What's Driving the Democrats Apart
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JULY/AUGUST 2016 TAKING DOWN TRUMP FUKUSHIMA’S GHOSTS THE REAL BORDER WALL THE SPLIT SCHOLARS, ARTISTS & 23 ACTIVISTS ON WHAT’S DRIVING THE DEMOCRATS APART NAOMI KLEIN JOHN JUDIS RICK PERLSTEIN RIVKA GALCHEN MARK GREEN ZEYNEP TUFEKCI JOHNETTA ELZIE DAVID SIMON contents JULY/ AUG 2016 18 Reboot the World The internet was supposed to be democratic and open to all. Then Facebook and the 30 NSA got their hands on it. Here’s how we can reclaim our digital future. The Split BY PAUL FORD 19 reasons the Democrats are so divided—and what it means 22 for the party’s future. The Ghosts of Fukushima It’s been five years since the meltdown forced them to abandon their village. Now they’re going home. Can a town devastated by nuclear disaster be brought back to life? BY STEVEN FEATHERSTONE 42 Borderline Madness What lies between the United States and Mexico. PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICHARD MISRACH UP FRONT COLUMNS REVIEW 6 Food producers caught 14 The Republican Party’s 48 After going undercover in misusing federal funds are addiction to whiteness. North Korea, a journalist faces quietly pressuring Congress BY JEET HEER her critics. BY SUKI KIM to shield them from public 16 The moral obligation 52 In Emma Cline’s debut novel, scrutiny. BY TED GENOWAYS to protest the Republican attraction can be deadly. 8 Our analysis of every primary- convention. BY THESSALY LA FORCE season attack ad reveals BY MICHAEL ERIC DYSON 55 Did an illicit love affair how Donald Trump defied the give birth to Moby-Dick? conventional wisdom. BY WILLIAM GIRALDI BY LAURA RESTON 58 How factory revolts inspired 11 If Barnes & Noble goes out of a new form of the novel. business, it’ll be a disaster for BY RACHEL KUSHNER book lovers. BY ALEX SHEPHARD 62 What men got wrong about 12 How hard-core gymnastics the economy. BY MALCOLM HARRIS fans are revolutionizing the way the sport is covered. 64 Backstory BY ELSPETH REEVE PHOTOGRAPH BY STÉPHANIE BURET COVER REFERENCE PHOTOS: JAMIE MCCARTHY/GETTY (SANDERS). MANUEL BALCE CENETA/AP (CLINTON) CENETA/AP BALCE MANUEL (SANDERS). MCCARTHY/GETTY JAMIE PHOTOS: REFERENCE COVER POETRY 61 Himalayan BY CAROL FROST COVER ILLUSTRATION BY PIOTR LEŚNIAK JULY/AUG 2016 | 1 contributors Michael Eric Dyson, a contributing editor at the new republic, is university professor of sociology at Georgetown and the Editor author of The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race Eric Bates in America. He’s calling on “all good citizens of conscience and decency” Executive Editor Culture Editor to join him in Cleveland for the Republican National Convention this Ryan Kearney Michelle Legro summer to “protest the specter of a Trump presidency by putting our Politics Editor Features Directors bodies on the line.” WE MUST MARCH ON CLEVELAND, P. 16 Bob Moser Sasha Belenky Deputy Editor Theodore Ross Steven Featherstone, a journalist based in Syracuse, has Ryu Spaeth Senior Editors Brian Beutler visited both Chernobyl and Fukushima twice. “I learned to stop Story Editor Laura Marsh Jeet Heer asking about radiation altogether,” he says. “Only then did I begin to Elspeth Reeve Managing Editor see the tremendous human impact the Fukushima disaster has had.” Elaine Teng News Editor THE GHOSTS OF FUKUSHIMA, P. 22 Alex Shephard Art Director Poetry Editor Rivka Galchen, a novelist and essayist, is the author of Parker Hubbard Cathy Park Hong Photo Director Atmospheric Disturbances. Her most recent book, Little Labors, is Associate Editors Stephanie Heimann an essay collection published this year. She has been emotionally Mikaela Lefrak Production Director managing the election season by reading the novels of Anthony Adam Peck Pamela Brandt Bijan Stephen Trollope and not combing her hair. THE SPLIT, P. 30 Contributing Editors Assistant Editor Esther Breger Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, activist, James Burnett, Alexander Chee, Ben Crair, Michelle Dean, and author of the international best-sellers This Changes Everything: Reporter-Researchers Siddhartha Deb, Michael Eric Dyson, Steven Cohen Capitalism vs. The Climate and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Paul Ford, Ted Genoways, Emma Foehringer Merchant Capitalism. She is never more grateful to live in Canada than during William Giraldi, Dana Goldstein, Gwyneth Kelly Kathryn Joyce, Suki Kim, U.S. elections. THE SPLIT, P. 30 Laura Reston Maria Konnikova, Corby Kummer, Jen Percy, Jamil Smith, Intern is the author of The Strange Case of Rachel Rachel Kushner Graeme Wood, Robert Wright Maggie Foucault K and The Flamethrowers, a novel indebted, in various ways, to Nanni Editorial Assistant Intern, Social Media Balestrini. Her essay in this issue appears in different form as the Meaghan Murphy Lillianna Byington introduction to Balestrini’s We Want Everything, forthcoming from Verso Books. POPULAR MECHANICS, P. 58 Editor in Chief Win McCormack Richard Misrach, an award-winning photographer based in California, was roaming the desert near the U.S.–Mexico border in 2004 when he spotted a blue barrel with the word agua printed on VP of Marketing and Director of Sales Communications Suzanne Wilson the side. The moment inspired his latest book, Border Cantos, a Erika Velazquez Advertising Account Manager cross-disciplinary project with composer Guillermo Galindo, which Senior Integrated Nano Fabuss was released by Aperture in April. BORDERLINE MADNESS, P. 42 Marketing Manager Associate Account Executive Evelyn Frison Shawn Awan Rick Perlstein is a historian, journalist, and best-selling author Director, People and Finance Director of Software of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Paul Biboud-Lubeck Gregg Meluski Consensus; Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing Controller Director of Digital Design of America; and The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of David Myer Silas Burton Reagan. THE SPLIT, P. 30 Office Manager, NY Product Manager Tori Campbell Max Zimbert Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an assistant professor of Publisher African American studies at Princeton University and the author Hamilton Fish of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Her research examines the intersection of race and public policy, specifically as it relates to American housing policies. THE SPLIT, P. 30 Published by Lake Avenue Publishing 1 Union Square West, is an assistant professor at the University of Zeynep Tufecki New York, NY 10003 North Carolina. She started out as a programmer, but after her boss President asked her if the computer system she managed could tell when he was Win McCormack lying, she switched fields to study the social impacts of technology. THE SPLIT, P. 30 For subscription Inquiries or problems call (800) 827-1289 For reprints and licensing visit www.tnrreprints.com Clarification: The Adrienne Rich illustration by Janna Klävers on page 59 of the May 2016 issue was based on a photograph by Joan E. Biren. 2 | NEW REPUBLIC from the stacks DEMOCRATS HAVE ALWAYS fought among themselves. The tensions between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders that we explore in this month’s cover section—between pragmatists and populists, incrementalists and insurgents—have echoes throughout the modern era, from Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy in 1968 to Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson in 1988. In that year, shortly after Dukakis led Democrats to their third straight presidential defeat, the new republic blamed the loss squarely on Jackson. In this essay by Ben Wattenberg, a left-wing intellectual who migrated to the right during his career as a writer and TV pundit, the magazine argued that Democrats needed to shun liberal activism and focus on appealing to middle-class whites who had abandoned the party over civil rights. Using racially coded language, Wattenberg painted Jackson as “an extravagant caricature” who “embodies” every white conser- vative stereotype of “squishy” liberals. In the short term, Wattenberg’s side won: Bill Clinton recaptured the White House in 1992 and made centrism the party’s default platform. Jackson’s brand of populist insurgency went into hibernation. But as Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders have shown, it was only sleeping. Ben J. Wattenberg The Curse of Jesse DECEMBER 5, 1988 If Democrats manage to regain potency on business-is-bad, defense-is-a-waste, law- too far in the ’60s and ’70s? You got it. We the presidential level, they will have two and-order-is-an-unclean-issue, etc. did. We were wrong. But we’ve learned from people to thank: George Bush and Jesse Bush has billboarded the excesses of lib- our mistakes. We’ve returned to our roots. Jackson. eralism. Jackson will almost surely run again We’re ready to govern. And by the way, what By running a shrewd, brilliant, relevant, in 1992 and embody the issue even if he about ‘The C-Word’? What about those symbolic, sometimes demagogic, and wholly tries to duck it. And so it is possible that the bozos on your side? Didn’t they also go too successful referendum on “The L-word,” Bush Democrats will finally be able to do easily far? Now let’s get serious and cut the cards. focused the mind on the central question and clearly what they should have done long Let’s talk about the future.” … of modern American politics: Has liberalism ago: Choose up sides, have an up-front The serious problem is not that the gone too far? By winning with a solid clash of ideas, and decide whether the Democrats keep losing, but what might majority, he has told doubting Democrats Democratic Party is moderate, tough, and happen if they end up running the world’s the answer: “Yes.” progressive—or very liberal, squishy, tend- superpower before they have reformed! If Bush has prominently reidentified ing toward radical. … Was Dukakis a good Every four years there are signs that the the problem, Jesse Jackson has come to candidate? Not particularly.