Amazon Gets Bigger Will Trump Go to War? the New Yuppies
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AMAZON GETS BIGGER WILL TRUMP GO TO WAR? THE NEW YUPPIES SEPTEMBER 2017 Two Great Reviews, One Low Price From now until the end of August, you can get a year’s subscription to both magazines for as little as $80. www.lrb.me/paris contents AUG/SEPT 2017 UP FRONT 6 Nuclear Summer 36 Will Washington’s bluster spark a war with Iran? BY COLIN H. KAHL 8 Rich Man, Poor City What Trump learned from New York City’s fiscal crisis. BY KIM PHILLIPS-FEIN 9 The Trump Tweetometer The president has found a surefire way to soothe his wounded ego: retweets. 10 The Real Voter Fraud With 99 bills in 31 states, the GOP aims to crush voting rights. BY ZACHARY ROTH 12 It Takes a Pillage How Trump is helping to revive the publishing industry. BY ALEX SHEPHARD COLUMNS 14 The New Nation-States After the Paris accord, the political landscape is shifting. BY BILL MCKIBBEN 16 Back to Work How a bold new proposal could make America great again. BY BRYCE COVERT REVIEW 58 European Disunion ) The Handshake What the rise of populist movements means for democracy. BY YASCHA MOUNK TRUMP ( Why did a Florida businessman named Yousef Muslet 64 Phantom Pains face life in prison for an everyday gesture? Why is Casey Afeck so sad? BY CHRISTIAN LORENTZEN BY MATT WOLFE 66 Strange Seer David Lynch pushes TV to its limits in the new Twin Peaks. BY RACHEL SYME 69 The New Yuppies How the aspirational class expresses its 18 26 50 status in an age of inequality. BY J.C. PAN The Return of Trump’s The Crossing 72 The Austenista Monopoly Russian As a record number Does Pride and Prejudice hold subversive messages? BY ELAINE SHOWALTER With Amazon on the rise Laundromat of refugees brave the deadly voyage from 74 and a business tycoon How mobsters and Created Equal in the White House, Libya to Italy, a rescue The economic divide has undermined REDUX; COVER ILLUSTRATION REFERENCE; MICHAEL VADON VADON MICHAEL REFERENCE; ILLUSTRATION COVER REDUX; oligarchs used Trump’s / vessel called the Topaz the Constitution. BY WIN MCCORMACK can a new generation of high-rises to clean Responder races to save Democrats return the dirty money and run an 80 Backstory migrants from perishing party to its trust-busting international crime ring. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEX GARCIA at sea. PHOTOGRAPHS BY roots? BY MATT STOLLER BY CRAIG UNGER MATHIEU WILLCOCKS POETRY 62 Alike, Yet Not Quite BY JENNY XIE 78 Twists of Comb-Hair PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFFERY SALTER JEFFERY BY PHOTOGRAPH COVER ILLUSTRATION BY JASON SEILER BY SHARON OLDS AUG/SEPT 2017 | 1 contributors Bryce Covert, a contributing op-ed writer at The New York Times, Editor in Chief specializes in writing about the economy. Last year her work was honored Win McCormack with an Exceptional Merit in Media Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus. BACK TO WORK, P. 16 Editor Eric Bates Colin H. Kahl is an associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Literary Editor Digital Director Georgetown University. He has served as deputy assistant to President Laura Marsh Mindy Kay Bricker Barack Obama and national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, Features Directors Executive Editor and deputy assistant for the Middle East to Defense Secretaries Robert Sasha Belenky Ryan Kearney Gates and Leon Panetta. NUCLEAR SUMMER, P. 6 Theodore Ross Deputy Editor Politics Editor Ryu Spaeth Christian Lorentzen is the film critic for the new republic and the book Bob Moser Social Media Editor critic for New York magazine. He has been following Casey Afeck’s career Managing Editor Sarah Jones closely for decades. “I was born in Boston,” he says, “and have been Laura Reston Senior Editors watching the Afeck brothers since they were in plays at the Cambridge Assistant Editor Brian Beutler Rindge and Latin School.” PHANTOM PAINS, P. 64 Moira Donegan Jeet Heer News Editor Design Director Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in the Alex Shephard Siung Tjia Environment at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org. His first Staff Writers Photo Director novel, about a secession movement in Vermont, will be published this fall. Emily Atkin Stephanie Heimann Clio Chang “As the planet’s peril mounts,” he says, “we’re all thinking outside the box Production Manager Josephine Livingstone Graham Vyse about solutions.” THE NEW NATION-STATES, P. 14 Steph Tan Poetry Editor Yascha Mounk is a lecturer on government at Harvard and a columnist Contributing Editors Cathy Park Hong at Slate. His second book, The Age of Responsibility: Luck, Choice, and the James Burnett, Alexander Chee, Ben Crair, Michelle Dean, Reporter-Researchers Welfare State, was published this spring. EUROPEAN DISUNION, P. 58 Siddhartha Deb, Michael Lovia Gyarkye Eric Dyson, Paul Ford, Ted Sukjong Hong J.C. Pan, a writer and critic in New York, has written on the vanishing Genoways, William Giraldi, Juliet Kleber Dana Goldstein, Kathryn Joyce, divide between work and leisure. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Suki Kim, Maria Konnikova, Interns Dissent, Jacobin, and The Fader. THE NEW YUPPIES, P. 69 Corby Kummer, Michelle Legro, Eric Armstrong, Sam Jen Percy, Jamil Smith, Fossum, Taylor Hartz, Graeme Wood, Robert Wright Joon Lee, Sagari Shetty Kim Phillips-Fein teaches twentieth-century American history at New York University. She is the author of Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics and Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Director of Marketing Associate Advertising Against the New Deal. RICH MAN, POOR CITY, P. 8 and Revenue Director Evelyn Frison Shawn Awan Elaine Showalter is a professor emerita of English at Princeton Audience and Controller University and the author, most recently, of The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Partnership Manager David Myer Howe. THE AUSTENISTA, P. 72 Eliza Fish Office Manager, NY Media Relations Manager Tori Campbell Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Open Markets Program at New America, Steph Leke where he is researching the history of anti-monopoly policy in the Associate Publisher twentieth century. He previously served as a senior policy adviser to the Art Stupar Senate Budget Committee. THE RETURN OF MONOPOLY, P. 18 Publisher Hamilton Fish Rachel Syme is the television critic for the new republic. She is currently working on her first book, about a love afair in Hollywood in the 1930s. She chose the new Twin Peaks for her inaugural column because “I Published by Lake Avenue Publishing knew David Lynch would make something that didn’t feel like anything 1 Union Square West, else. It actively resists snap judgment.” STRANGE SEER, P. 66 New York, NY 10003 President Craig Unger is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of Win McCormack several books, including House of Bush, House of Saud. Russia’s role in Trump’s ascent, he says, “may well turn out to be House of Trump, House of Putin.” TRUMP’S RUSSIAN LAUNDROMAT, P. 26 For subscription inquiries or problems call (800) 827-1289 For reprints and licensing visit www.TNRreprints.com Mathieu Willcocks is a photojournalist based in Scotland. Last summer he embedded aboard the Topaz Responder, a rescue ship in the Mediterranean, to document the dangerous voyage undertaken by refugees fleeing from Libya to Italy. THE CROSSING, P. 50 2 | NEW REPUBLIC GCTV GLOBAL CONNECTIONS TELEVISION Exploring international issues that have local impact VISIT: www.GlobalConnectionsTelevision.com HOSTED BY INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SPECIALIST, BILL MILLER Global Connections Television is an independently-produced talkshow focusing on international issues and how they impact people across the world. Programming provides in-depth analysis within a wide scope of current issues, topics and events including climate change, education, economic development and much more. Watch interviews with prominant experts including UN leaders, CEOs, international relations specialists, academics, and journalists and many others that are working to create a better world. GCTV is a pro-bono public service program that is available to any group. Cultural experiences curated by the New Republic DESTINATION: DATES: OCTOBER 21-28, 2017 Explore Cuba through the lens of politics, culture and society with the New Republic. In an immersive week, COST: All-inclusive tour covers daily you will experience breakfast, most lunches and dinners, Cuba through: all accommodations, and all tours: $5185 - $5645 per person (double/ • Discussions with political and single occupancy) cultural experts on the ground • Open studios with artists Your TNRDISCOVER host: • Cultural tours of historic Charles Bittner landmarks and sites Specialist in educational trips to • Traditional Cuban food in Cuba and elsewhere; professor restaurants and homes in the sociology department at • And so much more… St. John’s University, New York City. REGISTER NOW – LIMITED SPACE AVAILABLE For details, contact Charles Bittner [email protected] or 617-833-1435 Traveling under TNR’s People-to-People general license from the stacks PRESIDENTS ALWAYS GET flak for vacationing on the taxpayer dime—from FDR, who spent weekends fishing on the USS Potomac, to Barack Obama, who summered on posh Martha’s Vineyard. To counter the impression that they’re sleeping on the job, presidents usually try to manage the optics of their time of. Some vacation in swing states, like Richard Nixon in Key Biscayne. Others huddle with world leaders, like George H.W. Bush in Kennebunkport. And a few—as Ryan Lizza pointed out in the new republic in 2001—stage their getaways to create an illusion of folksiness, like George W. Bush at his ranch in Crawford. ✯ Donald Trump, as always, takes a diferent approach. His trips to Mar-a-Lago and his “summer White House” in New Jersey aren’t about politics at all. They’re purely personal—an excuse to escape a city he hates and a job he cannot manage.