George Packer's Blog, page 194

The Silence and Violence of the N.R.A.

In the language of today’s National Rifle Association, “an armed society is a polite society.” The aphorism, borrowed from the science-fiction author Robert Heinlein, is the inspiration for one of the N.R.A.’s most popular T-shirts, which bears the word “COEXIST,” spelled out in brightly colored ammo cartridges and guns. To promote the shirt ($17.99), the N.R.A. store says that Heinlein’s quote “emphasizes the independent, tolerant nature of gun owners in a fun and thought-provoking way.”

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Related:
“Our Country Is Better Than That”: Two Responses to Tragedy
The Horrific, Predictable Result of a Widely Armed Citizenry
Three Terrible Days of Violence

The Horrific, Predictable Result of a Widely Armed Citizenry

The killings in Dallas are one more reminder that guns are central, not accessory, to the American plague of violence. They were central fifty-plus years ago, when a troubled ex-Marine had only to send a coupon to a mail-order gun house in Chicago to get a military rifle with which to kill John F. Kennedy—that assassin-sniper also fired from a Dallas building onto a Dallas street. They are central now, when the increased fetishism of guns and carrying guns has made such horrors as last night’s not merely predictable but unsurprising. The one thing we can be sure of, after we have mourned the last massacre, is that there will be another. You wake up at three in the morning, check the news, and there it is.

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Related:
“Our Country Is Better Than That”: Two Responses to Tragedy
The Silence and Violence of the N.R.A.
Three Terrible Days of Violence

The Jailhouse Lawyer Derrick Hamilton’s Role in the Reversal of a Murder Conviction

Derrick Hamilton never went to law school, but prisoners across New York State have heard about his formidable legal skills, which he acquired while he was wrongly imprisoned for murder for more than two decades, reading law books and fighting to get himself and other inmates set free. I recently wrote about Hamilton, who was released in 2011, for the magazine; he works as a paralegal in New York City and continues to help prisoners he believes to be innocent. Last year, I travelled with him to Green Haven prison, in Dutchess County, to visit a client serving twenty-five to life. This prisoner, who had once been confined on the same cellblock as Hamilton, told me about the excitement that would spread among inmates when they found out that Hamilton had been transferred to their prison. “Everybody knows him,” the inmate said. “First thing that crosses everybody’s mind is ‘Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!’ ”

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Related:
Juan Rivera and the Dangers of Coercive Interrogation
No Justice, No Peace

Three Terrible Days of Violence

In a single week, we have seen the spectacle of two black men killed by police and five police officers gunned down at a rally that was being held in response to those deaths. On Thursday, President Obama spoke of the incidents in Baton Rouge and Minnesota, saying, “When incidents like this occur, there’s a big chunk of our citizenry that feels as if, because of the color of their skin, they are not being treated the same, and that hurts, and that should trouble all of us. This is not just a black issue, not just a Hispanic issue. This is an American issue that we all should care about.” Less than twenty-four hours later, he released a statement calling the shooting of eleven police in Dallas a “vicious, despicable, calculated attack upon law enforcement.” What began as a lethargic return to work following a holiday has devolved into an American crucible.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
“Our Country Is Better Than That”: Two Responses to Tragedy
The Silence and Violence of the N.R.A.
The Horrific, Predictable Result of a Widely Armed Citizenry

How Craft Brewers Advance Science, and Make Better Beer

Not long ago, I found myself in a beer-tasting room in upstate New York, looking out on a field of hops and sampling the craft brews of a company called Indian Ladder Farmstead. Among the list of beers chalked on a blackboard was one particularly hoppy creation named “Dr. Paul Matthews I.P.A.” Naturally I felt obliged to inquire about the eponymous doctor. The owner, Dietrich Gehring, told me that the name was an homage. He said his passion for wild hops had led him to Matthews, to whom he referred as the Lord of the Hops.

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Related:
Budweiser and the Selling of America
Fishdog River Brewing Co.’s Ultimate I.P.A.
The Quest to Reproduce the World’s Oldest Shipwreck Beer

A Message to Digital Subscribers

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Related:
Obama and Trump After Dallas
To Catch a Graffiti Artist
Life with Two Kids

Editing Kevin Durant

The two most popular Google searches in America on the Fourth of July were “July 4th” and “Declaration of Independence.” The third was “Players’ Tribune.” The popularity of that last search was the result of a story written by Kevin Durant, the National Basketball Association’s 2014 Most Valuable Player and the deputy publisher of the Players’ Tribune, a not yet two-year-old online publication run by professional athletes who wish to tell their stories in their own words. Durant used three hundred and fifty-one words in the story to reveal which team he’d chosen to play for next season. “I understood cognitively that I was facing a crossroads in my evolution as a player and as a man, and that it came with exceptionally difficult choices,” Durant wrote. He opted to join the Golden State Warriors, who, after winning a league-record seventy-three games last year, edged Durant’s Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals, before narrowly losing to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the N.B.A. Finals. The choice angered a lot of basketball fans, particularly those in Oklahoma. It also gave the Players’ Tribune its biggest day of traffic so far: more than three million unique visitors, which is about what the site usually gets in a month, and is better than the average day on ESPN.com.

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Related:
LeBron James, King of Narrative
The Unlikelihood of Rooting for LeBron James
The Conditional Cavaliers Face Elimination Again

Is Donald Trump Losing It?

Here are two news ledes that were written on Wednesday night about a speech that Donald Trump gave at a rally in Cincinnati. One of them appeared in a major newspaper; the other I made up.

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Related:
Southern Trouble for Donald Trump?
Henry Kissinger’s Tactical-Nuclear Shadow
A Damning Reprieve For Hillary Clinton

A Police Killing in Baton Rouge

On Tuesday night, Alton Sterling was fatally shot by police in front of the Triple S Food Mart, a convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. According to police accounts, the officers were summoned to the store by an anonymous caller who claimed to have been threatened by a man wielding a gun. The first video of the shooting to be released publicly shows the officers and Sterling—three large men—at the point of confrontation. One officer launches himself forward, tackles Sterling, and brings him to the ground. The second officer places a knee on Sterling’s chest as they attempt to subdue him. A moment later someone shouts, “He’s got a gun!,” at which point the kneeling officer draws his weapon and places it near Sterling’s chest. Then the sound of gunshots. In a second video, released later on Wednesday, five distinct shots can be heard, followed by an image of Sterling, his arms stretched out and his palms upward, his shirt already stained with blood.

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Related:
Gun Control and the Art of the Sit-In
How the Gun Industry Sells Self-Defense
Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, June 21st

Southern Trouble for Donald Trump?

Donald Trump might be borrowing the G.O.P. like a family car he can take for a joy ride and trash, but that doesn’t mean he’s flouting all of the family traditions. In many ways, he’s running a campaign that revives the old Southern strategy, practiced by Barry Goldwater and, more craftily, by Richard Nixon, of peeling disaffected white voters away from the Democratic Party with dog-whistle racism and a certain amount of sympathy for the lowered prospects of the working class. Trump is sure, naturally, that he’ll “do great” with that approach in the so-called solid South—solid for Democrats, from Reconstruction until the civil-rights era; solid for Republicans thereafter. Ahead of a campaign appearance in Raleigh on Tuesday, Trump declared, “People of North Carolina want strength, protection and jobs, and President Obama and Hillary Clinton have let them down for many years. I will bring jobs back to North Carolina, and our country, like never seen before.”

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Related:
A Damning Reprieve For Hillary Clinton
Congressional Republicans Vote to Abolish F.B.I.
Things Donald Trump Has Said About Hillary Clinton That Could Double As My Tinder Bio