Before we start this week, I want to share with you a list sourced from … you. Last week, I asked Sunday APR readers to post the names of some of their favorite authors who were not regularly appearing in this space. I got some genuinely great suggestions, some of which have had me reading through older columns throughout the week.
My sifting of the comments last week was far from perfect, so if you don’t see someone you named in this list, please call my attention to them again. Here, in no particular order, are the suggestions that I spotted.
There are some killer suggestions in this bunch. Honestly, you could make a team of literary sluggers out of this collection that would clean up at the World Series of Editorials (and since there are at least three Pulitzer Prize winners on this list, you might argue that they already have).
I will definitely keep these authors in mind when putting together the Sunday APR. That doesn’t mean they’ll always be represented, because 1) They won’t always have a new column up, 2) Their latest may have already been hit in another article, 3) They may be writing a piece that’s either very local, or very personal, and in both cases I tend to raise a pretty high hurdle, 4) I may be overwhelmed with other pieces, and 5) I still intend to skim the Washington Post, the Guardian, and the Miami Herald each week and my functional brain cells by the time I get done with them on Sunday morning are down to precious few. Heck, my functional brain cells are nothing to write home about before I start reading in any given week.
So if a favorite of yours doesn’t appear in any given week, it’s not because I’m ignoring you. It’s probably because they either didn’t have something new, or I fell asleep on the keyboard before I got to them. But this week, I’m going to make an effort to hit as many as I can, largely to provide a bit of a sampler and gather some feedback for the future.
In any case, let’s go read pundits for the last time in 2018!
The Trump Effect
Virginia Heffernan on two generations of Trumps corrupting doctors, lawyers, and others
Los Angeles Times
In 1968, according to the New York Times, Fred may have struck a draft-dodging deal for Donald with one of his tenants, Larry Braunstein, a podiatrist. Braunstein’s daughters remember their father saying he diagnosed Trump with bone spurs as a “favor” to his landlord. The diagnosis won Trump a medical exemption from the draft during the Vietnam War.
Corrupting doctors is something of a leitmotif ofTrump’s history. Remember Dr. Harold “Sweetheart, this is Watergate” Bornstein? Dr. Ronny “Candy Man” Jackson? They’re not unlike the president’s iffy lawyers: Marc “Watch Your Back” Kasowitz, Michael “I’m Going To Come At You” Cohen, and Rudolph “Truth Isn’t Truth” Giuliani.
Trump, the Corrupter, sounds like an appropriate Marvel villain for our age.
Doctors and lawyers, along with clergy, architects and engineers, are members of what used to be quaintly called “the professions.” Unlike a real estate promoter who runs casinos into the ground, heads up a fake university and promiscuously sells his ignoble name, professionals are expected to stand for something higher than profit. Many swear oaths in their fields. And they can lose their standing if they violate their profession’s ethical tenets.
It’s genuinely amazing how many people have been willing to take a fall for Trump over the years. The promise of money explains some of it, except … surely many of these people must have noticed that Trump very rarely pays those he owes. And still they go down.
Renée Graham on Donald Trump, perennial punchline
Boston Globe
President Trump has no sense of humor.
While this pales in comparison with his mounting moral, constitutional, and possibly criminal sins, his latest tantrum against “Saturday Night Live” finds him wading deeper into the wannabe dictator muck.
In the “SNL” spoof of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Trump (played by Alec Baldwin) is shown by Clarence the Angel (Kenan Thompson) how much better off the world would have been had he never become president. Save for a few chuckles, it was pretty mild stuff — unless you’re a man who craves absolute reverence.
“A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live,” Trump tweeted early Sunday. “It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame and belittle! Collusion?”
What Trump’s word scrapple suggests isn’t just absurd. It’s also dangerous. If he could, Trump would use the courts to inoculate himself from insult or public ridicule. He would criminalize comedy itself.
If Trump criminalized jokes, wouldn’t that mean Trump himself had to go to jail? And would we still be allowed to laugh about it?
Mike Littwin on Trump’s ability to dish it out — and make us take it
Colorado Independent
I have no idea how it will end — only that it will end badly.
I don’t mean the shutdown. History gives a pretty good guide on how the shutdown will go. It will last a few days or a few weeks, depending on how long it takes Mitch McConnell to convince Donald Trump that Democrats really aren’t going to fold either on his useless wall or his “beautiful” steel slat barrier (with the medieval-looking pikes) and that Senate Republicans are growing so panicked they just might do something crazy — like actually stand up to him.
The shutdown will end in chaos, just as it began. It will end in humiliation — just ask Paul Ryan, who ends his role as speaker in utter failure. It will end with Trump claiming victory, just as he did after the midterm shellacking. And it will end with Trump shouting into the pre-morning Twitter sky that he wants to fire his new Fed chairman or Bob Mueller or his new interim chief of staff or somebody, suddenly realizing that he should have fired Jim Mattis before Mattis quit, leaving behind his dramatic three-page letter that screamed the truth about Trump’s danger to the world.
I really like the rhythm of Littwin’s writing here. Count me as a fan.
All the talk is of cracks finally starting to show in Trump’s support from congressional loyalists. I’m not sure I buy any of that, not so long as Trump’s polls among Republican voters remain so strong. Certainly, political logic would suggest that something happened this week, something different, something worse, something irretrievable. It all makes sense unless you think harder about it and ask yourself what part logic has ever played in the endless Trump drama.
Joan Walsh on Trump’s outrage and courageousness
The Nation
Thursday, December 20, will go down in history as the day Americans had to face a devastating truth about the dangerous charlatan in the White House: Trump cares more about the policy wisdom of right-wing grifters like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter than of a lifelong military leader and public servant like Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who announced his resignation Thursday evening.
Note that, as you’ll see throughout this week, I’m going back to older posts when necessary to get an example — though I’ve shied away from writers who haven’t written anything in the last month, or whose Christmas piece was of the “when I was a child, we wore bread wrappers on our feet while hiking twelve miles to school in the snow” variety. So Walsh’s article here isn’t brand new, but it’s still darn good.
Mattis’s letter sizzled with alarm that Trump has disrespected our allies and propped up totalitarians in Russia and China. “Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects,” he wrote, “I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.”
And the world gasped.
I admit: So did I.
Environment
Charles Pierce on Trump’s follies … and actions that are no joke
Esquire
Over the weekend, another child died in the custody of the United States because of the president*'s brainless immigration policy. The president* flew halfway around the world for a 30-minute photo-op with some soldiers because he was shamed into doing so, and this was shortly after he was shamed into submarining a deal on the southern border by Rush Limbaugh and a chorus of lower primates. At this point, I think he could be shamed into jumping off the Truman Balcony dressed as Queen Mathilde of Belgium.
Much of Pierce’s piece this week recaps the New York Times’ excellent article on the degrading of environmental rules under Trump. It’s horrific reading — and well worth revisiting.
Monica Wilson on addressing the problem of plastic, by really cutting back on plastic
Guardian
As holiday shopping ramps up, so do the dizzying varieties of plastic packaging tossed in recycling bins. And while we wish a Christmas miracle would transform this old garbage into something new, the reality is the waste left over from the holiday shopping frenzy is more likely than ever to end up in a landfill or incinerator. Until January of this year, the United States and other Western countries were foisting their low-value plastic waste on to China, with little concern for the environmental degradation this caused. To protect its citizens from the burden of foreign pollution, in the beginning of this year, China refused to be the world’s dumping ground and effectively closed its doors to plastic waste imports.
Until recently, it’s been easy to excuse the use of disposable plastic items, so long as they went into the recycle bin once a week. But now more than ever, the recycling of most plastics is simply an illusion. I walked out of Target the other day with a plastic bag and as I got into my car, I couldn’t help but think that this … this was my real legacy. I will be gone. My family will be gone. Every word I’ve ever written will be forgotten. Even the city and nation where I lived will be ancient history. But that damn bag will still be there.
Religion
Hamid Dabashi on Jesus as a Palestinian refugee
Al Jezeera
Yes, it’s a bit late for a Christmas piece, but Dabashi’s decidedly non-Western take on the familiar themes gives them an interesting twist.
There is something beautifully sacred about the moment in the Quran when the angels inform Mary she is about to give birth to Jesus. Angels bring her the good news. They tell her of how "He will speak to the people in the cradle and in maturity and will be of the righteous."
That Mary and Jesus even appear in the Quran is likely a great surprise to many of those who wish that Trump’s wall could extend around Syria.
Generations of European depiction of Christ as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white man have made it difficult for European and North American Christians today to imagine him for what he was: a Jewish Palestinian refugee child who grew up to become a towering revolutionary figure.
Dabashi looks at many of the different ways in which Jesus has been viewed, across time and cultures, and finds a figure that can still speak to those who are decidedly not American evangelicals.
Connie Schultz tells her Christmas story with a few select quotes
"I'm a good Christian. If I become president, we're going to be saying 'merry Christmas' at every store." — Donald Trump, December 2015
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ... Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem ... to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. — Luke 2:1, 4-7 (New Revised Standard Version)
"A total of 2,551 migrant children were taken from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, many of whom were separated under the 'zero tolerance' policy that called for the prosecution of all immigrants crossing the border illegally." — NBC News, July 2018
Frankly, the game of “find something Trump said that’s counter to gospel teaching” is equal to the game of “find something Trump said.”
Immigration
The Santa Fe New Mexican on facing down the grim truth
Santa Fe New Mexican
Two dead children in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Thousands more being held in facilities ill-equipped to care for children. An overall decline in illegal immigration, yet an administration that shouts emergency, even shutting down the government to raise funds for a border wall that won’t close off the country no matter how high it is built. …
The two children who died both were taken into custody in New Mexico and detained in our state; earlier, Roxsana Hernandez, a Honduran transgender woman died in an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facility in Cibola County.
If we do not act, we are complicit. How the United States treats asylum-seekers is a federal issue, but these deaths are happening in New Mexico. It must be our concern.
That’s a very direct, and honest, statement that is not being repeated often enough: Failing to stop what Trump is doing means being complicit in his actions, including the death of children and others.
Karen Tumulty on Trump’s breezy dismissal of dead children
Washington Post
With President Trump, there is no bottom. Every time you think you have seen it, he manages to sink even lower.
Anyone wanting to summarize 2018, and 2017, and 2016 could start, and end, with those two sentences.
It is not news that the president is indifferent to human suffering. His limp response to the devastation of the 2017 hurricane in Puerto Rico — which he claimed to have been a “fantastic job” on the part of his administration — stands out in that regard. But on Saturday, we saw yet another level of depravity when Trump made his first comments regarding the deaths in recent days of two migrant Guatemalan children after they were apprehended by federal authorities. It revealed not only callousness but also opportunism, as he sought to turn this tragedy into a partisan advantage in his current standoff with Democrats over the government shutdown.
Trump–Russia
Michael Tomasky on how Trump’s fate is actually in the turtle-ly hands of Mitch McConnell
Obviously, Mueller is an important figure. Perhaps soon, he will send his report up to the Justice Department. Though the department has no legal obligation to make it public, it seems close to impossible to me that a report of such clear first-order public concern can be kept under wraps. So one way or the other I expect we’ll know what he's found.
Beyond that, he may issue more indictments. Not just of Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi, but of the president’s family members. Maybe even the president himself, although that seems unlikely (but not impossible, as some insist). I try to stay away from predictions these days, but given that we know that Mueller has hours of testimony from Michael Cohen, presumably hours more from longtime Trump Organization bagman Allen Weisselberg, and Trump’s tax returns, I’d expect some seriously interesting revelations.
But Mueller holds no power beyond that. He can give us evidence; but he can’t direct what happens as a result of that evidence entering the public sphere.
That power rests with one man. The fate of this presidency, whether we like it or not, is in the hands of Mitch McConnell.
The odds of Mitch McConnell voting for Donald Trump to be ousted are actually lower today than when Trump took office. So long as Trump will reliably scrawl his name on the list of judicial nominees that the Federalists hand to him, and McConnell can run them through the Senate without any chance of objection, Trump could outdo Caligula, or Dracula, and McConnell would not even give one slow-motion blink.
2020
Jonathan Chait on why Sanders is out to torpedo Beto
New York Magazine
The first skirmish of the 2020 Democratic primary, a wave of attacks on Beto O’Rourke by supporters of Bernie Sanders, took almost everybody by surprise. On the outside, it looks like one of those inscrutable, personality-driven online spats that characterize the Twitter era. But the feud is neither petty nor personal nor irrational. It’s the first shot in a war that may well continue for the next year and a half.
Can I give an advance ‘aarrggh’ now and express just how much I hope this is not true?
I have opinions about the parties involved in this conflict that are not difficult to guess. But my aim in this article is not to persuade readers of the merits of my preferences, but instead to provide a descriptive account of an important conflict that I believe is being widely misunderstood. Indeed, I think the online warriors of the Bernie movement are getting too little credit, and their mainstream liberal antagonists would benefit from a better understanding of their motives and thinking.
This is definitely worth reading, no matter if you support side A, side B, or no side in this argument. And hopefully some understanding will help head off that year-long bitterly pointless feud that Donald Trump would love to see.
Nancy LeTourneau looks at indicators that may be more accurate than polls
Washington Monthly
Pollsters are working furiously to tell us who leads the pack when it comes to Democrats that are considering a presidential run in 2020. But this far out, their predictions are abysmally inaccurate, if not misleading. Most voters aren’t paying attention and are more likely to give the nod to the person with the highest name recognition—which explains why Biden and Sanders generally come in at #1 and #2.
If you really want to know who is most likely to become the nominee, Keith Humphreys goes where other pundits fear to tread and proclaims that Beto O’Rourke has a “towering advantage in the 2020 Democratic primary.” As a scientist, Humphreys doesn’t rely on inaccurate polling to make that prediction.
That “towering advantage” may appear to relate to the “why” behind Chait’s article. But LeTourneau’s piece is, thankfully, much less serious about trying to spot a winner from this distance.
Jay Bookman just hopes that the answer down the road, is not in the rear-view mirror
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
John Kerry has been a superb public servant, beginning with his heroic service in Vietnam and extending through a 28-year career in the Senate and a productive four-year stint as secretary of state. He is as qualified as anyone in U.S. history to serve as president of the United States.
Yet, John Kerry should not run for president in 2020.Joe Biden is a wise and decent soul, someone sincerely committed to making this a better country. In his 36 years in the Senate and eight as vice president for Barack Obama, he too has demonstrated the character and qualifications to be an excellent president.He too should not run in 2020.
Some of those nodding along to this point are likely to put on frowny faces from here on out.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who inspired millions in his 2016 underdog primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, has provided a powerful voice for the otherwise voiceless, saying things that need to be said. He should not run in 2020. The same is probably true of Sen. Elizabeth Warren. I’m open to hearing the case that she makes for herself, but her botched, naive handling of Native American ancestry questions raises doubt about her ability to handle what comes in a presidential campaign.
I’m not keen on the idea that experience is a disqualification for any of the above. Nor am I all that enthusiastic about the idea of someone new for the sake of someone new. But, thankfully, Democrats have a wealth of good choices going into 2020. Personally, I’ve been very impressed by how Kamala Harris has handled herself in Senate hearings. I’d love to see how she brings that savvy analysis and forthright speech to a debate stage. On the other hand, I’ve also become fairly enamored of Kirsten Gillibrand, who is at the top of exactly no polls at the moment, who is still on the “I hate her” chart for quite a few, and who is pretty much a non-starter in the mind of many big money donors — but see previous article for how valuable any of that is at this point.
Jamelle Bouie on the color of 2020
Slate
Before Barack Obama’s election in 2008, the relationship between white racial views and partisanship wasn’t as clear-cut as one might think. Yes, Republicans won the large majority of white voters who believed black disadvantage could be attributed to a lack of hard work or effort—a key measure in the “racial resentment scale”—but a substantial minority of white voters was part of the Democratic coalition as well. But once Obama was in office, whites—and especially those with less formal education—“became better able to connect racial issues to partisan politics,” according to a recent book charting these changes to American politics.
Still, in his 2012 re-election race, Obama won a portion of whites with negative views of blacks. The reason has everything to do with the campaigns. Obama didn’t emphasize race or speak explicitly on racial issues. Neither did Mitt Romney. Race mattered, but white racial views—and white identity—weren’t as crucial to the outcome.
This is interesting analysis, and worth reading in full … though, as with every other look at 2020, I’m not sure how to weigh whether it really helps make more accurate predictions.
2018 in review
Aisha Sultan focuses on letters she received about a pivotal moment in the last year
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
This year my reader mail took an unexpected turn. I started reading many more stories about readers’ personal traumas, oftentimes long buried, and past injustices individuals have experienced. Sometimes it’s easier for people to share a painful story with someone they’ve never met, someone they expect will be sympathetic. These messages revealed truths about how the effects of traumatic events can linger long after something bad happens. When I wrote about the allegations surrounding then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, several older women wrote to tell me about their own sexual assaults and why they didn’t speak up earlier.
One reader shared, in part: “Fifty years ago, when I was a victim, I did not report it either. I remember every detail of the assault, but I don’t remember where we were, or what we had done on our date prior to the assault.
That letter was far from the only heart-breaker on this topic.
“When I was just 20 years old, the same thing happened to me ... only worse,” she started. She described the graphic and disturbing details of the assault, which she gave me permission to share in an online post. “I never told anyone ... ever. I have been seeing a therapist and eventually mustered up the courage to tell her. I called it ‘the incident’ ... never ‘rape.’”
Sultan’s piece reminds us that while the effort to confront Kavanaugh was halted by Republicans who were eager to see him on the Court, many of whom still pretend that they don’t understand why his actions were “such a big deal,” that moment of 2018 was so impactful not because Kavanaugh’s actions were rare, but because they were not.
Paul Krugman on 2018 as another example of failed Republican economics
New York Times
As 2018 draws to an end, we’re seeing many articles about the state of the economy. What I’d like to do, however, is talk about something different — the state of economics, at least as it relates to the political situation. And that state is not good: The bad faith that dominates conservative politics at every level is infecting right-leaning economists, too.
This is sad, but it’s also pathetic. For even as once-respected economists abase themselves in the face of Trumpism, the G.O.P. is making it ever clearer that their services aren’t wanted, that only hacks need apply.
Krugman goes on to break down the categories of serious economists, left and right, and the anything-for-Trump hacks. For Trumpists, only the latter category will do, because even a right wing economist who tries to work from facts is quickly confronted with the failures of Trump’s policies … and that won’t do. Krugman also shows just how readily even the so-called respectable economists on the right were willing to argue against a position when it was seen as helping Democrats, then swiftly pivot to the opposite position when it appeared to help Trump. And hey, I included Krugman, all right? So my purity vow is broken.
Brian Calvert on the continuing fight to sustain journalism
High Country News
The first half of my journalistic career was spent abroad, much of it in Cambodia, a Southeast Asian country reeling from decades of war and corruption. The country is run by elites under the patronage of Prime Minister Hun Sen, a strongman who has clung to power for nearly four decades through the brutal suppression of all who oppose him.
Hun Sen was a soldier in the Khmer Rouge, the communist guerillas who killed some 2 million of their countrymen, especially those they labeled “enemies of the people,” a term coined by Vladimir Lenin. Hun Sen’s rule is violent, but he is also a skilled demagogue who uses the media to ridicule opponents, subtly encouraging others to attack his foes. His people have thrown grenades into opposition rallies and murdered labor leaders, environmentalists and, yes, journalists — eight of them since 1994.
I have never lived in a scarier place, so you can imagine how I feel today hearing the president of the United States call American journalists the “enemies of the people.” Of Donald Trump’s many documented falsehoods, this is the most dangerous. And it has had real consequences. In June, a gunman walked into the Capital Gazette, in Annapolis, Maryland, and killed five people, four of them journalists. In October, an ardent Trump supporter mailed 13 bombs to critics of the president, two of them to CNN. Just as in Cambodia, we cannot ignore the political environment in which these attacks take place.
One of those columnists whose work I love to feature is Carl Hiaasen. I’ve not done that as many times this year in large part because Hiaasen hasn’t written many columns this year. And that, in turn, is because his brother, Rob Hiaasen, was a journalist at the Capital Gazette and one of those killed in June.
Art Cullen recites the soul-crushing litany
Storm Lake Times
The federal government was partially shut down, again, over immigration. The treasury secretary incited a panic on Christmas Eve by announcing that six major banks remain solvent, resulting in the biggest Dec. 24 loss on record at the Dow Jones. A second child died of neglect at the border. Trump sat alone at the White House and tweeted his disgust for the FBI, for Democrats and for immigrants (forgetting in the moment that the Holy Family were refugees at the Nativity). We keep thinking: This must be the low point. But it never is.
Our President is a pervert spanked by a porn star on his bare bottom with a magazine. He is a tyrant who seeks to deport citizens of the United States, specifically Southeast Asian and Latino, to foreign nations. He is an inveterate liar. The President has incited violence against a free press. His closest advisors are in prison or awaiting it for fraud involving the security forces of Russia. He started a trade war with China that remains far from resolved, and sparked trade disputes with Canada and Mexico, that sapped what little vitality corn and soybean markets had. We are now subsidizing hogs owned by Smithfield Foods, which is owned by the Chinese, because of this idiotic trade war. Our allies around the world don’t know if we stand with them anymore.
“This must be the low point. But it never is.” could be a new national motto. We need that in Latin, please. Google Translate gives me “Haec debet esse humilis punctum. Sed non ita est.” Which sounds, appropriately enough, like a noise you might make while gearing up to spit. But Google Translate’s skill with Latin verb tenses is pretty much equal to … my skill with Latin verb tenses. So don’t start carving that new seal just yet.
Leonard Pitts puts 2018 in it’s place
Miami Herald
We lost Dennis Edwards, whose raw, serrated vocals lifted the Temptations to “Cloud Nine.” We lost the Queen, Aretha Franklin, whose voice was a kinetic fire, burning away everything but truth. And we lost Stan “The Man” Lee, the creative genius who made generations of us believe in spider powers, misunderstood mutants, a rainbow bridge and the sovereign nation of Wakanda. ‘Nuff said.
But the signature loss of this year was neither personal nor public. No, 2018 will go down as the year we lost ourselves. Although, granted, we’ve been losing ourselves for awhile now.
Americans cherish a self-image as a people who, while they may make a wrong turn here and there, are ultimately noble, ultimately compassionate, ultimately selfless and ultimately driven and defined by vision, values and verities that make us unique among nations. Or as Bruce Springsteen sang in a song called “Long Walk Home,” “That flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone — who we are, what we’ll do, and what we won’t.”
He sang that back in 2007, using the walk home as a metaphor for bridging the gulf between what America is supposed to be and what it too often was back when the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina were still fresh wounds. But his assertion of American identity seems critical now in ways that were unimaginable then.
I say this a lot but … read the rest of Leonard Pitts.
Robert Gebelhoff on the new gilded age
Washington Post
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, reported in November that life expectancy for the average American ticked downward for the third year in a row. …
Giving birth in the United States has become increasingly deadly over the past few decades, placing our country in the same category as developing nations such as Afghanistan and Swaziland. And the rates are even worse for mothers of color. …
The latest CDC data released this year shows that U.S. infant mortality rates, after steadily falling over the past few decades, haven’t decreased significantly for five years. Today it stands at 5.9 deaths per 1,000 births, far higher than the average rate of 3.9 deaths for developed countries. Again, it’s even worse for infants of color.
But of course, statistics like these define what’s happening on average. Not what’s happening in the rarefied realms of the “best healthcare system in the world” if you can afford it.
And while unemployment is at the lowest rate in almost 50 years, the percentage of people in the labor force has remained mysteriously low relative to other developed countries. Experts say part of that trend can be explained by demographics as baby boomers retire, but U.S. participation rates also lag for people of working age. One analysis from this summer found that if the United States had the same working-age participation as Britain, we’d have to factor another 11 million people into the unemployment rate.
Our great healthcare system … isn’t. Our record low unemployment … isn’t. Our terrific economy … isn’t. Instead, what we’ve watched through 2018 is Republicans doing everything they can to scrape up the last pennies and secure benefits for themselves before the collapse. And that collapse looks terrifyingly near.
Nationalism vs Patriotism
Anne Applebaum on why there must be a difference
Washington Post
As 2018 draws to a very strange close — during Christmas, President Trump sat alone in the White House, surrounded by the synthetic glow of television screens — it’s worth pausing to remember the speech made that day by the French president, Emmanuel Macron. If nothing else, it might point the way to a better 2019.
Ostensibly, Macron’s subject was the First World War, the brutal moment when “Europe very nearly committed suicide.” But the real theme was France — or rather, the two different visions of France that have competed with each other for more than a century. On the one hand, the French president described a nationalist, isolationist, internally focused vision of France; this definition of the nation has been around for a very long time, and it does have a deep, primal appeal: “Our interests first and who cares about the rest,” as Macron put it. This is something everyone can understand.
But Macron also laid out another way of thinking about his country, a “vision of France as a generous nation, of France as a project, of France promoting universal values . . . the exact opposite of the egotism of a people who look after only their interests.” This more idealistic patriotism — “the exact opposite of nationalism,” said Macron — is a more difficult cause to support, and yet over the years, many in France have supported it. This is the France that overturned the verdict in the Dreyfus trial, the France that believed all citizens, and not just ethnic Frenchmen, should be treated equally under the law; this is the France that joined the Resistance instead of Vichy, the France that agreed to share power and sovereignty with Germany in the wake of World War II, the France that helped build prosperity across the continent.
It’s very easy to be cynical about the second description, and to point out all the errors that have been made by nations trying to do more than look out for themselves — but that’s a cynicism that helps only those who long for nationalism.
Note: If you’re wondering why Will Bunch, who probably got more votes in comments than anyone else, isn’t included today, it’s because he’s been on a rather long Christmas break and wrote his last piece on December 11. I tried not to go back more than a week or two when finding my samples. Just believe me when I say, I didn’t forget him.
Also note: If you really feel compelled to scream that we need to “hire an editor” who “knows the difference between to and too” and the proper placement of apostrophes, as someone did last week, then I feel compelled to point out that we have an excellent crew of copy editors, none of whom are working at 2AM on Sunday morning when I finish off this column. And while I do a read through at the end of the piece to try and spot the more obvious errors, by the time I’m done I’ve usually been at this one thing about six hours at the end of a long day. Frankly, you should count yourself lucky that at least the last few comments don’t turn up in a mixture of Klingon and adult-speak from Charlie Brown.
And an update note: Sorry. Now that it is actually morning it’s clear that, while that previous note may not be in Klingon, it was poorly transcribed from the native language of the thin-skinned grump.