George Packer's Blog, page 114

Orwell’s “1984” and Trump’s America

I have, I’m afraid, a terrible confession to make: I have never been a huge fan of George Orwell’s “1984.” It always seemed, in its extrapolations from present to future, too pat, a little lacking in the imaginative extrapolations we want from dystopian literature. As the British author Anthony Burgess pointed out a long time ago, Orwell’s modern hell was basically a reproduction of British misery in the postwar rationing years, with the malice of Stalin’s police-state style added on. That other ninth-grade classic, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” where a permanent playground of sex and drugs persists in a fiercely inegalitarian society, seemed to me far more prescient, and so did any work of Philip K. Dick’s that extrapolated forward our bizarre American entertainment obsessions into an ever more brutal future in which Ken and Barbie might be worshipped as gods. “1984” seemed, in contrast, too brutal, too atavistic, too limited in its imagination of the relation between authoritarian state and helpless citizens.

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Related:
The Literal Stink of the Trump Apocalypse
Watching President Trump with Horror Around the World
Dreamers Watch as the Trump Assault Begins

The Knicks Throw Up Another Airball

On Monday, during a rare win for the New York Knicks, against the Indiana Pacers, center Joakim Noah was fouled and stepped to the free-throw line. The lanky, sloppily ponytailed center took a few stiff dribbles and hoisted the ball toward the rim. Immediately, he—along with the rest of the arena—knew that things had gone wrong. As he screwed his face into blank confusion, then sharp terror, and finally sad resignation, the ball sailed crookedly to the left, eventually falling at least a foot short of the hoop. As awful as it was to watch, the botched attempt wasn’t a surprise. In a league of powerful, fleet-footed guards, increasingly dexterous big men, and thousands of improbably accurate three-pointers, Noah’s tortured set shot might be the ugliest recurring event. He stands slightly pigeon-toed and holds the ball as if hoping to squeeze out the air; at the point of release, he looks a bit like a volleyball player, setting up someone else’s big spike.

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J. J. Redick’s Part-Time Job
An American Tennis Player Finds Her Voice
No One Knows Whether Ronda Rousey Still Wants to Fight

Watching President Trump with Horror Around the World

On Thursday, Donald Trump’s sixth full day in office, I asked a British friend for his initial impressions. Noting that the new American President had moved swiftly, signing executive orders to end Obamacare, complete the Dakota Access pipeline, and begin building the border wall with Mexico, my friend shook his head and remarked, “The real problem is it’s not just America, is it? The whole world gets Trump, whether it likes it or not.”

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Related:
Orwell’s “1984” and Trump’s America
The Literal Stink of the Trump Apocalypse
Dreamers Watch as the Trump Assault Begins

Dreamers Watch as the Trump Assault Begins

The executive orders rain down like tweets now from the Oval Office. Some are nearly as gestural, as off the wall, as the ravings of @realDonaldTrump. Even congressional Republicans are unbriefed, caught by surprise by some of the edicts issued daily, or more than daily, by President Donald Trump. That was the case on Wednesday, when a flurry of executive orders announced the elements of an immigration crackdown: construction of the much promised southern border wall, a vast increase in enforcement agents and detention facilities, a federal assault on the hundreds of American cities that have declined to act as immigration police. This failure to consult, not only with political allies but with the relevant government agencies, or legal specialists, or experts of any sort, is what makes some of the orders seem slight and unrealistic. Obamacare shall be abolished, details to come. The executive orders are reportedly being written by a pair of White House aides, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, who also wrote Trump’s painful Inaugural Address. Miller became known during the campaign for whipping up crowds with the chant “Build the wall!” Bannon is the former editor of the far-right Web site Breitbart News.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Orwell’s “1984” and Trump’s America
The Literal Stink of the Trump Apocalypse
Watching President Trump with Horror Around the World

Swing Left and the Post-Election Surge of Progressive Activism

On January 18th, the Twitter account for a new political organization posted its first tweet: a link to swingleft.org—a neatly designed Web site where you can plug in your Zip Code to find the nearest U.S. House district whose seat was, in the most recent election, decided by a small margin—along with the message “Let’s get to work.” The Swing Left campaign, which aims to win the House for Democrats in 2018, quickly went viral. The comedian Sarah Silverman tweeted “Start thinking mid term elections now – this makes it CRAZY easy,” with a link to the site. As the roughly three million people who came out for the Women’s March on Saturday made colorfully evident, an enormous, amorphous bundle of progressive energy in the country is searching for an outlet or three. By January 22nd, a hundred thousand people had signed up to receive Swing Left updates. That number has since more than doubled. In addition, ten thousand people have filled out a form on the site to offer their skills in a volunteer capacity. The Web site has been shared on Facebook nearly three hundred thousand times.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Orwell’s “1984” and Trump’s America
The Literal Stink of the Trump Apocalypse
Watching President Trump with Horror Around the World

The Messaging of Trump Hotels

Real estate is a dynastic business. In the case of Donald Trump, his family’s property investments began with his grandfather, a German immigrant who ran hotels for gold prospectors in Northwestern boomtowns, and eventually bought land in Queens. The Trump Organization, as Donald named the company when he took it over, in the early nineteen-seventies, owns, leases, and invests in properties, including seventeen golf courses and ten hotels. According to its Web site, it is “the world’s only global luxury real estate super-brand.”

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Related:
Orwell’s “1984” and Trump’s America
The Literal Stink of the Trump Apocalypse
Watching President Trump with Horror Around the World

How to Lose the War on Terror

Last July, anguished by the war in Syria and the plight of millions fleeing the grisly six-year conflict, Andrea Dettelbach e-mailed her rabbi at Temple Sinai, in Washington, D.C. She suggested that the synagogue sponsor a Syrian refugee family. He agreed. Temple Sinai has since raised “unbelievable amounts of money” for the family, she told me, found cell phones to give when they arrive, organized a life-skills team to help with everything from banking to education, and lined up doctors, including a female internist who speaks Arabic. Dettelbach’s basement is full of boxes, of donated furnishings, clothing, a television. “One member of the congregation decided, instead of giving gifts last year, to buy all new pots and pans in the names of her friends.” Temple Sinai partnered with Lutheran Social Services to launch the complex process.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump’s Tough-Guy Talk on Torture Risks Real Lives
Why Republicans Won’t Break with Trump
Trump Makes the Global Gag Rule on Abortion Even Worse

Trump’s Tough-Guy Talk on Torture Risks Real Lives

In an interview with his biographer Michael D’Antonio, Donald Trump explained that although he received a medical deferment rather than serving in the war in Vietnam, “I always felt that I was in the military.” This was, as D’Antonio reported in “Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success,” because he spent his high-school years at a military-themed boarding school, not far from West Point.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
How to Lose the War on Terror
Why Republicans Won’t Break with Trump
Trump Makes the Global Gag Rule on Abortion Even Worse

Why Republicans Won’t Break with Trump

Appearing on Fox News on Wednesday morning, Karl Rove, the veteran Republican strategist, seemed a bit bemused. “We have two Presidencies under way,” he said. In one of them, Donald Trump was “looking strong and fulfilling his campaign promises,” Rove explained. He was referring to a series of executive orders that Trump had issued in policy areas ranging from health care to trade to the environment. While these edicts outraged many liberals and moderates, they were broadly in line with what the new President had pledged to do.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
How to Lose the War on Terror
Trump’s Tough-Guy Talk on Torture Risks Real Lives
Trump Makes the Global Gag Rule on Abortion Even Worse

Venus Williams and Amazing Comebacks at the Australian Open

When I imagine Venus Williams on the court, I see her standing on the baseline, taking the ball early, hitting it hard and deep and flat. Or I think of her scrambling, her compact swing generating surprising power, her long legs almost flailing as they fly. I think of her high service toss, or the intensity with which she stares at the ball as she lines up a shot, or the coiled energy in her crouch as she pulls back her racquet. Pushed into a corner, she takes a wild swing and sends the ball, somehow, with perfect accuracy into the opposite spot. I think, too, of the way her feet can slow, and the way energy can seem to drain out of her in the course of a single game, or how it can be absent from the start. I also think of the way she fights.

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Related:
American Tennis in Black and White
Serena Williams, Andy Murray, and a Political Wimbledon
Serena’s Successor?