He labels these four distinct expressions of contemporary American culture: "Free America" (center-right and libertarians), "Smart America" (center-left meritocratic elites), "Real America" (Donald Trump's . Ben Rhodes was the Presidents speechwriter, foreign-policy adviser, and confidant. Persuasion doesnt work. Thats where its strongest, and at this point its dominant. We are having history wars at the momentin state legislatures, in school districtsand we are bringing up parts of our history that have been suppressed and that have to be brought to the surface. The past four years have severely tested those ideals, and under the leadership of Jeffrey Goldberg, who became editor in chief the month before . You are referring to Roosevelts jab at Woodrow Wilson in the years before America entered the First World War: A milk-and-water righteousness unbacked by force to the full is as wicked as and even more mischievous than force divorced from righteousness. No one wants to come out in support of either righteousness or watery milk (I know I dont), but, unfortunately, Roosevelts cult of force doesnt answer the hardest questions of foreign policy, either. And one of them is national service. The lesson is not to embrace one or the other; its to combine them with wisdom. Writers for The New Yorker have been known to refer to the editor, David Remnick, as Dad, so there was something a little illicit about their decision to gather without him back in 2018 at a Windsor Terrace apartment. Packer describes the decline of America from a very specific . But she also said the NewsGuild believed the writers were misclassified as contractors, when they were really akin to full-time employees, and she laid out a path for them to join the union. Almost any Republican now can be slotted into the Reagan mold or the Trump mold, or theyre pretending to be one but theyre clearly the other. Writers who are skeptical of the unions tactics some told me they object to its confrontational social media style have bitten their tongues or deleted critical tweets. Interspersed are capsule biographies of influential figures of the time such as Colin Powell, Newt Gingrich, Elizabeth Warren, Jay-Z, and Raymond Carver. A war on this scale puts a whole country to the test, like a human body thats been slack for a while and then is suddenly exerted to the limits of its strength. This seems like the only way that face-to-face interactions between Americans from wildly different backgrounds could happen. Everyone I met on my last trip feared a wider catastrophe without American troops. I have a list of qualities that I think apply to most of us, that foreigners immediately pick up as American traits. None of them are original, and a lot of them are long shots. The Talk of the Town. Smart America is the meritocracy. Jane Mayer came from Washington, and Lawrence Wright flew in from Austin, Texas. And it says, Were all individuals. We all have a chance to make it. They would like security and order, however possible. Do you think youre more likely to say, when looking back on Just America in this period, Wow, that was a crazy time that many of our institutions on the left went through, and they did a lot of harm, or You know what? The book is kind of a quarrel with myself because, on the one hand, I am in a state of utter disgust and rage at the Republican Party, and its lies, its conspiracies, its racism, its cynicism. The editor, William Shawn, responded with pained, elegant letters, warning that collective bargaining would undermine the friendly, gentle, free, informal, democratic atmosphere that made The New Yorker special. . It was a white Christian-nationalist narrative that said, Your free trade, your immigration, even your corporations and monopolies have not improved a lot of towns, and rural areas have sunk and are in deep trouble, and have some of the same serious problems that the inner cities have had for decades. And so, when Trump came along, in 2015, he intuited in his reptilian way that the old, sunny, optimistic Reagan message didnt cut it, and that something more dark and nativist and ugly would appealthat people didnt want to hear how good things were. The country itself needs us to somehow be committed to it, and not just to ourselves and to our political tribe, and to our cohort and the people who share the bubble with us. 1. . Ad Choices. BUT, most of us would like to be able to get health insurance.. Publish date: January 15, 2008; Language: English; ISBN: 9781436147613; 4.06 (2619 ratings) Regular Price: 29.99 USD. The employees ultimately backed down, rejecting the notion of unionism for what seemed in part to be cultural reasons. At the depth of his crisis in trying to leave the Party . And instead they got the back of the hand of Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party, just as Biden is getting it now. My worry is that the philosophical and practical direction of this movement is making those achievements less likely. All rights reserved. In 2019, she was a judge of the National Book Award in Nonfiction. But I felt that in the last few years, politically and culturally, things have happened that showed that there are divisions within, as well as between, those two big blocks of Americans. Mr. Remnick declined to be interviewed, but said in an email that his two goals were that we achieve our highest editorial ambitions and that we work together with fairness, adding, Ill be glad to see us sign a foundational contract that memorializes our commitment to both., Many of the writers I spoke to said they saw Mr. Remnick as caught between an uncompromising union and an ailing parent company. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Human Rights in North Korea to Stay on UN Security Council Radar,US News is a recognized leader in college, grad school, hospital, mutual fund, and car rankings. Trumps performative macho is scaring voters in both parties away from women candidates. And now its the subject of lawsuits. They also have deep confidence in his ability to make their work better. Im in favor of putting together an exit strategy for Iraq, but Im also sure that if we were to leave most of the territory in the near future, the country would erupt in bloodshed of a scope that we havent seen in a long time. People in Japan are calling Goto's murder their 9/11. But I would like to call it Equal America, which is a deep, old American drive to be as good as anyone else, to have no one able to say, Im better than you. Smart America is where I mostly live, but its no longer a meritocracy, if it ever was. 40 Lightfoot must have known what was coming on Tuesday because she laid down the race/woman card over the weekend. And youre right that eight years of Obama in some ways gave us Trump. THE Roaring '20s was the decade when modern celebrity . They might even be repelled by it. I think youre right. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. In an interview with ESPN, Toma said the field was watered the Wednesday morning before the game, which took place on . It is a new aristocracy of credentials, and people are born into it. Our Man George Packer 2019-05-09 From one of America's greatest non-fiction writers, an epic saga of the rise and fall of American power, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, told through the life of one man. Maybe publishers need to think disruptively and not be victims., Maybe, he added, they should think a little more like predators., [For the Record, 1:15 p.m. PST Feb. 10: An earlier version of this post misquoted author George Packer as saying, Maybe publishers need to think destructively and not be victims. He used the word disruptively, not destructively.], Join Carolyn Kellogg on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. George Packer, Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow and ASU Future of War Fellow, wrote a book, Our Man, about Richard Holbrooke and American foreign policy.Packer has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2003. Anyone can read what you share. Compared to Iraq or the recession in rural North Carolina, I thought it would be relatively straightforward, Packer said. Chambers-like. Why did ISIS allow its negotiations with Jordan to collapse? The 96-year-old magazine, known for its revered writers and sophisticated audience, is being consumed by a labor dispute. Right. Those opportunities now also include newsletter platforms like Substack, and a new start-up called Puck, a digital magazine in which star writers get a cut of the subscription business and a share of the company. And unlike organizers in the 1930s, the NewsGuild has social media. A new mood of activism has swept through the home of the mascot Eustace Tilley.CreditNick Little. 89 (1): 31-32. Patriotism, to me, is closer to what Im trying to describe because its like loyalty. Then Ben Taub, an investigative reporter, asked Ms. Mohit why she had told their unionizing colleagues that the NewsGuild was also organizing the writers. Even when the result is considered a success, as in Nikole I can do what you cant do. It is not the same as the ideal of everyone being equal, which is in the Declaration of Independence, because of course throughout our history lots of people have not been equal. The book achieves this mainly by tracing the lives of various individuals from different backgrounds through the years. They're scared of doing something that might look a little unsafe. She told them, two people in the room said, that the guild could protect them from being fired and could even defend them against misguided editorial choices, if, for example, an editor she cited Arianna Huffington suddenly wanted everyone to write about sleep. But I mean it in a larger sense. Or are you making a larger point that, for liberals to achieve something beyond just winning elections, they have to inculcate a sense of patriotism and national spirit? A recent essay in the Atlantic by George Packer, author of the 2013 book Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, makes the case that America is, in fact, a failed state. In 2003, Packer was awarded two Overseas Press Club awards, one for his 20,000-word examination of the difficulties faced during the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq and the other for his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone. Or is there something about Americans that limits our capabilities in this type of project? Gili Ostfield, a production employee and union member, pointedly told HuffPost last week that if The New Yorker tries to print a diminished magazine without striking employees, it will be a stain on David Remnicks reputation.. And this is also the Democratic Party going along with the Reagan consensus. His reference points all seem to go back to Roosevelt and Truman and trade unions. Am I really prepared to say its over? Its a pretty radical solution, if you think about what it would do to their sales he said. In his new book, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, George Packer writes that the United States is in a state of disrepair, brought about primarily by the fact that inequality undermined the common faith that Americans need to create a successful multi-everything democracy. The book opens with an essay on the state of the U.S. during the pandemic, and then offers sketches of four different visions of the country: Free America, of Reaganism; Smart America, of Silicon Valley and other professional lites; Real America, of Trumpist reaction; and Just America, of a new generation of leftists. Packer doesn't preach about this. June 29, 2021. Unionized employees from Cond Nast marched from New York University to the home of Anna Wintour, Cond Nasts global chief content officer, last Tuesday. And that rebellion was out in the heartland. His 2005 book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq analyzes the events that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and reports on subsequent developments in that country, largely based on interviews with ordinary Iraqis. The author of The Assassin's Gate (2005), The Unwinding (2013), and a recently published biography of Richard Holbrooke, Our Man, Packer has written for bastions of liberal thought from the New York Times Magazine to The New Yorker in a distinguished, decades-long career. (April 29, 2013). By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Neither of these issues is new. 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