Inside stories of how activist staffers countered corporate lobbies

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Available now in jacketed cloth & ebook formats. Visit us at www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com. contents OCTOBER 2017

UP FRONT 6 The New Fight for Labor Rights 18 To survive, the labor movement needs to rethink its strategy. BY RACHEL M. COHEN 8 Losing Hearts and Minds How Trump quietly gutted a program to combat extremism. BY BENJAMIN POWERS 9 The Trump Tweetometer A look inside the president’s mind, based on his first seven months of tweets. 10 The Next Standing Rock Why is Canada green-lighting a pipeline that could kill the climate? BY BEN ADLER 12 Art of the Steal How Trump’s self-dealing helped make his book a best-seller. BY ALEX SHEPHARD

COLUMNS 14 Deadbeat Democrats How Bill Clinton set the stage for the GOP’s war on the poor. BY BRYCE COVERT Lauren Underwood, 16 a nurse from Illinois, Redoing the Electoral Math is a candidate for Congress. It will take more than demographics to save the Democrats. BY JOHN B. JUDIS Running on Hope REVIEW 46 Rules for Radicals A new group of Obama aides aims to take down Trump. The right-wing economist who rigged But can Democrats win without a unified message? democracy for the rich. BY ALAN WOLFE BY BEN AUSTEN 51 Theory Conspiracy Laurent Binet sets a mystery among French intellectuals. BY SVEN BIRKERTS 54 Mean Streets David Simon’s The Deuce refuses to glamorize ’70s New York. BY RACHEL SYME 28 34 38 56 True Detective #AlwaysTrump Gone Baby Gone Land of the Ross Macdonald used noir to illuminate Maybe he’ll be impeached. Shadowy shell companies, Hermit King his time. BY NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF Or maybe he’ll be voted vacant houses, and unpaid Closed off from the world, 60 The Outsider out of office in 2020. But property taxes. In the wake North Korea weaves a The Dardenne brothers probe the liberal no matter how he leaves of the housing crisis, a militarized mind-set into conscience. BY CHRISTIAN LORENTZEN the White House, we’ll new breed of real estate the fabric of everyday never be rid of Trump— investor is destroying life. A glimpse inside the 62 War Stories How Russia’s foreign policy is rooted in and all that he represents America’s cities. propaganda machine. an epic myth. BY SOPHIE PINKHAM about America. BY RACHEL MONROE TEXT BY JEAN H. LEE BY JEET HEER PHOTOS BY CARL DE KEYZER 68 Backstory PHOTOGRAPH BY ADAM REYNOLDS

POETRY 49 Sun BY HADARA BAR-NADAV

KEVIN MIYAZAKI/REDUX MIYAZAKI/REDUX KEVIN COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY NATHANIEL WELCH/REDUX

OCTOBER 2017 | 1 contributors

Editor in Chief Ben Austen is a Chicago-based journalist whose work has appeared in Win McCormack Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and The Atlantic. His book

High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing will be Editor published in February 2018. RUNNING ON HOPE, P. 18 Eric Bates

Sven Birkerts is the editor of the journal agni and the author of ten Literary Editor Digital Director books of literary criticism, including Changing the Subject: Art and Attention Laura Marsh Mindy Kay Bricker in the Internet Age. In 1983, he reviewed Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of Features Directors Executive Editor Sasha Belenky Ryan Kearney the Rose for the new republic. THEORY CONSPIRACY, P. 51 Theodore Ross Deputy Editor Managing Editor is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C., Ryu Spaeth Rachel M. Cohen Laura Reston who focuses on cities, labor, and inequality. Her work has appeared in The Social Media Editor Assistant Editor Eric Armstrong American Prospect, Slate, and Vice. THE NEW FIGHT FOR LABOR RIGHTS, P. 6 Moira Donegan Senior Editors Editor at Large Brian Beutler Bryce Covert is an independent journalist who writes about the Bob Moser Jeet Heer economy. She is a contributing op-ed writer at The New York Times, and her News Editor Design Director articles about the history of welfare reform have appeared in The Nation, Alex Shephard Siung Tjia The Atlantic, and ThinkProgress. DEADBEAT DEMOCRATS, P. 14 Staff Writers Photo Director Emily Atkin Nicholas Dawidoff is the author of five books, including Pulitzer Prize Stephanie Heimann Clio Chang Production Manager Sarah Jones finalistThe Fly Swatter: Portrait of an Exceptional Character. His first book, Josephine Livingstone Steph Tan The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg, has been made into Graham Vyse an upcoming film starring Paul Rudd.TRUE DETECTIVE, P. 56 Contributing Editors Poetry Editor James Burnett, Alexander Chee, Cathy Park Hong Carl De Keyzer is a Belgian photographer with Magnum Photos. His Ben Crair, Michelle Dean, Siddhartha Deb, Michael Reporter-Researchers work explores political systems, religion, and the environment. He has won Eric Dyson, Paul Ford, Ted Rachelle Hampton Suzanne Monyak numerous awards for his photos, and his work has been published in The Genoways, William Giraldi, Dana Goldstein, Kathryn Joyce, Rachel Stone Guardian, The New Yorker, and Le Monde. LAND OF THE HERMIT KING, P. 38 Suki Kim, Maria Konnikova, Corby Kummer, Michelle Legro, Jen Percy, Jamil Smith, John B. Judis is an editor at large at Talking Points Memo and a columnist Graeme Wood, Robert Wright at the new republic. He is the co-author, with Ruy Teixeira, of The Emerging Democratic Majority. His latest book is The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics. Director of Marketing Associate Director REDOING THE ELECTORAL MATH, P. 16 and Revenue of Advertising Evelyn Frison Shawn Awan Jean H. Lee is a journalist and global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Audience and Controller Partnership Manager International Center for Scholars. She served as bureau chief of the David Myer Eliza Fish Associated Press’s Korean Peninsula operations for five years, becoming the Office Manager, NY Media Relations Manager first American reporter permitted to join Pyongyang’s foreign press corps Sarah Whalen Steph Leke in 2011 and opening the news agency’s Pyongyang bureau in 2012. Her Associate Publisher writing was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2013. LAND OF THE HERMIT Art Stupar KING, P. 38 President and Publisher Rachel Monroe is a writer based in Marfa, Texas. She was drawn to Hamilton Fish investigate abandoned houses—and who is responsible for them—after media coverage of Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore seemed to imply that residents are to blame for the city’s decline. Her new book about women, Published by Lake Avenue Publishing crime, and obsession will be published in 2019. GONE BABY GONE, P. 34 1 Union Square West New York, NY 10003

Sophie Pinkham is the author of Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Chairman Ukraine. Her last piece in the new republic, published in the September 2016 Win McCormack issue, was a review of Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s oral histories. WAR STORIES, P. 62

For subscription inquiries or problems call (800) 827-1289 is professor emeritus of political science at Boston College and Alan Wolfe For reprints and licensing visit www.TNRreprints.com a longtime contributor to the new republic. He is the author and editor of more than 20 books, including Does American Democracy Still Work? and The Future of Liberalism. RULES FOR RADICALS, P. 46

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tnr_discovery_cuba_ad_052017_print_1.indd 1 5/24/17 1:14 PM TERRY ASHE/TIME LIFE IMAGES/GETTY Literary License David Grann OCTOBER 2017 in 1822, JohnC. Calhoun of South around as long as the modern campaign itself; out soon. “They want to know who you are.” John McCain, whose own memoiriscoming dates’ philosophy,” says Arizona Senator are no longer that interested in the candi- dirt onthemselves to get elected. “People the first time, candidates seem willingto dish also signals achange inpolitical culture: For candidate. The boomincampaign memoirs and, thus, amore attractive presidential author asamore attractive humanbeing right,” hemutters. “I’mworking onthat.” then glances at thethrong of press. “You’re elderly woman tells him. He stares at her, “You’re lookingless mouthy these days,” an of about100autograph-seekers plays along. volunteers in tow. Nevertheless, the crowd Hampshire, with leaflet-bearing political happen to pass through Manchester, New really believes him.Not many booktours just Learned the Hard Way. stack of copies of hisnew memoir, rich announces, takingaseat besideatall “I’m here onlyto sign books,” Newt Ging MAY 11,1998 remains the same:Gingrich’s booksare allabout the greatness ofGingrich. recent campaign. Two decadesafter hepublishedhis1998 memoir, one thing relaxing child-labor laws to colonizing the moon—plucked from hismost revolution heledin1994, andconcludes with policy titled volunteered to serve as his vice president. Yet the book might more aptly be had a front-row seat to the madness: He endorsed Trump early, then humbly guide to our mostincomprehensible president. The former House speaker Gingrich isback inbookstores with public Hardthe Way. The goal, asDavid Grann observed at the time in the the House, Newt Gingrich traversed New Hampshire hawking flogged bookstores. Hillary Clinton peddled Two years before a presidential election, a flood of new political memoirs hits intricately orchestrated moves that are asridiculous they are time-honored. from thestacks Learned theHard Way ELECTIONS, LIKE COTILLIONS The campaign book,of course, hasbeen This isthewholepoint of Lessons Trumping Trump. , issimple: to present the author asanattractive candidate. The The Audacity of Hope

|

5 It’s unlikely anybody Gingrich compares Trump’s victory to the conservative —to repackage its in 2006. And in 1998, fresh off a bruising coup in and professional wrestling, involve a seriesof ­ Carolina Lessons Understanding Trump, Hard Choices -

portant directive: Publish amemoir. the blueprint, though,was anequallyim power brokers to cultivate. Burieddeepin to study, what primarystates to visit,what elements of any campaign: what politics document laidoutindetail thetraditional White House four years later. The70-page a secret memorandum on how to winthe victory. On that day, Jimmy Carter received one day before Nixon’s landslidepresidential literature came onNovember 4, 1972, just A Timefor Action millions into the camp of the man who wrote policy andlibertarianismthat itfrightened so searingly honest abouthishawkish foreign ter’s Hiss andtheCheckers speech.Barry Goldwa sober manof affairs whohadovercome Alger Nixon’s with grand designs to unveil. In1962, Richard the intelligentsia that they were serious men their grand designs—or, at least, to convince times, candidates have used books to unveil a Philadelphianewspaper. Inmore recent arranged to have hislife story publishedin became theprototype of thecampaign Highly personal, But aturningpoint inmoderncampaign The Conscience of aConservative Six Crises in 2014. Barack Obama ­ prescriptions—fr a hastily published : Lyndon B. Johnson. depicted theauthorasa Lessons Learned Lessons Learned Why Not theBest? ✯ new re Today, om om - Gingrich celebrates his election as minority whip, 1989. was was - -

to hide say everything. everything. say to hide nothing have who ones the while nothing, say to hide, something have really who rich, Ging like Candidates genre: the of secret real the with We left are clean. to come his ethics problems—he can’t bring himself relate to his presidential abilities—such as actually might that to sins comes it when Yet, is. he sorry how and was, he stupid how is, he fat how everything: to confess pigged out. he mixed marijuana with baked beans and revelationboldest is that, in law school, the autobiography, Pataki’s George ernor York New in Gov so, And infomercial. the of the literary equivalent become has then, book, campaign The screaming. away run might voters the and self, inner true your confessionals can be dangerous. Reveal the highest office intheland—and itworked. Plains, Georgia, upbringingaqualification for Rosalynn. Carter’s booksought to make his names like Miss Lillian,brother Billy, and ly structure, populated by characters with people to Carter’s Gothic Southern fami confessional. Itintroduced theAmerican Gingrich, of course, insists he is willing willing is he insists course, of Gingrich, The trouble is that, in politics, actual a - - - up front

STRIKE FORCE

The New Fight for Labor Rights To survive in the twenty-first century, the labor movement needs to rethink its strategy.

BY RACHEL M. COHEN

THE AMERICAN LABOR movement currently stands at For more than 80 years, workers have primarily one of its lowest points in history. Barely one-tenth of relied on protection from the National Labor Rela- all workers belong to a union—down from more than tions Act, the landmark measure passed under FDR one-third in the 1950s. Over the past half-century, that prohibits unfair labor practices and encourages the courts have gutted legal protections for striking collective bargaining by private-sector employers. But workers, curtailed their ability to engage in political the law has been so watered down by unfriendly court action, and granted employers broad “free speech” decisions and legislative amendments that it offers rights to frighten them out of unionizing. Under little recourse for the labor movement going forward. President Trump, workers are likely to be besieged by Today, according to a new report by a leading think even more hostile attacks from Republicans and their tank, workers would be better off if they adopted a corporate allies—including calls for a national “right strategy that turned to a different and more sacrosanct to work” law that would strip unions of their ability to set of constitutional guarantees: the Bill of Rights. collect dues. If the labor movement hopes to survive in the twenty-first century, it will need a new strategy. ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARIN ELFMAN

6 | NEW REPUBLIC According to Shaun Richman, a former organizing Some longtime observers of the labor movement director for the American Federation of Teachers, are skeptical that unions will embrace Richman’s workers should not just defend their rights as em- call to arms. “I’ve found that unions are very short­ ployees, but should also start championing their sighted,” says Bill Fletcher Jr., co-founder of the liberties as citizens. In a report for the Century Center for Labor Renewal and a former education LABOR PAINS ­Foundation, Richman argues that just as corpora- director of the afl-cio. “There’s a conservatism that Percentage of American tions have gone to court to claim broad constitutional exists in the labor movement—a sense that doing workers in unions: protections, workers should assert their fundamental anything different might be too radical, or could be 1960: 30.9 rights to free speech and equal protection under misperceived, or could lead to an uncertain outcome.” 1970: 27.4 the law. “Unions have rarely if ever argued that Given the bleak state of affairs for workers, how- these cases violated their own constitutional rights,” ever, some argue the labor movement has little left to 1980: 22.3 Richman says. “Rights-based rhetoric was kept out lose. “There’s no point thinking that if labor sticks with 1990: 16.0 of their whole legal strategy.” the status quo, they will survive,” says Erik Loomis, Consider several recent cases that unions argued—­ a labor historian at the University of Rhode Island. 2000: 13.4 and lost—under the National Labor Relations Act. In “The National Labor Relations Board under Obama 2010: 11.9 2011, workers at a Jimmy John’s sandwich franchise was probably the best it’s been for labor since LBJ. in Minneapolis launched a campaign to protest the But even that kind of incremental progress is just not 2016: 10.7 company’s refusal to provide paid sick leave. In enough when you’re at total war with the Republicans.” response, the company fired six workers involved When it comes to corporations and employers, in the protest. But when the union representing the the courts routinely adopt a rights-based position. employees, the Industrial Workers of the World, Unlimited campaign contributions are protected as accused the company of violating the National Labor a form of free speech. Denying the right of unions Relations Act, a federal appeals court ruled in July to collect dues from all employees is defended as that the company had the right to fire its employees “the right to work.” Employers have the right to for engaging in “disloyal” conduct. permanently replace striking workers, and to put At the same time, Congress and the courts have economic pressure on other businesses to support sharply curtailed the ability of workers to go on strike, their own economic interests. Richman points to cable especially in solidarity with others. It is now ille- television providers that have blacked out an entire gal for truck drivers to refuse to make deliveries to channel rather than submit to a rate increase from stores where workers are on strike, or for cleaners the channel’s network—and have even urged viewers to refuse to wash linens from hotels where workers to call the network’s CEO to complain. “Why is the are protesting. In 2006, Roger Toussaint, then the use of the secondary boycott legal when employed president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, was sentenced to ten days in jail for leading a transit strike that crippled New York City. Employ- ers, meanwhile, have retained the right to lock out Workers should steal a page from the corporate workers who are engaged in collective bargaining, playbook and assert their constitutional rights to and to fire employees without just cause. free speech and equal protection under the law. To Richman, cases like these underscore the ben- efit of a rights-based strategy. After all, punishing employees for speaking out against their boss— whether on a flyer, at -shirt, or Twitter—would by media companies,” Richman writes in his report, seem to violate their First Amendment right to free “but illegal when exercised in solidarity by workers?” speech. Similarly, going on strike should fall un- Richman spells out a variety of rights-based cas- der the constitutional right to free assembly, and es that unions should take to court—where even union organizing embodies the right enshrined in conservative judges have proven to be receptive to the Thirteenth Amendment to be free from “invol- constitutional arguments. Unions should argue that untary servitude.” In effect, Richman argues, unions workers have a free-speech right to protest their should go on offense in the courts—and brandish employers. If they are locked out on the job, workers the Constitution as their most powerful weapon. should assert their due process rights under the Fifth “After the election, it’s clear Democrats need to do Amendment. And they should challenge right-to- something to win back workers,” Richman says. “But work laws and the bans on solidarity boycotts and they don’t really know what to do. Why not push the so-called “signal picketing”—such as protests in courts to establish a right to strike? Or the right to front of a company that mistreats its employees—as be free from arbitrary terminations from your job?” violations of their Fourteenth Amendment right

OCTOBER 2017 | 7 up front to equal protection under the law. “Simply put,” we could just pursue a long legal strategy and ul- Richman argues, “unions are hampered by rules timately win in the courts,” says Stephen Lerner, that would never be applied to corporations, or to a labor strategist and architect of the Justice for any other form of political activism.” Janitors campaign. “It has to be part of a concerted In addition to fighting in court, workers and their strategy—winning both legally and legislatively.” allies need to educate the public about workplace In a way, there’s no better time than now to imple- inequality and pressure Democratic lawmakers to ment a rights-based labor strategy. After all, Lerner block anti-labor judges. They also need to begin points out, some of the greatest gains in labor history outlining a clear pro-worker agenda for whoever have come from workers organizing to fight illegal or wins the Democratic nomination for president in unprotected conditions—whether it was farmworkers 2020. The Obama era showed just how brief the going on strike to protest low wages, or public school window of opportunity can be for advancing labor teachers mobilizing for collective bargaining rights at rights. That’s why, even though the GOP currently the state level. It’s not just Republicans holding back controls all three branches of government, and the workers—it’s also the timidity of unions themselves. courts still tilt to the right on matters of labor law, “There has to be a willingness to break the law as a unions and their supporters must wage a war on way to highlight injustices,” Lerner says, “to show all fronts. “It would be horrible if people thought we can go on offense.”a

HOMELAND INSECURITY

Losing Hearts and Minds How Trump quietly gutted a program to combat homegrown extremists.

BY BENJAMIN POWERS

EVEN AS DONALD Trump has vowed to eradicate the combating extremism by far-right groups—a form scourge of “radical Islamic terrorism” and to ban of terrorism that has risen sharply under Trump. Muslim immigration, one element of Barack Obama’s The message was clear: Instead of partnering with counterterrorism strategy seemed likely to survive. religious and community leaders to fight all forms Last year, the Department of Homeland Security of homegrown extremism, like the violent attack announced it would award $10 million to groups that in Charlottesville, Trump will largely rely on law work to turn people away from violent extremism. enforcement to target Muslim Americans—a move The majority of the grants would flow to a wide range that is likely to exacerbate tensions in communities of community organizations—including the Muslim subjected to warrantless surveillance, religious pro- Public Affairs Council, which targets the social and filing, and police aggression. political isolation that can lead to radicalization, “Community-led initiatives that were the cen- and Life After Hate, which works to rehabilitate terpiece of this grant process are being deleted and former neo-Nazis and other right-wing radicals. The rendered obsolete by the administration,” says Salam funding—part of a program called Countering Violent Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Extremism—emphasizes community engagement Council, which lost $393,800 in funding. “To us, over aggressive law enforcement. “Very often the there is no indication they believe in community best efforts to counter violent extremism are local, partnership. The rhetoric from this administration, tailored to a particular community,” said Jeh Johnson, if anything, is trying to kill partnership between law Obama’s secretary of homeland security. enforcement and communities.” But all that changed over the summer. Without The abruptness of the administration’s move has warning, the Trump administration abruptly canceled left many of the community groups scrambling to the CVE funding for many community organizations, survive. “That loss of funding was crippling for us,” shifting the majority of grants to law enforcement says Todd Mack, the executive director of Music in and government agencies. What’s more, the ad- Common, which was set to receive $159,000. Mack ministration eliminated grants explicitly aimed at founded the nonprofit in 2005, three years after his

8 | NEW REPUBLIC The Trump Tweetometer A highly precise quantitative analysis of every single presidential tweet.

WHAT DOES DONALD TRUMP think about all day? more than creating jobs for Americans (82) To answer that question, we dissected each of his or fighting terrorism (43). He obsesses over 1,270 tweets since his inauguration. The result Obama (40) more than crime (24), and Crooked is a detailed Twitter scan of the president’s brain Hillary (36) more than North Korea (35). Boring during his first seven months in office. Most of stuff—religion, infrastructure, energy—barely his cerebral cortex is dominated by things he registers at all. Thanks to the emerging science of hates: “fake news” (145 mentions), Obamacare Computed Twittography, we now have a precise (122), Democrats (110), and immigrants (100). CT scan of the president’s mental state. And the He dwells on his own campaign and crowds (91) prognosis, we’re sorry to report, is not good.

Inside Trump’s Brain A Twitter scan of the president’s mind, based on everything he tweeted about more than 30 times. OBAMACARE NEWS SUCKS I LIKE MY AWESOMEHUGE CAMPAIGN FAKE AND MYCROWDS S OBAMA G T D ET AN TI R SUCKS E NEWS NG R MIG M ID OF IM O C R ARY A CROOKED HILL SO MANY TS I HATE JOBS!

I’VE MET FOREIGN LEADERS TRADE T DEALS E RUSSIA TERRORISM N I B A NORTH HOW REPUBLICANS IN C Y CONGRESS ARE TOTALLY M KOREA GOING TO DO WHAT I SAY MY BEAUTIFUL FAMILY OUR GREAT Other Stuff I Stuff I Barely MILITARY Think About Think About The Courts 30 Infrastructure 8 Leaks 24 Religion 4 Crime 24 Energy 4 China 22 The Holocaust 3 James Comey 22 Guns 2 Sports 21 Sean Spicer 1

OCTOBER 2017 | 9 up front

A RADICAL friend Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, retrograde,” says Brian Levin, director of the Center SHIFT was kidnapped and murdered by extremists in Paki- for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California Trump’s cuts stan. Over the past decade, the group has worked to State University in San Bernardino. “This is like look- to community bring people of different faiths and cultures together ing at a patient that’s having various manifestations groups fighting through songwriting and performances. Mack had of illness, and just doing an MRI on their shoulder.” extremism: hired staff and planned out the next two years of Shifting money to government agencies also Life After Hate programming based on the promised CVE grant. “I makes potential extremists less likely to cooper- $400,000 wasn’t naïve,” he says. “I knew what was going on ate with counterterrorism efforts. “When these during Trump’s campaign and the rhetoric he was programs are cut, people think, ‘Why should I be Muslim Public Affairs Council using. But I didn’t think they’d strip away funding a part of this?’ or ‘I don’t feel comfortable working $393,800 for this after people had already been notified.” with these agencies,’” says Laura Khor, an expert Sammy Rangel, the executive director and on countering violent extremism at the Center for Music in Common $159,000 co-founder of Life After Hate, was similarly blindsided. Security Studies at Georgetown. “That puts a lot on “We felt like the rug had been pulled out from under- the government agencies. They have to work harder, Coptic Orthodox neath us,” he told CNN in July. The Chicago-based because they’ve lost key players in the communities.” Charities group, which was founded by former neo-Nazis, The shift in CVE grants is a sign that those within $150,000 planned to use the $400,000 in CVE grants to provide the Trump administration who agitate for an all- Project Help job training and other services to help extremists out “war on Islam” have gained the upper hand. In Nevada disengage from hate groups. Since Trump’s election, July, George Selim, the head of the CVE program, $150,000 Life After Hate says, it has seen requests for assistance handed in his resignation. Selim, a conservative Re- Muslim American soar twentyfold, as concerned friends and family publican who joined Homeland Security during the Leadership members seek to help their loved ones get their lives Bush administration, initially believed that Trump Alliance back on track. Indeed, as a recent report from the might be open to working hand-in-hand with Mus- $40,000 Government Accountability Office points out, right- lim communities. John Kelly, the homeland security wing extremists in the United States have carried out secretary who became White House chief of staff in far more deadly attacks since ­September 11, 2001, July, even attended a celebration during Ramadan than Islamic radicals have. “We’re dealing with life- earlier this year and emphasized the importance of and-death issues,” Rangel said. The loss of funding partnering with American Muslims. “might embolden the people we’re trying to help.” But the sudden pivot on CVE grants reveals There’s little doubt that Trump’s policy shift will Trump’s true strategy when it comes to radical- make it harder for the government to successfully ization. “There were clearly political appointees combat violent extremism. Studies have shown that in this administration who didn’t see the value of the best way to confront homegrown terrorists is community partnerships with American Muslims,” not through law enforcement, but by partnering Selim told The Atlantic. For Trump, it appears, even with religious leaders and family members in the $10 million is too much to spend on winning hearts communities where extremists live. “This pivot is and minds in the war on terrorism. a

PIPELINE PROTEST

The Next Standing Rock A new Canadian pipeline could be “game over” for the climate—and activists are lining up to stop it.

BY BEN ADLER

EVEN AS THE world continues to reel from Donald in planet-warming pollution by transporting oil Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate extracted from Canada’s tar sands, one of the world’s accord, another environmental disaster is already dirtiest and most energy-intensive sources of crude. looming. In September, construction is scheduled to The supersize pipeline, stretching along a 715-mile begin on a massive expansion of the Trans Mountain route from Alberta to the Pacific Ocean, will pump Pipeline, a project that will create a dramatic spike 890,000 barrels of oil to the coast each day—more

10 | NEW REPUBLIC than doubling the current carbon emissions from But the project’s timeline—let alone its ultimate tar sands. In climate terms, that’s the equivalent of completion—is far from assured. Trans Mountain putting another 3.6 million cars on the road. has galvanized climate activists and indigenous Mining and processing oil from tar sands creates leaders, who argue that the pipeline will pollute 14 percent more carbon emissions than the average drinking water, injure wildlife, and displace native oil used in the United States—and transporting it peoples. The city of Vancouver has filed a lawsuit to from the remote interior of Canada to foreign mar- block the pipeline, arguing that the accompanying kets drives up emissions even more. Canada’s oil and sevenfold increase in traffic by oil tankers poses a gas industry is already the country’s largest source serious threat to aquatic life and water safety. Envi- of carbon emissions, and it’s growing rapidly—up ronmentalists say the impact on endangered orcas 76 percent between 1990 and 2015. James Hansen, one of the first climate scientists to sound the alarm on global warming, has warned that exploiting the tar sands would be nothing short of “game over for Despite Justin Trudeau’s reputation as a the climate.” climate hero, he is betting on the failure of The pipeline itself is American, owned by the Paris accord. Houston-based­­ energy giant Kinder-Morgan, which boasts of operating a “giant toll road” for the flow of oil and natural gas. But the man paving the way for the pipeline is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, represents a violation of Canada’s Species at Risk who has carefully cultivated a reputation among Act; in an email to the new republic, Kinder-Morgan environmentalists as the climate-conscious op- notes that the government is requiring it to develop posite of Donald Trump. “The pipeline flies in the a Marine Mammal Protection Program to mitigate face of a lot of the values we’re seeing from the prime the potential threat to whales. minister—­like his great statements about Canadians First Nations communities along the pipeline believing in climate action after Trump pulled out route have also filed lawsuits, arguing that the project of Paris,” says Mike Hudema, a climate campaigner threatens their drinking water. “It is our Standing with Greenpeace Canada. Rock,” Lee Spahan, chief of the Coldwater Nation, The Canadian government says it has factored declared at a press conference in January. More Trans Mountain’s emissions into its plan to meet than 120 native groups in Canada and the United its obligations under the Paris agreement. But en- States have joined the Treaty Alliance Against Tar vironmental experts argue that the math doesn’t Sands Expansion, and climate activists in the United add up. The new pipeline is projected to spew up to States are raising funds to support the lawsuits. In 17 million tons of carbon diox- ide into the atmosphere every year—far more than Canadi- ans can be expected to save by cutting back on emissions elsewhere. And the pipeline only makes economic sense if the Paris accord fails: After all, since tar-sand oil is more expensive to extract than light crude, Trans Mountain can turn a profit only if the world keeps burning more and more oil. By saying yes to the pipe- line, Trudeau is effectively betting on a global spike in oil consumption. “Approval is predicated on the failure of the Paris agreement,” says Kathryn Harrison, a professor of polit- ical science at the University of British Columbia.

OCTOBER 2017 | 11 up front

addition, the Sierra Club and other environmen- If all else fails, activists plan literally to put their tal groups are pressuring banks not to underwrite bodies on the line, as they did at Keystone and Stand- Kinder-Morgan’s upcoming initial public offering. ing Rock. In 2014, when Kinder-Morgan attempted “It is a Canadian political issue,” says Sierra Club a drilling test along the pipeline’s route, 34 local campaigner Stephanie Hillman, “but it’s a regional activists were arrested for trying to block the machin- environmental issue.” ery. And just as First Nations activists from Canada The leftward tilt of Canadian politics, especially traveled to North Dakota to protest the Dakota Access in British Columbia, may also throw a wrench in Pipeline, Native Americans from south of the border Kinder-Morgan’s plans. The pipeline was approved plan to block the Trans Mountain expansion. “We last fall by federal and provincial governments can pretty much guarantee that camps will spring up controlled by Trudeau’s Liberal Party. But in May, along the pipeline route,” says Grand Chief Stewart after New Democrats and Greens won a one-seat Phillip, president of the Union of British Columbia majority in British Columbia, the left-wing coalition Indian Chiefs. “Those camps will be occupied not vowed to do everything in its power to block the only by First Nations people and their allies, but by Trans Mountain Pipeline—including holding up the environmental and multifaith movement. It will necessary permits. be very similar to Standing Rock.” a

NOVEL APPROACH

Art of the Steal How Trump boosted his book sales and gamed the New York Times best-seller list.

BY ALEX SHEPHARD

DONALD TRUMP’S PROUDEST accomplishment—next Art of the Deal. Total sales figures for Trump’s mem- to his high-rises, his golf courses, and his daughter oir are estimated at between one million and four Ivanka—is his book, Trump: The Art of the Deal. million copies—compared to at least seven million Published 30 years ago this fall, the book has long for Rich Dad, Poor Dad; 25 million for The 7 Habits served as his calling card—evidence that he’s the of Highly Effective People; and 30 million for How greatest negotiator ever to live, and proof positive to Win Friends and Influence People. And while it’s that he’s fit to be president. When critics tried to true that The Art of the Deal spent 48 weeks on the laugh him off during his campaign, Trump fired back Times best-seller list—even reaching the number-­ with his bone fides. “I went to the Wharton School one spot, where it remained for 13 weeks—that of Finance, I was a great student,” he boasted. “I go achievement was due not just to Trump’s image out, I make a tremendous fortune. I write a book as a celebrity, but also to his vanity and penchant for gaming the system. The story of how Trump all but assured his book reached the best-seller list was first revealed by Jack Trump executives purchased thousands of copies O’Donnell, a former Trump executive who detailed of The Art of the Deal—so many, in fact, they had to his boss’s self-dealing in his 1991 tell-all, Trumped! find creative ways to get rid of them all. According to O’Donnell, who oversaw marketing and served as president and chief operating officer of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino from 1987 to 1990, the Trump Organization helped boost The called The Art of the Deal, the number-one-selling Art of the Deal by purchasing tens of thousands of business book of all time.” What else do voters need copies on its own. In his book, O’Donnell recounts to know? After all, it’s the rare businessman who can buying 1,000 copies of The Art of the Deal to sell land a spot on the New York Times best-seller list. in the Plaza’s gift shop—only to be told by fellow Contrary to Trump’s claims, however, other executive Steve Hyde that it wasn’t nearly enough. business books have sold far more copies than The “You’ve got to increase your order,” Hyde told him.

12 | NEW REPUBLIC “Donald will go nuts if you don’t order more books.” How many more? Four thousand cop- ies, O’Donnell was told. “We were pressured to buy a lot of books,” O’Donnell tells the new republic. So many, in fact, that he had to find creative ways to get rid of them all. “What we would do is use them as a turn-down service in a hotel,” O’Donnell laughs. “You know how in a nice hotel they turn your bedcover down and put a mint there? We were putting books on the bed.” And it wasn’t just the Plaza Hotel that was buying the book in bulk. According to O’Don- nell, Trump executives were instructed to buy thousands of copies for their properties. In typical Trump fashion, the boss pitted his top executives against each other: When Trump’s then-wife, Ivana, ordered 4,000 books for the Trump Castle Casino in Atlantic City, O’Don- nell was warned that he needed to match her. “Hey, Jack,” a fellow executive cautioned him, “you better buy as many books as Ivana, or Donald will use it against you.” bulk purchases of the kind the Trump Organization At the time Trump was purchasing stacks of his was making. But that hasn’t stopped opportunists—­ own book, gaming the Times best-seller list was just especially politicians—from manipulating the num- coming into fashion for desperate writers and publish- bers. Over the past three decades, Al D’Amato, Scott ers. Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, published Brown, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, and Joe Lieberman in 1966, and Wayne Dyer’s Your Erroneous Zones, have all been busted for using campaign funds to published in 1976, each benefited from large orders purchase their own books to distribute to donors. that helped propel them to best-seller status. But In 2015, Ted Cruz got in a lengthy spat with the Trump helped pioneer the cheating among business Times, which refused to place him on its best-seller BULK BUYERS authors, who have more resources to rig the system. list after he spent $122,000 on his own book. Even How much politicians “Much of this was not very public,” says Laura Miller, Trump himself returned to the practice he pioneered spent on copies of their a sociologist at Brandeis University who studies the with The Art of the Deal. Last year, The Daily Beast own books: publishing industry. “When you have someone who is reported that Trump had illegally spent $55,000 of Ben Carson the executive of a large organization, there are more his campaign funds on thousands of copies of his America the Beautiful financial resources available for large purchases of new manifesto, Crippled America—an initial boost and One Nation books—and more of a rationale for doing so.” that helped it gain a spot on the Times chart as well, $150,000 The benefits of rigging the system are huge. For where it stayed for three months. Ted Cruz authors, being able to tout themselves as a New York Even without Trump’s manipulation, The Art A Time for Truth Times best-seller can help them land more book of the Deal would have become a best-seller. De- $122,000 deals, TV appearances, and other lucrative gigs. mand ultimately proved to be so high that Random Herman Cain Trump, for his part, parlayed his best-seller status House, the book’s publisher, had trouble keeping This is Herman Cain! into two new careers: first as host of The Apprentice, bookstores stocked with copies. But Trump’s bulk $100,000 and then as leader of the free world. “The New York purchases generated much-needed buzz at a crucial Sarah Palin Times name lends a certain kind of gravitas,” says moment—and, like so much else he does, served to Going Rogue Miller. “It shows that one is popular among the stroke his ego. While his hotel staffs were hustling $63,000 public, and that this very respected news outlet is to give away all the unsold copies of The Art of Deal certifying that popularity.” he had purchased, Trump insisted on setting up a Donald Trump Crippled America Not long after the success of The Art of the Deal, table in Trump Tower to personally autograph the $55,000 the Times began taking steps to protect the integrity book for guests. “He loved doing it,” recalls Tony of its list. In 1995, after business authors Michael Schwartz, the book’s co-author. Even as The Art of Treacy and Fred Wiersema allegedly spent $250,000 the Deal was garnering the stamp of approval from purchasing their own books, the Times added a dag- a publication he now derides as “fake news,” Trump ger symbol next to books that benefited from large wanted to experience the adulation firsthand.a

OCTOBER 2017 | 13 battle lines

as workers, not welfare cheats, a more generous era would ensue,” The New York Times observed in 2000, summing up the rationale for Clinton’s wager on welfare reform. “Harmful stereotypes would fade. New benefits would flow.” Celebrating the law’s passage in 1996, Clinton repeated his Reaganesque justifi- cation for sweeping change. “The current welfare system undermines the basic val- ues of work, responsibility, and family,” he declared, “trapping generation after generation in dependency.” In the end, though, Clinton never succeeded at getting more generous benefits for the poor. And his bet on “reform” turned what was once a helping hand into a slap in the face—and an utter disaster for the vulnerable. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act ended the Great Society promise of cash benefits for all families in need. It imposed work requirements on recipients of welfare benefits, and allowed states to erect further barriers to aid. And it plunged millions into even deeper pov- erty. In 1996, nearly 70 percent of poor families received benefits. Today it’s less than 25 percent. And that’s not because Deadbeat Democrats they all found decent jobs and developed How Bill Clinton set the stage for the GOP’s war on the poor. the sense of “personal responsibility” and “self-sufficiency” that Clinton loved BY BRYCE COVERT to preach about. According to a study of low-income single mothers, more than 20 percent go for months at a time with N JUNE, AT A RALLY IN CEDAR RAPIDS, nationalist demagogues like Trump but neither employment nor benefits. Since Iowa, President Trump brought 6,000 of Democrats like Clinton, who pledged 1995, the number of Americans living Isupporters to their feet, roaring their in his 1992 campaign to “end welfare as on $2 or less a day has nearly tripled­—­ approval. “I believe the time has come for we know it.” including some three million children. new immigration rules,” Trump bellowed. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s talk At the same time, Clinton’s reform “Those seeking admission into our coun- of lazy “welfare queens” and “strapping failed to convince more Americans to help try must be able to support themselves young bucks” buying expensive steaks on those in need. In fact, as political scien- financially and should not use welfare for the government’s dime had turned welfare tists Joe Soss and Sanford Schram have a period of at least five years.” A bill to into a dirty word. By 1989, two-thirds of found, the law “was actually followed by shred the safety net for legal immigrants Americans thought welfare made people a decline in the public’s desire to reduce would be moving through Congress “very dependent and “content” to stay poor. inequality and raise living standards for shortly,” Trump promised. Feeling hemmed in by white voters who the poor.” Rather than reframe the debate The legislation never materialized, for had responded to Reagan’s racemonger- over welfare, Clinton ended up legitimiz- a simple reason: What Trump proposed ing about the shiftless poor guzzling up ing the notion that the poor need “tough is already the law of the land. Thanks to government benefits, Clinton decided to love,” reinforcing the racist stereotypes the massive “welfare reform” bill that make a sort of Faustian bargain: He would that had been peddled by Reagan, and President Bill Clinton signed two decades “reform” welfare in a way that would de- whetting the GOP’s appetites for even ago, new immigrants are ineligible for toxify the politics around it, gambling more cuts. Today, drawing on the same public assistance during their first five that the move would create more support rationale that was given credence by years in America. It’s a mean-spirited for a strong safety net in the long run. policy. But it was the creation not of “Once taxpayers started viewing the poor ILLUSTRATION BY ANDRÉ CARRILHO

14 | NEW REPUBLIC ­Clinton, Trump and his Republican allies Ryan calls “welfare reform” one of “the “an attack, by and large, on low-income in Congress are clamoring for another two big things” that Republicans want Americans,” has never put forward a round of “welfare reform.” If Bill Clinton to get done this year. The House budget program for reversing the devastation took us back to the days of Hoovervilles would impose harsh work requirements it’s caused. and breadlines, Paul Ryan and his fel- on a host of new programs and turn Med- This fall, Democrats have a chance to low conservatives want to return us to icaid into “block grants,” placing federal start reframing the debate. With GOP Dickensian England. And they may very funds in the hands of individual states—a majorities in both houses of Congress, well get their way this time, thanks to the system that has dramatically eroded wel- liberals won’t be able to defeat all of Ryan’s noxious legacy of welfare reform. fare benefits since 1996. Trump’s budget, and Trump’s proposals. But they should meanwhile, calls for slashing $272 billion seize the opportunity to roll out concrete HE CASE THAT CLINTON MADE from a wide category of “welfare” pro- proposals to match their anti-poverty rhet- for “welfare reform” created a grams over the next decade. oric. Two years ago, Representative Gwen Tpowerful weapon that Republi- Republican governors and state legis- Moore of Wisconsin, a former welfare ben- cans are using in their renewed assault latures, in the meantime, are not waiting eficiary herself, came up with a promising on the poor. Paul Ryan has long defended­ for Congress to act. Fifteen states now approach. Her Rise Out of Poverty Act his calls for draconian cuts to safety-­ strip aid from anyone who misses or fails would fundamentally change the nature of net programs by explicitly comparing a drug test. Some have imposed harsh “welfare reform” by shifting the measure them to Clinton’s approach, which the lifetime limits on benefits: Families in of success from reducing welfare rolls to House speaker has praised for yielding Arizona, for example, are abruptly cut reducing child poverty. The bill would “landmark legislation” that he considers off after a year, no matter how dire their require that benefits rise with inflation, an “unprecedented success.” Echoing circumstances. Wisconsin Governor Scott which hasn’t happened since 1996. And Clinton, Ryan has blamed poverty on a Walker has sued the federal government it would guarantee childcare for all wel- “tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in to allow him to place work requirements fare recipients who work. “You want to be particular, of men not working and just on food-stamp recipients, contending self-sufficient?” Moore told me back when generations of men not even thinking that the states should have wider latitude she first introduced her bill. “Hallelujah! about working or learning the value of to impose restrictions on benefits. Let’s talk about what it means.” the culture of work.” Republicans, of course, have been But even Moore’s proposal plays on the The most recent House budget sings waging war on the poor for decades. But GOP’s turf, by emphasizing ways to reward the same tune, relying on lingering if Trump and Ryan succeed in slashing the “working” poor. Instead of fighting a ­perceptions of the “deadbeat” poor. “The federal government should no lon- ger create a culture of dependency on Since the passage of “welfare reform,” the number government,” the budget insists, “but of Americans living on $2 or less a day has nearly rather should promote self-sufficiency tripled—including some three million children. and the value of a hard-earned dollar.” It recommends welfare reforms that “pro- mote work and self-sufficiency,” as if the the safety net even further, Democrats rearguard effort to preserve existing bene- country hadn’t endured a debate over will shoulder part of the blame. Back fits, Democrats should go on offense, pro- just that for the better part of the 1990s. when Clinton first pushed for welfare posing even bolder ideas to aid the poor. In his own budget, President Trump ex- reform, many Democrats fought hard to For starters, why not call for a “universal plicitly calls for a new round of “welfare stop it. Almost his entire cabinet, and half basic income” that ensures every Ameri- reform,” in nearly identical language. “We the Democrats in Congress, opposed the can a bare-minimum level of resources? must reform our welfare system so that measure. But in the two decades since, Under UBI—an idea once championed it does not discourage able-bodied adults liberals have done next to nothing to by both George McGovern and Richard from working, which takes away scarce change the toxic terms of welfare poli- Nixon—the government would simply resources from those in real need,” the tics by challenging, in a consistent way, cut an annual check for every American. president’s budget states. “Work must the stereotype that welfare recipients are A federal supplement of just $3,000 a year be the center of our social policy.” undeserving. They’ve never tried to rekin- would slice poverty rates in half. But where “welfare” used to refer dle the War on Poverty. Instead, they’ve The only way to atone for Bill Clinton’s specifically to cash assistance, Republi- pushed mainly for tax breaks to “working sin, and for his party’s continued failure cans have expanded the definition. Now families”—language that conjures up a to defend those in need, is to create a new a whole new universe of programs has Reaganesque divide between hardwork- political constituency for increasing aid been lumped together and primed for ing Americans who merit assistance and to the poor. It’s an effort that will take the chopping block: food stamps, Med- those who don’t. Even Bernie Sanders, years, perhaps decades. But the time to icaid, even unemployment insurance. who has denounced welfare reform as start is now. a

OCTOBER 2017 | 15 body politic

notion that Democrats must woo Trump voters as a “fool’s errand,” Phillips says the party must be “race-conscious and not race-neutral or color-blind.” Demographics are destiny. “The con- cerns of people of color,” he concludes, “should be driving politics today and into the future.” This isn’t a new argument, of course— and I bear some responsibility for it. The book I co-wrote in 2002 with de- mographer Ruy Teixeira, The Emerging Democratic Majority, laid out an overly optimistic forecast of the party’s pros- pects in an increasingly diverse America. By and large, Teixeira still holds to the view that the growth of minority popu- lations will provide a long-term “boost to the left.” In his new book, fittingly titled The Optimistic Leftist, Teixeira notes that by the 2050s, eleven of the 15 largest states will be “majority-minority.” On one level, there’s no arguing with the math. If you take the percentage of Americans that the U.S. census defines as “minorities” and project their past voting habits into the next decade and beyond, you’ll come up with a very sun- Redoing the Electoral Math ny version of the Democrats’ prospects. I argued that demographics favored the Democrats. I was wrong. There are only two problems with this line of thinking, but they’re pretty big BY JOHN B. JUDIS ones. For starters, the census prediction of a “majority-­minority” America—slated to arrive in 2044—is deeply flawed. And F ANY FORCE ON EARTH COULD BE Steve Phillips of the Center for Amer- so is the notion that ethnic minorities powerful enough to unite the Dem- ican Progress, a leading proponent of the will always and forever continue to back Iocratic Party, you’d have thought the latter view, argues that the Democrats Democrats in Obama-like numbers. words “President Donald Trump” would doomed themselves in 2016 with “a stra- do the trick. Instead, Hillary Clinton’s tegic error: prioritizing the pursuit of HE U.S. CENSUS MAKES A CRITI- ­defeat last November only served to in- wavering whites over investing in and cal assumption that undermines tensify the split within the party. Nine inspiring African American voters.” In Tits predictions of a majority-­ months in, two warring camps continue the wake of the election, Phillips wrote nonwhite country. It projects that the to offer seemingly irreconcilable versions in The Nation that “the single greatest same percentage of people who cur- of what went awry and how to fix it. On force shaping American politics today rently identify themselves as “Latino” one side, populists like Bernie Sanders is the demographic revolution that is or “Asian” will continue to claim those and Rust Belt Democrats like Represen- transforming the racial composition of identities in future generations. In real- tative Tim Ryan of Ohio argue that the the U.S. population.” ity, that’s highly unlikely. History shows party lost by neglecting working-class Taken together, Phillips writes in his that as ethnic groups assimilate into voters while catering primarily to “identi- book, Brown Is the New White, “progres- American culture, they increasingly ty politics.” On the other side, an equally sive people of color” already combine identify themselves as “white.” vocal contingent makes the opposite case: with “progressive whites” to make up Whiteness is not a genetic category, that the Democrats will blow it in 2018 51 percent of voting-age Americans. “And after all; it’s a social and political con- and 2020 if they take voters of color for that majority,” he adds, “is getting big- struct that relies on perception and granted and focus their energy on wooing ger every single day.” The strategy pre- the white voters who backed Trump. scription logically follows. Rejecting the ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX NABAUM

16 | NEW REPUBLIC prejudice. A century ago, Irish, Italians, Latino vote in 2016. Those are not the on a woman’s right to choose; rather, and Jews were not seen as whites. “This kinds of numbers on which you can build they emphasized the fundamental inter­ town has 8,000,000 people,” a young a lasting majority. est in prosperity and peace that unites Harry Truman wrote his cousin upon vis­ the working and middle classes. Think iting New York City in 1918. “7,500,000 of OING FORWARD, THE REAL of Bill Clinton’s “putting people first” ’em are of Israelish extraction. (400,000 demographic question is not campaign in 1992, or Obama’s reelec­ wops and the rest are white people.)” But Gwhether voters of color will com­ tion effort in 2012, when he spent the by the time Truman became president, all bine with progressive whites to form a year contrasting his vision of a country those immigrant groups were considered new American majority; it’s whether in which “everybody gets a fair shot” with “white.” There’s no reason to imagine that Democrats, without abandoning their the GOP’s “same old you’re-on-your- Latinos and Asians won’t follow much the commitment to racial justice and to own philosophy.” same pattern. America’s immigrants, can succeed in By contrast, Hillary Clinton’s “Stron­ In fact, it’s already happening. In the crafting a message and an agenda that ger Together” campaign was rooted in 2010 Census, 53 percent of Latinos iden­ steers clear of the liberal version of racial the idea of “inclusion.” She conveyed her tified as “white,” as did more than half stereotyping: assuming that people of concern with race, ethnicity, and gender, of Asian Americans of mixed parentage. color will inevitably vote alike. but not with what Sanders called “the In future generations, those percent­ Democrats need to heed two obvious disappearing middle class.” ages are almost certain to grow. Accord­ but often ignored facts about American If Democrats try to win future elec­ ing to a recent Pew study, more than politics. The first is that Democrats from tions by relying on narrow racial-­ethnic one-quarter of Latinos and Asians marry Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama have targeting, they will not only enable the non-Latinos and non-Asians, and that succeeded in winning national elections Republicans to play wedge politics, they number will surely continue to climb (as have most of the Republicans who’ve will also miss the opportunity to make over the generations. entered the White House) by convincingly a broader economic argument. Not Unless ethnic identification is defined portraying themselves as the candidates long ago, I spoke with Mustafa Tameez, in purely racial—and racist—terms, the of “the common folk” and “the middle a Houston political consultant who census projections are straight-out wrong class” against Wall Street and other made his name helping to elect the and profoundly misleading. So is the as­ special interests. first Vietnamese-­American to the Tex­ sumption that Asians and Latinos will Especially following his noxious as House. The momentum in American continue to vote at an overwhelming comments on Charlottesville, it’s hard politics, he believes, is with Democrats clip for Democrats. This view, which to see Trump’s election as anything but who stress “an economic message rather underpins the whole idea of a “new a ­national revival of white supremacy. To than ethnic-identity politics. We can’t American majority,” ignores the diver­ be sure, he put out plenty of dog whistles buy into the conservative frame that the sity that already prevails among voters for the racists. But in the general election, Democrats are a party of the minorities.” lumped together as “Latino” or “Asian.” Cuban-Americans in Miami vote very differently from Mexican-Americans in There is no need for Democrats to choose Los Angeles; immigrants from Japan or between appealing to white workers and courting Vietnam come from starkly different people of color. cultures than those from South Korea or China. While more than two-thirds of Asian voters went for Obama in 2012 Trump ran as the candidate of the “silent This thinking runs contrary to the and Clinton in 2016, they leaned the other majority,” who promised to “make Amer­ “race-conscious” strategy touted by way in the 2014 midterms: National exit ica great again” in the face of opposition Democrats who believe that a majority­- polls showed them favoring Republicans from “the establishment.” minority nation is a guarantee of victory. by 50 to 49 percent. The second fact about elections is Sorry to say, but it’s not going to happen. Similarly, while Latinos form a strong that conservatives in both parties have The best way for Democrats to build a Democratic bloc in California, in most repeatedly defeated left and center-left lasting majority is to fight for an agenda states they don’t automatically punch candidates by dividing their natural of shared prosperity that has the power the “D.” In Texas, Senator John Cornyn constituency—­the bottom two-thirds to unite, rather than divide, their natu­ bested his Democratic opponent among of America’s economic pyramid—along ral constituencies. There is no need, in Latinos in 2014 by a small margin, and racial or ethnic lines. The Democrats short, for Democrats to choose between Senator Richard Burr won 49 percent who have successfully countered this appealing to white workers and courting of the Latino vote in North Carolina last divide-and-conquer strategy didn’t turn people of color. By making a strong and year over a strong liberal challenger. In their backs on the civil rights of African effective case for economic justice, they Florida, Marco Rubio almost won the Americans or Mexican-Americans, or can do both at the same time. a

OCTOBER 2017 | 17 18 | NEW REPUBLIC Ravi Gupta is recruiting a fresh slate of candidates to take down Trump. But can a former Obama staffer forge a new path for Democrats?

BY BEN AUSTEN Laurie Pohutsky, a 29-year-old lab technician from the suburbs of

PHOTOGRAPH BY Detroit, sits on a stage before 500 aspiring politicians to explain NATHANIEL WELCH why she decided to run for the Michigan state legislature. “After the election, a lot of people were scared,” she says. “I’m a woman, a scientist, and a survivor of sexual assault. And we’ve watched the current administration attack all three of these groups.” For Pohutsky, Donald Trump’s victory was a sort of “11/9 awakening,” an inversion of that other radical reorienting of American life. The morning after the election, bewildered and angry, she asked herself, “What can I do at this moment to make a difference?” The answer, she says, was clear: “I was going to run for office.”

OCTOBER 2017 | 19 Kelly Breen, a lawyer sitting next to Pohutsky, chimes in. to Nashville for a weekend in December. A venture capitalist “I was tired of complaining on Facebook!” Those assembled friend from Silicon Valley seeded most of the money for what whoop with delight and snap their fingers in choral harmony. would be the Arena’s first meet-up. The group’s logo, five cir- When Breen came home from work on November 9, she recalls, cling arrows all pointing inward to a blank space, is a pictorial her husband handed her a sheaf of official-looking forms and representation of something Obama said during the 2008 declared, “You’re running for office.” campaign: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the Pohutsky and Breen may be preaching to the choir, but it’s change that we seek.” Gupta, in effect, was getting the band back a remarkably young and diverse choir, even for a congregation together. His cohort of young technocrats and entrepreneurs of Democrats. The political hopefuls are gathered in downtown had helped elect America’s first black president. Why couldn’t Detroit in June for a weekend “summit” organized by a new they use their experience in both the public and private sectors group called the Arena. Created in December 2016 to harness to recruit and train the country’s next generation of leaders? the collective energy of America’s postelection freak-out, the For Gupta, the fault lines from the presidential election Arena aims to recruit, train, and support first-time candidates are personal. He grew up in Staten Island, the right-leaning, for office. This is already the group’s third summit, and the working-class borough that gave Trump his only victory in can-do fervor feels at times like a cross between a TED talk his native New York City. Gupta’s mother, who is white, voted and a live taping of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. There are mo- for Hillary Clinton. His Indian-American father, prison guard tivational speeches and tutorials on immigration policy and brother, and many of his childhood friends sided with Trump. workshops on the basics of campaign fund-raising. When an From that divide, both racial and political, Gupta took away an emcee yells, “People, make some noise!” the attendees, mostly Obama-like desire to unite a fractured America. “That we’re in their twenties and thirties, oblige. Stage left, a DJ provides told we should hate each other because we have different the weekend its thumping soundtrack, beginning with James opinions on who should be president is grotesque,” he says. Brown: Revenge! I’m mad. The big payback! Gupta feels the same way about the schisms in the Democratic Since Trump’s election, the Democratic Party has found itself Party exposed by the prolonged primary fight between Hillary both invigorated and adrift. The day after his inauguration, an Clinton and Bernie Sanders. “The Bernie effect is real, and we unprecedented combination of resolve and despair sent millions at the Arena respect that,” he says. “I backed the insurgent into the streets for the Women’s March, followed by mass protests over the president’s Muslim travel ban. From this self-proclaimed “resistance,” tens of thousands of would- The Arena embodies the debate at the be candidates for local, state, and federal offices have emerged, eager for guidance and support. The Arena joins heart of the resistance to Trump: Can a crowded field of get-out-the-­candidate organizations Democrats regain power without a that have formed since the election, from Indivisible and Swing Left to Code Blue and Run for Something. Though clear and compelling agenda? their techniques and political positions vary widely, each wants to transform the outrage and self-recrimination over Trump’s election into tangible victories at the polls. Each candidate in 2007. I didn’t identify with the party. The early believes that the Democratic Party has failed to recruit a diverse Obama-ites know what it’s like to be passionate and underdogs.” and viable slate of candidates. And each believes that winning The model that Gupta has fashioned for the Arena repli- the White House is not enough—that it is essential to support cates many of the strengths—and shortcomings—of Obama’s candidates at the state and local level, a belated nod to the politics. The group openly avows the idealism that drew decades-­long strategy employed by alec and the Koch brothers. them to Obama’s first presidential campaign, along with The Arena was dreamed up by Ravi Gupta, a former staffer a commitment to rational discourse in the face of partisan on Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign. Gupta, now 34, incivility. But the partisan divide has widened since Obama served at the United Nations under Susan Rice before leaving took office, and the populist surge that elected Trump is government in 2010 to open a string of charter schools for not exactly welcoming to the political insiders and coastal low-income students in the South. The day after the election, elites who founded the Arena. The group, which plans to students at the high school he started in Nashville came to him run candidates in red and blue districts across the coun- in fear. Were immigrant students going to be deported? Were try next year, has adopted a deeply pragmatic approach. African American kids going to be subjected to Jim Crow laws? It avoids specific positions on policies, encouraging each Would lgbtq students be forced to undergo conversion therapy? candidate to fashion his or her own message, even on core Gupta was devastated. “I went into a classroom and just liberal issues like health care and government oversight. The started crying,” he recalled. But by the time he reached the best strategy,­ Gupta believes, is bottom up: Let candidates parking lot, he was already on the phone. Soon he had invited tailor their campaigns to their individual ­constituencies. his buddies from the Obama administration and Yale Law down “We work with candidates to make sure they can articulate

20 | NEW REPUBLIC Lauren Underwood, a candidate for Congress, holds centrist views that match her constituency in Illinois. “I am running in reality,” she says.

clearly, ‘These are my values, they came from this district, in Chicago. “Too many in our party cling to an overly cau- and all policies flow from those values,’ ” Gupta tells me. A tious centrist ideology,” Sanders declares in a New York candidate in Wisconsin might advocate universal health Times op-ed that week. His organization, Our Revolution, care and a $15 minimum wage; an office-seeker in Georgia, seeks to unite Democrats around a populist message that meanwhile, might eschew gun control and abortion rights. embraces single-payer health care, free college tuition, and The danger of this district-by-district relativism, of course, criminal justice reform. “We need people who are unapol- is that the party offers up a thousand messengers but no mes- ogetically progressive,” says Nina Turner, the former Ohio sage. Democrats don’t have a “vision or story they want to state senator who serves as president of Our Revolution. “We paint of what is wrong with America today,” Matthew Yglesias need a 1944 FDR economic bill of rights for the people of observed recently in Vox, and no model for “what is the better this country.” country they want to build for the future.” Gupta, like many At the summit in Detroit, by contrast, the Arena focuses on establishment Democrats, believes that the core principles of process, not policy. Up on stage, a political consultant named economic equality and social justice are enough to unite the Marlon Marshall finishes his interview of Laurie Pohutsky and party, especially at a time when Republicans are intent on Kelly Breen. Marshall’s résumé—he’s a Democratic consulting slashing health care and aid to working families. The Arena, heavyweight who served as a top director of Clinton’s presi- in essence, embodies the debate at the heart of the widespread dential campaign—would likely have gotten him the vaudeville resistance to Trump: Can Democrats regain power over the hook at the People’s Summit. Here, organizers see him as the long term without articulating a clear and compelling party epitome of what the Arena represents: a call to arms, with an agenda? And can a group of young Obama acolytes bend the emphasis on the arms. “If you’re thinking about running,” moral arc of the universe toward justice, as their candidate so Marshall exhorts the audience of would-be candidates, “know often proclaimed, without agreeing on what justice looks like? that there are a slew of people who are going to have your The same weekend the Arena holds its summit in Detroit, back. If you want to run for office, dammit, run for office! And

PHOTOGRAPH BY KEVIN MIYAZAKI/REDUX FOR THE NEW REPUBLIC supporters of Bernie Sanders convene a “People’s Summit”­ go out there and win this shit.”

OCTOBER 2017 | 21 ETROIT IS AN interesting place to hold an assembly disenfranchisement of poor and minority voters. “How do of Trump-era Democrats. Early on the summit’s we beat them on this argument?” he asks. “First, we have to first day, a group of 40 attendees takes a tour of make the argument.” the city. After a stop at a revitalized commercial After his presentation, Kander and I talk at a table outside Dstrip seven miles from downtown, the bus delivers everyone the banquet hall overlooking the Detroit River. Democrats, to a United Auto Workers vote center. One of the guides is he insists, don’t have to choose between Hillary centrism and Ian Conyers, a Michigan state senator and great-nephew Bernie progressivism. “Which direction the Democratic Party of Representative John Conyers. “You can’t come to the D,” should go is presented as a binary choice,” he says. “I don’t he belts out, “and not know about the workers that made think that’s the case at all.” Kander offers his own campaign as America great!” It’s the absence of “again” at the end of the proof: An army veteran who volunteered to serve in Afghani- pronouncement that strikes me as conspicuous. stan, he lost by three percentage points in a state that Trump Inside the vote center, Yvonne Cash, a UAW representative, won by 19, making a name for himself nationally with a viral laments the outcome of the election in the Rust Belt, where ad in which he assembled a rifle blindfolded. Kander has the Trump won a majority of the white electorate. “The Repub- gifted politician’s knack of making whatever he’s talking about licans took our message and flipped it,” she says. “They said seem both plainspoken and right. “Politics is no different than they were for the working class, and that the Democrats are being a good person,” he says. “You make your argument to only educated, college elites.” The young lawyers and techies everybody based on your values, and you don’t compromise from the Arena listen intently. One of them asks Cash how, as those values. When you do that, you increase the chances of candidates, they can connect with organized labor. winning over the people who don’t agree with you.” Honesty Cash pauses for a few beats. “I’m going to be very real,” she and integrity, not ideology, is how Democrats will win back says. “The first question we ask when we screen a candidate the country. “What I’m saying,” he says, “is people will forgive is: What kind of car do you drive?” you for believing something that they don’t believe, so long It’s an awkward if revealing moment. Cash is suggesting as they know you genuinely hold that belief, and you hold it that Democratic candidates must adhere to the “buy American” because you care about them.” message that the UAW has been promoting ever since Japanese It’s a fundamental truth—but one that glosses over the knotty imports invaded the U.S. auto market in the 1980s. If you want questions that Democrats are wrestling with right now: What to get working-class voters out to the polls, she implies, you specifically do they believe? And what policy positions in their have to drive a Ford F-150. But that kind of “old economy” candidates are they willing to forgive to win races next year thinking runs the risk of reinforcing the false promises that and beyond? Gupta, for his part, talks excitedly to me about Trump made about restoring a bygone industrial age. And it has little to do with the “new economy” challenges facing the Arena’s young millennial candidates, many “Which direction the Democratic of whom don’t even own a car. They use Lyft and Uber. The Arena recognizes that Democrats cannot sim- Party should go is presented as a ply define themselves in opposition to Trump. While binary choice,” Kander says. “I don’t the group has no policy platform, it works hard over the weekend to demonstrate the values and first princi- think that’s the case at all.” ples that it believes give the factions within the party a common cause. “Not only how you engage and lead,” as one Arena leader puts it, “but also why.” There are panels on Bill Clinton on the campaign trail in 1992 doing just what the ongoing water crisis in Flint and on Detroit’s immigrant Kander extols. “He was Yale Law and a Rhodes scholar,” Gupta community. “Immigrants don’t just take jobs,” a city official says, “and he crushed it on blue-collar issues.” I point out that explains. “They start businesses and make jobs.” Brian Deese, while Clinton was coming across to working-class voters as who served as a senior adviser to President Obama, talks about a folksy guy who felt their pain, he and the New Democrats the need to address climate change and renewable energy in were shredding social welfare and putting millions of black local terms. Brittany Packnett, an organizer focused on police Americans behind bars. Gupta agrees—to an extent. He says violence, reminds attendees that political participation is not there’s nothing worse than the “Ivy-educated elite who wears optional for racial minorities, immigrants, and others under flannel,” and he has turned away candidates seeking his help who assault by systemic injustices: “Not everyone gets to choose seemed inauthentic. But he also argues that Bill Clinton gets whether they enter the arena or not.” Jason Kander, the former a bad rap. “For people who care who’s on the Supreme Court Missouri secretary of state who nearly unseated an incumbent and about our tax policy,” he says, “Clinton did win back the GOP senator last November, describes how Republicans have White House after three terms of Republican rule.” It’s an un- hijacked the political narrative on voting rights, spreading disputedly pragmatic position, but one that is unlikely to inspire unfounded fears of voter fraud when the real problem is the the millions of disaffected Democrats who rejected Clintonism

22 | NEW REPUBLIC in favor of Trump and Sanders during last year’s election. The Arena’s neutrality on matters of policy is meant to make the group a welcome space for Bernie and Hillary supporters alike. In its first few months, through its trav- eling meet-ups, it has begun to develop relationships with grassroots organizations and local party Democrats. In March, 650 people showed up for an Arena summit in North Carolina, and in December the group plans to hold a meet- ing in Arizona. At one point in Detroit, a woman from Oak- land stands up to announce that she has organized a new group of 1,200 members who plan to fight for racial justice. “We have to support women of color,” she declares, “even if they’re not in our fucking district!” At another, the event Haley Stevens sees her insider role in the auto industry bailout as an asset in her House race in Michigan. takes on the spirit of a revival meeting; a moderator, seizing the moment, asks who will commit to running for office in the Empowered to Run. “There are 520,000 elected offices across next five years. Some 250 people rise up to cascading cheers. the country,” he explains, “and most are uncontested or nomi- Many of the millennials at the summit see themselves not as nally contested.” Empowered aims to connect local candidates candidates but as “political entrepreneurs,” using technology to in every district to resources, making it possible for grassroots make the political process more accessible to all. Seated next candidates to compete in all 520,000 races. The plan hints to me at one session is a 27-year-old named Alon Gur, who at both the techie mind-set of the young Obama veterans in- has been working on the campaign of Larry Krasner, a civil volved in the Arena, and at the way the Obama administration rights attorney in Philadelphia endorsed by Our Revolution. didn’t take advantage of their energy and know-how in 2009 In May, Krasner won the city’s Democratic primary for district to usher a new wave of Democrats into the political process, attorney on a pledge never to seek the death penalty and to just as the Tea Party was getting started. When Obama took combat institutional racism in the justice system. Gur tells office, Democrats controlled both chambers in 27 state legisla- me about a digital platform he’s co-creating, a sort of Task tures. Today, Republicans control 32, and hold twice as many Rabbit for politics, which connects nascent campaigns to a governorships as Democrats. Sinha actually had the idea for gig economy of policy experts, staffers, and web designers. Empowered before Obama was even elected. “When I was Sitting behind us is Dani Isaacsohn, a classmate of Gur’s working on Obama’s campaign in 2008,” he says, “I thought from Yale Law. Isaacsohn, it turns out, is also developing a that someone should start figuring out the apparatus to build digital platform: a service that links policymakers to valuable up a ground force not just for the election, but for the long- contacts within the communities they serve. term.” He didn’t do it, he regrets. And neither did anyone else. “What’s yours called?” Gur asks. “Bridgeable,” Isaacsohn says. FTER THE FIRST day’s speakers wrap up, the Arena “Ooh, that’s good.” folks walk a couple of blocks to a dinner reception “How about yours?” in the Guardian Building. It’s a downtown palace “Switchboard.” befitting Detroit’s fortunes in the 1920s, with a Earlier I meet Steve Sinha, a computer scientist who worked 150-footA vaulted lobby that’s marbled and lit up by prismatic in Obama’s state department and advised Hillary Clinton’s tiles and a giant, glowing Tiffany clock. The summit-goers pile

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL NEMETH FOR THE NEW REPUBLIC campaign about policy. He has created a tech platform called their plates with chicken shawarma and drink freely from the

OCTOBER 2017 | 23 open bar and dance to the Mary Jane Girls. It’s here I meet Lauren Underwood, a 30-year-old registered nurse from Illinois who’s running for Congress. She talks effusively about her plans, even as she checks herself periodically, explaining that she’s new to the on- and off-the-record thing. On the record, she is from Naperville, a suburb an hour west of Chicago. While still in college she interned with then-Senator Barack Obama. She went to work for the Department of Health and Human Services a few months after the passage of the Af- fordable Care Act, and spent the next seven years implementing and reforming Obamacare. “I set up the ACA marketplace,” she says. “We have people in Congress making laws who didn’t even read it.” She started grooming herself for office back when Trump was still a birther nut: In 2014, she attended the Women’s Campaign School, a one-week program at Yale. She also joined the New Leaders Council, a training program for young Democrats founded in 2005 to chip away at the GOP’s mountainous advan- tage when it comes to recruiting talented newcomers. In February, Underwood found herself on a New Leaders Council conference call in which the ex- ecutive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said that the party, still reel- ing from Trump’s victory, would consider backing candidates who didn’t fit its conventional mold. The Democrats have little chance of flipping the Senate in 2018, with only eight Republican incumbents up for re-election. But down only 46 seats in the House, the dccc has targeted 59 GOP-held districts it believes are winnable. The list includes the 14th district in Illinois, where Underwood lives. After the call, Underwood visited the dccc’s Andy Kim, a national security expert, is vying for a winnable congressional race: headquarters, thinking she might run for the state the New Jersey seat held by Tom MacArthur, an architect of the Trumpcare bill. legislature. “I brought my congresswoman outfit,” she says. “I looked like I took it seriously.” She was stunned when the party asked if she’d consider entering the New Congress, which wants to mount primary challenges to ­congressional race herself. She returned home to talk to local Democratic incumbents it deems insufficiently progressive. party insiders about a possible run. When she checked in with That doesn’t mean she believes all Democrats must be centrists; the various Indivisible groups in her district, she was surprised she just feels that her own politics happen to match perfectly to find that they hadn’t put forward a candidate of their own. with those of her suburban and rural district. It’s a place she In July, she applied to become one of the candidates that the loves—the landscaped strip malls, the schools named for Arena is supporting with fellowships designed to provide Indian tribal lands, the way the four-lane roads divide rows the tools and training they’ll need to win next year. of soybeans on one side from residential subdivisions on the Underwood is, in many ways, the picture of a candidate other. Her current representative is a Tea Party Republican running on the virtues of Obama: She’s young, African Amer- named Randy Hultgren. “He does not represent our moder- ican, reared in his administration—and, as she tells me with ate district,” Underwood says. “He is wrong on every issue.” mock apology, “not the most liberal Democrat.” She is fine On the second day of the summit, Underwood joins a panel with Elizabeth Warren, but does not agree with Sanders and alongside three other candidates running for Congress next his followers on many issues, including the legalization of year. Ken Harbaugh, a former Navy pilot who started an or- marijuana and the aversion to U.S. intervention in world ganization that deploys service members to disaster areas,

conflicts. She says she has no time for activist groups like Brand explains why he is a candidate in northeastern Ohio. “I know PHOTOGRAPH BY NATHANIEL WELCH/REDUX FOR THE NEW REPUBLIC

24 | NEW REPUBLIC this is going to sound old-fashioned, but if I had to boil it She looks me over, considering how freely she should express down to one word, it would be patriotism,” he says. “I served her views on the world as it is and the world as it should be. my country overseas. We need more people in Washington “I am running in reality,” she says. who put country first and party second.” Andy Kim, a Rhodes scholar who served as an adviser to General David Petraeus on HE LAST AFTERNOON of the summit is given over Afghanistan and to President Obama on isis, wants to unseat to the specifics of candidate training: how to run Representative Tom MacArthur of New Jersey, who helped a campaign, stay on message, connect with voters craft the bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “Health care and funders. Some participants head off to learn affects every aspect of our lives,” Kim says. “Health care is a Tabout incorporating social media into campaigns. Others take right. So that’s why we’re fighting.” Haley Stevens, a former advantage of one-on-one “office hours” with a few-dozen Treasury Department staffer who worked on the presidential consultants and strategists, from Hillary for America and the task force that bailed out the auto industry, touts her insider Democratic National Committee to MoveOn.org. Everyone credentials as an asset. “I worked at the intersection of industry else files into conference rooms for a range of seminars led and government, where we can come together for solutions,” by battle-scarred political operatives. she says. “My message is: Your life and work matter.” The novice candidates are full of questions. A woman who is To Gupta, Underwood and the other political hopefuls at planning to run for the Wisconsin state legislature asks where the summit embody the way forward for Democrats: young, she can find good polling data. (“Start with the state party,” a experienced candidates able to articulate their passion and political organizer tells her. “Get in touch with former candi- connect with voters. “If we’re successful in the 2018 race,” dates,” another expert adds.) One would-be candidate wants to he says, “the Arena-backed candidates will all be the clearest know where to focus his limited funds. (Don’t pay for political examples of telling an authentic story in the clearest, most advice, he’s told.) A guy thinking about running for alderman compelling way.” But one Democrat’s authenticity is another on Chicago’s South Side asks when is the best time to announce. Democrat’s selling out. Many in the party warn that unless (The answer: When he is ready to be a target, and can show candidates address the needs of working-class voters, Demo- that he’s raised an imposing haul of money.) Candidates ask crats will continue to lose ground to Republicans at every level how much time to dedicate to calling donors, and whether it’s of government. “We don’t just need more people running for better to ask for an actual dollar amount on each call. A man office,” says Becky Bond, who served as a senior adviser in the from Lansing says he can afford only three mailings. When in Sanders campaign. “We need credible candidates who run on the election cycle should he send them? For the Arena-goers, who have heard the same im- ploring message repeated again and again—run for office, right now—this kind of detailed, hands-on -in Many in the party warn that unless struction arrives like a sweat-lodge revelation. “Shit, this candidates address the needs of is awesome,” a guy considering a bid for the Michigan working-class voters, Democrats state senate announces after the entire group reconvenes in the ballroom. “You really gave me the tools. We have will continue to lose to Republicans. a lot of work to do. But this is how you do it. This is how to be an agent of change and to look out for people.” The very first person I met at the summit was a rocker-­ a bold platform that will significantly improve people’s lives if looking dude from San Francisco who said he was here only elected. We need to give the voters who the Democrats have to check out the scene, and had zero interest in elected office. consistently taken for granted or written off a reason to turn I now overhear him expounding on his plans to move back out and vote. Medicare for all, free college tuition, an end to to Pittsburgh to win a seat in the state legislature. In August, to the cash bail system. Resistance groups should encourage expand its support to candidates, the Arena merged with a and support candidates who step up to run on these ideas.” new political consulting group called chorus Agency, which Underwood rejects that kind of thinking as out of touch was recently founded by other Obama campaign veterans. for her district. She is content to shape her own message, It is not until the very last panel that I hear the name Bernie even if it diverges from the prevailing upsurge of populist Sanders spoken aloud at the summit. The conference room sentiment, tailoring it to what she sees as the concerns of her is packed for “The Millennial Generation and the Future of constituents. She’s eager to start talking to voters at super- American Democracy,” and I stand in the back as a former markets and churches in McHenry County, the reddest part county financial official from Detroit encourages people to of her district, which Trump won by eight points. She won’t do their stint in local government: “The best experience of be highlighting some traditional Democratic issues, like gun my life,” he says. A national political consultant talks about control, which she considers a no-win proposition there. And the need to rebrand politics so it’s cool for young people. The she doesn’t think it prudent to lead with calls for racial equity. head of a creative studio that does campaign videos—most

OCTOBER 2017 | 25 recently for Randy Bryce, the union ironworker challenging It’s hardly a rousing vote of confidence. If Democrats aren’t Paul Ryan in Wisconsin—argues that millennials aren’t being giving their most energized members a clear and inspiring given the right incentives to invest in politics. A city coun- sense of why the party matters, then what hope do they have cilman from Cincinnati chastises Democrats for ceding the of winning back the Rust Belt or middle America, or turning economic argument to Trump, who spoke about trade, jobs, red states blue? In July, the party establishment unveiled a and industry only in fanciful generalities. modest agenda called “A Better Deal,” calling for a $15 min- Suddenly, an African American web developer from Brook- imum wage and regulations to cut prescription drug costs, lyn raises his hand to interject. More millennials voted for but it did little to change minds that the Democrats stood for Sanders, he points out, than for Clinton and Trump combined. more than being anti-Trump. What’s more, the Labour Party in the United Kingdom ran a I’m still puzzling out what these crosscurrents mean for far-left campaign earlier that month and reclaimed seats in the Democratic Party when Ravi Gupta closes out the summit Parliament. “They have a platform that is unapologetically that afternoon. Gupta chooses to end the event by pointing to progressive,” the man continues. “They say, ‘We’re going to a recent thread on the Slack channel that Arena members use take care of regular people.’ We don’t have that message.” for group messaging. The discussion, he laments, had devolved “We don’t see a platform that goes with our beliefs,” some- into a contentious back and forth in which people accused one else interrupts. others in the group of being racists, assuming the worst about A white woman cuts in, “We want to feel something.” their peers. “The Slack discussion was completely at odds “The party assumes that most progressives are Democrats,” with the vision President Obama had for this country,” Gupta another woman shouts. “But most millennials don’t see them- says, citing Obama’s 2008 “A More Perfect Union” Philadel- selves in the party platform. So they don’t feel an obligation phia speech on race as his personal “North Star.” He admits to show up for the party. I’ve worked in politics ever since I to being saddened that much of the country, including many was a teenager, but I’m not a party loyalist.” Democrats, have veered from that speech’s lesson of inclusion and forgiveness. Hate crimes are up, the president has singled out immigrants and transgender citizens for punitive attacks, and Trump himself has begun openly defending white supremacists. Gupta wants the Arena to be both an accelerator for social change and a sanctuary from the storm. “I want to take this opportunity to explain what we as a progressive com- munity believe in,” he says. “If you disagree, that’s fine. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t share this vision. It’s important to describe our values.” He shares the story of his paternal grandfa- ther, a cloth merchant with nine children who lived in one of the poorest provinces in India. His grandfather gave up his business and jeopardized the well-being of his family, Gupta says, to follow Gandhi’s nonviolent movement for independence. “He made a conscious choice to embrace a certain level of love and grace toward your enemy that was totally irrational but, in my opinion, grounded in a vision of what needed to come after,” Gupta Jason Kander, an Arena adviser who narrowly lost a Senate bid in Missouri last says. The Slack discussion, which seemed to lack year, believes Democrats will win by emphasizing integrity rather than ideology. that generosity of spirit, troubles Gupta because it recapitulates the racial strife he knew from Staten Island and the Deep South—tensions that are now It’s as though a quarter-century of frustration with the tearing apart American society. But he manages to end his Democratic Party has boiled over in the space of a minute. reproach by returning to the high optimism of his favorite The moderator for the panel is Milia Fisher, a former Hillary Obama speech. “Somehow we as a progressive community Clinton staffer in her twenties who recently launched the have been able to open our doors and bring people together Defiant Network, a grassroots group dedicated to creating a and be kind to each other and start to think what a common “powerful crowdsourced vision to save our democracy.” She America could look like if we did it together,” Gupta says as asks how many people in the room identify strongly with the valediction. “That’s what I heard this entire weekend—that

Democratic Party. Fewer than half raise a hand. we came together around a spirit of leading this country.” COURTESY OF THE ARENA

26 | NEW REPUBLIC The New Blue Grassroots groups are divided over how to build a better Democrat.

When it comes to recruiting candidates Something explains on its web site. “It’s In reality, though, groups on both to run for office, Donald Trump is the tempting to create a litmus test for sides of the divide share a common best thing to happen to Democrats more specific issues, but when working weakness: They are trying to impose since Richard Nixon dropped a mixtape across the country, you have to take an identity on Democrats from the of himself swearing like a Tarantino regional differences into account.” top down. The establishment wing of character while conspiring to destroy the On the other side of the divide are the party favors a more diffuse and Constitution. Since last November, groups that are recruiting and supporting centrist message, while the populist a half dozen new organizations have candidates with a distinctly populist insurgency promotes a more defined sprung up to tap the widespread bent. Our Revolution, the political action and left-leaning agenda. What is really outburst of electoral energy on the left. committee organized by Bernie Sanders needed is a path capable of uniting the For the most part, though, the groups after his failed primary bid, requires party in all its diversity—a new direction replicate the deep rift within the party candidates for national office to submit that blends the political pragmatism of itself over an essential and unanswered a detailed application form verifying Obama and Clinton with the energy question: What does it mean to be their positions on everything from a $15 and idealism of the Sanders rebellion. a Democrat? minimum wage and Medicare for all The best way to achieve that goal One on side of the divide are to the demilitarization of police. “Any may come from Indivisible, a grassroots organizations like the Arena, which Democrat worth their salt that doesn’t group founded by four former hew to the party establishment’s unequivocally say Medicare for all is Democratic congressional aides to long-standing strategy of letting the way to go? To me, there’s something “stiffen Democratic spines and weaken candidates tailor their own messages wrong with them,” Nina Turner, president pro-Trump Republican resolve.” The to fit their constituencies. Two of the of Our Revolution, told Politico recently. organization, which already boasts DIY groups—Emerge America, which was “We’re not going to accept no more 6,000 chapters, is working to craft founded in 2005 and recruits female hemming and hawing. No more game a new platform for the party by politicians, and Run for Something, which playing. Make your stand.” embarking on a national “listening tour” focuses on down-ballot mun­ icipal Another populist group, Brand New of its membership. “These groups elections—are supported by Onward Congress, is running a carefully selected formed organically, at the grassroots Together, a political action committee slate of congressional candidates “like level,” says Helen Kalla, Indivisible’s founded in May by Hillary Clinton a presidential campaign,” requiring them spokesperson. “We want to make sure to “encourage people to organize, get to adhere to a detailed platform that to hear from them all.” That bottom-up involved, and run for office.” Only Run includes positions on everything from approach—crowdsourcing an agenda for Something has a policy platform, “keeping abortion legal and safe” to that incorporates the best ideas from which, like Hillary herself, is vague and “returning judicial discretion to judges.” a wide range of constituencies—could highly flexible, and doesn’t require its Billing itself as “post-partisan,” the offer the party a way out of its identity candidates to take a line-in-the-sand group is mounting primary challenges crisis. Standing against Trump is a position on issues like abortion, health to incumbent Democrats who don’t start. But it may not matter, in the long care, and racial equality. “We won’t meet its standards, including Senator run, unless Democrats figure out what serve as the ‘purity police,’” Run for Joe Manchin of West Virginia. they’re standing for. SARAH JONES

It’s undeniably heartfelt, but the civility of Obama doesn’t align 100 percent with me, but I’m here. I want to fix what’s seem like a platform on which to build a movement today. broken.” And he appreciates what the Arena can do for him Earlier in the day, at the end of the seminar where all the and everyone else at the summit who is eager to unseat Re- Democratic Party disaffection surfaced, I caught up to publicans. But when it comes to how the Arena’s ecumenical the Brooklyn web developer who first mentioned Sanders. His approach might benefit the Democrats over the long term, name is Justin Charles. He works for Fast Company magazine, he is still not sure. and he’s also an organizer with the Democratic Socialists of “I don’t know,” he says, his uncertainty leaving him lost for America. As a Bernie supporter, he tells me he’s fine with words. “I’m a registered Democrat.” He searches for a way to the Arena’s emphasis on political inclusivity. “There are a lot explain why that matters. “I mean,” he says, “it’s, like, better of Obama and Clinton alums here,” he says. “That may not than the other guys.” a

OCTOBER 2017 | 27 #Always Trump Donald J.Trump @stilltherealPresident Crooked Chelsea has ZERO leadership ability. She is only president because millions voted Maybe he’ll be impeached. illegally - it is sad! RETWEETS LIKES Or maybe he’ll be voted out 12,321 23,579 of office in 2020. But no matter how he leaves the White House, we’ll never be rid of Trump—and all that he represents about America.

BY JEET HEER

ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDDIE GUY

28 | NEW REPUBLIC #Always Trump

OCTOBER 2017 | 29 #AlwaysTrump

hen reality becomes a nightmare, dreams of how to remove Trump from office as quickly as possible. begin to seem like a form of sanity. Amid the He poses, after all, an existential threat to—well, existence waking nightmare that has been the Trump itself. But the dream of bringing about an end to Trump’s W presidency, liberals have had one hope that era in Washington is tinged with something darker and has kept them going: that one day, perhaps sooner rather than more worrisome. If we’re honest with ourselves, we must later, we will be rid of Donald Trump. He is so manifestly unfit admit that we don’t just want Trump gone from the White for office, so reckless in violating the fundamental tenets of House—we want to return to a time when Trump did not democracy, so personally unstable and vindictive, that it could dominate our every waking moment. We want it all to go only be a matter of a few short years before he is either driven away: the endless Twitter rants; the bellicose threats against from the White House by impeachment or voted out of office perceived enemies, foreign and domestic; the toxic brew of by the majority of Americans who consider him a dangerous narcissism and incompetence and greed that has come to fraud and a national embarrassment. Once he is gone, liberals permeate the national discourse. The desire to oust Trump, believe—once he has finally exited our lives for good—we can at a deeper level, represents a liberal fantasy in which we begin the difficult work of restoring some semblance of order can somehow magically, instantly turn back the clock and and reason in a world without Trump. live once more in the comforting world of our pre-Trump The dream of returning to the comforts of a post-Trump assumptions. In this fetching version of harmony restored, world began the day after his election. As soon as liberals not only will Trump no longer be president, he’ll no longer awoke to the wrenching news of his victory, the hope arose have been president. He will vanish from public life, and that his presidency could somehow be averted. Would a the hobgoblins he has unleashed in our national psyche will recount reveal that the vote tallies in Wisconsin, Michi- disappear along with him. gan, and Pennsylvania—all of which were razor-thin—were Yet even as the prospect of his removal becomes ever wrong? Could the Electoral College be called on to exercise more palpable, we must awaken from this blue-state reverie its constitutional duty by refusing to ratify the election we have constructed for ourselves. The truth is, no matter results? Would the manifest corruption of Trump’s transi- how he winds up leaving office, Donald Trump will always tion—his nepotism, his covert meetings with international be with us. We may, unless there is nuclear Armageddon, business partners, his refusal to divest himself of properties outlast his presidency. Robert Mueller’s investigation may that posed a conflict of interest—lead to his impeachment even shorten it. But we can’t repeal or replace it. Long after under the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution? Would his presidency ends—indeed, long after he has departed this Vice President Mike Pence come to his senses, or give way to his ambition, and declare Trump “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” under the 25th Amendment? Or, barring a peaceful succession, would the military find The desire to oust Trump it necessary to stage a coup to save America from Trump? “The prospect of American military leaders responding to a represents a liberal fantasy in presidential order with open defiance is frightening,” Rosa which we can turn back the clock to Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University and a former senior adviser at the State Department, observed a comforting pre-Trump world. only a week into Trump’s presidency. “But so, too, is the prospect of military obedience to an insane order.” As the months went on and none of these liberal dreams was realized, hope turned to a variety of other scenarios. vale of tweets for that gloriously appointed Mar-a-Lago Maybe Robert Mueller would uncover evidence that Trump in the sky—Trump will continue to dominate and disrupt was directly involved in Russia’s meddling in last year’s our lives at every turn. Because he’s Trump, being a former election—or directly involved in covering it up—leading to president will do nothing to diminish his desperate need a constitutional crisis of Watergate proportions. Perhaps for attention or his willingness to hurt whomever it takes Trump would become fed up with all the tedium and hassle to get it. He’ll still have his gifts as a showman, his wealth, and ridicule that comes with the office and simply decide to his mastery of social media, and the unshakable devotion quit, retiring to Mar-a-Lago to golf away his remaining days. of his followers. And the media will remain just as eager to Or, even if we are doomed to suffer through four full years report and dissect and amplify his every untruth and slander. of President Trump, surely voters will flock to the polls in Indeed, freed from the shackles of the Constitution, Trump 2020 to ensure that he joins the ranks of the eight previous could end up provoking even more havoc out of office than commanders-in-chief who were deemed undeserving of a he has as president. second term. There will never be, in short, a world without Trump. As It’s understandable, and perhaps even necessary, that we work to remove him from office, we must also grapple we have devoted ourselves so thoroughly to the question with a harsh truth: that his influence, and the broader forces

30 | NEW REPUBLIC he represents, will not end with his presidency. When Trump leaves the Oval Office, our long national nightmare will not be over. It will have just begun.

or argument’s sake, let’s assume the best-case scenario: that we some- F how manage to survive Trump’s first term and send him packing in 2020. At the moment, the odds of him winning reelec- tion appear about equal to those of the Titanic triumphantly resurfac- ing under its own steam. His ap- proval ratings are at historic lows, and he evinces no interest in find- ing a way to expand his base. The doting crowds he still draws at his campaign-style rallies convince him that he’s beholding—and be- loved by—a majority of Americans, since those are the only moments he ever comes face-to-face with a citizen unpossessed of either a trust fund or a hedge fund. Nor will Trump feel constrained by the long-standing So: What happens after Trump finds out that America has protocol that keeps former presidents from commenting rejected him in favor of whatever crooked, terrorist-loving, on the policies and job performance of their successors. jobs-destroying candidate the Democrats have decided Far from it—because bashing the new tenant at 1600 Penn- to nominate? Nothing dignified. For starters, he’ll likely sylvania Avenue will present Trump with his best chance skip his successor’s “fake inauguration” and stage his own to stir up outrage and get attention. Cable news networks, swearing-in, surrounded by what he will tout as the biggest which pretend to respect the reserve of other ex-presidents, crowd of onlookers in the history of onlooking. There is no will eat it up. scenario in which Trump will accept that he has lost fair And he may not even have to depend on Fox News or and square; no matter how resounding his margin of defeat CNN—his chief media enablers—for television access. Last may be, he will begin his post-presidency by howling about year, when the punditocracy was still taking a Hillary Clin- massive voter fraud and political witch hunts and the fail- ton presidency for granted, Trump mulled launching his ure of whatever attorney general has replaced Jeff Sessions own cable empire to perpetuate right-wing Trumpmania, to put his opponent behind bars. In his mind, Trump will reasoning (in the words of one of his associates) that “win still be president, and he will devote himself to a lifelong or lose, we are on to something here.” The fascination of and evidence-free campaign to expose the conspiracy that that “win or lose” is its indication that Trump’s view of the illegally deposed him. American electorate makes no distinction between voters And he’ll have plenty of help doing it. He’ll still be able and audiences. If we have learned nothing else about him, to turn out huge crowds, command a vast Twitter audience, it’s that (1) his vast ego needs constant nursing and (2) en- and get television exposure whenever he wants it, even in hancing the Trump brand is always his top priority, without “retirement.” The word itself is farcical when applied to any differentiation among gaudy casinos, online universities, Trump. How can a man who has never held a job he didn’t mail-order steaks, and the presidency of the United States. inherit or buy retire from being himself? Teddy Roos- All Trump ever wanted to do was to play the president,

REFERENCE PHOTO PREVIOUS SPREAD: JACK GRUBER/POOL/GETTY; ABOVE: VIEWPRESS/CORBIS/GETTY ABOVE: GRUBER/POOL/GETTY; JACK SPREAD: PREVIOUS PHOTO REFERENCE evelt never did, and carried on blithely bully-­pulpiting, to a role that will be immeasurably easier once he’s actually ­ebulliently divisive and obstreperous effect, for a decade out of office. Sarah Palin tried and failed to become a TV after leaving the White House. That’s probably the clos- star after leaving office. Trump enacted that strategy in est prototype for what we can expect from ex-President reverse. As ex-president, he will be perfectly positioned Trump, but multiplied a thousandfold by today’s social to return to his natural habitat, the simulacrum of “reality media platforms and his own irresponsibility. TV.” It’s not hard to imagine Trump TV as a ceaseless and

OCTOBER 2017 | 31 #AlwaysTrump

influential presence in the cable landscape, tugging Fox As ex-president, he’ll do everything he can to delegitimize News and the rest of the media even further to the right. our entire system of government even more than he has as Every day, Trump could sit in a mock Oval Office and -ex president. He’ll find a way to implicate Hillary, too. At some plain how his successor is failing miserably, how terrible level, he’ll never forgive her for losing the election to him. all politicians are, how he—and the American people—have Kamala Harris, or whoever, will have her hands full 24-7 been betrayed. He would become America’s ruling maestro rebutting Trump’s wild accusations and cuckoo gambits to of resentment, the nurturer of white male grievance in an discredit her presidency. And Trump’s base, or whatever is increasingly diverse world. left of it, will take his every last word as gospel truth. Trump won’t need to burnish his “legacy” as other ex-presidents do, by politely writing their memoirs and launching foundations devoted to eradicating poverty or ow imagine how drastically all this mayhem gets disease. He’ll just keep right on being Trump, wrecking and ratcheted up if Trump is forced to leave office insulting everything in sight that isn’t his, all in the interest prematurely. Almost one-quarter of the American of selling crap emblazoned with his name. The only tradition N public was still firmly in Richard Nixon’s camp he’s likely to follow is the building of his presidential library, the week he resigned. Trump’s bedrock devotees will stay which is sure to be a lulu. Even former presidents far better equally loyal, even if Vladimir Putin starts hosting public at simulating modesty have been unable to resist monumen- screenings of the pee tape in the Kremlin every Wednesday. talizing themselves for posterity. Unlike his predecessors, Only Trump’s base won’t accept his departure as Nixon’s however, Trump is unhindered by taste. The damn thing did, because Trump himself will be egging them on to see will probably look like Caesar’s Palace crossed with a Bond his eviction from the White House as the worst injustice villain’s lair. Its scale will make the average aircraft carrier ever perpetrated in America’s—in any country’s—history. look like a skiff. Granted, the way things are going on the The German word for this is Dolchstoss. That was the legal front, Trump may wind up having to build it in Saudi myth, wildly popular in right-wing German circles after Arabia—but that’s hardly a guarantee of improved decor. 1918, that they would have won the First World War if only It’s impossible to imagine, in other words, that Trump they’d gotten the chance. Instead, the Kaiser’s proud army will be any more of a normal ex-president than he was a was “stabbed in the back” by cunning Jews, craven politicos, normal president. After all, he’s not a figure whose power and other such dubiously cosmopolitan, non-Junker types. and influence rely on political respectability or establishment America’s own pre-eminent Dolchstoss myth explains our defeat in Vietnam in similar terms. Ronald Reagan swore by it. When Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo asked, “Do we get to win this time?” before heading back to ’Nam for revenge, The point of accepting that we in one of the signature movies of the Reagan years, nobody needed to ask who had stood in the way of victory: hippie will never be free of Trump is to peaceniks, morale-­undermining journalists, pinheaded liberate ourselves from our own rad-lib intellectuals, “Hanoi Jane” Fonda and her fellow Hollywood pinkos, and George McGovern, among others. illusions and wishful thinking. The Dolchstoss myth that’s sure to take hold if Trump is impeached or quits under pressure will be virulent. The tale his devotees will raise their children to swear by will describe the nefarious way that coastal elites, partisan Democrats, the approval. Rather, Trump belongs to the great line of reprobate liberal media, and a whole slew of other pseudo-­Americans— politicians, from James Michael Curley to Marion Barry, who from Muslims relishing our surprise introduction to sharia thrive on notoriety and gain strength from scandal. Curley law to transgender weirdos, man-hating feminists, and was once reelected as mayor of Boston while under federal America-­hating Obama zombies, not to mention pusillan- indictment, retaining his popularity even as he spent part imous establishment Republicans—all conspired to deprive of his term in prison. Barry, likewise, parlayed his federal them of the greatest president ever: the only one they felt conviction for drug possession into a fourth term as mayor of ever spoke for them. There will be talk of armed insurrection. Washington. Like these renegade politicians, Trump will use Aspiring Dylann Roofs will look for an enemy headquarters his infamy to cement his ties with his followers, and to fight to shoot up. It will be ugly. on even in the face of political defeat or criminal indictment. Trump will love it. Since he has no concern for the coun- He’ll sulphurize the air more or less constantly with crack- try’s greater good, he’ll do everything he can to keep his pot, malignant yarns about the Deep State enemies arrayed base’s passions choleric. He already dotes on being their against him and the Republican jackals who betrayed him. red-capped messiah, but their martyred Christ? He will be The Jake Tappers, Chuck Todds, and Wolf Blitzers will get the greatest person ever to be anybody’s martyred Christ. it in the neck until they wish they’d been born without one. As unlikely as the image seems to us crucifiers—please, God,

32 | NEW REPUBLIC The arc of the moral universe, we were assured, bent toward justice. To wish for Trump to go away is to believe that the forces under- lying his rise to power will some- how cease to exist. But his success will only serve to inspire imitators. Lower down the political food chain, mini-Trumps will keep sprouting like mushrooms for generations to come. Trump has mobilized a new majority of forthright bigots within the Republican Party, and they will no longer be content with the racist dog whistles of old. It’s not just that crafty shape-shifters like Ted Cruz or Tom Cotton could attempt to remake themselves in the master’s image. The great danger is that the White House could one day be held by a Trumpian disciple who is actually competent at bypassing the consti- tutional impediments to tyranny. In the hands of a President Pence, Trump’s demagoguery would be far more likely to undermine the foun- let him be wearing more than a loincloth—Trumpmania’s dations of American democracy. And now that Trump has already manifest status as distorted religious cultism will changed the parameters of what is acceptable as president, go into overdrive. maga will be the new inri. the old aspirational slogan that “anyone can become presi- Most likely, Trump will be perceived as a martyr even if dent” has taken on a new meaning; already, there is serious he keels over of natural causes in the Oval Office sometime talk among Republicans about Senator Kid Rock. However in the next three years. That’s not a remote possibility when crass, truth-averse, greedy, unqualified, or compromised we’re talking about an obese, rage-filled, 71-year-old man Trump’s successors may be, they can be confident that they with an amazingly unhealthy lifestyle. (If you thought Sean will never exceed the now-­degraded boundaries of political Spicer had it rough, you’ve clearly never pictured the hell decency and responsibility established by their champion. of being Trump’s doctor.) If that should happen, the Trump The day will come when we are free of Trump the presi- legend will undoubtedly embrace the claim that “they” killed dent. But the day will not come when we are free of Trump- him by hounding the great man until his heart couldn’t take ism, in all its ugly and vicious manifestations, until we it. One smug little chuckle too many from Rachel Maddow unflinchingly embrace the world that he has helped to create, the night he accidentally tuned in to msnbc while looking and focus on devising the strategies and agenda that it will for Tucker Carlson Tonight, and blam! Every president’s take to overcome and counteract everything that he rep- grave draws visitors, but Trump’s could be the first at which resents, both today and long into the future. Once Trump’s masses of people kneel. Down the road, Muslim Americans carnival presidency is over, after all, it won’t much matter and other red-state undesirables could learn that they’re how his exit happened. The political class and its media better off staying indoors every June 14: Trump’s birthday. enablers will attempt to go back to business as usual—but And here we come to the reason that we must give up our Trump’s supporters won’t. As much as we may wish oth- fantasy of a world without Trump. The point of accepting that erwise, the rancorous, intolerant America he flushed out we will never be free of his mania is not to drive ourselves of hiding won’t cease to exist simply because he’s left the into an even deeper depression, but rather to liberate our- White House. Eventually, there may come a day when we

REFERENCE PHOTO: TOM PENNINGTON/GETTY TOM PHOTO: REFERENCE selves from our own illusions and wishful thinking. Before can look back upon the Trump era without triggering our Trump, we lived in a make-believe world of our own creation. ptsd. But that will only happen if we put aside our delusion The first black man in history had been elected president. The of returning to a world without Trump and see him for what first woman was about to succeed him. Nothing, certainly not he is: a symptom of something deep and intractable in the an infantile blowhard who thrived on debt and deception, American psyche that was not caused by a single election, could derail the inevitable rise of a lasting liberal majority. and cannot be cured by one. a

OCTOBER 2017 | 33 The vacant lot where 1906 Boone Street once stood. A Texas millionaire bought up hundreds of Baltimore properties—and left them to rot.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ALAN CHIN 34 | NEW REPUBLIC HEN IT WAS STILL STANDING, 1906 thought it was worth. Whoever the real Boone Street was a classic exam- owner was remained a mystery. ple of a Baltimore row house: three The Community Law Center, a local W stories tall and only 15 feet wide, legal services group, launched an inves- with a curved bay window in front and a tigation into 1906 Boone and hundreds narrow garden out back. Built in 1920, it of other vacant properties around Balti- featured a red brick facade, five bedrooms, more. The hunt took more than a year. and a claw-foot tub in the second-­ floor In many cases, the identity of a property bathroom. Karen Saunders, who now owner was hidden behind a maze of shell lives two doors down, remembers liv- companies; an operation called Balti- ing in the house as a child in the 1960s. more Return Fund LLC, for example, had Lewis Mitchell, a Coast Guard welder, purchased 1906 Boone at a city tax sale purchased the house next door 21 years for $5,452. Eventually, the investigation ago. Together with his brother, who lives revealed a Texas-based web of nearly a one house over, Mitchell spent more than dozen LLCs—limited liability corpora- a year cleaning, painting, and repairing tions, a form of legal tax shelter—that his new home. “I build ships,” Mitchell controlled more than 300 properties in says. “I figured I could do a house.” Baltimore. Nearly all had been purchased But even as Mitchell and his brother at tax sales, often online, between 2001 spackled walls and patched leaks, 1906 and 2010. Most sold for less than $5,000. Boone sat vacant—a moldering eyesore Many were vacant and in bad shape. that dragged the entire neighborhood As it turned out, all the properties—and­ down with it. Whenever it rained, water the various LLCs that owned them— would collect in the abandoned row house were the responsibility of one man: a and seep into Mitchell’s basement. To Houston millionaire named Scott Wizig, discourage break-ins, he hung his moth- who had made his fortune as a real estate er’s curtains in the upstairs windows at speculator. Few people in Baltimore had 1906. But with no one tending to it, the ever heard of Wizig; it’s unclear, in fact, house eventually collapsed in on itself. whether he ever visited his properties in When I visited the property, it looked like IN THE WAKE OF THE the city. But over the course of a decade, a stage set for an apocalypse film, its walls HOUSING CRISIS, Wizig appeared to have become the big- and floors partially demolished, its roof A NEW BREED OF gest private owner of derelict houses in open to the sky. Bird droppings covered REAL ESTATE INVESTOR Baltimore. How he did it, and why no the stairwell. The bathtub was still there. IS DESTROYING one was able to stop him, explains much Exposed, squatting precariously on a jag- AMERICA’S CITIES. about the current state of America’s cities. ged scrap of what used to be the second floor, the tub felt somehow obscene: a HE HOUSING CRASH OF 2008, COM- ruin-porn image of a city in crisis. BY RACHEL MONROE bined with the relative ease of buying In cities from Baltimore to Phoenix, property online, has ushered in a new vacant houses attract crime, serve as T era of real estate speculation. With breeding grounds for rats and dumping millions of homeowners unable to pay grounds for trash, strain fire and police find a piece of yellow plastic nailed to the their mortgages and taxes, abandoned services, and gut local property values. front door of 1906 Boone, one of those properties are increasingly put up for auc- “There’s a general reduction in qua­ lity of for sale—no credit check! signs that tion in online tax sales, enabling out-of- life around these properties,” says Kim have become ubiquitous in poor neigh- state investors to snap up houses, sight Graziani of the Center for Communi- borhoods. Mitchell figured maybe he’d unseen, in vacancy-plagued cities like Bal- ty Progress, a nonprofit organization buy the house and fix it up, the same timore, Cleveland, and Indianapolis. The that studies run-down houses across way he’d renovated his own home. But market is huge. Nationwide, according to the country and works to turn blighted when he called the number on the sign, the Center for Community Progress, more properties into neighborhood assets. “You he didn’t reach a Baltimore resident who than 4.7 million properties currently stand find increased rates of fear, anxiety, and had inherited the place from his elderly empty—a number that surged by almost depression among people who live adja- parents, or even a local bank that had half between 2000 and 2010. cent to vacant and abandoned properties. repossessed the house. Instead, he wound Despite earnest narratives about young There’s a loss of neighborhood fabric.” up talking to a woman from a company in homeowners working to rebuild American One day, around eight years ago, Texas that offered to sell him the property cities one DIY project at a time, many Mitchell came home from the shipyard to for $30,000—nearly ten times what he buyers in online tax sales are absentee­

OCTOBER 2017 | 35 real estate speculators buying in bulk. A town with more than half a million dol- Singapore businessman recently bought lars in hand, which he used to buy 284 414 properties during a single auction in run-down properties at tax auction for an Detroit; a Hong Kong billionaire named average price of less than $2,200. Wizig’s Jimmy Lai owns so many vacant houses in two-day buying spree was remarkable the city that they’re known as “Lai-sores.” Real estate enough to merit an article in the Buffalo At a Houston tax sale I attended in 2015, News. “He had stacks of cashier’s checks amid the crowd of mom-and-pop buyers—­ speculators can in all different denominations, ready to be ­a young couple pushing a stroller, an old impulse-buy a signed,” Bruna Michaux, the city’s senior man in baggy camo shorts—­veteran in- tax administrator, told the paper. “And I vestors with briefcases full of cash stalked house for less than mean stacks.” the bidding floor. “There’s a whole lot the price of a At first, Buffalo was optimistic about of money here,” said John Osenbaugh, a the out-of-town investor; in a depressed Houston real estate agent. “This guy who used car—but market, speculation can seem like a form looks like a bum could be carrying several local communities of flattery. But the hope quickly evapo- hundred thousand dollars.” rated, as Wizig’s rental properties began Part of the popularity of tax sales can be are fighting back. racking up hundreds of code violations. chalked up to unaccredited “schools”—like The state filed suit against Wizig and the erstwhile Trump University—which NY Liberty Homes LLC, the entity that promise would-be investors they can get bought and managed the properties, al- rich quick by buying up abandoned prop- leging that some of the buildings weren’t erties on the cheap in distressed cities. At But the mass purchasing of distressed hooked up to the sewer system; others the same time, the internet has made it homes by faraway investors is having had no heat. What’s more, the state as- possible to impulse-buy a house as easily the opposite effect. According to a case serted, Liberty’s rental agreements il- as a flat-screen TV. Such schemes have study of Cleveland by the Joint Center legally required tenants to pay for their inspired investors in England to purchase for Housing Studies at Harvard Univer- own repairs and charged them double for vacant properties in Cleveland over eBay, sity, properties owned by out-of-state any repairs Wizig performed. By the time and a Colorado pawnbroker to close on and high-volume investors are far more Wizig reached a settlement with the state, homes in Buffalo via PayPal. likely to remain empty, have delinquent he was being called the most prosecuted For investors, there are myriad ways to tax bills, violate local building codes, and landlord in the history of Buffalo. make money off a building you bought for ultimately require demolition. Wizig’s business associates attribute less than the cost of a used car. You can Scott Wizig developed an eye for op- his difficulties to regional differences in rent it out and make back your investment portunity early on: As a kid, he sold lemon- regulation. “Scott’s business plan doesn’t within a year—as long as you don’t spend ade to construction workers and repaired fit every state,” says Bogany. “In those much, if anything, on repairs. You can sell bikes to resell in his neighborhood. After Eastern cities, there are a lot of rules and to desperate homebuyers—offering them high school, he convinced his parents to regulations. If you’re trying to foreclose financing at exorbitant interest rates, or let him raid his college fund to buy his on somebody or evict somebody, it’s a including contract provisions that allow first foreclosed property. “No other re- much harder process. They’re not as busi- you to seize the property after one or two altor wanted to mess with it, because the ness friendly as we are here in Texas.” missed payments. You can seek out blight- price was so minimal—$5,000 or $8,000,” Wizig wound up selling 98 of the troubled ed areas near hospitals or universities, says Shad Bogany, a Houston realtor who properties in Buffalo for $1 to a nonprofit betting that an expanding institution will helped the teenaged Wizig make his initial called the Nonprofit Training Institute. eventually gobble up the neighborhood real estate purchase. But the late 1980s But the move ended up being an elaborate and pay you handsomely for your roofless, turned out to be an opportune moment game of pass the buck: The group, which collapsing investment. Or you can sell to to get into the market. Houston was rav- never fixed up the properties, no longer other speculators. “That’s the ‘there’s a aged by the oil bust; the Houston Chronicle appears to exist. It currently owes the city sucker born every minute’ variation of called it “a time of bankruptcies and fore- of Buffalo $949,250 in fines for housing the real estate game,” says Alan Mallach, a closures, for sale signs and empty office code violations. senior fellow at the Center for Community towers, loan defaults and failed banks.” Progress. “You buy really cheap and then When the city began to boom again, Wiz- FIRST SAW SCOTT WIZIG AT THE sell at a markup to other investors much ig’s investments paid off handsomely. Houston tax auction in July 2015. less sophisticated than you are.” In 2000, after going into business as There was a Vegas-y feeling in the In theory, tax sales are supposed to a real estate investor, Wizig turned his I air—the locked briefcases full of cash, replenish city coffers and transfer vacant attention to Buffalo, where more than the sheen of sweat on upper lips, the rush homes from delinquent owners to people 15 percent of all housing units were of a lot of money being moved around who will actually improve the properties. ­vacant. That October, Wizig came to ­quickly all contributed­ to a shared sense

36 | NEW REPUBLIC of anticipation­ and precarious high spir- their own hands,” says Kristine Dunker- every ­delinquent owner, let alone take its. The owner of 1906 Boone Street ton, the group’s executive director. them to court. It took the CLC years to was standing near the back of the room, In 2013, six community organizations break through the carefully cultivated an- sporting a healthy tan, a salmon-colored sued Wizig and nine of his LLCs, claiming onymity of Wizig’s shell companies and polo shirt, khaki shorts, and black run- that his method of buying vacant proper- hold him responsible for the properties ning shoes with neon-pink highlights. ties and failing to maintain them “estab- he owned. And while some cities have He was presiding over a table of young lished a pattern and practice that threatens begun experimenting with strategies to women who were researching properties the welfare of the communities’ neighbor- make cheap properties less appealing on computers. I watched him buy a house hoods.” But after a judge ordered Wizig to distant speculators—by­ using receiver- for $16,000, a process that appeared to to clean up dozens of homes, seven of the ship, say, to seize unmaintained properties take no more than ten minutes. LLCs filed for bankruptcy, essentially halt- from delinquent owners—investors have Wizig wouldn’t speak with me for ing the lawsuit. In 2015, the community little reason to avoid risky assets, especial- months. When he finally agreed to, he groups finally reached a settlement that ly when the risk is largely borne by local didn’t want to discuss how he profits from required the defendants to fix, sell, or de- neighborhoods the investors will never buying up distressed properties. By the molish dozens of vacant properties around see. There’s still plenty of profit to be made time we spoke, he was trying to rid from the pain of America’s cities; last himself of his Baltimore properties, year’s tax sale in Detroit, for example, just as he’d done before in Buffalo. was the city’s biggest ever. He presented his work as a form of Last summer, a year after the CLC charity: In his view, he helps the city settled its suit against Wizig, the by selling homes and providing fi- demolition of 1906 Boone was finally nancing to people who otherwise complete. But by then, the damage couldn’t afford them. (The Houston had been done. When people say a Press has reported on his company’s single vacant house can undermine sales of legally uninhabitable ­houses an entire block, they’re usually speak- to undocumented immigrants.) He ing metaphorically. But here, the donates to local minority youth destabilization is literal. Every time groups and hosted a book signing Lewis Mitchell looks out his window, last year for Martin Luther King III he sees what might happen to his own and Representative John Lewis. home. Most of the houses across the I asked him about a word—­ street are already in various states of “slumlord”—that his critics some- collapse, victims of the domino effect times throw around. “I have a hard that a single ruined house can inflict time understanding that,” he told Scott Wizig has made a fortune buying derelict properties. on its neighbors. Only four people me. “ ‘Slumlord’ means we’re pro- still live across from Mitchell. The moting to people, selling to people empty lot left where 1906 Boone once who live in unsafe conditions. We’re not the city, including 1906 Boone Street. The stood may mean that he and the remain- in the rental business in Baltimore—we’re LLCs also agreed to pay $85,000 to ing homeowners on the street will face a not selling these houses to consumers.” the community groups—­money used similar fate in the next few years. It’s true that in Baltimore, unlike in to form a new group to combat the prob- What gnaws at Mitchell is the fact that Buffalo, Wizig focused on selling his prop- lem of vacant housing in the city. things didn’t have to end up this way; a erties to other investors rather than rent- It was a huge victory for the commu- different kind of future could have been ing them out to low-income tenants. But nity activists. Nothing like it had ever possible for 1906 Boone. Mitchell’s own to those who live next to his unmaintained happened in Baltimore before—a neigh- house was vacant when he bought it 21 properties, the precise shading of his busi- borhood coming together and making years ago and fixed it up. He had wanted to ness model offers little comfort. The di- an absentee owner clean up properties. do the same thing for 1906—he had some lapidated homes owned by Wizig’s web of Dunkerton praises the community leaders money saved up, and plenty of renovation LLCs continue to put a strain on the sur- for their “initiative, persistence, deep de- experience. But the very attributes of the rounding neighborhoods, attracting rats sire to improve their neighborhood, and property that threatened the community in and trash and crime. To help neighbors love for the city.” The lawsuit empowered Baltimore—the abandonment and neglect fight back, the Community Law Center and energized the communities, and gave evident in every sagging floor and broken convinced the Maryland state legislature them a sense of hope. “It was never about window—are what made it so attractive to allow nonprofit groups like the CLC to getting money,” she says. to an investor in Houston. Urban blight sue the owners of problem properties. In some ways, however, the victory is a market. By the time Mitchell saw the “It’s empowering, in that it allows com- is purely symbolic. It’s simply not fea- for sale sign on 1906 Boone, the house

DAVE ROSSMAN DAVE munities to take code ­enforcement into sible for community groups to identify was already long gone. a

OCTOBER 2017 | 37 38 | NEW REPUBLIC Land of the Hermit King

Closed off from the world, North Korea weaves a highly militarized mind-set into the fabric of everyday life.

BY JEAN H. LEE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CARL DE KEYZER

← A topographic map in the science room at Toksong Primary School, in the provincial city of Phyongsong. The map emphasizes the militarized might of the North and omits the four-mile-deep Demilitarized Zone—one of the world’s most heavily armed borders—that has divided the Korean peninsula since 1953.

OCTOBER 2017 | 39 METICULOUSLY CHOREOGRAPHED MILITARY parades. Strident news announcements on state tele- vision. Missile tests presided over by a grinning Kim Jong Un. Propaganda from North Korea comes to us fully formed and almost alluring in its opacity: a fin- ished product that has been carefully constructed to convey an idealized image of strength and unity. Carl De Keyzer, a photographer based in Belgium, offers a different and more intimate view: a glimpse of the process of indoctrination within North Ko- rea. From their first day in kindergarten, children are spoon-fed propaganda—from lectures about the legendary feats of Kim Il Sung to field trips to a mu- seum that depicts, in gruesome detail, Americans massacring Koreans. What makes the images all the more remarkable is that De Keyzer was subject to the same restrictions imposed on foreign tour- ists who visit North Korea. During his four trips to the country over the past two years, he was attended at all times by official minders, and had to submit his photos for state approval. As a result, we see only the images the regime wants us to see—a sunny, utopian view of a nation where, in reality, some 70 percent of the people struggle to put food on the table, and most live without running water, heat, or electricity. Yet through his keen eye and careful framing, De Keyzer helps us see beyond the official picture. A mural of children dressed as soldiers wielding rifles looms over an exhibit of colorful toys. A state-­ produced music video serenades diners with footage of blazing howitzers. A mother beams at her son in the only village where foreigners are permitted to spend the night at a Korean home selected by the state. The images do not show us what is kept out of the frame. But within their narrow confines, they reveal much of what is meant to remain unseen. As the first American journalist granted per- mission to join the local press corps in Pyongyang, I know firsthand how important it is to see North Korea in all its complexity. The effect of De Keyzer’s work is not to sanitize the regime, but to underscore just how deeply its militarized worldview is woven into the fabric of everyday life. Such glimpses have never been more important—especially now, as our own leader exhibits a “locked and loaded” mind-set that would be right at home in Kim Il Sung Square. a

→ A mural of children firing rifles and playing with fighter jets hovers over a display of toys in the Three-Revolution Exhibition House. North Korea has the fourth-largest active military in the world; the Red Youth Guard has an estimated one million members between the ages of 14 and 16.

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OCTOBER 2017 | 41 ↑ Men in Pyongyang file through the refreshment line at an exhibit of 3D photographs. North Korea likes to showcase itself as a technological power, but its GDP is among the lowest in the world—only $1,700 per person, compared to $37,900 in South Korea. CARL DE KEYZER/MAGNUM

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↓ A mother and son at the remote Homestay Village near Mount Chilbo, one—if not the only—place where foreigners are permitted to spend the night with a Korean family. The well-furnished homes, surrounded by an electric fence, offer no trace of the hardships endured by most rural families.

↑ Howitzers in a state-produced music video at a restaurant in Pyongyang. Film and music are some of the most potent tools the government uses to disseminate propaganda. Before he died in 2011, Kim Jong Il owned some 30,000 films, including every Oscar winner, and spent lavishly to fund movies designed to highlight the country’s military prowess.

OCTOBER 2017 | 43 ↓ Koreans rehearse a mass rally beneath the Juche Tower in Pyongyang—a display carefully framed for foreign journalists. Rallies celebrating ballistic missile advancements are a hallmark of the regime, with citizens clutching placards bearing slogans like: “Let’s Become Bullets and Bombs Devotedly Defending Respected Supreme Leader Comrade Kim Jong Un!”

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→ Commuters at a Pyongyang subway station pass Rodong Sinmun, the country’s largest state-sanctioned newspaper. While many elites now subscribe to a digital edition of the paper, nearly 600,000 citizens still read copies posted at libraries and factories.

↑ In a diorama at the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities, U.S. soldiers are depicted driving a nail into a Korean woman’s head. The regime uses the museum’s gory displays to foster an unsubstantiated narrative that American-led forces massacred 35,000 civilians in Sinchon in 1950.

OCTOBER 2017 | 45 REVIEW

ESSAY

Rules for Radicals How a right-wing economist rigged democracy in favor of the rich.

BY ALAN WOLFE

WE ALL KNOW we live in a democracy. And we all know that ­Administrations can respond by appointing a raft of new in our democracy, inequality is rampant. So the question judges, as the Republicans have tried to do, but that requires naturally arises: How do wealthy and powerful people protect continuous occupation of the presidency, which the Repub- their privileges against all those who have the right to vote licans have not (yet) been able to accomplish. and might—you never know—reject what the wealthy and Here is where the economist James McGill Buchanan made powerful want? his major contribution to American political life. As MacLean According to Nancy MacLean, who teaches history at tells us in Democracy in Chains, Buchanan, a Tennessean who Duke University, elites have found a better way to serve their spent most of his career in Virginia, came up with a way to cause than the outright reliance on police terror associated­ prevent challenges to elite rule so innovative that it deserved a with dictators such as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe or prize. As it happens, he got one: the Nobel Prize in economics Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. Dictatorships, after all, in 1986. Buchanan is known for his contributions to what is are unstable. A government powerful enough to terrorize the called public choice theory, which applies economic reasoning oppressed could at some point turn around and terrorize to problems traditionally studied by political scientists. The key the oppressors. insight of public choice theory is that there is no such thing Privileged Americans prefer a safer as a disinterested public bureaucracy that carries out neutral method, one steeped in our history, and policies devoted to the common good. “Each participant in the in particular the history of the South- political process,” Buchanan believed, “tries, single-mindedly, ern states: Simply prevent those at the to further his own interest, at the expense of others if this bottom from exercising their right to is necessary.” Bureaucrats will inevitably try to expand the vote at all. Restricting the franchise scope of what they regulate, just as businessmen will seek to remains popular in places like North expand their profits. Legislators find themselves at the mercy Carolina and Texas, and has recently of government administrators because the administrators tend moved north into Wisconsin, where to have only one interest—protecting their turf—while elected new voter ID laws meant that by the representatives have many. 2016 election, 300,000 registered voters Following this logic, public choice theorists treat govern- DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS: found themselves without the identi- ment itself with skepticism. If you start hearing terms such THE DEEP HISTORY OF THE RADICAL RIGHT’S fication required to cast a ballot. But as “government failure” or “rent-seeking behavior,” you are STEALTH PLAN FOR AMERICA while voter suppression offers many likely listening to a public choice theorist. Rent-seeking oc- BY NANCY MACLEAN advantages to elites, it is far from fool- curs when individuals or groups seek to obtain favors from Viking, 368 pp., $28.00 proof. We still have courts, and many of them look askance on such schemes. ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON PRADES

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James McGill Buchanan, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1986, helped foster a culture of disdain and distrust of government.

OCTOBER 2017 | 47 REVIEW government that only benefit themselves, while all taxpayers pay for it. Agricultural price supports are a typical example; so are licensing laws that make it difficult for a funeral director or barber to set up shops that would compete with existing ones. Government failure simply means that an outcome that could be produced more cheaply and efficiently by the mar- ket is instead produced by government at greater cost and inefficiency. The importance of public choice the- ory, however, lies not in its technical terminology, but in its overall impact as a way of thinking about government. Over the past few decades, disdain toward government has become an established feature of the American political sys- tem. By building an influential base of support among academics for curbing Charles Koch funded a center for the study of Buchanan’s ideas with a $10 million gift. the power of the government, Buchanan made a significant contribution to this change in the national their ultimate effect. Knight was an idiosyncratic thinker mood. And since government has often acted, at least since and anything but an ideologue. But the idea that some things the New Deal, to protect those with little power from those are unknowable led more dogmatic libertarians to the con- with more, public choice theory has helped along the process clusion that markets work better than states, because the by which inequality in America has risen so dramatically in state tries to eliminate uncertainty, which can never be recent years. done, while the market simply lives with it and adjusts as conditions change. BUCHANAN, AS IT happens, was the grandson of a populist Knight’s legacy can be seen in the way that later Chicago leader and former governor of Tennessee. He grew up, as economists, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, many populists do, full of resentment—in his case, that of a preferred to rely on the market to solve any kind of economic white Southerner who feels he is not taken seriously by the (or social or political) problem and to avoid involving the state Ivy League crowd of upper-class Brahmins who look down on wherever possible. Since markets themselves favor those pow- erful enough to control them, libertarianism holds promise for those who want to limit the reach of democracy: An “invisible Proudhon famously wrote that hand” unseen by the powerless but nonetheless manipulated property is theft. Buchanan turned by the powerful can nearly always be relied upon to keep people in their place. the formulation around: The Not needing the state, libertarians never developed a theory regulation of property is theft. of it. They simply aim to ensure that some take more advantage than others of the rules that govern a market-driven society. Buchanan, however, refused to view the state as a black box uninteresting in itself: He asked where the rules come from in the first place, and how they could be reshaped according people like him as rednecks and hicks. In 1946, after gradu- to libertarian principles. ating from Middle Tennessee State and doing military service In The Calculus of Consent, the book he co-authored with in New York, where he once again felt the sting of discrimina- Gordon Tullock, Buchanan outlined his thinking: tion, Buchanan entered the graduate economics program at the University of Chicago. There, he was mentored by Frank Our approach is based on the idea that, insofar as this pursuit H. Knight, one of the era’s most prominent economists, who of self-interest does take place, it should be taken into account dominated the department in the 1940s. in the organization of the political constitution. Only in this Knight’s major contribution was to differentiate between way can the institutional setting for collective choice-making situations of risk, where an outcome can be estimated by be constructed so as to confine the exploitation of man by probability analysis, and situations of uncertainty, where man within acceptable limits. We are convinced that man can

decisions have to be made with no reliable way to predict organize his political society better by putting checkreins on BO RADER/THE WICHITA EAGLE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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his behavior in advance, checkreins which effectively restrain ­relationship he created with the Koch brothers, especially the behavior of the deviant from the “moral way.” Charles Koch, in the 1980s. MacLean suggests that Koch “came to see, perhaps in the light of all the Nobel attention,” that In other words, if we come to agreements about the way things Buchanan “possessed the key he had been searching for over should be, but know that some people may not act accordingly, so many years.” Koch was frustrated by Republican adminis- we can anticipate the problem by making rules—“checkreins”— trations’ failure to radically shrink the federal government, and under which such actions would not be possible. he had begun to view some of the leading libertarians of the It sounds reasonable enough: One could read Buchanan and Tullock’s book as an argument for checking immoral behavior such as stealing or cheating. But anyone versed in the language of conservative economics will understand immediately that the “deviant” behavior that Buchanan and Tullock wish to curtail consists of any effort by the majority to place restraints on the Sun activities of the rich and powerful, for instance through antitrust BY HADARA BAR-NADAV laws or environmental regulations. The checkreins Buchanan and Tullock refer to would be embedded in a constitution designed to prevent precisely such action. Think of it this way: If I sue a Blistered apple, large firm, I have a chance of winning. If it is unconstitutional gold that molts for me to sue that firm, I can never win unless the Constitution the eye and boils is amended. Without severe constitutional checks, Buchanan animals in their caves. argued, the government will expand so extensively that key individual rights, especially the right to property, will be de- I touch & touch stroyed; that is why he believed we must fear what he called “constitutional anarchy,” in which “individual rights are subject & touch, to the whims of politicians.” branding the hands Proudhon, much admired by Karl Marx, famously wrote that of each child. property is theft. Using economic models, Buchanan turned the formulation around: The regulation of property is theft. A circle Free-market capitalism will be best protected not by locking of unmoored fury. the barn door after the horse has been stolen, but by making it extremely difficult to steal the horse in the first place. Think I see death all of the stable as secured by a gate to which only the owner around you— has the key. That, Buchanan thought, is what is necessary to your phantomed self preserve capitalism. charred blue,

DESPITE BUCHANAN’S NOBEL Prize, it was far from certain cast against that his work would become widely known. Following stints asphalt. at ucla and the University of Virginia, Buchanan taught at both Virginia Tech and George Mason University, neither an The body’s ash already elite institution. Unlike the 2015 Nobel winner in economics, visible, Angus Deaton, he is not known for his facility with massive unglittering data sets; in fact, as MacLean emphasizes, Buchanan used in its cheap velvet. no data at all, relying instead on abstract reasoning. No best-selling book like Milton and Rose Friedman’s Capi- Bow down talism and Freedom ever graced his résumé. It is true that, in the brilliance like Milton Friedman, Buchanan shared his ideas with the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. During a week there in 1980, of your borrowed light. Buchanan made recommendations on the drafting of a new Let me ignite constitution, which severely constrained the power of the your end. majority. But, unlike Friedman, Buchanan “was content,” Maclean writes, “to work in the shadows.” After presenting a paper on democracy to the Mont Pelerin Society in 1981, Hadara Bar-Nadav’s newest book of poetry is THE NEW he never publicly commented on the Pinochet regime again. NUDITY (Saturnalia Books, 2017). One thing, however, did grant Buchanan an unusual de- gree of influence, according to MacLean, and that was the

OCTOBER 2017 | 49 REVIEW time as too woolly-headed to produce fundamental change in describes as “the base camp” of Koch’s cause at George Mason, Washington. From his perch at George Mason, Buchanan was is now headed by Tyler Cowen, a well-known blogger and New not only close to Washington geographically, he had also built York Times contributor. MacLean treats Cowen as a typical an impressive academic reputation. Why not give him a try? right-wing libertarian, struggling to make acceptable to the With a $10 million gift to George Mason in 1997, Koch masses policies that benefit only the rich. Here I think she is helped fund what is now the Center for Study of Public Choice, off base; I admire Cowen’s breadth and refreshing sense of with Buchanan as director. The Kochs also funded the Institute humor. And because there is nothing stealth about him, nor for Humane Studies and the Center for the Study of Market much that is dour and full of resentment, I consider him a far Processes, which later became the Mercatus (Latin for “mar- cry from James Buchanan. ket”) Center. The question that both Koch and Buchanan faced was this: Would Buchanan just become one more theoretical IS BUCHANAN OF sufficient importance to sustain a narrative economist, or would he use his academic credibility to change viewing him as the leader of a covert plan to transform Amer- public policy directly in the direction Koch favored? ica? MacLean describes how she found Buchanan’s papers and The most fascinating section of MacLean’s book is her personal effects as if she had suddenly stumbled upon a gold account of how Buchanan, with all his wisdom about setting mine. She concluded that it was her job to tell “the utterly rules, was outmaneuvered at George Mason by an otherwise chilling story of the single most powerful and least understood obscure individual (but with close ties to Koch) named, of all threat to democracy today: a stealth bid to reverse-engineer things, Richie Fink. Fink worked hand in glove with Charles all of America, at both the state and national level, back to the Koch to transform the centers at George Mason into think political economy and oligarchic governance of mid-century tanks for the New Right. He moved some of them even closer Virginia, minus the segregation.” A tall order, no doubt—and to Washington in Arlington, Virginia—home of the newly far too tall. At times, MacLean sounds like the British writers named Antonin Scalia Law School—and emphasized how, just who filled in the details of the lives of the Cambridge spies in like the law school, they could merge movement activities with elaborately plotted novels. She all but announces herself as a academic respectability. As if suddenly waking from a night- solitary truth-teller. If Buchanan and his friends want to change mare, Buchanan looked around and did not like what Fink was America, she argues, “they should do it honestly and openly.” doing, which, in his opinion, “verges on fraud.” Buchanan, it The trouble is that they did—and they still do. Buchanan, seemed, was primarily a theorist after all. after all, won a Nobel Prize, which is not generally awarded to Buchanan’s concerns were seconded by a colleague, Charles scholars who refuse to publish. I was introduced to his ideas in K. Rowley. Neither, however, had much impact. George Mason’s graduate school and have, from time to time, written about them. leaders were uninterested in Buchanan’s sudden concern with MacLean’s book, if anything, proves the opposite of what she academic integrity; the Kochs were giving too much money to claims. As she correctly notes, Buchanan’s ideas bear a certain Fink’s operations, and they knew where their bread was buttered. resemblance to those of John C. Calhoun, who himself was any- There now exists in the United States, especially in fields such thing but obscure, having served as vice president of the United States, and will remain an important historical figure after every university building named after him has been demolished. It The question Buchanan faced was also strikes me as a hitch in MacLean’s argument that Charles this: Would he use his academic Koch, this financier of a hidden effort to change America, has been the subject of endless books, blogs, and even films. credibility to change public policy MacLean has nonetheless written a book that deserves atten- in the direction Koch favored? tion. She is also, in my opinion, very much correct to conclude that this version of libertarianism “actually wants a very strong government”—since any government that seeks to protect the few from the many, at least in a democracy, will require strong public authority to keep the majority in their place. There can as economics and law, an entire alternative university system. be little doubt that the Republican Party’s efforts to restrict the And thanks in no small part to Buchanan, George Mason is at franchise in the name of liberty will continue. Conservatives its center. With plentiful Koch money to spend, this alternative will go on arguing that the attempts of right-wing religious system has fellowships to offer, journals in which to publish, organizations to discriminate against lgbt people are justified and access to the right kinds of politicians. Think tanks are the on the grounds of religious freedom. No matter how massive nerve centers of this world, and for the past three decades they corporate spending on elections becomes, it will still be called have relentlessly promoted its messages among staff members in free speech. All of these examples of Humpty Dumptyism can Republican administrations, judges at all levels, and the general be traced back to thinkers like Buchanan, who desired nothing public through op eds and television appearances. less than to change the rules of our democracy. Democracy in Besides, by the time Fink supplanted Buchanan, a new gen- Chains offers an essential guide to this strain of thought and eration had emerged. The Mercatus Center, which MacLean the damage it has done. a

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BOOKS Kristeva, Philippe Sollers, Jacques Derrida, John Searle, Noam Chomsky, and Camille Paglia. Indeed, Umberto Eco himself moves with knowing deliberation through several sections of the book, and is at one point described as flashing on “a vision of a poisoned monk.” The intellectual at the center of the novel, though, is Roland Barthes, the French theorist whose many works include the seminal text “The Death of the Author.” In February 1980, in what we used to think of as verifiable real life, Barthes was struck by a laundry van as he was heading home from lunch with then-future French President François Mitterrand. He died a month later from his injuries. The idea that Mitterrand, a man of the left and an aspirant to the nation’s highest office, would be meeting with the country’s leading intellectual—who was fatally injured immediately afterward—is naturally tanta- lizing. Binet, who has written a nonfiction book about former President François Hollande, has a keen interest in political machinations. What could Mitterrand and Barthes have been discussing? Surely not Racine. The “verifiable real life” distinction matters, because The Seventh Function of Language slips with trippy ease among known people and public events and extravagant fictionaliza- tions of the same. Binet is not new to making narrative out of recent history: In 2010 he won the Goncourt Prize for HHhH, his novel about the assassination of Nazi official Reinhard Hey- drich. But The Seventh Function of Language is more outlandish and deliberate in its departures from fact. As soon as the news Theory Conspiracy of Barthes’s accident is out, President Giscard d’Estaing, facing In Laurent Binet’s novel, French an upcoming election against Mitterrand, charges a taciturn officer named Bayard to look into the matter. Visiting Barthes intellectuals stir political intrigue. at the hospital, Bayard discovers that the philosopher can no longer speak. He indicates that he has several questions. All BY SVEN BIRKERTS Barthes needs to do is nod or shake his head. “Barthes stares at the superintendent with his sad spaniel eyes. He gives a weak nod.” The questioning is dutiful and yields little—until Bayard asks if he had any kind of document on him. “Barthes’s gaze,” IN UMBERTO ECO’S 1983 novel, The Name of the Rose, a ratio- he sees, “is suddenly charged with a new intensity.” The game, cinating monk named Baskerville and his assistant team up in as they say, is afoot. search of a missing text—the apocryphal second book of Aris- Even before the gruff, Gitane-smoking Bayard interviews totle’s Poetics, which Baskerville believes will help him solve a Barthes’s colleagues—Michel Foucault, Philippe Sollers, Julia series of murders within the walls of the unnamed monastery. Kristeva, and Bernard-Henri Lévy—he realizes that he is in way A sui generis literary mystery set in fourteenth-century Italy, over his head. He will need an interpreter to parse the lan- the novel gave Eco a way to infuse the mainstream attractions guage of French intellectuals. Et voilà! After a few fast-­moving of the detective genre with the more obscure delights of a scenes (Binet is not one for elaborate narrative causality), scholarly challenge. As he investigated crimes, Baskerville was the superintendent is partnered up with a young semiotics at the same time exploring the arcana of signification. Against professor named Simon Herzog. Semiotics is, to refresh, the the odds, the book became a global best-seller. science of signs; it theorizes things and events as belonging The Seventh Function of Language, by Laurent Binet, smartly within systems of meaning that can be “read.” Herzog—whose translated from the French by Sam Taylor, owes more than a initials wink to Sherlock Holmes—will act as the Virgil leading little to Eco’s novel. Packed with plots and subplots, heady in Bayard through the hellish circles of theory. its play of ideas and its spoofing of “theory,” it likewise offers The pages of The Seventh Function of Language are scat- a trail of bodies, an oddly matched pair of investigators, a tered with forensic and semiotic breadcrumbs, and for those missing text, and pages upon pages of elaborate philosophical inclined to track them they comprise part of the Barthesian debate. Binet gives prominent roles and cameos to an array of 1980s intellectual superstars, including Louis Althusser, Julia ILLUSTRATION BY ADAM HOWLING

OCTOBER 2017 | 51 REVIEW

“pleasure of the text.” As do the madly improbable cam- finger chopped off there on the spot. (The novel, by the way, eos by so many intellectual superstars, who chatter away, abounds in suspicious figures with missing digits.) The Logos or degrade themselves with drugs and alcohol and orgi- Club contests offer an obvious nod to scenes inThe Name of astic sex, or suffer events and fates unlike anything that is the Rose in which monks gather to debate subtle tenets of the known to have befallen them in real life. But Binet’s aim is not faith. At a contest in Bologna, the detectives watch as cele- just to send up the egos and abstracted excesses of academia, brated Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni goes up or to reveal that discourse is subject to manipulation; it is against an imposing older woman on the topic of intellectuals to suggest that the ultimate aim of such manipulation is to and power. He loses and his finger is summarily amputated. wield real political power. His partner for the evening, the well-known actress Monica Vitti, must tend to his injury. THE TWISTS AND turns of Binet’s plot are too byzantine to These assorted dialectical face-offs give Binet another way outline here; I refrain more from a fear of creating endless to take an angle on theory. He asserts, with Barthes, that ev- explanatory regress than of divulging any spoilers. But a few erything can be construed as a sign. Meanings are not isolated, major developments do need to be remarked. The first in- but form part of a system, and can therefore be interpreted volves that missing document. When Bayard and Simon go in diverse ways. Any assertion can be overturned and have to Barthes’s apartment to look around, vigilant Simon notices its thrust reversed through the agile play of rhetoric. Paradox that the book on Barthes’s desk is linguist Roman Jakobson’s rules. Describing the debate with Antonioni, Binet writes: Linguistics and Poetics. Inside, marking a page, he finds a sheet “The old woman says that this is the very beauty of the true of paper covered with small script. This he replaces without intellectual: He does not need to want to be revolutionary in reading. If only he had read it—for the paper is soon stolen, order to be revolutionary.” Antonioni, for his part, “snorts triggering much narrative mayhem, and leading to several contemptuously that she will have to explain that to Heidegger.” dramatic murders. There are many, many pages of this sort of thing. One of the victims is a young man named Hamed, a lover With each section of the novel, Binet ups the improbabil- of Barthes’s. Just before he dies, “while the sirens scream in ity factor, and his narrative grows increasingly farcical. The the distance,” he whispers a last word: “Echo.” Or that’s how Bologna section, for example, ends at the train station right Bayard hears it, anyway. But some time later, speaking with, at the moment of the 1980 terrorist bombing there. Though yes, Tzvetan Todorov, he asks the theorist if he can think of any special significance that one word might have had. Not missing a beat, Todorov responds: “Umberto. How is he?” Binet’s characters carry on with Echo, Eco. The chase now moves to Bologna, Umberto all of the arbitrariness of signifiers Eco’s hometown. As the bearded professor gets some page time, various revelations emerge to advance the plot. Vitally, that have been freed from their we get an idea of what the sought-after text might reveal: a signifieds. hitherto unknown supplement to Jakobson’s work on the six functions of language. The English philosopher J.L. Austin has theorized this “seventh function” as the “performative,” while others have called it the “magic” function. Being adept at this function, Eco explains to Bayard, “enables someone, in a number of the characters happen to be present, through a much more extensive fashion, to con- one happy coincidence or another they all escape death, even vince anyone else to do anything at all in though the incident in fact killed more than 80 people. any situation.” Clearly the possession of The action next moves to Ithaca, New York. Bayard and such a power would be a game changer Herzog attend a major conference on linguistics (which never on any number of nonacademic—which took place) organized by Jonathan Culler (a literary theorist is to say “real-world”—fronts. at Cornell). Among the list of participants who exist in real Part of the power of language, Binet’s life—Noam Chomsky, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Ro- novel suggests, rests on its slipperiness, man Jakobson, Julia Kristeva, Paul de Man, Jeffrey Mehlman, its ability to embody shifting meanings. Richard Rorty, John Searle, and Gayatri Spivak—is one who Bayard and Herzog witness this aspect of does not: Morris J. Zapp, who happens to be the protagonist language in action when they find them- of David Lodge’s 1975 spoof of academia, Changing Places. selves attending several nights of specta- Though Binet makes characters out of any number of the THE SEVENTH cle staged by the Logos Club, an ancient pooh-bahs of literary theory and philosophy, the actions and FUNCTION OF LANGUAGE secret society premised on gladiatorial fates assigned to them bear almost no resemblance to what we BY LAURENT BINET debate. Two formidable contestants are know of them. (Though, I should point out, Louis Althusser is FSG, 368pp., $27.00 given a topic to argue before judges and described as strangling his wife to death—which is documented an audience, and the loser has his or her in his actual autobiography.) Characters engage in outlan­ dish

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traditionally been kept apart. He has praised Milan Kunde- ra’s narrative feints, and those of Bret Easton Ellis—how they allow invention and the so- called “actual” to cohabit. Ellis, for instance, “borrowed” Jay McInerney’s character Alison Poole and used her in several of his works; Kundera, in The Book of Laughter and Forget- ting, freely mingled invented stories with recollections of his own experience. Binet has also discussed his interest in the recently fashionable French movement of “auto-­fiction,” which manipulates the real-­life materials of autobiography—­ asserting, in effect, that mem- ory is just another form of nar- Roland Barthes in 1963: Binet’s novel spins an elaborate mystery from the French theorist’s death in 1980. rative creation. In The Seventh Function of sexual acts and in several cases meet violent and horrific deaths; Language, Binet has taken “having it all ways” to a new lev- they carry on throughout with all of the arbitrariness of sig- el. Meanings and designations not only invert and collapse nifiers that have been freed from their signifieds. Perhaps, in into each other, but the same unhooking of signifier from fact, this is Binet’s point: to play out some of the absurdist signified that underwrote so much of “theory” is ridiculed. implications of a deconstructed universe. All in good fun, the critic wants to say—and would, were we But if it is, he winds up sacrificing much of the tension of the not just now all living under the sign of the counterfactual. mystery genre in order to keep hitting such an obvious target. When the truth status of political pronouncements is no lon- And in doing so, he parts company with Eco’s earlier enterprise. ger subject to formerly accepted checks and balances, how is By the novel’s midpoint, if not sooner, we find ourselves in the the novelist bent on playing with the line between “real” and psychological zone where everything is permitted. Effects seem “fake” to ply his trade? His conceit seems less transgressive barely answerable to causes, and staged encounters are heaped than redundant. Does the reader have the stomach for an one upon the next. Inevitably, the mystery we’ve been tracking anarchic mirroring of anarchy? The real-world link between begins to feel like just one more improbability. The reader feels rhetorical sleight of hand and power needs, instead, to be less and less interested in the narrative vicissitudes, and might explored and exposed. well start glazing over in those passages of argumentation in Amusing and unsettling enough at first, the business be- which each thing is revealed to be its opposite. comes less tenable the more wildly Binet spins out his scenarios. I’ll leave the climax and resolution for those who persist. To maximize his effects, the novel would have to be half as It is enough to say that, just as the plot began in the realm of long, for little is gained by the repetitions. If we’ve seen one politics—with Barthes and Mitterrand’s luncheon—it ends famous theorist absurdly jousting with another, we don’t need with the 1981 French presidential election, in which the sev- to see 20 others. It could be that there are in-jokes for the enth function of language has apparently allowed a suddenly cognoscenti in these encounters, but the audience for these empowered Mitterrand to carry the day. will not be large. To crib from Cyril Connolly, inside every overstuffed novel is a thin novel trying to get out. HOW MANY THINGS can a novel be? Where do we draw our One of the bit players in The Seventh Function of Language, lines, if there even are any lines left? Stylish, devilish, cerebral— encountered at the Ithaca conference, is the translator and setting these obvious and inevitable descriptors aside, what do theorist Jeffrey Mehlman. Professor Mehlman happens to teach we have here? Does The Seventh Function of Language, like The at Boston University, where I also work. I run into him now Name of the Rose before it, add up to something more than a and again, either on the street or at the occasional gathering, pumped-up entertainment for the name-dropping set? Is Binet so it was very strange to encounter him, however briefly, in making any larger statement with his transgressive antics? Binet’s pages. When I see him next, I will be most tempted to In interviews, Binet has expressed his interest in creating say, as does Binet at the very outset: “Life is not a novel. Or

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON/MAGNUM HENRI and subverting artifice, and in mingling materials that have at least you would like to believe so.” a

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TV being pelted in the face and left bleeding on the sidewalk. When he staggers home, his wife (a bouffanted Zoe Kazan) is nowhere to be found. She has gone out boozing, leaving their kids with her mother. Later that morning, as Vince smokes a predawn cigarette as he starts his Manhattan shift, he cross- es paths with Darlene (Dominique Fishback), a baby-faced prostitute from the sticks of North Carolina. They exchange the kind of glance that can only be shared by two people who understand each other’s misery. Both are living out their own “summers of hell.” The Times Square of The Deuce is not just infernal but well on its way to collapse. The show gets its title from the ’70s-era nickname for the mangy strip of 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, which was then depravity central. City services were tapped dry; sewage workers went on strike; and the part of town that’s now home to M&M’s World and The Lion King was overrun with smutty movie theaters, massage parlors, and x-rated bookshops, many of which were often raided by the police. That summer, according to The New York Times, the cops hit eight sex shows in one night, arresting 20 people. Mayor John Lindsay declared a crackdown on prostitution in Midtown that was focused on curbing the supply rather than eliminating the demand. “There are maybe 3,000 of us in the city,” one sex worker told the Times in 1971, “and if we each have ten customers a day that’s 30,000 men who paid out.” Her turf is the world portrayed in The Deuce. The show Mean Streets attempts to capture what happened at a very particular neon David Simon’s new drama The Deuce intersection of vice and suffering and capitalistic hustles. The series covers a decade of change. Just when Gerald Ford refuses to glamorize ’70s New York. was telling New York to drop dead and the Bronx was burn- ing to the ground, new enterprises began to prosper. The BY RACHEL SYME pornography industry defeated regulations and became big business—by the end of The Deuce’s first season, Deep Throat has hit movie theaters—and Times Square nightlife ventures (from peep booths to rock clubs), many underpinned by crime I WORRIED WHEN I saw the trailer for The Deuce, a grimy new syndicate investments, are cutting deals with the cops and drama series from David Simon (The Wire, Treme, Show Me a raking in cash. Hero) and George Pelecanos (a veteran crime writer who worked with Simon on The Wire), that it would repeat last year’s 1970s AS IN THE WIRE, all the dirty money is inevitably accompanied nostalgia trip, the glossy HBO series Vinyl. Created by Martin by violence, blight, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness. In Scorsese and Mick Jagger, Vinyl was a careening louche-fest, a scene halfway through the season, two prostitutes stand with record executives snorting cocaine off mirrored tables outside a sleazy Chinese restaurant as it rains. A young and wearing pants that lowered their sperm count. The show newcomer named Lori (a smart-alecky Emily Meade, who promised viewers a passport to a grittier (read: more authentic) delivers impeccable eyebrow-acting all season) grumbles time, when the city still had a “soul” and one might haphazardly about the downpour. Eileen (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who goes wander into a Ramones show any night of the week. It thrived by the street name Candy, is a veteran sex worker who wears on the kind of unearned, glitzy danger that comes with simply a curly blond Orphan Annie wig and a perpetual sigh. (Gyl- evoking ’70s Manhattan. lenhaal also serves as a producer of The Deuce, a role she Fortunately, The Deuce is no exercise in misplaced nostalgia. asked for as a condition to playing Candy, she says, because It has plenty of terror and grit, beginning with an early-morning she “wanted some kind of guarantee that they wanted not mugging in the summer of 1971. Vincent Martino—a musta- just my body but also my mind.”) A daisy-duked Fantine chioed bar manager played by James Franco doing his best in platform sandals, Eileen works to support a child in the blue-collar Brooklyn accent—is assaulted while dropping off suburbs. When Lori suggests not turning tricks because of

the bar’s cash take, and pleads for his life at gunpoint before the bad weather, Eileen snorts at the thought. She has been COLLECTION/GETTY PICTURE LIFE THAI/THE TED

54 | NEW REPUBLIC REVIEW around long enough to know that you can’t take a rain check also as unhappy cowards trapped in a system from which on survival. they find little respite and no escape. Lori, Darlene, and other women who work with pimps Gbenga Akinnagbe, an alumnus of The Wire, plays Larry often suffer violent, horrifying punishment if they do not Brown, a slick dresser who constantly holds the threat of perform—one aspect of The Deuce that is brutal and hard to physical violence over Darlene; there is no romanticizing his watch. Eileen, who has “no man,” works as her own boss. She role in her terror, even as Akinnagbe brings an undercurrent won’t suffer the same repercussions if she takes the night off, of grief to his verbal lashings. As in The Wire, the bleakness of but she also knows she can’t afford to skip work. She heads to The Deuce is individual, interpersonal, and institutional all the skin flicks, where a man asks her if she likes movies and at once. The lubricity of Times Square could not have flour- immediately unzips his pants in the flea-ridden, red velvet ished without corrupt (or absent) police, and a great deal of seats. As Eileen gets to work, a giant rat crawls from the floor The Deuce is dedicated to showing the many ways in which up to her wig. It is horrifying, humiliating, and a moment of the nypd made deals or turned a blind eye to the goings-on. stark clarity; her sorrow is complete. Lawrence Gilliard Jr. is moving as Chris Alston, a cop who In Eileen’s case, it isn’t the work that debases her. It’s her finds himself disturbed by the ethical ellipses of working on lack of control over her life, her alienation, the violence she 42nd Street, and decides to help a gumshoe reporter named suffers alone in hotel rooms at the hands of johns who don’t Sandra Washington (a splendid Natalie Paul) publish an exposé. want to pay. She finds respite and agency in the world of Another officer nicknames her “Angela Davis” when she tries filmed pornography, where she discovers that she can make to go undercover as a prostitute for a night. Her shoes give her money with a lot less risk. In the second episode, Eileen fills in away, Alston says: Street workers don’t wear Bonwit Teller. at a porn shoot in the Bronx, and as she has cold potato soup Washington herself comes up against city crookedness as the splashed over her face, you see a twinkle in her eye. In this nypd attempts to thwart her exposé. work, she can use her entrepreneurial spirit to her advantage. David Simon has always been a kind of soothsayer of inter- She is present at the birth of something. connected graft: The police are dirty, the journalists are com- promised, the slime begins at home. And, yet, radiant personal JAMES FRANCO PLAYS not only Vince Martino in The Deuce, but stories shine through the muck. No one on The Deuce is having also his twin brother, Frankie. If Vince is virtuous, then Frankie, much fun. The sex isn’t prurient, but it isn’t always joyless. The with his gambling debts and libertine reputation, is a bastion clothes are mostly shabby, the porn shoots are low-budget, of vice. Franco’s weaselly smarm works perfectly as rat fink the bars are raucous only when a glam band rolls through. But Frankie, and he brings a smear of buttery tenderness to Vince, importantly, everyone remains stuck on the same block, living who opens a seedy new bar near Times Square called the Hi-Hat, shoulder to shoulder, forced to confront one another. The Deuce which welcomes prostitutes. When I heard about Franco’s acting stunt, I was skeptical: The duplication trick could easily have become the focus of the show, as the brothers attempt to become As in The Wire, the bleakness smut impresarios with the help of a rotund, industrious mob of The Deuce is individual, boss named Rudy Pipilo (Michael Rispoli). In the wrong hands, The Deuce had the potential to turn into a show about the ’70s interpersonal, and institutional that focused exclusively on a kind of bygone machismo, a wish all at once. fulfillment forTaxi Driver fans who still quote Travis Bickle’s “You talkin’ to me?” when they look in the mirror. Simon and Pelecanos, however, allow a multitude of char- acters to share the spotlight. (They also brought in several women to work on the project, including director Michelle is about intractability and cycles; the vortex of poverty and pain MacLaren and crime novelists Megan Abbott and Lisa Lutz that characterized the city in the bankrupt era. Some people in the writers’ room.) The misery is spread around evenly, manage to get out with plucky innovation; some never will. which feels like a more accurate evocation of ’70s Manhattan Perhaps there is a tacit nostalgia play in this; perhaps today’s than a rhapsodic love letter to the city’s one-time rough ­edges. New Yorkers dripping with sweat on wi-fi-enabled subway We learn the backstory of Darlene, who returns to North platforms will long for the crackling, seamy city of 40 years Carolina only to lie to her former friends that she is a model ago. But I doubt it. If nothing else, The Deuce shows the ’70s in New York; in the process, she dupes a young waitress into as a hell that no one should want to return to, even if it was coming north on the bus to join the trade. We meet Ruby, an a hotbed of creativity. As one aging prostitute puts it on the astringent prostitute who is known on the street as “Thunder show: “Daddies, husbands, and pimps, they’re all the same. Thighs” and becomes the tragic clown of the season as she They love you for who you are, until you try to be someone attempts to laugh through her pain. The coterie of pimps who else. At least pimps are up front about it.” Cities are always all meet up at Leon’s Diner to eat greasy bacon and talk shop changing, and New Yorkers have maybe never loved Times are portrayed as tough, sexist, flamboyant braggarts—but Square. The Deuce is just up front about it. a

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BOOKS the novel—“I’m the new-type detective”—goes some way ­toward explaining how Macdonald earned his place among our greatest novelists. As Archer drives through fogged-in hills with a young woman, she asks him why he does detective work. Because he’s attracted to danger? Archer’s reply defines the moral outlook of Macdonald’s detective. While danger gives Archer a sense of power, he tells her, the true appeal lies in watching people closely enough that they reveal themselves:

When I went into police work in 1935, I believed that evil was a quality some people were born with, like a harelip. A cop’s True Detective job was to find those people and put them away. But evil isn’t How Ross Macdonald used noir to so simple. Everybody has it in him, and whether it comes out in his actions depends on a number of things. Environment, illuminate American society. opportunity, economic pressure, a piece of bad luck, a wrong friend. The trouble is a cop has to go on judging people by rule BY NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF of thumb, and acting on the judgment.

Whereas Hammett’s Sam Spade and Chandler’s Philip Marlowe stride through worlds that exist as their own spotlit stages, IN APRIL 1949, Raymond Chandler described his aspiration the new-type detective looks outward, tries to locate flickers to write a transcending book, “which, ostensibly a mystery of meaning in the vast gloom around him. These are stories and keeping the spice of mystery, will actually be a novel where the detective doesn’t just discover what happened to a of character and atmosphere with an over-tone of violence missing person. He reveals what makes a person feel lost—the and fear.” Chandler was contemplating his most ambitious—and perverse and tawdry elements that define people as castoffs most uneven—novel, The Long Goodbye. He was also contem- in a skewed American landscape. plating Ross Macdonald, who had just published The Moving Target, his first novel featuring the detective Lew Archer. At ROSS MACDONALD WAS the pen name of Kenneth Millar. Born the time, Chandler was obsessed with “significant” writing in California in 1915, his early life was shaped by his parents’ and resentful of the trash-strewn gully out back to which he separation, after which his mother set out with him across believed genre writers like him were consigned. The Moving Canada. Through the 1920s, they lived in rooming houses and Target, he told a friend, impressed him as a lesson in “How with assorted relatives; his mother begged for money in the Not to be a Sophisticated Writer.” He was especially annoyed streets, and Macdonald narrowly avoided the orphanage. By by Macdonald’s description of a car as “acned with rust,” a the age of 16, he had lived at 50 different addresses. He went pretentious tell that, for Chandler, marked Macdonald as just through a long phase of stealing and drinking and bisexual another “recherché” writer. promiscuity, and would spend his life struggling to reconcile He protested too much. Macdonald would go on to write his early anguish and humiliation. In a pool hall in Kitchener, 18 Lew Archer novels, eleven of which have been reissued Ontario, he found his great means of doing so. There he picked by the Library of America, the publishing imprint inspired by up a Hammett novel and instantly read secret meaning into it. Edmund Wilson’s vision for a series that would canonize and Hammett was an evanescent talent whose brief run ­yielded preserve the best American writing, as the Pléiade editions books perhaps best remembered for becoming films:The Mal- had done in France. Macdonald didn’t want for fans, from Iris tese Falcon and The Thin Man. His deeper achievement was to Murdoch to Warren Zevon, who dedicated an album to him. His distill the authentic experience of day-to-day urban corruption biggest admirer was Eudora Welty, with whom he exchanged into intense, laconic tragedies like The Glass Key and his mas- the hundreds of intimate notes collected in Meanwhile There terpiece, Red Harvest. Hammett had worked as a detective, and Are Letters. (Welty tells Macdonald that she dreams in his he saw what a writer could do by putting a single man on the handwriting; he confides that “I live in your world, as you live case in a shadowed world with only his gun and his deadpan constantly in mine.”) This summer’s release of the Library’s to protect him against inimical forces. But unlike real detec- third volume of Macdonald’s novels—Black Money, The Instant tives, the Continental Op and Sam Spade were aspirational; Enemy, The Goodbye Look, and The Underground Man—places Hammett called Spade “a dream man” because there never him alongside Chandler and Dashiell Hammett—not to mention was a real shamus like him. Spade and the Op were also such Melville, Faulkner, Baldwin, and Welty—on America’s most infectious characters that no dame could resist them. Neither rarefied bookshelf. could Hammett’s literary heir, Chandler. While The Moving Target is not included in the Library of America reissue, Archer’s brash proclamation midway through ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN RITTER

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Chandler’s hero, that “self-sufficient, self-satisfied, ­self-confident,­ untouchable bastard” Philip Marlowe, is a rav- ishing American creation. Chandler published seven Marlowe novels between 1939 and 1958, and how delicious it always is to watch him hold Marlowe up to the light and shake the simile out of him: “He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.” The dialogue is smooth, shiny, and loaded with sin. “I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners,” Marlowe tells Vivian Regan in The Big Sleep. “They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.” Vivian responds, “People don’t talk like that to me.” And that was the limitation: People don’t speak that way. When you finished the books, what you were left with was the unforgettable man lighting up the unforgettable dark city with memorably bright talk, but little to deepen the reality of life as people live it. Macdonald named Lew Archer in homage to Sam Spade’s murdered partner in The Maltese Falcon, and gave him a backstory. Archer worked for five years on the Long Beach 1973: Macdonald imagined an open-minded “new-type” detective. police force before quitting for the sake of his integrity. As he explains in 1950’s The Drowning Pool: “There were too cynical”—in parallel to his penetrating assessments of others. Ar- many cases where the official version clashed with the facts I cher’s ambivalence about everything, most of all himself, makes knew.” A world-weary crusader with no real friends we ever his insight credible. His unattainable aspiration is to be a good meet, Archer lives in middle-class West Los Angeles, never man. “I keep trying, when I remember to,” he confesses in The getting over the wife who left him, still making payments on Barbarous Coast, “but it keeps getting tougher every year. Like an underpowered Ford, wearing plain California suits. He trying to chin yourself with one hand.” In 1958’s The Doomsters, charges a daily fee and expenses, though he has an aversion the book Macdonald wrote after his only child, Linda, fell into to collecting them, as though taking money will implicate and serious trouble with the law, Archer sits in a cheap hotel room “declass” him; he loathes the rich and says he is, “like most and feels a stab of pain and loss: “Perhaps the pain was for my- Americans,” a counterpuncher. A good day begins with a rare self; the loss was of a self I had once imagined.” When thinking steak and a barbershop shave. Sometimes it finishes kissing about crime and criminals, Archer never forgets that he, like another man’s unhappy wife. Archer prefers clear-eyed women Macdonald, is someone who could have gone either way in life. who have been through enough disappointment themselves that they won’t make any claims on a solitary, unattainable WHEN MACDONALD RETURNED to California in the 1940s, his romantic. He is haunted by boyhood memories of holding his wife, Margaret Millar, was already a successful writer, whereas father’s hand in the Long Beach surf. Macdonald himself still had one foot in the Navy and one in Macdonald was no less skilled a user of language than the academy, at the University of Michigan. Only in 1951 did Chandler or Hammett. An aging woman “still wore hopeful he complete his dissertation, on Samuel Taylor Coleridge. white ruffles at her wrist and throat,” and the coastal sea has W. H. Auden had been one of his professors, and the revered “a used dishwater color.” The abandoned husband Alex Kincaid poet’s esteem for detective novels made him one of the several in The Chill has “that clean, crewcut All-­ surrogate father figures who directed Macdonald’s life from American look, and the blur of pain in his afar. (Another was his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.) eyes.” Macdonald’s 1958 description of a In the ’50s, Macdonald visited juvenile detention facilities, street boy as “a feather in a vacuum” was attended many trials, and befriended judges, prosecutors, perhaps appreciated by John Updike, who lawyers, and boxers. Yet it was his poor, exiled, fatherless child- two years later described Ted Williams hood, with his sense of being torn between two countries and as “a feather caught in a vortex.” As to somehow damned for crimes he couldn’t remember committing, that repellent case of acne, all metaphor that made Macdonald—and made Archer. In his scrupulous men have their moments of excess, and and perceptive 1999 biography, Ross Macdonald, Tom Nolan Chandler, who gave a carpet “a Florida makes clear that the ongoing irresolution of those early years suntan” and made teeth “white as fresh was the source of both Macdonald’s art and the “deranged” orange pith,” was far from immune. family life he and Margaret created together. One source told

THE ROSS MACDONALD Part of the thrill of the Archer books Nolan that Macdonald had the heavy emotional weather of a COLLECTION is Archer’s great gift for self-scrutiny, “very cooled-out person.” That was Archer, a cooled-out hero. EDITED BY TOM NOLAN the way he can monitor his own internal “I wasn’t Archer, exactly,” Macdonald wrote in an essay titled Library of America, 2,618

pp., $112.50 fluctuations—“I was feeling sweaty and “The Writer as Detective Hero,” “but Archer was me.” BETTMANN/GETTY

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Many of Archer’s cases involve someone missing—often a ONCE ARCHER BEGINS a case, he never quits, even if his client fiancée or a child—and loss is Macdonald’s great subject. (When fires him. He thinks he owes it to the victim and to himself to Macdonald’s friend Betty Lid telephoned in terror because her see it through. Ultimately, the new-type detective is addicted husband was away, leaving her alone during a raging California to the picaresque so beautifully described in The Instant Enemy: canyon fire, Macdonald’s response was, “Betty, you’re always alone.”) As Archer digs into a present calamity, he must inev- I had to admit to myself that I lived for nights like these, moving itably trace it through earlier generations of calamity. All the across the city’s great broken body, making connections among prodigal daughters, abandoned sons, and shipwrecked girls its millions of cells. I had a crazy wish or fantasy that some next door got that way for a reason. The wounded orphan Davy day, before I died, if I made all the right neural connections, Spanner from The Instant Enemy steals cars to go “grief riding,” the city would come all the way alive. and is cursed with a temper that, when it ignites, makes him imagine violent enemies everywhere. Young, neglected Sandy, It’s a detective’s fantasy, something very different from the fan- in the same book, acts out because “by getting into trouble tasy detectives of Hammett and Chandler. Macdonald describes Sandy had converted herself into an unforgettable presence.” real detectives with the same technical fluency with which Archer turns up the worst that can happen in a childhood: another great and underappreciated modern novelist, John Le There are rape victims, suicides, runaways, bulimics, a boy Carré, portrays intelligence operatives. Archer is constructed with “white scars down his back, hundreds of them, like fading in formidable contrast to the petty, rigid law-enforcement cuneiform cuts.” When somebody remarks how hard it is to hack thriving in every department, who hurries to conclusions figure kids these days, Archer says, “It always was.” about cases and then sets aside the facts that don’t fit. InThe People who knew him considered Macdonald to be kind, Zebra-Striped Hearse, Macdonald offers the job description for gentle, a little distanced, and ferociously principled. If his dis- that rare thing, the first-rate detective: “honesty, imagination, tressing childhood overwhelmed his own fathering acumen, curiosity, and a love of people.” Excellent detectives are hu- he saw with great clarity other parents who refused to grow mane, steady people with frayed collars who understand the up, who succumbed to whatever made them feel better in the world’s basic instability, don’t put any faith in coincidences moment. The Doomsters is one of several Archer novels about or prosecutors, and always trust the ballistics expert. Life, fallen idol-adults behaving badly in front of children, who in- Macdonald says, “always has loose ends, and it’s sometimes evitably see more than anybody believes they can grasp, with best to let them ravel out.” traumatizing results. Macdonald’s books teem with lost fathers, In 1950, Chandler published a collection he entitled Trouble deadbeats, cuckqueans, sexually frustrated husbands and hom- Is My Business, a phrase Macdonald would enjoy rebuking again icidal mothers—women driven to bloodshed by despicable men. and again. “Getting information is my business,” Archer says Macdonald knows that few murderers ever kill more than once, in Black Money. You get the lowdown by listening; the good detective can merge with any group, nest into any situation. “I spent most of my working time waiting, talking and waiting,” Macdonald gave the downcast jobs Archer says in The Doomsters. “Talking to ordinary people in of a 1950s detective a timeless ordinary neighborhoods about ordinary things, waiting for truth to come up to the surface.” Those conversations have to mission: to investigate the sources seem casual, because asking strangers to tell you their hidden of rot in the American grain. truths is always delicate. Even Archer loses people: “She’d come close to the edge of candor but I had pushed her too fast. She drew away from it, her personality almost visibly receding.” Archer is compelled by a decent and generous belief that the world becomes a better place when men with authority and the killings he writes about are the extreme expression are motivated not by power or self-gratification, but by their of character under stress. As he puts it in The Zebra-Striped desire to understand the ordinary citizens they are supposed Hearse, murderers set out to destroy “an unlamented past which to be helping. “Other people’s lives are my business,” Archer seemed to bar them from the brave new world.” says in The Far Side of the Dollar. They’re also “my passion. Macdonald’s own world was the new California. He de- And my obsession, too, I guess. I’ve never been able to see scribes places “where cops were hated and feared.” There are much in the world besides the people in it.” Macdonald gave the women who wonder, “Is that all there is?” (Archer’s reliable downcast jobs of a day-rate 1950s detective a timeless mission: view is “girls can do about anything boys can do.”) Macdonald to investigate the sources of rot in the American grain. Today, thinks about drug abuse, racial and ethnic discrimination, the when socially conscious law enforcement sometimes seems a long-term emotional effects of incarceration, the despoiled fantasy—mere aspiration—it’s especially apt to see Lew Archer environment, and income inequality. In The Goodbye Look, dressed up in the glossy black Library of America club jacket, the detective wonders, “How can a man help breaking the law the model American detective. His enduring virtue—and Ross if he don’t have money to live on?” Macdonald’s—is compassion. a

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FILM The mystery begins with a typical Dardenne moment: a casual act that turns out to bear a heavy moral weight. Dr. Jenny Davin (Adèle Haenel) is a young physician about to leave her post at a small practice in a working-class district. Her boss is retiring, and she has found a better-paid position at a tonier medical outfit across town. One night, as she and her intern, Julien (Olivier Bonnaud), are finishing up at the office, someone buzzes at the door. Jenny tells Julien not to answer it. They’ve already stayed an hour late, and their patients should know better than to bother them after hours. Julien departs a few minutes later in a state of agitation. Jenny leaves for a party at her new practice. Julien never returns to work, and will tell Jenny that he’s returning to his home village, giving up medicine after five years of study. The next morning, Jen- ny is met by a pair of detectives (Ben Hamidou and Laurent Caron) asking to see her office’s surveillance video from the night before. The person buzzing at the door was a teenage girl who’s been found dead at a construction site by the river. No one has any idea who she is. Jenny blames herself for the girl’s death. The surveillance footage shows that she was desperate, seemingly trying to escape from someone, probably the person who killed her. Jenny’s guilt is intensified by loosely connected feelings of class guilt—the fact that she was hurrying to leave her patients for a swishier gig and a party in her honor at her fancy new office. She gives up her new post and instead takes over her old boss’s practice, resigning herself to a lower income and to The Outsider living in the modest accommodations attached to her office. The Dardenne brothers examine the She’ll go on spending her evenings making house calls and writing methadone prescriptions, never not answering the conscience of a middle-class liberal. buzzer or the phone. Making her rounds, Jenny asks her patients if they know BY CHRISTIAN LORENTZEN the dead girl. She becomes the conscience of this patchwork community, and as such she’s no longer an entirely welcome presence. Her patients want her to stop asking questions. A boy named Bryan (Louka Minnella) admits that he saw the THE UNKNOWN GIRL, the new film by the Belgian brothers girl fellating an old man in a camper parked in a vacant lot. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, is a peculiar whodunit. The But thinking about the case gives him crippling indigestion, film is more interested in the victim’s identity than the killer’s, and his father (Jérémie Renier) suffers back pain that requires and it’s not the authorities who search for the answers but a a morphine injection. The questions are making them sick. bystander to the crime—that is, if what caused the death was When she gets too close to the pimps the girl was working even a crime and not an accident. The investigations skirt for, they threaten her. Even the detectives want her to knock decaying industrial zones around the river and the highway it off: She’s alienating informants they need in an ongoing in Liège, a Belgian city adjacent to Seraing, the Dardennes’ drug case. Anyone who might know something has reason to hometown and the setting for most of their films. There are want the death to go unexplained. construction sites, dusty fenced-in clearings, and dismal apartment blocks. We meet drug addicts, desperate immi- ONE CRITICISM THAT’S been voiced about the Dardennes’ grants, and criminal elements. The film fuses the roving earlier films is the absence of characters like the filmmakers vision of postindustrial precarity that defined the Dardenne themselves. “The Dardenne brothers capture a significant brothers’ last two features, Two Days, One Night (2014) and swath of humanity in their films,” Richard Brody wrote of The Kid With a Bike (2012), with the noirish turns of Lorna’s Lorna’s Silence, “but nobody who resembles the Dardenne Silence (2009) and L’Enfant (2005), which depict a vicious brothers.” Although they grew up in Seraing and spent their world closing in on itself. To complicate matters, at the film’s early careers making documentaries about the region and its center the Dardennes place an amateur detective who doesn’t naturally belong to this parlous world. ILLUSTRATION BY HANNA BARCZYK

60 | NEW REPUBLIC REVIEW withering manufacturing industry, as internationally success- ­overwrought, even hammy. It’s a stark contrast to Haenel’s steel- ful filmmakers they now partake of a life far away from their iness, which is no less interesting, if less obviously Oscar bait. desperate characters. Before The Unknown Girl, the Dardennes looked in on a world in which they had roots, but floated above THERE HAVE BEEN resilient, even stoic, heroines in the it as sympathetic observers, with two Palmes d’Or from Cannes Dardennes’ earlier films, but they haven’t been middle-class to their names. interlopers like Haenel’s character. Her performance recalls Haenel’s doctor is the first Dardenne heroine who shares Arta Dobroshi’s in Lorna’s Silence, the best of the Dardennes’ their distance from the community she works in. Her nice movies of the past decade. Dobroshi’s Lorna is an Albanian clothes, her highlighted hair, the fact that she’s in good health immigrant caught up in a multitiered citizenship-through-­ and not scarred by a lingering trauma set her apart from just marriage scheme that leaves her first husband (Jérémie Renier), about everyone else in The Unknown Girl. Only the colleagues a recovering junkie, dead, despite her efforts to save him. She at the upscale consultancy she abandons remotely resem- becomes convinced, against the word of doctors, that she’s ble her. Perhaps for this reason, however, Haenel’s perfor- carrying the dead man’s child, which muddies the arrangements mance attracted­ criticism at Cannes in 2016—after which the for her next marriage, to a Russian paying a premium to take Dardennes went back to the editing room to cut a new version, advantage of her newfound Belgian citizenship, and puts her seven minutes shorter than the one they premiered. In The on the wrong side of the gangsters who set up the deal. Like Guardian, Peter Bradshaw called the movie “passionless,” citing Jenny, Lorna finds herself trapped between failing, overgrown Haenel’s “bafflingly inert performance.” Her “usual spark,” he boys and predatory men. complained, appeared “to be doused by self-consciousness.” Renier, who began working with the Dardennes as a teen- But this self-consciousness is the source of The Unknown ager in The Promise (1996), reappears throughout their later Girl’s animating tension. Jenny’s uneasiness—a new if un- films as a broken father (or would-be father in Lorna’s Silence). stable element in the Dardennes’ films—reflects their own In L’Enfant, he sells his child, buys the baby back, but winds preoccupation with the consequences of their success and up in jail. In The Kid With a Bike, he abandons his son, Cyril, status. What does it take for someone who doesn’t share in leading to the boy’s adoption by Samantha, a hairdresser willing a precarious reality to understand a life shaped by it? Jenny is the guilty middle-class liberal on a mission of pity among the impoverished. Yes, she may be in over her head, but she Before The Unknown Girl, the is also sacrificing material wealth and comfort, and putting Dardennes looked in on a world in her own life at risk. Jenny is beloved by some of her patients—one boy with which they had roots, but floated cancer plays guitar and sings her a song of gratitude, with a above it as sympathetic observers. hint of a teenage crush—but others come to her for phony prescriptions and become physically menacing when she turns them down. We don’t know anything of her life outside her work: no romantic interests, friends, or family. We don’t see her eat much besides the waffles and cakes her patients give to upend her own life for a stranger’s trouble-making child. her as gifts. “A good doctor has to control his emotions,” she Renier’s performance in The Unknown Girl is as edgy as any of tells Julien. If increasingly obsessed with the dead girl, she’s these, if in a smaller role. He’s the film’s radioactive particle. also self-possessed. It’s this apparent coldness that sets her There are scenes in The Kid With a Bike and Lorna’s Silence off drastically from Sandra, the heroine of the Dardennes’ last of greater intensity than anything in The Unknown Girl: Lorna feature, Two Days, One Night, played by Marion Cotillard, who taking her husband to bed to prevent him from relapsing; earned an Oscar nomination for her overheated performance Lorna escaping a gangster who’s about to kill her; Saman- of helplessness. tha wrestling Cyril when he decides to go out after dark to Two Days, One Night was a startlingly direct essay on the help a local thug. In The Unknown Girl, Jenny is tossed into a indignities of neoliberalism from the perspective of one of deep construction ditch by Bryan, in a scene that underlines its victims. Sandra has been away from work at a solar panel the futility of her detective work with an absurdity that’s factory because of depression, and now that she’s ready to almost comic. When she does discover the girl’s identity come back, management has put her position to a vote among and the circumstances of her death, the Dardennes refuse a the staff. They can elect to let her keep her job, or to receive a pat resolution. One of the strangest aspects of their work is bonus of 1,000 euros each. As Sandra travels across Seraing their combination of sweeping plot twists and endings that petitioning her co-workers for her livelihood (she’s married leave the door open to both hopeful and hopeless futures. We with a couple of kids, and losing her job will force the family last see Jenny ushering an old woman with a cane down the out of their home and back into social housing), Cotillard stairs into the examination room. If Jenny is a stand-in for is jittery, constantly on the verge of tears. In her quest for the Dardennes, she, like the filmmakers, has learned that the self-­preservation, she’s on edge. The performance is at times best she can do is go on with her work. a

OCTOBER 2017 | 61 REVIEW

BOOKS own death. For him life holds no special value; it is something easy to throw away.

This, of course, is far from how Russians see themselves. Two new books—Gregory Carleton’s Russia: The Story of War and Gerard Toal’s Near Abroad: Putin, the West and the Contest Over Ukraine and the Caucasus—examine Russia’s self-image in detail, providing the kind of context and nuance that is badly needed in the current climate of hysteria and conspira- cy theories. Looking back eight centuries, Carleton traces an epic tale of war and redemption, of a Russia that finds itself War Stories constantly at risk of barbarian invasion and annihilation and Russia’s foreign policy is rooted in an yet manages, time and again, to save both itself and its neigh- bors. Toal, meanwhile, shows how Russia’s national narrative epic myth of betrayal and redemption. resembles America’s own: In their aggressions, both countries see themselves as the uniquely appointed savior of Western BY SOPHIE PINKHAM civilization. Over the past 20 years, Russia’s and America’s narratives have clashed repeatedly. A political geographer, Toal seeks to bring the discussion of Russia’s treatment of its neighbors back THE PAST YEAR has seen the greatest panic over Russia’s influ- to their physical location. As the United States has encroached ence on U.S. politics since the end of the Cold War. From the on Russia’s “near abroad”—the surrounding countries that com- hacking of DNC servers during the presidential campaign to prise Russia’s traditional sphere of influence—it has activated links between Russian officials and Trump’s team, Democrats deep-seated Russian anxieties about invasion. Together, Russia: have leapt at the idea that Trump’s victory resulted from Rus- The Story of War and Near Abroad make clear why Russia has sian machinations, even though there remains little evidence been so infuriated by U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Georgia. that the hacks decisively affected the election. Rather than The reasons long predate the rise of Vladimir Putin. revising their platform to appeal to today’s working class, Democrats have pointed their fingers at a familiar enemy; THINLY POPULATED AND sprawled across Eurasia, with few rather than listening to their base, they have put their faith in natural defensive borders, Russia has been subjected to re- the intelligence community. peated waves of foreign invasion. In the thirteenth century, Russia-blaming is an easy sell, in part, because the American the Mongols conquered feuding East Slavic principalities, narrative about Russia (or rather, about the Soviet Union) is drenching the land in blood and subjugating the Orthodox so well-rehearsed. The rhetoric of the Cold War is still fresh in Christian Slavs for more than 200 years. European neighbors the memory of an aging political class, and a new generation of offered their Christian brothers no help, the Russian story pundits has proved eager to revive it. Post-Soviet, oligarchic-­ goes, only betrayal: Swedes and Teutonic knights attacked capitalist Russia is frequently referred to as “Soviet” or “commu- Novgorod, the northwestern Slavic province that was among nist.” Last fall, during the campaign, msnbc host Joy-Ann Reid the few spared by the Mongols. tweeted, “For most Americans it’s shocking to see an American But this treachery gave Russia one of its first military he- presidential candidate openly touting authoritarian, commu- roes. In 1240, Prince Alexander Nevsky defeated the Swedes, nist Russia.” Others even claim to have identified an essential and in 1242 he drove the Teutonic knights back across the Russianness. In May, former Director of National Intelligence frozen Lake Peipus, a battle immortalized in Sergei Eisen- James Clapper told NBC that Russians “are typically, almost stein’s classic film Alexander Nevsky. In 1380, the next hero genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever.” in the Russian pantheon, Prince Dmitry Donskoy, defeated a The idea that Russians are fundamentally different from Mongol army at Kulikovo Field, south of Moscow. The Mongol Westerners dates back several centuries in European his- Yoke continued to weigh heavy on Russia’s neck for another tory, and reached its apotheosis in the Nazi classification of century, but Russia’s heroic myths place little importance on Slavs as Untermenschen. In his memoirs, German general immediate outcomes. Any number of defeats can be rewritten F.W. Mellenthin wrote: as victories so long as victory comes eventually. In 1552, Ivan the Terrible conquered Kazan, capital of a A feature of the Russian soldier is his utter contempt for life Muslim successor state to the Mongol khanate. The History of or death, so incomprehensible to a Westerner. The Russian is Kazan, a prose epic written a decade after the siege, depicts completely unmoved when he steps over the dead bodies of God’s army attacking the city and its inhabitants so ferociously hundreds of his comrades, with the same unconcern he buries his dead compatriots, and with no less indifference he faces his PHOTOGRAPH BY LARRY TOWELL/MAGNUM

62 | NEW REPUBLIC REVIEW

A World War II monument in Saur-Mogila, Ukraine, scarred by fighting between the Ukrainian army and Russian-backed separatists in 2014. that the river runs with blood and corpses for seven days. As power of resistance, self-reliance, and self-sacrifice, including Carleton points out, this account manages, like so many stories self-sacrifice for the motherland and for one’s “friends.” of Russian military exploits after it, to turn an act of Russian Not that Europe showed much gratitude for Russia’s selfless aggression into an act of divinely sanctioned self-defense. acts. Every year on May 9, Victory Day, Russians grumble at Kazan was, as the narrative goes, the latest home of the infidels the West’s refusal to acknowledge that Russia won the Second who had been persecuting Russian Christians for centuries. World War. American triumphalism strikes them as especially The siege of Kazan served to safeguard both the Orthodox offensive, coming from a country whose lands didn’t absorb faith and the Russian land. The best defense is a good offense. a drop of blood. This is another important feature of Russia’s Two hundred and sixty years later, Russia defeated the in- national idea: Russia is always saving the world and never vading army of Napoleon, the Enlightenment Antichrist, and getting the credit. Instead, it awaits the next betrayal. proved that only Russia could rescue Europe from darkness. Putin has put particular emphasis on war as a central part In 1945, the Soviet Union achieved the greatest triumph of all, of Russia’s historical and contemporary identity, ramping up delivering Europe from fascism through an unprecedented act national commemorations of victory in World War II and other of self-sacrifice. The war’s horrific toll—much of it the result of military feats. The lessons of Russia’s war myth continue to incompetent or sadistic Soviet leadership—was deemed an be used in practical instruction. In a 2003 work of military essential and inevitable part of victory. One of Russia’s favorite history published by Russia’s defense ministry, Nevsky teaches religious injunctions is John 15:13, when Jesus says, “There is wariness of Western neighbors, Donskoy demonstrates the im- no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” In portance of national unity in the face of invasion, and Ivan’s siege World War I, the passage appeared in a prayer book issued to of Kazan shows that a foreign threat is best defused by conquest. Russian soldiers. In 1941, after Germany’s surprise attack on Historical tropes about Russia and war also formed a crucial the Soviet western front, the leader of the Russian Orthodox part of Russia’s rhetoric about its 2014 annexation of Crimea Church recited it like an incantation. In 2004, Patriarch Aleksei and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. Crimea is sup- II made it the mantra of Russia’s armed forces. Russia’s story posedly the place where Kievan Prince Vladimir converted to of war stresses not only fear of invasion, but also trust in the Christianity, beginning the Christianization of Rus, a medieval

OCTOBER 2017 | 63 REVIEW predecessor to the Russian state. Captured by the Mongols had developed strong relationships with U.S. Secretary of and retaken by Catherine the Great, Crimea was the site of State James Baker and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who momentous Russian battles during many wars. In 2014, the felt that Shevardnadze had helped facilitate the peaceful end Russian government and state media energetically promoted of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany. When the idea that Ukrainian “fascists” were plotting a genocidal Shevardnadze became Georgia’s parliamentary speaker in campaign against Russian speakers in Ukraine, who were in 1992 and then president in 1995, America and Germany were urgent need of protection. As with the siege of Kazan, an act glad to provide his fledgling state with financial assistance of aggression was reframed as a defense of the Russian people. and political support. In the process, they chose to overlook Georgia’s violent suppression of separatists in South Ossetia TOAL’S NEAR ABROAD adopts a much shorter time frame than and Abkhazia, where civil wars broke out in the early ’90s. Russia: The Story of War’s eight centuries, focusing instead on Faced with the potential loss of both regions to the Russian Putin’s 17 years in power. But like Carleton, Toal emphasizes the sphere of influence, Shevardnadze developed what Toal calls emotional and narrative aspects of Russia’s policies toward its “Georgia’s marketing pitch to the international community”—in neighbors and rivals, showing how a nation’s idea of itself, and particular to the United States. It wasn’t hard to figure out how its efforts to project this idea into the larger world, can shape its to press American buttons. Georgia, a small, beautiful country foreign policy, even when that national idea conflicts with more with delicious food and an ancient Christian culture, cast concrete strategic interests. Toal highlights America’s narrative itself as freedom-loving David to the hoary Russian Goliath. about its own role in the world, pointing out that the two su- Shevardnadze paired this appeal with an energetic effort to perpowers tell remarkably similar stories about themselves—as assert Georgia’s strategic importance to Europe and the United they might notice, if only they’d stop to listen. States, as a gateway to Central Asia’s oil and natural gas. The With evangelical enthusiasm, George W. Bush sought toward pitch worked: By 2001, Georgia was the third-largest recipient the end of his second term to expand nato east and south into of U.S. aid, much of which was lost to corruption. former Soviet states. His wishes met with The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq increased the considerable resistance, notably from strategic importance of Georgia, providing it with new political Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates, and An- leverage. America gave Georgia military training and weapons gela Merkel. Russia had made clear long to help Georgia assert its control over disputed territories, ago that offering nato membership to including a region that Russia wished to attack as part of its Georgia and Ukraine would mean cross- war in Chechnya. For Shevardnadze, the focus on war pro­ ing a “red line,” but that didn’t stop nato vided a welcome distraction from his failure to reform Georgia from announcing on April 3, 2008 that it into a semblance of liberal democracy. He signed Georgia up had “agreed today” that the two nations for the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq, earning even more would “become members of nato.” Th e American goodwill. Bucharest Declaration was a major trigger Georgia’s next president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was elected in for Russia, a country with nearly a mil- the wake of the country’s “Rose Revolution” in 2003. Educated RUSSIA: THE STORY lennium’s worth of anxiety about being at George Washington University and Columbia, Saakashvili OF WAR BY GREGORY CARLETON encircled, invaded, and conquered by its received support from the International Republican Institute, Harvard University Press, many enemies—among them Germany, a quasi-governmental organization whose stated goal is to 304 pp., $29.95 Sweden, France, and Turkey. From half a “expand freedom throughout the world.” At an IRI event in world away, the United States was push- 1995, Saakashvili had impressed the group’s chairman, John ing against a weakened Russia’s borders, McCain. American politicians like McCain loved the optics of the encroaching on countries that were al- Rose Revolution, led by a dynamic young product of American most inextricably entwined with Russia’s exchange programs. Fluent in English, Saakashvili was “our economy, culture, and history. guy,” ousting an aging Soviet-era bureaucrat. (Never mind that What did America stand to gain from Shevardnadze had enjoyed effusive American support for years.) this? Georgia and Ukraine are hardly of Among Georgia’s most powerful assets was the ability to strategic interest to the United States. offer America a flattering reflection of its own purported values. Toal argues that American engagement During his meeting with George W. Bush, Saakashvili won in these conflicts can only be explained the American president’s heart by quoting back Bush’s recent by America’s idea of its mission in the State of the Union address. “I’m impressed by this leader,” a

NEAR ABROAD: PUTIN, world and by a highly specific network charmed Bush told the press. “I’m impressed by his vision, I’m THE WEST AND THE of personal relationships. In the case of impressed by his courage.” When Georgia’s treasury ran out of CONTEST OVER UKRAINE AND THE Georgia, in particular, he offers a per- money, the U.S. government stepped in to pay its government CAUCASUS suasive account of how the conflict es- pensions and salaries. BY GERARD TOAL Oxford University Press, calated. As Soviet foreign minister in Despite Saakashvili’s reformist image, the new presi- 408 pp., $29.95 the late 1980s, Eduard Shevardnadze dent largely continued Shevardnadze’s adroit efforts to win

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U.S. support with high-flown rhetoric about “democratic greater struggle between East and West, between civilized values” while pursuing domestic policies that were hardly Europeans and Mongol hordes. The Ukrainian conflict, the in line with democratic principles. Saakashvili used his ex- argument went, was only the beginning of Russia’s plot to panded executive power to shove through a much-lauded retake every country in the former Soviet bloc. anti-corruption­ program, but he also presided over numerous But the script was even less successful this time around. human rights violations, including a notorious campaign in In 2008, McCain had tried to use the war in Georgia against which any citizen could be plucked from the street, admin- the Democrats in his presidential campaign, casting Barack istered a rapid (and potentially inaccurate) drug test, and, Obama’s lack of response to the crisis as “at odds with our if they tested positive, jailed until they paid an exorbitant democratic allies and yet so bizarrely in sync with Moscow.” fine. He meanwhile continued to work energetically to prove Obama interrupted his vacation to read a statement con- his fealty to the United States, offering military support for demning Russian aggression; he couldn’t afford to look soft nato operations in Afghanistan and deploying more Georgian on Russia. But by 2014, Obama recognized that Ukraine, troops to Iraq. Bush held up Georgia as a success story for his like Georgia, was profoundly important to Russia’s national “Freedom Agenda,” but he warned Saakashvili in private that interests in a way it would never be for the United States. the United States would not rescue Georgia if it picked a fight America’s messianic missions in Iraq and Afghanistan hadn’t with Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia. gone well, and Obama was too young to have been inculcated Placing his trust in public rhetoric over private cautions, with the logic of the Cold War. He pointed out that Russian Saakashvili provoked a war with Russia over South Ossetia aggression in Ukraine was not a sign of strength, but rather in 2008. Though taken by surprise, Russia quickly mobilized evidence of weakness, a failure of soft power. There was a and prevailed on the battlefield. Georgia pleaded in vain for bipartisan clamor to arm Ukraine and escalate the conflict, U.S support. “This is not about Georgia any more,” Saakashvili but to his credit, Obama resisted. Then came Donald Trump, who campaigned on an America First platform and railed against American interventionism The conflict in Ukraine was framed and nato. His quick reversal on his isolationist rhetoric is as a struggle between East and not just another example of his capriciousness and vacuity; it also demonstrates how deeply military interventionism is West, between civilized Europeans embedded in America’s political and economic system, and and Mongol hordes. in America’s idea of its role in the world. Many of those who expressed outrage over Trump’s pussy grabbing and anti-­ immigrant invective were unfazed when he shot Tomahawk missiles at Syria and dropped the “mother of all bombs” on Afghanistan. Many were pleased by the idea that the U.S. was told Washington. “This is about basic values of humanity, of finally putting an end to Russia’s barbaric support for Assad. American values that we always, ourselves, believed in.” “If the A comparison of Russia’s and America’s narratives about war world is not able to stop Russia here,” one Georgian politician shows how easily countries can become lost in their national warned, “then Russian tanks and Russian paratroopers can myths. We condemn the hypocrisy of Russia’s self-image as appear in every European capital.” a humanitarian warrior even as we pretend that we attacked But Russia’s deep strategic interests in the region ultimately Iraq, Libya, or Syria in order to promote democracy and human outstripped America’s appetite for another distant conflict rights. We deride Russia’s paranoia over foreign aggression of dubious geopolitical benefit. In the end, the United States even as we whip up panic over charges that Russia rigged the wasn’t willing to fight Russia over South Ossetia, no matter U.S. presidential election. We wring our hands over the size of how great Saakashvili’s gift for flummery. Russia’s military, forgetting that our own is an order of mag- nitude larger. Understanding Russia’s self-image is not only AFTER HIS PARTY was voted out in 2012, Saakashvili shifted his a way of better understanding Russian behavior. It can also attentions to Ukraine, the site of the next high-profile struggle help expose America’s most cherished illusions about itself. a over Russia’s near abroad. In 2014, after massive protests in Kiev culminated in the flight of Ukraine’s then-president, THE NEW REPUBLIC (ISSN 0028-6583), Vol. 248, No. 10, Issue 5,007, October 2017. Viktor Yanukovych, war erupted between the country’s new Published monthly (except for two double issues of Jan/Feb and Aug/Sep 2017) by TNR II, LLC, 1620 L Street NW, Suite 300C, Washington, D.C. 20036. Telephone leaders and separatist militants. As Russia provided covert (202) 508-4444. Back issues, $8.00 domestic and $10.00 Canada/int’l (includes postage support to the separatists, Saakashvili helped Ukraine’s new and handling). © 2017 by TNR II, LLC. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, D.C. and additional mailing offices. For reprints, rights and permissions, please visit: president, Petro Poroshenko, and prime minister Arseniy www.TNRreprints.com. Postmaster: Send changes of address to THE NEW REPUBLIC, P.O. Box 6387, Harlan, IA 51593-1887. Canadian Subscriptions: Canada Post Agreement Yatsenyuk lobby for U.S. aid. “This is a war between the past Number 7178957. Send changes of address information and blocks of undeliverable copies to IBC, 7485 Bath Road, Mississauga, ON L4T 4C1, Canada. Send letters and unsolicited and the future,” Yatsenyuk argued, as Saakashvili had before manuscripts to [email protected]. Poetry submissions must be emailed to [email protected]. him, “between the dark and the light, between freedom and For subscription inquiries or problems, call (800) 827-1289, or visit our web site at newrepublic.com/customer-service. dictatorship.” The conflict was framed as the front line of a

OCTOBER 2017 | 67 backstory

PHOTOGRAPH BY ADAM REYNOLDS

LOCATION JACKSON COUNTY, SOUTH DAKOTA DATE JANUARY 6, 2017

JUST OFF INTERSTATE 90 in South Dakota, on the edge of the the most common missile in America’s nuclear arsenal. Thou- Badlands, stands a nondescript ranch house. Eight men once sands of Air Force personnel cycled through the facility over lived and worked there, lounging in a rec room decked out with the 28 years it was operational, and its security detail played dorm furniture, reheating prepackaged dinners, and passing the board games in the rec room while they waited for signs that time with rounds of Battleship. Secretly, however, they were intruders—from Russian spies to the more frequent culprits, engaged in a far more dangerous game of brinkmanship. Deep jackrabbits—had breached the perimeter. beneath the house, behind a four-ton blast door made of steel Photographer Adam Reynolds traveled to the facility in Janu- and concrete, lay a restricted Air Force control center capable ary. Decommissioned in 1991, it is now a national park. “These of launching a battery of intercontinental ballistic missiles are shrines to an Armageddon that didn’t happen,” Reynolds powerful enough to lay waste to the Soviet Union. says. But with Donald Trump bringing the United States ever The first missile silos were installed across the Great Plains closer to the “fire and fury” of nuclear war, Reynolds’s images in 1959. A sparsely populated region far from major American also serve as a cautionary tale—a reminder of the last time cities, the Plains also provided the shortest route to Moscow: world leaders pushed us to the brink of total annihilation. a some 5,000 miles over the North Pole. Known as Delta, the launch center in South Dakota controlled ten Minutemen, See more of Adam Reynolds’s work on newrepublic.com

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