DEATH of a GREAT AMERICAN CITY New York and the Urban Crisis of Afl Uence
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
JEFF SHARLET ON BLUE LIVES MATTER HARPER’S MAGAZINE/JULY 2018 $6.99 DEATH OF A GREAT AMERICAN CITY New York and the Urban Crisis of Afl uence AS THE SOUTH GOES, SO GOES THE NATION magazine FOUNDED IN 1850 / VOL. 337, NO. 2018 JULY 2018 WWW.HARPERS.ORG Letters 2 Great Pains Allan Abramson, Josiah C. Wearin Easy Chair 4 Unmusical Chairs Rebecca Solnit Harper’s Index 9 Readings 11 Known Unknowns James Bridle 4 the People Anne Boyer’s ode to Missy Elliott Hat Tips Joshua Cohen meets a man of many hats Feast of the Epiphany Nikolai Grozni And . Bieke Depoorter, Hazem Harb, Mary Iverson, and Michael Cohen faces Trumped-up charges Report 24 THE DEATH OF A ONCE GREAT CITY Kevin Baker The fall of New York and the urban crisis of afluence Letter from Manus Island 49 NO EXIT Michael Green The ongoing abuses of Australia’s refugee policy Annotation 58 A FLAG FOR TRUMP’S AMERICA Jeff Sharlet The power of strength Letter from Alabama 60 AS THE SOUTH GOES, SO GOES THE NATION Imani Perry History haunts, but Alabama changes From the Archive 67 Unreconstructed Almena Lomax Story 69 PLANTE’S FERRY Jess Walter Reviews 73 NEW BOOKS Lidija Haas CRITIC AT LARGE Nat Segnit James Wood’s return to iction NEXT WAVE Joanna Biggs Deborah Levy’s foremothers and heiresses Puzzle 83 Richard E. Maltby Jr. Cover: Aerial photograph of 432 Park Avenue, New York City, May 2018 Findings 84 (detail), by Fred R. Conrad LETTERS magazine John R. MacArthur, President and Publisher Editorial Director Ellen Rosenbush Deputy Editor Emily Cooke Managing Editor Hasan Altaf Senior Editors Katia Bachko, Giles Harvey Editor Emeritus In Memoriam Lewis H. Lapham Washington Editor All of us at Harper’s Magazine deeply mourn the death of our longtime friend Andrew Cockburn and contributing editor Tom Wolfe (1930–2018). Some of his most inluential Art Director Stacey Clarkson James writings were published in this magazine, including “The Painted Word,” Poetry Editor “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” and “From Bauhaus to Our House.” His Ben Lerner Web Editor essays and journalism, as elegant as the igure he cut, have greatly enhanced Joe Kloc the esteem Harper’s has enjoyed over the past half century. He will be missed. Associate Editors Camille Bromley, Elizabeth Bryant, Rachel Poser, Matthew Sherrill Associate Art Director Kathryn Humphries Assistant Editors Great Pains people in a practical way, such as pro- Duncan Barile, Matthew Hickey, Stephanie McFeeters, Will Stephenson viding bottled water for infants or Assistant to the Editor Elizabeth Royte’s report about a those who fear overexposure to nitro- Adrian Kneubuhl Editorial Interns water crisis in rural Kansas relects the gen, or building a pipeline to the near- Matthew Browne, Whitney Kimball, reality that federal regulations place a est city with a reliable treatment plant. Victoria Uren Art Intern disproportionate burden on small busi- Either of these would be much cheap- Kate Bowman nesses and towns [“Drinking Prob- er than a local treatment plant. Contributing Editors Andrew J. Bacevich, Kevin Baker, Dan Baum, lems,” Letter from Pretty Prairie, May]. Compliance with a standard should Tom Bissell, Joshua Cohen, John Crowley, As a thirty-four-year veteran of the not be a blind obligation. We need to Rivka Galchen, Gary Greenberg, Jack Hitt, Edward Hoagland, Scott Horton, Environmental Protection Agency help small towns, not punish them. Frederick Kaufman, Garret Keizer, who spent four years as water division Mark Kingwell, Walter Kirn, Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, director in the Kansas City ofice, I Allan Abramson Clancy Martin, Duncan Murrell, Vince Passaro, Francine Prose, Jeff Sharlet, have come to consider this an iron Alexandria, Va. Christine Smallwood, Zadie Smith, law. Yes, Pretty Prairie has received Rebecca Solnit, Matthew Stevenson, John Edgar Wideman $2.4 million from the state for its water Royte’s description of small-town Contributing Artists treatment plant. But this money is a dynamics was quite accurate, and as Olive Ayhens, Lisa Elmaleh, Lena Herzog, Aaron Huey, Samuel James, Steve Mumford, loan that has to be repaid, not to men- she notes, farmers have been slow to Richard Ross, Tomas van Houtryve, tion that the ongoing maintenance adopt practices such as cover crop- Danijel Žeželj and operating costs will be borne by ping, which are expensive to imple- Vice President and General Manager Lynn Carlson the town forever. Will Pretty Prairie ment. No one wants to add strain to Vice President, Circulation be able to attract and retain compe- small farmers’ incomes, but I hope she Shawn D. Green Vice President, Marketing and Communications tent staff for the plant? What if the would agree that the people of Pretty Giulia Melucci plant falls out of compliance? Prairie must be capable of some Vice President, Advertising Jocelyn D. Giannini Federal standards set a minimum for change and compromise. Financial Virginia Navarro, Assistant to the Publisher all—a reasonable requirement. But incentives for farmers, coupled with Kim Lau, Senior Accountant Eve Brant, Ofice Manager they do not always make sense for very required nutrient management on a Courtney Joyal, Marketing Assistant small communities. Rather than ques- farm-by-farm basis, is the sensible Advertising Sales: tion Pretty Prairie about its reluctance compromise that will spread the costs (212) 420-5760; Fax: (212) 260-1096 Natalie C. Holly, Advertising Sales Representative to build a treatment plant, the govern- to the broader taxpayer base. Marisa Nakasone, Production Manager and Designer ment should help the town protect its Existing state and federal conserva- Sales Representatives Chicago: Tauster Media Resources, Inc. tion agencies could handle these jobs, (630) 336-0916; [email protected] Harper’s Magazine welcomes reader response. but they are not funded well enough. Detroit: Maiorana & Partners, Ltd. Please address mail to Letters, Harper’s (248) 546-2222; [email protected] Iowa has in place a nutrient reduction Canada: JMB Media International Magazine, 666 Broadway, New York, N.Y. strategy but so far lacks the political will (450) 405-7117; [email protected] 10012, or email us at [email protected]. Direct Mail: Special Aditions Advertising, LLC Short letters are more likely to be published, and inancial muscle to get the job done [email protected] For subscription <ueries and orders please call: and all letters are subject to editing. Volume even within the next ifty years. The 800-444-4653 precludes individual acknowledgment. task is so large that no state can accom- 2 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JULY 2018 plish the goal alone, and at the rate that verse range of people than I could governmental cost-sharing is currently meet in daily life—and my attention apportioned, my great- grandchildren span is no worse than it ever was. will still be discussing the same issues. I doubt that is what Pretty Prairie Felicia Nimue Ackerman wants. And it is certainly not what our Providence, R.I. water users deserve. Solnit’s description of humans’ re- Josiah C. Wearin lationship with the digital landscape Hastings, Iowa makes me think of the relationship between domesticated dogs and the Den of Liars human world. We know how to use cyberspace to achieve our own im- Meghan O’Gieblyn’s insights into mediate ends, and are given enough the religious and political outlook of positive reinforcement to become de- Vice President Mike Pence made pendent on it—much like our dogs are much of Daniel in the Old Testament on us. But at the same time, we are not [“Exiled,” Essay, May]. But it should fully aware of how the world works, not be ignored that the Book of Dan- what its ultimate goals are, or whether iel is a work of historical i ction. For it has goals different from our own. instance, it recounts a banquet scene Most people have enough compas- in which a disembodied hand writes a sion for their pets to refrain from de- mysterious text that only Daniel can liberate cruelty and indifference, but interpret. It reads: “Thou art weighed the creators of our technology have in the balances, and art found want- shown no comprehension of the im- ing.” This certainly applies to Pence. pact of their work, and have built in no human-oriented goals at all. Thus, LeGrand Smith it cares not one whit whether we pros- Ashevillle, N.C. per under its control, maybe not even whether we survive at all. Pence may well consider himself a modern Daniel, though the analogy isn’t Charlotte Baltus a good one: Daniel was a young man Rochester, N.Y. trying to maintain his integrity and discipline in the decadent halls of power, Nurtural Woman but this was his prison, not a place he’d sought out of self-aggrandizing ambition. Jacqueline Rose claims that the Evangelicals now herd caravans of daughter she adopted “has accepted camels with saddlebags full of gold that she cannot know . the story of through the eye of the needle with- her own past” [“Mothers Superior,” out the slightest difi culty, and would Readings, May]. In my experience—I have us believe that God cares less lost my only child to closed adoption— about his commandments or the it is the rare adoptive parent indeed teachings of Jesus than about abor- who encourages and enables the child tion, gay marriage, and immigration. to find her birth mother. Instead, New York Revisited many adoptive parents feel threatened Margaret Green by the idea of their child (even when BY HENRY JAMES Prineville, Ore. grown) i nding her original family. Rose’s essay is drenched in the cru- First published in Harper’s Monthly World Wild Web elty and exploitation of closed adop- Magazine in 1906 tion, although it is presented as an es- Rebecca Solnit’s latest essay is say about motherhood.