Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 378

An Iran-Deal Skeptic Becomes a Supporter

Earlier this year, California Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told me he had serious doubts about Iran’s intentions as it pursued a nuclear deal with the United States and five other world powers. He also said he was somewhat worried about the scale of possible American concessions during the talks. Schiff, who I described in a post at the time as a “moderate’s moderate,” suggested to me that he wanted to see President Obama achieve an important foreign-policy success, but as a Jew, he wanted to make sure that an anti-Semitic regime—both he and Obama agree that Iran is ruled by an anti-Semite—would not be allowed to become a nuclear-weapons state. At the time, he told me he was “uncommitted” and that he would “remain uncommitted” until he had time to review a final deal, should a final deal materialize.

Well, the final deal has materialized, and Schiff, in a telephone call over the weekend, told me that, based on an “extensive review,” he has decided to come out in favor of the deal. He said he plans to formally announce his support later on Monday, but that he has already informed the White House of his intentions. His decision should carry some weight with national security-minded Democrats, and with still-undecided members of the House Jewish caucus.

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In our conversation, Schiff told me wants to see Obama and Congress work together to strengthen key aspects of the deal—most notably, he wants the administration to promise Iran that the United States will have zero tolerance for any instances of Iranian cheating. But he said he believes the deal could serve its stated purpose: to keep Iran south of the nuclear threshold.

“At the end of the day, I could not find an alternative that would turn out in a better way than the deal,” he said. “Rejection of the deal would not lead to something credible. And I think that there are enough ways to mitigate the risks associated with the deal that it makes sense to me to move forward.” He went on, “The risks associated with rejection of the deal are quite a bit higher than the risks associated with going forward.”

The most important message that the Obama administration could send the Iranians—and one, Schiff suggested, that has not yet been fully communicated by the president—is that the U.S. will not fear the consequences of immediately reimposing sanctions on Iran, should Iran be caught cheating. “In the past, the repercussions for Iranian cheating would be that they would have to stop cheating,” he said. “We have to move to a situation in which not all sanctions would be immediately reimposed, but punitive sanctions would be placed on Iran each time there was cheating.”

And what if the Iranians use the reimposition of sanctions as an excuse to void the deal? “Well, then the deal’s over.” He went on: “If we prove they’re cheating, then it’s not the U.S. that is rejecting the deal, it’s Iran that is undermining the deal. We should impose sanctions on them in that case, and also do our best to add new sanctions on top of them. If the sanctions don’t work effectively, then I’m for using force rather then letting them become a nuclear-weapons state. Before Iran crosses the threshold, we would have to stop them by force.”

“Before Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, we would have to stop them by force.”

One of Schiff’s worries earlier this year concerned the reaction of Iran’s neighbors to the deal. If Iran’s various rivals in the region—Saudi Arabia, most obviously—decided that they themselves needed to build nuclear programs to counter their foremost adversary, then the deal would be fatally flawed. “I’m going to be very interested in what the agreement looks like to us, but also what it looks like to people in the area,” he said at the time. “If this agreement is not good enough to keep other nations near Iran from starting nuclear programs— Egypt, Turkey, the Gulf states—if it’s not enough to stop a nuclear-arms race in the region, then we haven’t accomplished very much.”

I asked Schiff what the Obama administration has done subsequently to allay this concern. “I think that if Iran abides by the agreement, and if we take strong action with our Gulf and other allies and constrain Iran’s malicious conventional conduct”— support for Hezbollah, for example —“you won’t see a breakout by these other nations. I don’t think these countries have made a decision to move forward on their own nuclear issues, so it is important that we work with them to counter Iran’s activities. We should rededicate ourselves to making sure that Iranian actions around the region are met by a more than equal and opposite reaction.”

To my surprise, Schiff seemed pleased with the so-called snapback provisions of the Iran deal, which will allow the United States to reimpose sanctions in case of Iranian cheating. Snapback has never been a particularly impressive idea to me, for the simple reason that the reimposition of sanctions after Iran has been allowed to become a far richer country than it is today would have only a limited and delayed impact on Iranian behavior. The release of Iranian funds held in other countries, combined with an inevitable, and possibly imminent, wave of foreign investments, will create for the Iranian regime a substantial financial cushion against future sanctions. But Schiff argued that the growth of the Iranian economy will raise expectations among ordinary Iranians, who will expect their leaders to protect their newfound economic gains. “Will the regime be in a better position to withstand sanctions? Yes. But the regime’s overriding interest is in self-preservation. If they were to cheat on this deal, they would bring down a world of economic hurt again that would send businesses running for the exits.”

“I am comfortable saying that this deal is in the best interest of Israel, as well as the best interest of the United States.”

Schiff, in our conversation this weekend, did not seem wildly enthusiastic about many aspects of the deal. He said he was disappointed that Iran will not be making a full accounting of its past nuclear-weaponization work—the so-called PMD, or possible military dimensions, issue. “This is an area in which we didn’t achieve as much as we should have.” But Schiff argued that the administration could mitigate the uncertainty surrounding this issue by redoubling intelligence-collections efforts. He is also disappointed, he said, that the deal leaves a substantial number of centrifuges in place. “What concerns me most is the size of the enrichment program that Iran will have in 15 years.”

“We have to make it very clear that we will never tolerate Iran developing highly enriched uranium,” he said.

Perhaps Schiff’s biggest concern, apart from the number of centrifuges Iran will be allowed to operate in 15 years, has to do with the Israeli reaction to the deal. He seemed to be taken aback by the near wall-to-wall opposition of the Israeli political elite to the agreement. “One of the things that has given me the most pause throughout the process is the Israeli opposition across the spectrum. I’ve tried to step back and understand why the perspective is different, and I’ve struggled with this. I’m not sure I can give you the answer.”

But, I asked him, Israeli concerns are not enough to keep you from voting in favor of the deal?

“I don’t think I can substitute anyone else’s judgment for my own. My Israeli friends, and my pro-Israel friends here, are making their points. I have to use my best judgment, and my judgment tells me that we’re better off strengthening the deal than rejecting it. The painful heart of this deal is the trade-off, where Iran has an internationally legitimized and fast enrichment capability, and what we gain in return is at least 15 years in which we’ve cut off any practical path for Iran to a bomb.”

He went on, “The U.S. and Israel share the same imperative: to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. There is not division of interest here. I am comfortable saying that this deal is in the best interest of Israel, as well as the best interest of the United States.”

Why the U.S. Can't Build an Opposition Army in Syria

Last week, the U.S. finally received some good news in Syria:.After months of prevarication, Turkey announced that the American military could launch airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria from its base in Incirlik. The development signaled that Turkey, a regional power, had at last agreed to join the fight against ISIS.

The announcement provided a dose of optimism in a conflict that has, in the last four years, killed over 200,000 and displaced millions more. Days later, however, the positive momentum screeched to a halt. Earlier this week, fighters from the al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group aligned with al-Qaeda, reportedly captured the commander of Division 30, a Syrian militia that receives U.S. funding and logistical support, in the countryside north of Aleppo. On Friday, the offensive escalated: Al-Nusra fighters attacked Division 30 headquarters, killing five and capturing others. According to Agence France Presse, the purpose of the attack was to obtain sophisticated weapons provided by the Americans.

“Syria is a very complex, very dangerous place, multiple armed sides battling each other.”

In the grand scheme of the Syrian Civil War, Division 30’s setback is unlikely to tilt the needle one direction or the other. But the development symbolizes the increasingly hopeless nature of the Obama Administration’s strategy in the country. Four years after declaring that Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator, had to go, Washington’s attempts to construct an cohesive military of “moderate" Syrians has largely failed. A program approved by Congress last September to train and equip 15,000 fighters in the next three years has gotten off to a slow start—of the 7,000 Syrians who have volunteered, only 60 have made it into training camps located outside of the country.

Part of the problem is logistical. According to Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, identifying and vetting Syrians able to participate—and getting them to the camps—are enormous challenges.

“There's another difficulty, which is exfiltrating these individuals out of Syria,” he told the AP. “Syria is a very complex, very dangerous place, multiple armed sides battling each other.”

But even if these logistical hurdles were overcome, the American plan for constructing an opposition army has major strategic flaws. The Obama Administration has decided that defeating ISIS is more important than removing Bashar al-Assad, but refuses to cooperate with Assad—whose own forces are fighting against the Islamic State—in doing so. Syrian soldiers who join U.S.-funded military groups are barred from fighting against Assad, even though government troops are, in much of the country, a far greater menace than ISIS.

“The American intelligence services have a fair idea who the good guys and bad guys are in Syria and they know which groups are fighting both extremism and dictatorship,” Mustapha Sejari, a rebel approved for the U.S. training program, told the Daily Beast in May. “If the Obama administration were sincere in putting an end to the suffering of the Syrian people, they could do that in three months.”

An Introverted Writer’s Lament

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Lately, though, I’ve been asking why.

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This question comes after several years of feeling ill at ease about my increasing lack of participation in the writing world. There’s my avoidance of readings, my fake enthusiasm as I swindle my own students out of their Friday nights to go to a lecture I won’t attend, my gag-triggering physical loathing of bookstores, my requirement that reading materials appear on my nightstand by benevolent conjury, without any consumer effort from me. There’s my acute failure as an educator to fill any tiny part of the role of writing-community steward that is assumed of me. There’s my own titanic hypocrisy most recently as I think about promoting a new book in the very community I can’t show love for. So here I am. In all my humility. Hello friends. Hello community. If you could pretend along with me that I’ve been here this whole time, that would be super.

My personal reticence aside, I agree with the general consensus that these live and in-person performances are a good thing: good for writers, good for the larger book world. Whether authors like to attend them or not, they’re justly lauded as an authentic celebration of earnest aspiration in a world that’s perennially hijacked by commercial concerns—worries about getting the story formulated for the eventual TV/movie adaptation bonanza, or timing the genre mash-up so that it can best crest the fad frenzy. Amid this noise, the writer’s variety show of readings, interviews, conferences, and Q&As is a way of talking back, creating and sustaining a community around writing that matters. It’s a way of feeling a little less desperate and a little more resourceful, of proudly professing our interdependency and earning our solidarity.

The purpose of all this is to enact the larger mission of the writing and arts communities: We want to transfigure the market demands of self-promotion into something inherently more valuable, to say yes and no to those rites of passage offered to us by the powers that be. We want to do all we can to promote our writing—and good writing in general—but sometimes the rituals by which we put ourselves out there can seem empty and exhausting. And if we choose to reject them altogether, we can feel like we’re not being good team players or doing our part.

That is why my first and most pressing question seems like such an outright act of mutiny. What I want to know is, since when does making art require participation in any community, beyond the intense participation that the art itself is undertaking? Since when am I not contributing to the community if all I want to do is make the art itself? Isn’t the art itself my intimate communication with others, with the world, with the unfolding spectacle of the human struggle as we live and coexist on this earth?

Since when did the community become our moral compass—our viability as writers determined so much by our team spirit?

Do I really have to get in the way of that glorious interface by standing up in my sustainable zebra-wood spectacles, my complexion stage-lit and soaked in unwelcome Elton John bubble-shimmer, my cleavage lurching vampishly out of my neckline, my mealy voice and charmless presence competing with the lavish froth of that espresso machine? I mean, I can hardly see past the spotlights and pretentious echo to my own page of writing. It looks like an alien thing in this environment, wholly unbecoming and sickeningly feeble. And lest I imply that the underground bunkers and wine cellars are better venues for the bookish, all of us with our beer slouches, our pond-water hues toning in with the shadows, our mussed hair like bits of unspotted mold, that’s not the case either. It’s all the same. It’s all very embarrassing and alienating, when we look around. We’re real-life writers, not actors each in our own third-rate art film about the writing life. Aren’t we?

Since when did the community become our moral compass—our viability and ethics as writers determined so much by our team spirit? What if the community and the kind of participation it involves are actually bad for my writing, diluting my writerly identity, my ego and my id, and my subservience and surrender to the craft? What if I just want to make something? What if all this communing actually hurts the primary means by which I set out to participate and communicate—my writing itself? What do I do then? I mean, why can’t I make art in my clerestory abyss and snub the community without feeling like a snotty little brat? Why can’t I?

Despite the fact that the introvert is a romanticized figure, in practice the introvert is reviled and pitied. (And offered pharmaceutical cures for her unfortunate existential defect.) But what if the reticence of the introvert isn’t about stage fright, or isn’t just about stage fright? What about those of us who don’t want to self-narrate all the time? It’s exhausting to always be making and talking, whether in front of people or behind them, synchronously or asynchronously. Now, when every popular technology is just another doorway opening onto the ever unfolding dormitory of life—the one we’re all expected to drift up and down with casual curiosity, looking in on each other for the latest bit of gossip or distraction—not even our desks are our private domain. We’re always just a click away from leaving the workbench for the forum.

History has typically not been generous to the writerly recluse. It’s usually only a lucrative position after the fact of your success—and it works best if you’re a man—Salinger, Pynchon, Faulkner all have that esoteric aura about them that’s quite different from poor old Emily Dickinson, that self-imposed shut-in, or Flannery O’Connor, whose excursive limitations were a sad matter of physical ailment. Even Donna Tartt has to go on 12-city tours. And then there’s me. I’m not Donna, or Emily, or Flannery. I’m not getting anywhere as a young, reclusive, female writer.

If we must encounter each other, let’s do it the old way—in the dark, by the fire, our breaths bated, the world a big black mystery beyond us.

This is nothing new, of course. With the Internet and social media we simply have an easier time expanding and enlarging the scope of all the old tricks. But at the same time, these platforms are marginalizing our long paragraphs and pictureless tomes even more—whether they’re online or in print. Sure our words and pictures and sound bites are freshly stocking the shelves these days, but our goods are often commodified down to pre-packaged, non-nutritive variety packs. And this development is still doing what it’s always done to art and the artist—politicizing us, making activists of us, making rhetoricians of us, making our writerly identity as much about who we are in the world of politics and community as who we are on the page.

I am grateful that there are many vibrant, engaged, brilliant people involved in the arts community who are much smarter than me and much more talented than me and much better writers than me, and who take pleasure and satisfaction in being a part of this community. For many, this inclusion is stimulating—it feeds the creative impulse, warms it with community spirit, keeps the mind and heart percolating. But it’s not right for me. I still don’t like where it’s taking me personally, the way it’s coercing me and guilting me and laying down standards and requirements for my viability, complicating my very simple ambitions with all this clutter: get your name here, network on this platform and that one, take photos, give a talk, show up.

For me the aesthetic of art is primal and private—it’s a guts-deep aesthetic that is not only losing its potency to the benevolent dictatorship of the screen, but that also goes limp and queasy in the rooms that host the reading, the conference, the Q&A. Writing, to me, isn’t meant to be read aloud. The last thing I want is some writer’s actual voice and bearing and personality scumming up my love affair with his/her book. I want to be alone with your book, please. It’s your words sweet-talking me deep in my head, it’s your thoughts caressing my inner voice, it’s your expression commingling with my perception. But I’m a selfish lover, and a limp compatriot. I want every book I read to be mine, not yours. And I also want every book I write to be mine, not yours—I don’t want to stand at a podium and acknowledge my readers and inoculate them to my writing through my underwhelming personhood, and I don’t want to have my own primal encounters ruined by your personhood either. If we must encounter each other, let’s do it the old way—in the dark, by the fire, our breaths bated, the world a big black mystery beyond us.

Or, if that’s impossible, I hope I can not draw too much contempt as the wallflower at our community shindigs, compelled to be here out of peer pressure but banishing myself to the sullen edge of the dance floor, clutching my bony elbows by the punch bowl, trying to disappear in this room of people that have welcomed me so very ardently. I don’t not want to be your friend. I just don’t want to dance with you.

Why It Matters Whether an Attack on Palestinians Is 'Terrorism'

Early Friday morning, two houses in the West Bank were firebombed. An 18-month-old Palestinian child was killed, while his mother, father, and brothers survived with critical burns. Police say they suspect the attack is the work of Jewish extremist settlers. Hebrew graffiti left on the scene read, “revenge,” “long live the messiah,” and “price tag.”

The last of those is a tip-off. “Price-tag attacks” is the term given to a string of anti-Palestinian incidents over the past several years. As The New York Times defined it in 2011, the campaign “seeks to exact a price from local Palestinians for violence against settlers or from Israeli security forces for taking action against illegal construction in Jewish outposts in the West Bank.” It’s a double bind for Palestinians, who are vulnerable to reprisals for actions of the Israeli government. As Uri Friedman has noted, the attacks can be traced as far back as 2005, though the more common start date is 2008. Definitions of the campaign vary. One 2013 tally found nearly 800 cases of suspected price-tag attacks, and 276 arrests, in an 18-month span. In 2014, Israeli security officials blamed a group of about 100 hardliners for most of the attacks.

Like so much in the West Bank, the politics of the attacks are elaborate. The attacks are likely launched by settlers inside the occupied territories. The Israeli government defends the propriety of the settlements, while most of the world—including the United States—opposes them. Palestinians blame Israeli policy in the West Bank for encouraging the attacks. “We cannot separate the barbaric attack that took place in Duma last night from the recent settlement approvals by the Israeli government,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said after Friday’s incident.

The Israeli government, unsurprisingly, disagrees, saying while the settlements are lawful, the attacks are most certainly not. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement condemning the attacks, saying: “This is an act of terrorism in every respect.” So did hardline Education Minister Naftali Bennett. “We are not talking about hatred, and not about a 'price tag.' This is murder," he said. "Arson against a house in Duma and the murder of a baby is a disgusting act of terror that we cannot permit.” The Israel Defense Forces referred to the attack as “a barbaric act of terrorism.”

The speed with which top Israeli officials labeled the attack “terrorism” presents an interesting contrast with the U.S., where questions about whether Dylann Roof’s massacre of nine black worshippers in Charleston, South Carolina, should be labeled terrorism (or perhaps a hate crime) consumed days of public discourse. (Incidentally, the U.S. also labeled Friday’s attack terrorism.)

But whereas the conversation in the U.S. was largely about the symbolic importance of the term, there are legal ramifications in Israel. For law-enforcement purposes, price-tag attacks aren't quite placed in the same category, no matter what officials call them. Two summers ago, price-tag attacks were nearly labeled as terrorism at the request of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and others, but the proposal was scotched—reportedly because of the prime minister’s hesitation. The debate hinged on whether adopting the label risked equating price-tag attacks with, say, Hamas attacks within Israel.

“In the Israeli collective psychology, terror is another thing. Terror is detonating a bomb in a crowded restaurant," Danny Dayan, a settlement advocate, said at the time, while also condemning the attacks (in part because they hurt the settler movement).

Nonetheless, the following month, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon deemed them “illegal organizing,” an elevation close to categorizing the attacks as terror. In January 2014, another proposal to officially label the attacks as terrorism was again turned back, though as The Times of Israel noted at the time, officials were increasingly calling price-tag attacks terrorism.

The question of what to call the attacks could be important for another reason, too: money. The Israeli government compensates victims of terrorism and their families. Typically, that has been a right afforded to Israelis who are killed or injured by Palestinian attacks. But in some more recent cases, the government has opted to grant Palestinians compensation as well, as NPR’s Daniel Estrin noted last year.

After Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir was abducted and killed by three Israeli men, his family was paid. Even in that case, however, an Israeli victims’ organization objected, saying it implied that Israel as a whole was culpable: “I don't have any responsibility for what the three murderers did.”

A Winter Olympics in a City Without Snow

When the International Olympic Committee selected Beijing on Friday as the host for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, the Chinese capital became the first city to have hosted both the Summer and Winter games. This, most likely, isn’t coincidental: Beijing’s hosting of the Summer games in 2008 was generally considered a success, and Almaty, the Kazakh city whose bid placed second, lacks comparable experience.

A closer examination of Beijing’s 2022 bid, though, reveals the selection is far more peculiar than it seems at first glance. One reason: It barely snows in Beijing. China’s northern plain is extremely dry, and what precipitation that falls in the capital tends to occur during the summer. Beijing’s Olympic planners have assured the IOC this won’t be a problem—the country will simply use artificial snow to accommodate events, such as skiing, that require it.

But no amount of fake snow can cover up China’s lack of tradition in winter sports. Part of this is socioeconomic: Much of China’s population is poor by developed-world standards, and the equipment costs of winter sports tend to be prohibitive.  

Another issue is the peculiar nature of how sports function in China. Most top Chinese athletes—think basketball’s Yao Ming—are selected from a young age and placed in state-run sports academies, where they receive extensive training in addition to receiving an education. Traditionally, China has centered its attention on summer sports like table tennis, swimming, and gymnastics, rather than sports like skiing, ice skating, and hockey. In recent years, skiing has become a popular sport among China’s wealthy—but much of the population remains unable to take part.

Then there’s China’s political climate, which, if anything, has grown more repressive since 2008. In the past seven years, the Chinese government has banned Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and has restricted speech on the social networks it allows to operate at all. Imagining an Olympics where athletes and spectators are cut off from Facebook is difficult in 2015—and may be even less plausible in 2022. For the second time in 14 years, the IOC has awarded the games to a country with a poor human-rights record.

“The 2008 Beijing Games have put an end—once and for all—to the notion that these Olympics are a ‘force for good,’” Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, wrote at the time.

Kazakhstan is little better. The country is a classic post-Soviet autocracy, one where Nursultan Nazarbayev has ruled without opposition since independence in 1991. But Almaty, its largest city and former capital, nonetheless had several advantages over Beijing. It’s an international winter-sports destination and already possesses the infrastructure Beijing will have to build from scratch. Almaty’s plan to hold every event within a 20-mile radius of the Olympic village would have made it the most compact games in three decades. And, not least, the city has ample natural snow—a point Almaty’s planners made repeatedly in its promotional materials.

Almaty took the bad news in stride Friday, and expressed a desire to bid for the games in the future. But is hosting the Olympics worth it? China dazzled the world in 2008 with state-of-the-art Olympic venues like the “Bird’s Nest” stadium and the Water Cube, but seven years later, these structures remain underutilized and burdened with debt. In order to prepare for the 2022 games, Beijing will again construct many new venues—making it questionable the city will be able to finance the event within the confines of its $3.066 billion budget.

For China, though, the Olympics have always been about more than money. In 2001, Beijing’s victory in obtaining the ’08 games sparked wild nationwide celebrations and a sense that the country had “arrived.” This time, however, the response was far more tepid.

“We are not that enthusiastic about it because it is not the Summer Olympics but only the Winter Olympics,” Wu Xiaowen, an accountant in Beijing, told the Times. “We don’t play or watch those games.”

A Winter Olympics In a City Without Snow

When the International Olympic Committee selected Beijing on Friday as the host for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, the Chinese capital became the first city to have hosted both the Summer and Winter games. This, most likely, isn’t coincidental: Beijing’s hosting of the Summer games in 2008 was generally considered a success, and Almaty, the Kazakh city whose bid placed second, lacks comparable experience.

A closer examination of Beijing’s 2022 bid, though, reveals the selection is far more peculiar than it seems at first glance. One reason: It barely snows in Beijing. China’s northern plain is extremely dry, and what precipitation that falls in the capital tends to occur during the summer. Beijing’s Olympic planners have assured the IOC this won’t be a problem—the country will simply use artificial snow to accommodate events, such as skiing, that require it.

But no amount of fake snow can cover up China’s lack of tradition in winter sports. Part of this is socioeconomic: Much of China’s population is poor by developed world standards, and the equipment costs of winter sports tend to be prohibitive.  

Another issue is the peculiar nature of how sports function in China. Most top Chinese athletes—think basketball’s Yao Ming—are selected from a young age and placed in state-run sports academies, where they receive extensive training in addition to receiving an education. Traditionally, China has centered its attention on summer sports like table tennis, swimming, and gymnastics, rather than sports like skiing, ice skating, and hockey. In recent years, skiing has become a popular sport among China’s wealthy—but much of the population remains unable to take part.

Then there’s China’s political climate, which, if anything, has grown more repressive since 2008. In the past seven years, the Chinese government has banned Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and has restricted speech on the social networks it allows to operate at all. Imagining an Olympics where athletes and spectators are cut off from Facebook is difficult in 2015—and may be even less plausible in 2022. For the second time in 14 years, the IOC has awarded the games to a country with a poor human rights record.

“The 2008 Beijing Games have put an end—once and for all—to the notion that these Olympics are a ‘force for good,’” Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, wrote at the time.

Kazakhstan is little better. The country is a classic post-Soviet autocracy, one where Nursultan Nazarbayev has ruled without opposition since independence in 1991. But Almaty, its largest city and former capital, nonetheless had several advantages over Beijing. It’s an international winter sports destination and already possesses the infrastructure Beijing will have to build from scratch. Almaty’s plan to hold every event within a 20-mile radius of the Olympic village would have made it the most compact games in three decades. And, not least, the city has ample natural snow—a point Almaty’s planners made repeatedly in its promotional materials.

Almaty took the bad news in stride Friday, and expressed a desire to bid for the games in the future. But is hosting the Olympics worth it? China dazzled the world in 2008 with state-of-the-art Olympic venues like the “Bird’s Nest” stadium and the Water Cube, but seven years later, these structures remain underutilized and burdened with debt. In order to prepare for the 2022 games, Beijing will again construct many new venues—making it questionable the city will be able to finance the event within the confines of its $3.066 billion budget.

For China, though, the Olympics have always been about more than money. In 2001, Beijing’s victory in obtaining the ’08 games sparked wild nationwide celebrations and a sense that the country had “arrived.” This time, however, the response was far more tepid.

“We are not that enthusiastic about it because it is not the Summer Olympics but only the Winter Olympics,” Wu Xiaowen, an accountant in Beijing, told the Times. “We don’t play or watch those games.”

The Big Question: Reader Poll

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My Outrage Is Better Than Your Outrage

Now is the point in the story of Cecil the lion—amid non-stop news coverage and passionate social-media advocacy—when people get tired of hearing about Cecil the lion. Even if they hesitate to say it.

But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgement and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Palmer didn’t just kill a lion. He killed an especially good-looking and “beloved” lion in an ostentatious and gruesome fashion that culminated in decapitation. To make things worse, that lion had a human name. To make things worse still, that name was Cecil.

It’s hard to think of a more innocent name than Cecil. Had the lion’s name been Satan or Derek, the international firestorm might have been attenuated. Had Palmer not had a past that included sexual harassment complaints and pleading guilty to lying to federal wildlife officials about killing a black bear, he might have been less hateable. He also might have been less hateable had he been a humble cobbler, or literally anything other than a wealthy dentist. But every element of this story fell into place in a way that sparked international outrage beyond any outrage storm this year.

Comedian Ricky Gervais tweeted a photograph of a lion.
The lion is not Cecil, but it went viral nonetheless.

“Is it that difficult for you to get an erection that you need to kill things?” Jimmy Kimmel chided Palmer, in a rant-turned-tearful-plea to viewers to donate money to lion-tracking research. The segment got more than 6.5 million views on YouTube in two days. Palmer’s professional credibility was destroyed by a flood of Yelp reviews that gave him one star on grounds that he is a murderer, from people who know nothing of his root-canal skills. “You kill a protected lion, we kill your shitty business :),” read one.

The dentist closed his practice and went into hiding. Many people called for his death, including the advocacy group PETA, specifically by  way of hanging. CNN asked, “Where is Walter Palmer?” as if people needed to find him (and maybe bring him to justice, as many already believed they were.)

The Internet has served to facilitate outrage, as the Internet does: the hotter the better. And because the case is so visceral and bipartisan in its opposition to Palmer’s act, few people stepped in to suggest that the fury, the people tweeting his home address, might be too much. That argument wins no outrage points.

Instead, the people who hadn't jumped on the Cecil-outrage bandwagon jumped on the superiority outrage bandwagon. It’s a bandwagon of outrage oneupmanship, and it’s just as rewarding as the original outrage bandwagon. Anyone can play, like this:

It’s fine to be outraged about one lion, but what about all of the other lions who are hunted and killed every year?  There are 250 Cecils killed annually across Africa as trophies, and that’s what you should really be outraged by. But good job caring now.

Actually, what about all of the animals? All of the cattle and fish and brilliant pigs who are systematically slaughtered for human consumption every day? Were you eating a hot dog when you posted that thing about Cecil on Facebook? Anyone who is not vegan is no better than the dentist Walter Palmer. That is what you really should be outraged by.

Actually, you only care about Zimbabwe when a lion is killed? Great of you. Killing animals is part of the circle of life, but you know what’s not? Human trafficking. People are bought and sold as slaves today all over the world. Why are you talking about one aged jungle cat in a place where the relationship between i mpoverished pastoralist communities and wealthy foreign tourists is more complicated than you actually understand ?

And I’m glad you’re so concerned about human trafficking, but there will be no humans at all if we don’t do something about climate change. Reliance on fossil fuels and industrialized farming is the real problem, and that's what you should be outraged by. You don’t know what to care about. I know what to care about.

The Internet launders outrage and returns it to us as validation, in the form of likes and stars and hearts. The greatest return comes from a strong and superior point of view, on high moral ground. And there is, fortunately and unfortunately, always higher moral ground. Even when a dentist kills an adorable lion, and everyone is upset about it, there’s better outrage ground to be won. The most widely accepted hierarchy of outrage seems to be: Single animal injured < single animal killed < multiple animals killed < systematic killing of animals < systematic oppression/torture of people < systematic killing of humans < end of all life due to uninhabitable planet.

Image circulating on Facebook

To say that there’s a more important issue in the world is always true, except in the case of climate change ending all life, both human and animal. So it’s meaningless, even if it’s fun, to go around one-upping people’s outrage. Try it. Someone will express legitimate concern over something, and all you have to do is say there are more important things to be concerned about. All you have to do is use the phrase “spare me” and then say something about global warming. You can literally write, “My outrage is more legit than your outrage! Ahhh!”

Don’t worry about that feeling a little too on-the-nose, because it doesn’t matter, because no one will remember it. Next month the armchair lion’s-rights activists won’t care about lions anymore, because lion’s-rights outrage will not be trending. They will be on to some new outrage. Many people are drawn to defend nature and underdogs (even when they are apex predators) and to hate wealthy, lying, violent dentists. But even more than that we are drawn to feeling superior and appearing wise, and being validated accordingly.

The Joy of Angst

Why, exactly, did Titus Andronicus make a 90-minute, 29-song double album about mental illness? The New York Times’ Joe Coscarelli recently put the question to singer Patrick Stickles: “Did you specifically make this record for people suffering from manic depression?”

“Mostly just for one person that does,” Stickles replied.

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This is both a typical and dangerous thing to say for anyone whose art rails against the meaningless of existence, the demons of the soul, and the hypocrisy of society. Stickles has a very specific mental illness, and not everyone can relate to it. But when, on the opening jam of this new album, he screams “I hate to be awake,” well, anyone not thrilled to go to work in the morning can, in fact, relate to that.

In 2015, even the most inward-focused artists have to work with an awareness that expressions of misery in modern pop culture can be reproduced, packaged, and sold for far more banal purposes. Kurt Cobain stands as the enduring symbol of what happens when personal disaffection goes mainstream; “Teenage angst has paid off well,” he sneered on the opening track of In Utero, the album that followed Nirvana’s explosion into superstardom and preceded his suicide.

Titus Andronicus doesn’t stand much risk of having its music swallowed up by the American mainstream. Even if loud guitar music were still commercially viable, this particular brand—pop hooks, punk casing, prog ambition, with a singer who somehow can scream and gurgle at the same time—would not sound good at the mall. But the New Jersey band has built an ultra-fervent fan base in its 10-year existence, perhaps becoming the perfect post-modern ragemaker: self-aware and positively giddy about the urge to burn the world down.

The band’s Shakespearian name, and the titles of its latest album, A Most Lamentable Tragedy, embrace the idea of performing for an audience. So does the music, packed with slogans seemingly lab-tested to be printed on T-shirts and references to other Titus Andronicus songs. Keeping all the interconnections straight isn’t unlike attempting to track all the wormholes between plotlines in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Meanwhile, the lyrics are blackly comic to the point of nihilism. The band’s third album, 2012’s Local Business, opened with Stickles’s own self-parodying version of “teenage angst has paid off well”: “Okay, I think by now we have established that everything is inherently worthless / and nothing in the universe has any kind of objective purpose.”

Now the band has released its most po-mo puzzlebox of anguish yet. Stickles has described The Most Lamentable Tragedy as a rock opera and has annotated the lyrics at Genius.com; judging by the band’s Twitter feed, which is filled with retweeted praise, the ambition has gone over quite well with its biggest fans. It’s not hard to see why. As before, the group rummages through classic-rock styles with an eye for entertainment: hardcore cartwheeling pauses for a surf-rock drums solo on “No Future Part IV”; the E Street singalong of “Lonely Boy” melts into ragtime freakout; the words “I’m going insane” pop up from time to time as a sort of bizarrely radio-ready hook. The only big change from before is that for however sprawling the track list is, the songs themselves are unusually compact—most end before the five-minute mark.

Given that the album’s lyrics are about a man struggling with manic depression, the songs accordingly swing between dirges and material that’ll make you want to do dozens of pushups. As for the narrative, it’s strangely generic: There’s a “lonely boy” struggling with an unnamable “something,” turning to drugs and sex, and confronting a psychological doppelgänger. The sole surprise for me was to hear Stickles find some solace in the last real song, the low-fi accordion tune “Stable Boy,” where he reasons that death is eternal so he might as well be alive for now.

Is it brilliant? Here’s where I have to admit that even though I’m an enormous fan of the band’s first three albums, something about Tragedy doesn’t quite click. The ingredients are all there, but save the id explosion of “Dimed Out” and the heavy-metal noir of “(S)He Said / (S)He Said,” nothing here has come close to making a permanent mark on my brain in the way that previous Titus Andronicus songs have. It might be that Stickles has broken up his emotions into discrete bursts—pepped-up one track, despondent another—instead swirling them together for glorious 10-minute tantrums. Or it might just be that the melodies aren’t as sharp. I’m not sure.

But I do know that there’s something lovely and generous to the effort on display. You see it in the longform music video they released for the album; Stickles shimmies and screams with backup dancers performing a maniacal Monster Mash. The idea underlying everything—the visuals, the raucous music, the extravagant complaints of the lyrics—is there’s freedom to be had by acknowledging the void; there’s fun in wallowing. And not just for Stickles. In his Times interview, he eventually confessed that he wouldn’t mind if “some young person that’s as troubled as I was five or six or three years ago, two years ago, last year, this month” takes comfort in all the noise. No doubt, more than a few will.

Wet Hot American Summer’s Wild, Triumphant Return

At some point, given time, word of mouth, and endless rewatching, a cult classic evolves into a universally beloved media property. Netflix, it seems, has become the arbiter of that transformation—first and most notably by reviving the adored-but-prematurely-canceled Arrested Development for a fourth season. Now the service is continuing this effort by turning the 2001 comedy Wet Hot American Summer, a critical and commercial bomb on its release, into an eight-episode prequel miniseries. Though it all but vanished without a trace on release, Wet Hot’s shaggy, surreal charm and its cast of future stars have helped it endure over the years, and despite its bizarre positioning, the Netflix edition hasn’t missed a beat, even 14 years later.

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The show comes from David Wain and Michael Showalter, who wrote the original film, with Wain directing. Playing into the ridiculousness of making a sequel to a 2001 comedy about summer camp whose actors were already too old to be playing teenagers, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp doubles down by being set before the original film, even though Showalter (who stars as camp counselor Coop) is now 45 years old, and the rest of the ensemble isn’t far behind. Thus, the show thumbs its nose at anyone who might question its need to exist, but it goes a step further and invests its plot with real purpose. Those watching the first film likely didn’t wonder at the backstories of its ensemble, but First Day of Camp nonetheless has delightfully convoluted arcs for everyone involved. It seems silly at first, but true to the Netflix binge-watch model, the structure fuels the impulse to watch the next episode, and the next.

From the dawn of its original programming, the network has analyzed reams of data from its streaming customers to figure out what kind of shows they’d enjoy best, and no doubt the enduring popularity of Wet Hot American Summer and its now-famous ensemble were reason enough to justify First Day of Camp. Discovering the film was a cult comedy rite of passage for many people: Whether you were a teenager, a college student, or just someone clicking around Comedy Central late at night, it felt like joining a secret club. Some of the cast—Paul Rudd, Molly Shannon, Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce—were already recognizable. Others—Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, Ken Marino, Joe Lo Truglio—became famous later, but their participation in the film was a special badge of honor. The existence of First Day of Camp is the final confirmation of what the film’s fans already knew—that it had evolved past “cult” to just become a regular comedy classic.

You can put the nostalgia aside, and First Day of Camp would still be the best TV comedy of the summer.

But even if you haven’t seen the film, First Day of Camp is probably going to be an enjoyable watch, because it shines with the genial silliness that made the original film so instantly lovable. Not every joke lands, but there’s always more following close behind to make up for it. The ensemble is so vast that there's some fun in waiting whole episodes for some favorite characters to show up. And there’s also a perverse game to be played in seeing just how well or poorly actors have aged in the intervening years—Paul Rudd is clearly possessed of some magical formula for youth, while others struggle to even keep their wigs on their heads.

Netflix’s nefarious metrics aside, Wain and Showalter should be credited for not treating First Day of Camp as an opportunity for a cheap nostalgia cash-in. Much like the ambitious, plot-heavy fourth season of Arrested Development (which Netflix revived in 2013, seven years after Fox cancelled it), they’re aiming high rather than just bouncing around the same jokes fans remember. Remember the talking can of vegetables from the movie? First Day of Camp shows you exactly how that came about. Why was the astrophysicist Henry Newman (David Hyde Pierce) living nearby Camp Firewood? All will be explained. Did you think Elizabeth Banks’s character had a mysterious secret identity? Well, she does, and it’s one of the prequel’s best and most bizarre running threads.

First Day of Camp has avoided other pitfalls. Arrested Development’s fourth season got bogged down in investigating how time passed for its characters during the cancellation period, and was hamstrung by its ensemble’s busy schedules (the main characters barely appeared together onscreen). Whole episodes would concentrate on the story of a single character, robbing the show of its best quality: the cast’s chemistry as a group. First Day of Camp flits between its many cast members with greater ease and dodges any questions of “what have they been up to?” by flashing back in time. The result is ridiculous, but at no point does First Day of Camp feel like it’s struggling to justify its existence. You can put the nostalgia aside, and it’s still the best TV comedy of the summer.