George Packer's Blog, page 132

The Toxic History Trump Shares with All of Us

One advantage of being the putative leader of a great nation is that people pay attention, even when you’re spouting nonsense. So it must be satisfying for Donald J. Trump, the President-elect, to fire off pensées on his Twitter account, knowing that each of these thoughts, or notions—however you describe them—will be subject to analysis. Are they true, or false, or silly? It doesn’t matter—attention must be paid, and if you thrive on attention it doesn’t get any better than that. In the past few days, along with trying to fill Cabinet posts, Trump came up with the conceit that he won the popular vote in the Presidential election, when he actually lost by more than two million votes, and that someone who exercises the constitutional right of offensive free speech by desecrating the American flag should face legal consequences; Trump suggested jail or the loss of citizenship. He continues to tweet out instant commentary on whatever crosses his mind, as he did this week, after a Somali refugee, an eighteen-year-old student at Ohio State University, attacked eleven people before being shot dead: “ISIS is taking credit for the terrible stabbing attack at Ohio State University by a Somali refugee who should not have been in our country.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Democrats and the Seesaw of Identity Politics
Trump’s Wolves of Wall Street
Trump University Valedictorian Speech, Class of 2009

The Propaganda About Russian Propaganda

In late October, I received an e-mail from “The PropOrNot Team,” which described itself as a “newly-formed independent team of computer scientists, statisticians, national security professionals, journalists and political activists, dedicated to identifying propaganda—particularly Russian propaganda targeting a U.S. audience.” PropOrNot said that it had identified two hundred Web sites that “qualify as Russian propaganda outlets.” The sites’ reach was wide—they are read by at least fifteen million Americans. PropOrNot said that it had “drafted a preliminary report about this for the office of Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), and after reviewing our report they urged us to get in touch with you and see about making it a story.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Solving the Problem of Fake News
Morning Cartoon: Friday, November 18th
Is Putin’s Russia Ready for Trump’s America?

Mitt Romney’s Humiliating Trump Reversal

It’s “like old times,” Mitt Romney said to a group of reporters on Tuesday night as he emerged from Trump International Hotel, which is in the old Gulf & Western building, at 1 Central Park West. Rubbing his hands together and flashing a smile that stretched all the way from his bottom teeth to his upper lip, he added, “I had a wonderful evening with President-elect Trump. We had another discussion about affairs throughout the world, and these discussions I’ve had with him have been enlightening and interesting and engaging. I’ve enjoyed them very, very much.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Elvis Costello at the Beacon: Misery and Splendor
Nigel Farage on the Story Behind His Friendship with Trump
Solving the Problem of Fake News

A Self-Bundling Service for Cinephiles

On November 11th, Hulu lost the Criterion Collection. The library of more than eleven hundred classic, foreign, and art-house films had been my main reason for subscribing to the popular on-demand video service, back in 2013, and I discovered its loss by accident, when I went to Hulu’s Web site to watch Louis Malle’s “My Dinner With André,” a film I had been anticipating for some time. I found it missing; and, strangely, in the drop-down menu under “Movies”—Documentaries, Genres, Hulu Movie Night, Staff Picks—there was no longer any Criterion option at all. The Criterion films that had been featured in my “Top Picks for You” buffet were also gone. Dozens of titles that had been on my watchlist: gone. Streaming content comes and goes—there are Web sites devoted to tracking which titles are scheduled to expire on Netflix each month—but it’s much rarer for a vast trove of high-quality material to vanish all at once.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
A Portrait of My Ego as a Big Black Dog
A New Film About Young French Women Drawn to Jihadism
Kenneth Lonergan’s Devastating, Liberating “Manchester by the Sea”

Will the Supreme Court Stop Texas from Executing the Intellectually Disabled?

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in the United States, in 1976, Texas has been responsible for more than a third of the country’s executions—five hundred and thirty-eight out of a thousand four hundred and forty. The most egregious reason is the state’s unique and grudging approach in cases where the defendant claims intellectual disability.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
President-Elect Trump’s Cabinet Picks
The Recount Road to Nowhere
Postscript: Fidel Castro, 1926-2016

Solving the Problem of Fake News

What we are now calling fake news—misinformation that people fall for—is nothing new. Thousands of years ago, in the Republic, Plato offered up a hellish vision of people who mistake shadows cast on a wall for reality. In the Iliad, the Trojans fell for a fake horse. Shakespeare loved misinformation: in “Twelfth Night,” Viola disguises herself as a man and wins the love of another woman; in “The Tempest,” Caliban mistakes Stephano for a god. And, in recent years, the Nobel committee has awarded several economics prizes to work on “information asymmetry,” “cognitive bias,” and other ways in which the human propensity toward misperception distorts the workings of the world.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Mitt Romney’s Humiliating Trump Reversal
Nigel Farage on the Story Behind His Friendship with Trump
Trump to Step Away from Making his Businesses Bankrupt to Focus on Bankrupting Country

The First Victims of Repealing Obamacare Will Be the Sick and the Poor

It has been widely noted that Donald Trump’s choice of Tom Price, the Republican congressman from Georgia, to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services makes a full-blown repeal of the Affordable Care Act more likely. Price, an orthopedic surgeon, isn’t just an armchair critic of Obamacare. In 2009, he put forward the Empowering Patients First Act, which was then intended as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. It has since evolved into a replacement for it. In a very useful piece on Price’s proposal, which he reintroduced in 2011, 2013, and 2015, Vox’s Sarah Kliff explains how Price’s bill goes beyond other Republican repeal plans, including the one endorsed by Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Mitt Romney’s Humiliating Trump Reversal
Nigel Farage on the Story Behind His Friendship with Trump
Solving the Problem of Fake News

A Delivery Company in India That Hires Only Women

On a hot, sticky day in a cramped residential neighborhood in south Delhi, Priyanka Sachdev, a slender nineteen-year-old, wrestled with her white “scooty,” a two-wheel scooter that is slightly smaller than a regular one and made for women. The push-button ignition had been ruined in recent monsoons, so she had to kick-start it. Sachdev had packages to deliver, and she was already late. Dressed in denim capris, a black-and-yellow striped T-shirt, and white loafers, she gave it a firm kick, and then a few more, but it wouldn’t budge. A small crowd had started to gather in the narrow street. She grabbed a passerby, who helped her gun the engine. She barely had time to offer a wave of thanks before speeding off in the noon-hour crush.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
India Takes a Big Step Back from Cash
Why Can’t Silicon Valley Solve Its Diversity Problem?
A Troubling Culture War Between India and Pakistan

Trump’s Choice on Cuba

Until Saturday, the jury was out on how President-elect Donald Trump would proceed on the issue of Cuba. Not for long: a few hours after Fidel Castro’s death was announced, on Friday night, Trump embarked on a series of increasingly aggressive tweets in which he threatened to undo President Barack Obama’s historic initiative to open up Cuba, which has been underway since December, 2014.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
President-Elect Trump’s Cabinet Picks
Trump’s Challenge to American Democracy
Ivanka Trump’s Terrible Book Helps Explain the Trump-Family Ethos

The Hand of ISIS at Ohio State

The Islamic State’s slick online magazine Rumiyah released a special issue on knife attacks last month. The cover illustration was of a blood-drenched blade. “When considering a just terror operation, an ocean of thoughts might pour into one’s mind, clouding the ability to make a final decision,” the authors of the feature article wrote. “Many people are often squeamish at the thought of plunging a sharp object into another person’s flesh. It is a discomfort caused by the untamed, inherent dislike for pain and death, especially after ‘modernization’ distanced males from partaking in the slaughtering of livestock for food and striking the enemy in war.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
A New Film About Young French Women Drawn to Jihadism
Paris, One Year Later
Is Putin’s Russia Ready for Trump’s America?