of the basics in fantasy, and it’s a simple matter of you kill the bad guy, and it’s over. That is not like evil in the real world, and there is a comfort in that.
Fantasy is often considered to be escapist literature, and it is in that sense. We often keep it abstract—just “evil”—and not specifically the evil of racism, or the evil of classism, or the evil of simply believing that some people deserve to be mistreated, or that some people are less important than others and can be discarded with impunity. In that sense, yes, I would say fantasy is probably part of that. But the choice of what I am embodying in this singular, boiled-down version of reality is specific to me.
JS: Are there any places in New York that you think are particularly sacred or, on the other hand, places you think are particularly “infected”?
NJ: Right now, all of New York is particularly infected. Unfortunately, we are dealing right now with the pandemic. We’ve been fortunate in some ways in that the politicians that are centered around New York City, the mayor and the governor, have at least handled the pandemic as well as they could, considering the federal government is effectively antagonistic towards people surviving this. And at least that New York spirit of cooperation, for the most part, is happening. Related Article What Science Fiction Teaches Us About Reality Ray Bradbury
This is a city where, when there’s a blackout, people jump out in the street and play traffic cop because otherwise nobody will ever get home, or where, after 9/11, New Yorkers just spontaneously showed up and tried to help to the degree that they could. Yeah, people will curse you out in a heartbeat, but they will also bend over backward to try and help you figure out where you’re going if you’re lost. That is as much a part of New York—the altruism and the beauty and the competence and the kindness—as the rudeness and all of the things that popular culture likes to latch onto.
New York is a symbol, and that’s literally what I was talking about in the book. New York has reached the point where it has meaning far beyond just a city. We have seen this throughout the pandemic. Florida’s kind of sneering that “we’re not New York,” as they deliberately institute procedures that have led to the uptick that is showing no signs of slowing down of Covid cases in their state. They did it almost in defiance of the fact that New York was doing distancing measures. That is just simply because we became a useful tool at that point, and that is the nature of New York as well.
We are a bludgeon; we are a weapon; we are a legend. We are the beacon that some people hold up in front of themselves as a motivation.
JS: Would you say that the majority of this book was written out of a love for New York, or a frustration, or both?
NJ: Love for New York and fear for New York. I’m 47; I’ve lived here on and off since I was 5. I have lived here enough to see New York go through massive changes. Around the time that I was born, the city was going through white flight as a result of desegregation. And then the city almost went bankrupt. Then there was a crack epidemic and all of these things. There was a period in the ’90s where the city was finally free of crack, but the drug war was still a huge problem. The police were a huge problem. But people were able to get jobs, and neighborhoods were being built instead of burned down. A lot of New Yorkers started to feel hope.
And then a different kind of plague began to hit, which was housing prices’ going so far beyond affordable that there’s effectively no middle class in New York anymore. Suddenly when new people came in, the city became beholden to real estate developers. Suddenly, we started to not get the funding that we needed for infrastructure and repair and things like that. What I see is the city’s growth and health being sapped by people that don’t seem to understand what the city needs to thrive. They’re happy to take what they want from it and go, but they’re not giving anything back.
But also, part of New York is fighting back when the city starts to become a place where the poor cannot live, or where Black people cannot just simply walk down the street and be themselves, or where disabled people can’t get around because the changes that we were supposed to impose on the public transportation system haven’t been funded, and so on. New York fights. New York sees a threat and begins to work against it, and that is also what I wanted to capture.
JS: Is there an avatar for one of the boroughs that you feel most connected to?
NJ: I actually tried to deliberately sever that sense of connection. I split it amongst all of the avatars. Related Articles Samuel R. Delany Speaks Cecilia D’Anastasio ‘I Came With a Calling’: Remembering Ursula K. Le Guin Zoë Carpenter Why Science Fiction Is a Fabulous Tool in the Fight for Social Justice Laura Flanders
Manny is kind of embodying my sense of wonder, I suppose. Brooklyn is probably my closest physical analog, but she’s an old school New Yorker, and I’m not. I am, in many ways still, a newcomer here, even though I’ve been here half of my life. I’m not a tried and true, do or die, Bed-Stuyer. I just moved here. She’s what I guess I’d like to grow up to be. Bronca is the sort of artistic engagement I grew up in, Art New York, and she’s modeled on actually the fact that my father was the director of the Bronx River Art Center for part of my childhood. I’ve seen what art and nonprofit New York is like, and I just wanted to speak to that.
So different people have different pieces of me, I guess. The one that probably doesn’t have anything of me is Aislyn.
You know what? Let me break that down. Dealing with the difficulty of establishing one’s identity is almost a universal thing. I think that’s something that everyone feels. So, in that sense, she’s probably a bit of me too.
JS: One passage that really stuck with me was when Mrs. Yu tells the avatars that “Gods are people.… They do jobs—bring fortune, look after people, make sure the world works as it should. They fall in love. Have babies. Fight. Die. It’s duty. It’s normal. Get over it.” It made me think about all of the activism that we’re seeing right now—and have been seeing, since activists have been doing this work for decades and decades. I wonder if that line had any sort of other meaning for you when you wrote it.
NJ: That’s an interesting interpretation, and I like that one, but that was not what I was thinking. The idea that the community activists who I see doing incredible things, especially now in this crisis, the idea that those people are, in their own ways, gods—I love it. What I was more thinking was just decentering a Christian focus on the world. The Christian way of looking at the world tends to be sort of all-encompassing and implying that this is the only way to think of a religion, or a faith, or a God, and that’s not how I think. Effectively, what’s happening in The City We Became is a kind of animism. It’s a piece of many African belief systems that specific items or focuses in life develop their own energy and their own life. The idea that God is this numinous thing that is an old man in the sky, or whatever you want to call it, is not universal, and I just wanted to get at that. That’s a fascination I’ve had pretty much since my first published novels, the Inheritance Trilogy. I just wanted to pull people away from thinking that the there’s going to be a binary good-evil way of looking at the story.
JS: This is maybe an existential question, but what makes someone a New Yorker?
NJ: Oh, that’s deeply existential. I think there comes a moment after you’ve been here for like a year or so, when all of the sudden there’s this moment where you just suddenly realize this is your city, that you don’t want to live anywhere else. Once that moment comes, you understand that this is part of you now. Even if you go somewhere else, you’re always going to be a New Yorker on some level. You’re going to miss it. You’re going to feel it. That’s when you become a New Yorker. New Yorkers are chosen, New Yorkers choose themselves. And then New York tests them to kind of make sure it’s real. And if they can handle that, then yeah, they become New Yorkers in that moment. You don’t have to be born a New Yorker. This is a city that’s hungry for new people.
JS: What was your moment?
NJ: Two thousand and seven was when I moved here, but I lived in New York on and off for much of my life. I thought of myself already as a New Yorker, but I hadn’t done the daily commute. I had not had to deal with New York snow other than to play in it when I was a child. I had not walked through sweltering streets where the heat is coming from both above and below because the sidewalks have soaked up so much sunlight.
It was not a specific thing, but I remember that I was walking down the street in my neighborhood. At the time I lived in Flatbush, across from the bottom edge of Prospect Park. It was evening. I was coming back from work. I was exhausted. The light was slanting down just so, and it was hitting the bricks of the buildings that I was passing. It was making the leaves on the trees and the flowers translucent. There was almost a ringing sensation. Maybe that means that I’m hallucinating, but it was just a moment when I was like, “Oh, now I’m a New Yorker.” And I’ve heard other New Yorkers, other transplants, describe a moment like that. I don’t know if you’re a transplant yourself?
JS: Yeah, I’m from Arizona.
NJ: I can’t say if it’s true for everyone else, but like I said, I’ve talked to some people who’ve had that experience. Did you have that moment yourself?
JS: I don’t think so. I’ve only been here since January.
NJ: It takes about a year, from what I hear. Also, you came in an interesting time. Oh my gosh. This has been your only experience of New York.
These are New York experiences you’re having in these six months that you’ve been here. It’s a hell of an intro, but you’ve probably seen more real New York than I have in the last 10 years or so of living here, because it’s felt more like real New York for the last few months than it has in a while. And I’m glad to see it. I had begun to fear that the old New York’s dead. It is not dead.
In a few months you’re going to start to see this massive wave of gentrification, almost in defiance of the New York that is fighting in the streets for reduced police presence in specifically Black neighborhoods. We’re going to see pushback, and you’re going to see attempts to, once again, gloss over the real New York.
But that is a useful education to have when, now that you know what the real New York looks like, you start to see it be slowly obscured or slowly, deliberately hidden. That is what I was writing this book to show.
JS: Will everything that’s happened in the last five months heavily influence the rest of the trilogy?
NJ: It has, because I had intended to do some things in later volumes that got stolen by reality. You can kind of see in the first book that I had been planning to explore an angle with NYPD, which I suspect you can now guess where I was going to go with that. I may still go with that because NYPD is still going to be NYPD. They didn’t get defunded; nothing has changed. I don’t know exactly how I want to handle that. That was for book three and, once again, thanks America, for stealing my ideas. That’s where I am right now.
JS: I think I had read in another interview you had done about the book that you were considering putting in characters that were very similar to some New York politicians. Is that still happening?
NJ: That’s still happening. I’ve actually had a great time lately having research conversations with community activists, and City Council people, and aides to City Council people, who have been helping me understand: How do you run for mayor in New York City? So, there’s that, if that is not a clue. (It is a clue.)
JS: What have you been doing to pass time or stay interested in things while being under lockdown?
NJ: I think the most useful thing that I’ve done is I have started to ration my social media so that I am basically only on Twitter for about an hour, give or take, in the mornings, and then I’m done. If I continue to look at Twitter, it’s so enraging that there’s nowhere to go from that. I don’t have the creative energy left after it’s been swallowed by anger.
I’ve always been a biker. I was actually just out there today, just tooling around the neighborhood, trying to see what’s changed, worried that one of my favorite little Haitian coffee shops might be closing, stuff like that. That’s as much self-therapy as research. I have to keep my own sense of New York intact if I am to write about it accurately.


thenation--2020-08-04--Not All Presidential Liars Are Created Equal

One hardly needs to make the case that Donald Trump is a liar .
Neither is it news that this is true of previous presidents as well .
At the same time , the depth and breadth of Trump ’ s dishonesty is something decidedly new .
As the MSNBC host Chris Hayes wrote in a New York Times book review 18 months after Trump ’ s inauguration : “ The president is a liar .
He lies about matters of the utmost consequence ( nuclear diplomacy ) and about the most trivial ( his golf game ) .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your own eyes .
He lies about things he said just moments ago .
He lies the way a woodpecker attacks a tree : compulsively , insistently , instinctively.
” Adapted from Lying in State : Why Presidents Lie—And Why Trump Is Worse by Eric Alterman .
Copyright © 2020 by Eric Alterman .
Available from Basic Books .
Trump ’ s ability to lie without concern for credibility is gruesomely impressive .
In one three-day period in April 2019 , Trump managed to make 171 “ false or misleading claims , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
During a telephone interview with the Fox News talk-show host Sean Hannity , he managed 45 falsehoods in 45 minutes .
This degree of lying qualifies as “ pathological , ” and so yes , America has a pathological liar for its president .
How did this happen ?
And what are the dangers of allowing this liar to dominate US political culture ?
For so common a human occurrence , lying can be a complicated matter .
We tell our children that lying is always wrong , but we don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ child in Hebrew school , I was taught to admire Jacob for tricking his father , Isaac , into giving the birthright blessing to him rather than its rightful recipient , his older brother , Esau .
We were also taught to admire the Egyptian midwives ’ lie to Pharaoh ’ s men about having murdered the Israelites ’ firstborn sons , including the little fellow who grew up to be Moses .
While few people refer to themselves as “ liars , ” those of us who does not lie with some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kashy and Bella M. DePaulo observed that lies are “ a fact of social life rather than an extraordinary or unusual event .
People tell lies to accomplish the most basic social interaction goals , such as influencing others , managing impressions , and providing reassurance and support.
” In politics , Hannah Arendt sardonically noted that “ no one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other , and no one , as far as I know , has ever counted truthfulness among the political @ @ @ @ @ @ @ went on , “ lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politician ’ s or the demagogue ’ s but also of the statesman ’ s trade.
” Obviously , politics is not a profession that rewards , much less fetishizes , honesty .
Journalists know this , and , in failing to hold presidents accountable for their dishonesty , the American press has reflected a larger ambivalence about doing so among the American people .
Historically , Americans have tended to accept presidential lies as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2017 , C‑Span asked 91 presidential scholars to rank past chief executives for their effectiveness , a measure that included “ moral authority.
” What was striking about the result was that dishonesty did not appear to matter .
Compulsive liars Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson both made it into the top 10 .
Relative truth-tellers Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter came in 12th and 26th , respectively , the latter just barely above the White House ’ s most egregious ( pre-Trump ) liar , Richard Nixon , who took the number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presidential rankings based on public polling , the big liars largely thrive , albeit due to ongoing political arguments rather than careful historical consideration .
In a 2011 Gallup poll , for instance , Reagan was number one and Bill Clinton was number three , with “ Honest Abe ” Lincoln squeaking into second place .
These results are regrettable .
A purposeful presidential falsehood on a matter of consequence sets off a chain reaction that can easily grow out of control .
Presidential lies—even when spoken by a subordinate—have the power to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that often complicates the problem the lie was intended to address .
Rather than admit to the lie and endure the humiliation of being caught in it , presidents usually double , triple , and quadruple down on their lies .
They then pile lies atop other lies ad infinitum until the entire edifice collapses beneath the weight of the many falsehoods .
Under such circumstances , democracy can break down .
As Arendt observed , “ if everybody always lies to you , the consequence is not that you believe the lies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any longer .
… And a people that no longer can believe anything can not make up its mind .
It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge .
And with such a people you can then do what you please.
” Arendt made this observation in the wake of Watergate , but her warning has never felt more prophetic—and more ominous—than today under Donald Trump .
And yet , we can not simply offer a blanket condemnation of presidential lying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I celebrate the fact that Franklin Roosevelt possessed the vision to ready the nation for war against Hitler and Hirohito even if he had to lie repeatedly to do it—that is , publicly proclaiming a commitment to keeping America out of foreign wars , while secretly taking steps to prepare for the one he believed to be inevitable .
America ’ s readiness to fight the Nazis when isolationism reigned supreme in the public discourse likely saved millions of lives and prevented Europe from falling to the fascists .
Yet Lyndon Johnson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America ’ s direct involvement in the Vietnam War , while remarkably similar to those told by Roosevelt , were put forth on behalf of plans for an unnecessary and ultimately failed war .
As Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas observed during that catastrophe , “ FDR ’ s deviousness in a good cause made it easier for LBJ to practice the same kind of deviousness in a bad cause.
” For much of its history , presidential lies were told in the service of the twin goals of white supremacy and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and then overseas .
But with the onset of the Cold War and the end of World War II , the US government under President Harry Truman adopted a virtually limitless definition of its “ national security ” needs .
Its official strategy , laid out in a top secret document titled “ United States Objectives and Programs for National Security , ” better known as NSC 68 , argued that “ the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at stake.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ posed by the Soviets and the precarious nature of the nuclear standoff meant that Cold War US presidents shouldered greater responsibilities and were accorded greater powers than any previous leaders in history .
In this context of saving “ the free world ” from Soviet domination or preventing the world ’ s destruction by nuclear weapons , the telling of a few presidential lies hardly registered as problem at all .
In New York , Zionism and Liberalism Faced Off—and Liberalism Won You Don ’ t Have to Publish Both Sides When One @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prove too great a burden for several presidents .
Lyndon Johnson ’ s lies , combined with his mental and emotional instability late in his presidency , led to catastrophe in Vietnam and could easily have spun even further out of control .
Richard Nixon ’ s incessant dishonesty , together with his noxious combination of ambition , racism , and criminality , produced an even more volatile situation , which , thanks to bipartisan efforts in Congress , was brought swiftly to an end without a constitutional crisis .
Nevertheless , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 57,000 senseless American battle deaths and likely at least 3 million more deaths among the soldiers and civilians of Vietnam and Cambodia .
Jimmy Carter ’ s apparent inability to manage America ’ s empire satisfactorily , and his presidency was derailed by it .
Ronald Reagan , in the years following Carter , revived and expanded the nation ’ s commitment to aggressively defending and expanding its empire , but he would find himself telling lie after lie in pursuit of illegal wars based on ideological fixations ; when explaining his actions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from reality .
The wars he pursued undermined his own authority as president and played a significant role in the defeat of his successor , George H.W .
Bush , in seeking a second term .
We need not minimize the horrific consequences of past presidential lies in order to observe that they pale in comparison to the lies told by Donald Trump .
The wars , coups , and assassinations that these presidents lied about resulted in the deaths of millions of innocents and the displacement of many millions more .
Trillions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the good name of the United States of America suffered around the world .
Yes , past presidents certainly lied—but they did not lie about everything .
The office of the presidency functioned with the understanding that although the president would have to lie on occasion for reasons of national security , the office and its occupant should remain more or less tethered to reality .
Those days ended on January 20 , 2017 .
The role of the media has always been crucial to the phenomenon of presidential lying .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to hold the government accountable .
It is the press ’ s job to tell the truth about what the government is doing , what it means , and why it matters .
When a president thinks about telling a lie—at least theoretically—he is forced to consider the likelihood that his mendacity may be exposed by some conscientious journalistic institution working to ferret out the truth .
These hard-earned facts empower citizens to make informed judgments about their leaders despite any dishonesty or demagoguery those leaders may exhibit .
In practice , however @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proven ambivalent about ensuring that presidents are held to any standard of truthfulness .
In the century following the American Revolution , journalism was largely a function of political partisanship , with newssheets and journals tied explicitly to one of the major political parties or local bosses .
News articles at the time , like life itself , were largely nasty and brutish ( though not always short ) .
When it comes to scurrilous accusations and paranoid fantasies , the likes of Fox News ’ s Sean Hannity , Laura Ingraham , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much worse than George Washington ’ s scourge , Benjamin Franklin Bache , publisher of the Philadelphia Aurora , much less the pamphleteer James Thomson Callender , whose work would malign Alexander Hamilton , Thomas Jefferson , and John Adams , who he attacked as a “ hideous hermaphroditical character.
” When it comes to lying , modern political reporters have found it challenging to call presidents out .
On matters of “ national security ” —a term that in most cases denotes the expansion or maintenance of the American empire—journalists have tended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wide berth , lest they appear unpatriotic , or somehow find themselves responsible for undermining the nation ’ s safety .
Another cause for reticence has been the expectation that journalists show respect for the office of the presidency , which they—publicly at least—have been more than happy to fulfill .
A third barrier arises from the ideology of journalistic objectivity , which dictates that there are two sides to any given issue , and that it is wrong to take one over the other , despite the fact that one ( or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lie .
Even at its most elite level , most reporters are happy to rely on the typical “ he said , she said ” formula .
Conflict , after all , is what makes a good story .
This is why , as the pundit Michael Kinsley noted during the second Bush administration , “ if some politician declares that two plus two is five , reporters might note that this position is not without controversy .
Indeed there are critics , including politicians of the opposite party , who contend that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” This tendency can be relatively innocuous so long as politicians hew close enough to the truth .
The problem , as The Washington Post ’ s legendary editor Ben Bradlee explained , is that “ even the very best newspapers have never learned how to handle public figures who lie with a straight face.
” Prior to Donald Trump ’ s presidential campaign , politicians ’ lies were treated in the mainstream media as an everyday occurrence .
They were , however , responded to not by calling them “ lies ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of liberal bias , since it was most often Republicans doing the lying—but by quoting “ both sides ” without identifying which one might be telling the truth .
In recent decades , this reluctance on the part of most journalists to make a judgment about falsehoods effectively gave increasingly radicalized right-wing Republican politicians a license to lie .
These lies were repeated and amplified by a growing web of conservative media outlets .
These institutions operated on the radio , in print , on cable television , and eventually across almost all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entrepreneurs , and shamelessly amoral self-promoters joined together to create a media ecosystem in which falsehoods hold sway .
The result is that today lies have been built atop other lies , and these have come to define the world—or what the columnist and political philosopher Walter Lippmann once termed “ the pictures in our heads ” —for tens of millions of Americans , despite the fact that they bear virtually no relation to reality .
Given the power of the right-wing media ecosystem to define the reality of conservative voters , its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of almost every Republican politician seeking national office .
In order to survive in this hothouse of extremist ideology and casual , constant dishonesty , the historian Garry Wills observed , Republicans ended up renouncing essentially the entire Enlightenment , and with it , “ reason , facts , science , open-mindedness , tolerance , secularity , [ and ] modernity.
” It was a long time coming , but by 2011 , veteran ex‑Republican congressional staffer Mike Lofgren admitted that his former political home was looking “ less and less like a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult.
” In April 2012 , the respected nonpartisan political analysts Thomas Mann of the centrist Brookings Institution and Norman Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute grew so frustrated with Republican recalcitrance that they joined together to author a missive in The Washington Post titled “ Let ’ s Just Say It : The Republicans Are the Problem.
” The piece was remarkable because Mann and Ornstein represented the heart of what had been the bipartisan political establishment .
Now they were warning of “ an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political party that had grown “ ideologically extreme ; scornful of compromise ; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts , evidence and science ; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
” They explained that journalists ’ belief in objectivity notwithstanding , “ a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality.
” The op‑ed proved to be among the most widely read and cited of any Post article since the paper first went online .
Countless journalists congratulated Mann and Ornstein privately for saying what they could not say publicly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ producers , Mann explained , were “ concerned about their professional standing and vulnerability to charges of partisan bias.
” So , reporters simply stopped speaking to Mann and Ornstein—at least without hearing from “ both sides.
” It was the media ’ s willingness to embrace the culture of dishonesty that helped to open a door for a president openly contemptuous of the media—and of the truth itself .
Trump knows , as all tyrants do , that without the accountability provided by an independent media , a powerful politician can get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s founders bequeathed the press its special status and protections under the First Amendment for exactly this reason .
Trump ’ s insistent accusation that the media are the “ Enemy of the American People ” and constant protestations of “ fake news ” are intended to undermine confidence in the press and thereby undermine its ability to hold his administration answerable to the public .
But it did not matter how frequently or how egregiously Trump and his administration lied to journalists or how viciously they insulted their character , their professionalism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outlets kept returning for more abuse and precious little truth .
“ We ’ re not cheerleaders for the president nor are we the opposition , ” argues New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker .
He further insists , “ What we shouldn ’ t do is let the noise overcome our journalistic values.
” But all too often , what was offered as a defense of old-fashioned commitments to provide “ both sides ” of any given controversy devolved , in practice , to running interference for Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they were not in a fight with the president that they were failing to inform the public of just how serious a threat he posed to the country ’ s freedoms .
Even were Trump to respect the constitutional constraints on his office , he would still enjoy an awesome degree of potentially destructive power .
Beginning with the birth of the atom bomb and the ever-expanding ideology of the “ national security state , ” the prerogatives of the presidency have grown beyond anything the founders could have possibly imagined .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ his disposal , Trump could , of course , end all human life and destroy the planet .
Less dramatically , he could invoke any one of the emergency powers contained in the 123 statutory provisions that give presidents near-dictatorial powers .
Trump might , for instance , seize control of “ any facility or station for wire communication , ” should he decide to proclaim “ that there exists a state or threat of war involving the United States , ” and order it to broadcast only his voice and his orders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dishonesty , the institutions charged with protecting American democracy and civic life should err on the side of vigilance rather than complacency .
Reflecting on the corruption of his erstwhile friends and colleagues in the Trump administration , former FBI director James Comey explained , “ It starts with your sitting silent while he lies , both in public and private , making you complicit by your silence.
” The silence is natural .
“ After all , what are you supposed to say ?
He ’ s the president of the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ you are lost .
He has eaten your soul.
” Comey ’ s metaphor is a good one , but the circle he drew is overly narrow .
Trump ’ s lies are not only devouring America ’ s soul ; they are threatening the future viability of our democratic republican form of government .
Trump is the Frankenstein monster of a political system that has not merely tolerated lies from our leaders but has come to demand them .
The weaknesses of the American political system that gave rise to Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They must be confronted , head-on , while we still have a soul—and a republic—worth saving .

One hardly needs to make the case that Donald Trump is a liar. Neither is it news that this is true of previous presidents as well. At the same time, the depth and breadth of Trump’s dishonesty is something decidedly new. As the MSNBC host Chris Hayes wrote in a New York Times book review 18 months after Trump’s inauguration: “The president is a liar. He lies about matters of the utmost consequence (nuclear diplomacy) and about the most trivial (his golf game). He lies about things you can see with your own eyes. He lies about things he said just moments ago. He lies the way a woodpecker attacks a tree: compulsively, insistently, instinctively.” Adapted from Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie—And Why Trump Is Worse by Eric Alterman. Copyright © 2020 by Eric Alterman. Available from Basic Books.
Trump’s ability to lie without concern for credibility is gruesomely impressive. In one three-day period in April 2019, Trump managed to make 171 “false or misleading claims,” according to The Washington Post fact-checking team. During a telephone interview with the Fox News talk-show host Sean Hannity, he managed 45 falsehoods in 45 minutes. This degree of lying qualifies as “pathological,” and so yes, America has a pathological liar for its president. How did this happen? And what are the dangers of allowing this liar to dominate US political culture?
For so common a human occurrence, lying can be a complicated matter. We tell our children that lying is always wrong, but we don’t mean it. As a young child in Hebrew school, I was taught to admire Jacob for tricking his father, Isaac, into giving the birthright blessing to him rather than its rightful recipient, his older brother, Esau. We were also taught to admire the Egyptian midwives’ lie to Pharaoh’s men about having murdered the Israelites’ firstborn sons, including the little fellow who grew up to be Moses.
While few people refer to themselves as “liars,” those of us who does not lie with some frequency are rare. Sociologists Deborah A. Kashy and Bella M. DePaulo observed that lies are “a fact of social life rather than an extraordinary or unusual event. People tell lies to accomplish the most basic social interaction goals, such as influencing others, managing impressions, and providing reassurance and support.”
In politics, Hannah Arendt sardonically noted that “no one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other, and no one, as far as I know, has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues.” To the contrary, she went on, “lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politician’s or the demagogue’s but also of the statesman’s trade.”
Obviously, politics is not a profession that rewards, much less fetishizes, honesty. Journalists know this, and, in failing to hold presidents accountable for their dishonesty, the American press has reflected a larger ambivalence about doing so among the American people. Historically, Americans have tended to accept presidential lies as the cost of doing business. In 2017, C‑Span asked 91 presidential scholars to rank past chief executives for their effectiveness, a measure that included “moral authority.” What was striking about the result was that dishonesty did not appear to matter. Compulsive liars Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson both made it into the top 10. Relative truth-tellers Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter came in 12th and 26th, respectively, the latter just barely above the White House’s most egregious (pre-Trump) liar, Richard Nixon, who took the number 28 spot on the list. In presidential rankings based on public polling, the big liars largely thrive, albeit due to ongoing political arguments rather than careful historical consideration. In a 2011 Gallup poll, for instance, Reagan was number one and Bill Clinton was number three, with “Honest Abe” Lincoln squeaking into second place. 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
These results are regrettable. A purposeful presidential falsehood on a matter of consequence sets off a chain reaction that can easily grow out of control. Presidential lies—even when spoken by a subordinate—have the power to create their own reality, a fact that often complicates the problem the lie was intended to address. Rather than admit to the lie and endure the humiliation of being caught in it, presidents usually double, triple, and quadruple down on their lies. They then pile lies atop other lies ad infinitum until the entire edifice collapses beneath the weight of the many falsehoods. Current Issue View our current issue
Under such circumstances, democracy can break down. As Arendt observed, “if everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. … And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.” Arendt made this observation in the wake of Watergate, but her warning has never felt more prophetic—and more ominous—than today under Donald Trump.
And yet, we cannot simply offer a blanket condemnation of presidential lying, as it is not always wrong. I celebrate the fact that Franklin Roosevelt possessed the vision to ready the nation for war against Hitler and Hirohito even if he had to lie repeatedly to do it—that is, publicly proclaiming a commitment to keeping America out of foreign wars, while secretly taking steps to prepare for the one he believed to be inevitable. America’s readiness to fight the Nazis when isolationism reigned supreme in the public discourse likely saved millions of lives and prevented Europe from falling to the fascists. Yet Lyndon Johnson’s lies during the lead‑up to America’s direct involvement in the Vietnam War, while remarkably similar to those told by Roosevelt, were put forth on behalf of plans for an unnecessary and ultimately failed war. As Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas observed during that catastrophe, “FDR’s deviousness in a good cause made it easier for LBJ to practice the same kind of deviousness in a bad cause.”
For much of its history, presidential lies were told in the service of the twin goals of white supremacy and constant expansion, initially across the continent and then overseas. But with the onset of the Cold War and the end of World War II , the US government under President Harry Truman adopted a virtually limitless definition of its “national security” needs. Its official strategy, laid out in a top secret document titled “United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,” better known as NSC 68, argued that “the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at stake.” The combination of the perceived existential challenge posed by the Soviets and the precarious nature of the nuclear standoff meant that Cold War US presidents shouldered greater responsibilities and were accorded greater powers than any previous leaders in history. In this context of saving “the free world” from Soviet domination or preventing the world’s destruction by nuclear weapons, the telling of a few presidential lies hardly registered as problem at all. More From Eric Alterman Conservative Jews Made a Terrible Bargain With Trump and the Right Over Israel December 21, 2022 Todd Gitlin Told His Truth Everywhere He Went February 8, 2022 Why the Media No Longer Cares About Nicaragua September 28, 2021
This awesome responsibility would prove too great a burden for several presidents. Lyndon Johnson’s lies, combined with his mental and emotional instability late in his presidency, led to catastrophe in Vietnam and could easily have spun even further out of control. Richard Nixon’s incessant dishonesty, together with his noxious combination of ambition, racism, and criminality, produced an even more volatile situation, which, thanks to bipartisan efforts in Congress, was brought swiftly to an end without a constitutional crisis. Nevertheless, the policies of these presidents caused more than 57,000 senseless American battle deaths and likely at least 3 million more deaths among the soldiers and civilians of Vietnam and Cambodia. Jimmy Carter’s apparent inability to manage America’s empire satisfactorily, and his presidency was derailed by it. Ronald Reagan, in the years following Carter, revived and expanded the nation’s commitment to aggressively defending and expanding its empire, but he would find himself telling lie after lie in pursuit of illegal wars based on ideological fixations; when explaining his actions, frequently he behaved as if detached from reality. The wars he pursued undermined his own authority as president and played a significant role in the defeat of his successor, George H.W. Bush, in seeking a second term.
We need not minimize the horrific consequences of past presidential lies in order to observe that they pale in comparison to the lies told by Donald Trump. The wars, coups, and assassinations that these presidents lied about resulted in the deaths of millions of innocents and the displacement of many millions more. Trillions of dollars were wasted in the process, and the good name of the United States of America suffered around the world. Yes, past presidents certainly lied—but they did not lie about everything. The office of the presidency functioned with the understanding that although the president would have to lie on occasion for reasons of national security, the office and its occupant should remain more or less tethered to reality. Those days ended on January 20, 2017.
The role of the media has always been crucial to the phenomenon of presidential lying. In theory, it is their responsibility to hold the government accountable. It is the press’s job to tell the truth about what the government is doing, what it means, and why it matters. When a president thinks about telling a lie—at least theoretically—he is forced to consider the likelihood that his mendacity may be exposed by some conscientious journalistic institution working to ferret out the truth. These hard-earned facts empower citizens to make informed judgments about their leaders despite any dishonesty or demagoguery those leaders may exhibit. In practice, however, members of the media have often proven ambivalent about ensuring that presidents are held to any standard of truthfulness. In the century following the American Revolution, journalism was largely a function of political partisanship, with newssheets and journals tied explicitly to one of the major political parties or local bosses. News articles at the time, like life itself, were largely nasty and brutish (though not always short). When it comes to scurrilous accusations and paranoid fantasies, the likes of Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson are perhaps not that much worse than George Washington’s scourge, Benjamin Franklin Bache, publisher of the Philadelphia Aurora, much less the pamphleteer James Thomson Callender, whose work would malign Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, who he attacked as a “hideous hermaphroditical character.”
When it comes to lying, modern political reporters have found it challenging to call presidents out. On matters of “national security”—a term that in most cases denotes the expansion or maintenance of the American empire—journalists have tended to give presidents and their advisers a wide berth, lest they appear unpatriotic, or somehow find themselves responsible for undermining the nation’s safety. Another cause for reticence has been the expectation that journalists show respect for the office of the presidency, which they—publicly at least—have been more than happy to fulfill. A third barrier arises from the ideology of journalistic objectivity, which dictates that there are two sides to any given issue, and that it is wrong to take one over the other, despite the fact that one (or both) might be based on a lie. Even at its most elite level, most reporters are happy to rely on the typical “he said, she said” formula. Conflict, after all, is what makes a good story.
This is why, as the pundit Michael Kinsley noted during the second Bush administration, “if some politician declares that two plus two is five, reporters might note that this position is not without controversy. Indeed there are critics, including politicians of the opposite party, who contend that two plus two may actually be four.” This tendency can be relatively innocuous so long as politicians hew close enough to the truth. The problem, as The Washington Post’s legendary editor Ben Bradlee explained, is that “even the very best newspapers have never learned how to handle public figures who lie with a straight face.”
Prior to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, politicians’ lies were treated in the mainstream media as an everyday occurrence. They were, however, responded to not by calling them “lies”—which was considered nonobjective, and evidence of liberal bias, since it was most often Republicans doing the lying—but by quoting “both sides” without identifying which one might be telling the truth. In recent decades, this reluctance on the part of most journalists to make a judgment about falsehoods effectively gave increasingly radicalized right-wing Republican politicians a license to lie. These lies were repeated and amplified by a growing web of conservative media outlets. These institutions operated on the radio, in print, on cable television, and eventually across almost all social media. Conservative billionaires, media entrepreneurs, and shamelessly amoral self-promoters joined together to create a media ecosystem in which falsehoods hold sway. The result is that today lies have been built atop other lies, and these have come to define the world—or what the columnist and political philosopher Walter Lippmann once termed “the pictures in our heads”—for tens of millions of Americans, despite the fact that they bear virtually no relation to reality.
Given the power of the right-wing media ecosystem to define the reality of conservative voters, its members were able to demand the fealty of almost every Republican politician seeking national office. In order to survive in this hothouse of extremist ideology and casual, constant dishonesty, the historian Garry Wills observed, Republicans ended up renouncing essentially the entire Enlightenment, and with it, “reason, facts, science, open-mindedness, tolerance, secularity, [and] modernity.” Related Article Facebook Fuels Its Users’ Ignorance With Lies Eric Alterman
It was a long time coming, but by 2011, veteran ex‑Republican congressional staffer Mike Lofgren admitted that his former political home was looking “less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult.” In April 2012, the respected nonpartisan political analysts Thomas Mann of the centrist Brookings Institution and Norman Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute grew so frustrated with Republican recalcitrance that they joined together to author a missive in The Washington Post titled “Let’s Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem.” The piece was remarkable because Mann and Ornstein represented the heart of what had been the bipartisan political establishment. Now they were warning of “an insurgent outlier in American politics”—a political party that had grown “ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” They explained that journalists’ belief in objectivity notwithstanding, “a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality.” The op‑ed proved to be among the most widely read and cited of any Post article since the paper first went online. Countless journalists congratulated Mann and Ornstein privately for saying what they could not say publicly.
Yet nothing changed. Editors and producers, Mann explained, were “concerned about their professional standing and vulnerability to charges of partisan bias.” So, reporters simply stopped speaking to Mann and Ornstein—at least without hearing from “both sides.” It was the media’s willingness to embrace the culture of dishonesty that helped to open a door for a president openly contemptuous of the media—and of the truth itself.
Trump knows, as all tyrants do, that without the accountability provided by an independent media, a powerful politician can get away with almost anything. America’s founders bequeathed the press its special status and protections under the First Amendment for exactly this reason. Trump’s insistent accusation that the media are the “Enemy of the American People” and constant protestations of “fake news” are intended to undermine confidence in the press and thereby undermine its ability to hold his administration answerable to the public.
But it did not matter how frequently or how egregiously Trump and his administration lied to journalists or how viciously they insulted their character, their professionalism, or even their ethnicity—reporters for mainstream outlets kept returning for more abuse and precious little truth. “We’re not cheerleaders for the president nor are we the opposition,” argues New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker. He further insists, “What we shouldn’t do is let the noise overcome our journalistic values.” But all too often, what was offered as a defense of old-fashioned commitments to provide “both sides” of any given controversy devolved, in practice, to running interference for Trump’s dishonesty. Many journalists were so insistent that they were not in a fight with the president that they were failing to inform the public of just how serious a threat he posed to the country’s freedoms.
Even were Trump to respect the constitutional constraints on his office, he would still enjoy an awesome degree of potentially destructive power. Beginning with the birth of the atom bomb and the ever-expanding ideology of the “national security state,” the prerogatives of the presidency have grown beyond anything the founders could have possibly imagined. With America’s nuclear arsenal at his disposal, Trump could, of course, end all human life and destroy the planet. Less dramatically, he could invoke any one of the emergency powers contained in the 123 statutory provisions that give presidents near-dictatorial powers. Trump might, for instance, seize control of “any facility or station for wire communication,” should he decide to proclaim “that there exists a state or threat of war involving the United States,” and order it to broadcast only his voice and his orders. With Trump’s power and dishonesty, the institutions charged with protecting American democracy and civic life should err on the side of vigilance rather than complacency.
Reflecting on the corruption of his erstwhile friends and colleagues in the Trump administration, former FBI director James Comey explained, “It starts with your sitting silent while he lies, both in public and private, making you complicit by your silence.” The silence is natural. “After all, what are you supposed to say? He’s the president of the United States.” The end result is that “you are lost. He has eaten your soul.” Comey’s metaphor is a good one, but the circle he drew is overly narrow. Trump’s lies are not only devouring America’s soul; they are threatening the future viability of our democratic republican form of government. Trump is the Frankenstein monster of a political system that has not merely tolerated lies from our leaders but has come to demand them. The weaknesses of the American political system that gave rise to Trump will not disappear with his presidency. They must be confronted, head-on, while we still have a soul—and a republic—worth saving.