George Packer's Blog, page 186

Wall Street Women: Harassed and Power-Hungry

In an early scene in “Equity,” a new movie about women investment bankers, the protagonist, Naomi Bishop, delivers an address at her alma mater and describes how she became one of the top bankers for a firm that might be modelled after the former Bear Stearns. “I like money,” Bishop, played by Anna Gunn, tells the audience. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I only do what I do to take care of other people, because it is O.K. to do it for ourselves. For how it makes us feel. Secure? Yeah. Powerful? Absolutely.” She pauses, as if contemplating the political correctness of what she’s about to say: “I am so glad that it’s finally acceptable for women to sit and talk about ambition openly. But don’t let money be a dirty word. We can like that, too.”

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Related:
Youthful Illusions in Woody Allen’s “Café Society”
Postscript: Michael Cimino, 1939–2016
The Screenwriter of “E.T.” and “The BFG” Says Goodbye

Peter Thiel’s Conservative Vision

The last four speakers at the Republican National Convention were the candidate, the candidate’s daughter, the candidate’s friend of forty years, and the libertarian technologist and billionaire Peter Thiel. Yesterday, word came that Thiel would acknowledge in his speech that he is gay, and, although this is not news, his choice to say it in this arena, before a Party that has specifically singled out the L.G.B.T.Q. community for discrimination, made it a probe into the conservative psyche. “I am proud to be gay,” Thiel said from the stage. “I am proud to be a Republican.” The cheers were quick and loud, and a new inflection appeared in the Party’s evolving politics of identity. Later, when the candidate himself pledged to defend L.G.B.T.Q. Americans, the Republicans in the arena stood to clap. “I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said,” Trump remarked, after the applause. “Thank you.” I was standing amid the moderate Republican delegation from Washington, D.C., and each of its members—even the dead-enders who had been passing out #NeverTrump buttons a few minutes earlier—stood and cheered.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The R.N.C. on TV: Ivanka’s Weaponized Graciousness
What Does NATO Do, Anyway?
Stephen Colbert’s Joyful Return to Political Comedy

Little America: The Birth of a New Republican Party

Thirteen months ago, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President with a speech that sparked a revival of America’s far right, a seething confederation of white nationalists, “racial activists,” and anti-immigration zealots. On Thursday, the final day of the Republican National Convention, in Cleveland, I bumped into Richard Spencer, the “identitarian” who is “dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future” of white people in the United States. (The Southern Poverty Law Center has called Spencer, who has degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago, a “professional racist in khakis.”)

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The R.N.C. on TV: Ivanka’s Weaponized Graciousness
What Does NATO Do, Anyway?
Stephen Colbert’s Joyful Return to Political Comedy

Donald Trump’s Dark, Dark Convention Speech

In the history of democracies, there are numerous instances of authoritarian “strongmen” rising to power, and virtually all have based their appeal on a promise to restore order. Donald Trump clearly aspires to join this list, and, in one sense, his apocalyptic speech accepting the Republican nomination for President, on Thursday night in Cleveland, merely confirmed what we already know.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The R.N.C. on TV: Ivanka’s Weaponized Graciousness
What Does NATO Do, Anyway?
Stephen Colbert’s Joyful Return to Political Comedy

Ivanka Trump’s Walk on the Donald Side

Midway through her speech introducing her father at the Republican Convention, on Thursday night, Ivanka Trump began talking about disparities in pay for women. The ones it was particularly hard on, she said, were not single women but “married mothers.” Donald Trump, when he was President—and she was sure he would be—would see to it that American women had affordable child care, and he would fight for other “policies that allow women with children to thrive.” At that, Ivanka, glowing in a petal-pink dress, her hair a smooth sheen, swivelled to look directly into the camera, with a brilliant smile, like the heroine in a nineties action television show, about to impart a point of plot explication, and said, “And I will fight for this, too—right alongside of him!”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Ted Cruz Has a History of Getting Himself Booed During Speeches
The Strangely Quiet Streets of Cleveland
The Political Erotica of 2016

Ted Cruz Has a History of Getting Himself Booed During Speeches

Did Ted Cruz do it on purpose? Did he deliver a speech that he knew the crowd would hate? Did he expect to get booed? Was he secretly exulting as he walked off the podium?

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Ivanka Trump’s Walk on the Donald Side
The Strangely Quiet Streets of Cleveland
The Political Erotica of 2016

The Strangely Quiet Streets of Cleveland

Alex Jones, the pro-Trump conspiracist radio host, has been in Cleveland since Monday, and in that time he has been spoiling for a fight. On Tuesday, he got into a street scuffle with a group of leftists (“dirty communists,” he reportedly called them) and threw his shoulder into them, like a drunk trying to bang open a stuck cellar door. On his radio show on Wednesday, Jones raised the possibility that some would-be terrorists in Cleveland had stolen a garbage truck. He urged his listeners to be on the lookout for a suspicious trash-truck operator and to be prepared to “climb in that cab and take that person out.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Ivanka Trump’s Walk on the Donald Side
Ted Cruz Has a History of Getting Himself Booed During Speeches
Trump’s Mixed Messages to Wall Street

Trump’s Mixed Messages to Wall Street

It was only fitting that, partway through the Republican National Convention, on a day that was supposed to be about the economy, a rumor started to ricochet around Cleveland that Donald Trump had zeroed in on a potential pick for Treasury Secretary. It was none other than Steven Mnuchin, a hedge-fund manager and Goldman Sachs veteran, who became the national finance chairman of Trump’s campaign in April. An initial report suggested that Trump had made the decision already; it was later clarified, in a Bloomberg article, that Trump had simply said that Mnuchin “would make a good Treasury secretary,” during a meeting with wealthy donors at the Southampton, Long Island, home of Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor. Previous names that Trump has floated for the job include the activist investor Carl Icahn (who conveyed, via Twitter, that he had “decided to accept”) and Henry Kravis, the founder of the private-equity firm KKR (who, when asked about Trump’s musing at a conference last year, said, “That was scary when he said that”). It hints at the strategy that Trump seems to use when it comes to filling important campaign slots or even future government positions: simply look around and grab whoever appears in your line of sight.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Ivanka Trump’s Walk on the Donald Side
Ted Cruz Has a History of Getting Himself Booed During Speeches
The Strangely Quiet Streets of Cleveland

The New Obamacare Economy

The employees of Hope Haven, a nonprofit organization in Burlington, Iowa, provide services to some five hundred people with intellectual and physical disabilities, often in their clients’ homes. Depending on the day, they can be called upon to work as companions, cleaners, readers, personal shoppers, cooks, or bathers. “We have situations where we support people twenty-four hours a day,” Bob Bartles, Hope Haven’s executive director, told me. His staff members perform intimate labors of compassion, yet, as low-wage workers, they, too, are a vulnerable class. “Our entry wage is $11.25 per hour,” Bartles said. “We’re about ninety-per-cent funded by the government. Most of that is Medicaid, and Medicaid doesn’t set rates that allow us to pay much more.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Life-Expectancy Inequality Grows in America
Bernie Sanders and the Realists
The Many Problems with Bernie Sanders’s Health-Care Plan

Ted Cruz’s War

Yesterday afternoon, several hours before he gave the speech that split the Republican National Convention, Ted Cruz held a rally at a waterfront restaurant for twelve hundred of his supporters, to thank them for their work on his Presidential campaign and to insist that they had participated in something of deep meaning. “I’m reminded of one of my favorite scenes in cinema,” Cruz said, and he described one from the movie “Patton” in which the general, mustering his troops and channelling Shakespeare, tells them that, when “our grandkids ask where were you in the great one, the great battle, we’ll be able to say to our grandkids, ‘I wasn’t shovelling crap in Louisiana.’ ” Cruz mentioned the matter that preoccupied the Convention—whether or not he would endorse Donald Trump—but said only that “every one of us has an obligation to follow his conscience.” It was clear that Cruz had in mind a crusade, but it wasn’t obvious whether that crusade included the Republican Party, or Donald Trump, or his movement alone. If Cruz was Patton in the conservative wars, who were the Germans?

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Ivanka Trump’s Walk on the Donald Side
Ted Cruz Has a History of Getting Himself Booed During Speeches
The Strangely Quiet Streets of Cleveland