George Packer's Blog, page 151

What China Sees in Donald Trump—and in Itself

The current American Presidential election has been called many things: a pathetic, protracted joke; the great apocalyptic implosion; a dumpster fire; an unending nightmare; the best and the worst reality-television series ever made. But all of these labels, theatrical as they may be, pale in comparison to the terms that Chinese observers, in both official press outlets and on social media, have used in recent days to describe the Trump-Clinton standoff: as a spectacle of unfettered “chaos” that shakes their faith in the legitimacy of Western democracy.

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Related:
Will Donald Trump Cost Republicans the Senate? A State-By-State Guide
Trump-Pence 2016 Debate-Prep Session
Melania Trump, Conspiracy Theorist

Melania Trump, Conspiracy Theorist

On Monday night, Melania Trump allowed, in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, that she was surprised to see her husband, Donald, bragging in video outtakes from “Access Hollywood” about grabbing women by their genitals against their will. The video was shot in 2005, several months after she married Trump, but, she said, “That is not the man I know.” She figured that it was Billy Bush’s fault; as the show’s host, he had worked to “lead on” and “egg on” her husband to get him to “say dirty and bad stuff.” It was “boy talk,” she said, and yet she insisted that her adult husband didn’t talk that way. “That is why I was surprised,” she said. “But I was not surprised that the tape came out. I was not surprised about that.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Will Donald Trump Cost Republicans the Senate? A State-By-State Guide
What China Sees in Donald Trump—and in Itself
Trump-Pence 2016 Debate-Prep Session

Hard Choices for Peace in Afghanistan

On September 29th, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hezb-e-Islami (Islamic Party) of Afghanistan, signed a peace agreement with the Afghan government, by prerecorded video, from an undisclosed location. In the nineteen-eighties, Hezb-e-Islami was the most extreme of the seven mujahideen parties recognized by Pakistan, and Hekmatyar’s unblinking black eyes were framed by a black turban and full black beard. Three decades later, Hekmatyar, now sixty-nine, has a different look. On the video, he wore the same black turban, but his beard has turned white and his heavy-lidded eyes peered out from behind bookish wire-rimmed glasses.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
An Assassination That Could Bring War Or Peace
Iran’s Grim News from Syria
Not Even Kabul Is Safe from the Taliban

Apple, Samsung, and Good Design—Inside and Out

Apple’s design prowess, long celebrated—even venerated—has taken some nasty hits since the release of the iPhone 7. Technology watchers have been dismissive. “Apple has squandered its once-commanding lead in hardware and software design,” Farhad Manjoo, of the New York Times, wrote. He added, “As competitors have borrowed and even begun to surpass Apple’s best designs, what was iconic about the company’s phones, computers, tablets and other products has come to seem generic.” This is a conundrum for Apple. Its design is iconic—and pleasing—enough for others to blatantly imitate, making it hard to escape the ubiquity of its own design.

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Related:
Twitter Has Never Been Stronger—or Weaker
Workplace by Facebook, or a Party in the Office
Yelling at Amazon’s Alexa

The Meaning of Open Trade and Open Borders

Near the end of his 1817 treatise, “On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation,” David Ricardo advanced the “law of comparative advantage,” the idea that each country—not to mention the world that countries add up to—would be better off if each specialized in the thing it did most efficiently. Portugal may be more productive than Britain in both clothmaking and winemaking; but if Portugal is comparatively more productive in winemaking than clothmaking, and Britain the other way around, Portugal should make the wine, Britain the cloth, and they should trade freely with one another. The math will work, even if Portuguese weavers will not, at least for a while—and even if each country’s countryside will come to seem less pleasingly variegated. The worker, in the long run, would be compensated, owing to “a fall in the value of the necessaries on which his wages are expended.” Accordingly, Ricardo argued in Parliament for the abolition of Britain’s “corn laws,” tariffs on imported grain, which protected the remnants of the landed aristocracy, along with their rural retainers. Those tariffs were eventually lifted in 1846, a generation after his death; bread got cheaper, and lords got quainter.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Afternoon Cartoon: Monday, October 17th
Why Trump TV Probably Won’t Happen
Nation Fears Drug Test Would Reveal Trump Not on Drugs

Postscript: Venida Browder

Venida Browder died on Friday, at age sixty-three, after suffering a heart attack at her home, in the Bronx. She had seven children; her youngest, Kalief, was known as Peanut. After he was charged with a robbery at age sixteen, in the spring of 2010, Venida spent the next three years trying to get him out of jail. Every time he was brought to Bronx State Supreme Court to appear before a judge, Venida was there. He had thirty-one court dates before a judge released him and dismissed the charges against him. “You don’t see a mother showing up that many times,” Kalief’s defense attorney told me. He recalled that she always had the same question for him: “She just wanted to know when he could come home.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Remembering Kalief Browder
Kalief Browder, in His Own Words
Kalief Browder Learned How to Commit Suicide on Rikers

Why Trump TV Probably Won’t Happen

Donald Trump has always seemed more interested in being on TV than in being President. While he has never managed to acquire even a rudimentary understanding of foreign policy, he is a master of gaining attention.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Meaning of Open Trade and Open Borders
Afternoon Cartoon: Monday, October 17th
Nation Fears Drug Test Would Reveal Trump Not on Drugs

ISIS on the Run

Wearing the military uniform of Iraq’s élite counterterrorism force, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi abruptly appeared on Iraqi national television in the early hours of Monday morning. “The time of victory has come, and operations to liberate Mosul have started,” he announced. The long-anticipated battle against the Islamic State—also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh—for control of the strategic city was under way at last.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Putin, Syria, and Why Moscow Has Gone War-Crazy
A Homemade Museum for Yemeni Refugees in Djibouti
The Real Nuclear Threat

The Real Soylent Sickness

I have never tasted Soylent, the meal substitute dreamed up in Silicon Valley’s hacker-engineering culture and beloved by tech workers, but it hasn’t exactly received raves for flavor. Lizzie Widdicombe, writing about it in the magazine, two years ago, found a “yeasty, comforting blandness about it.” The tech team at Quartz came up with a list of descriptors including “wet cardboard,” “the aftertaste of Cheerios cereal,” and “not food.” Now that Soylent’s snack bars, the newest form for ingesting the food-replacement substance, have been voluntarily recalled by the company, after Gizmodo reported that the product made dozens of customers sick, that innocuous taste will likely be the least of its concerns.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
A Brooklyn Chef’s Quest for Locally Caught Sushi
A Hack to Yahoo’s Shrunken Reputation
From the Makers of Avocado Toast

Steve Bannon’s Vision for the Trump Coalition After Election Day

This week, Donald Trump’s campaign took a new and even darker turn. As multiple women accused the Republican Presidential nominee of sexual harassment and sexual assault, Trump gave speeches on Thursday and Friday that had two themes: he denied all the charges against him, most notably by arguing that his accusers were not attractive enough for him to assault, and he claimed that the accusations are part of a global conspiracy against him, involving the Clintons, the news media, and international banks.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Putin, Syria, and Why Moscow Has Gone War-Crazy
Trump Warns Hillary May Rig Election by Getting More Votes
Paul Ryan’s Struggle with Trump—and Trump’s Voters