George Packer's Blog, page 88

Earth Day in the Age of Trump

Next week, millions of Americans will celebrate Earth Day, even though, three months into Donald Trump’s Presidency, there sure isn’t much to celebrate. A White House characterized by flaming incompetence has nevertheless managed to do one thing effectively: it has trashed years’ worth of work to protect the planet. As David Horsey put it recently, in the Los Angeles Times, “Donald Trump’s foreign policy and legislative agenda may be a confused mess,” but “his administration’s attack on the environment is operating with the focus and zeal of the Spanish Inquisition.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Sean Spicer Is Very Sorry About His Holocaust Comments
What Would Be Wrong with Trump Restoring Glass-Steagall?
Putin Angrily Resigns from Trump’s Reëlection Campaign

The Assad Family: Nemesis of Nine U.S. Presidents

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s first meeting with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, in 1973, dragged on until almost eleven P.M. It ran so long, the Times reported, that the media began to speculate about whether America’s top diplomat had been kidnapped. Assad “negotiated tenaciously and daringly like a riverboat gambler to make sure he had exacted the last sliver of available concessions,” Kissinger recalled in his memoir, “Years of Upheaval.” The marathons were typical. In 1991, Secretary of State James Baker famously waved a white flag “in submission” after almost ten hours because he needed a bathroom break. Baker called negotiating with Assad “bladder diplomacy.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Devin Nunes and the Ethics Watchdogs
Was Trump’s Strike on Syria Legal?
When China’s Dinner Partner Went To War

Devin Nunes and the Ethics Watchdogs

Norm Eisen, the dean of Washington ethics watchdogs, has a simple way of describing his reaction to hearing Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the lawmaker formerly in charge of an investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election, disclose classified information to the press last month. “I fell out of my chair,” Eisen told me.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Assad Family: Nemesis of Nine U.S. Presidents
When China’s Dinner Partner Went To War
What Bill O’Reilly Means to Fox News

United’s Unfriendly Skies

“That is just not right,” a woman on board United Flight 3411, at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, said, when two members of the police department began tugging an older, Asian man from his seat. Seconds later, as captured in a video recorded by another passenger, her cries (“My God, what are you doing?”), along with those of the man and of others on the plane, became more urgent, as the deputies pulled him up and, without pausing to register that they had banged his head on an armrest, dragged him down the aisle. The man’s shirt is pulled up, exposing his stomach: his dignity got as little consideration from the authorities as did his safety, or the fact that he had a ticket. The woman screamed, “No, this is wrong! Oh, my God, look at what you did to him!” The officers didn’t seem to notice that there was blood on his face, although the sight of it made a man next to the woman recoil and bury his head in his hands, and elicited an untranscribable gasp from a third passenger.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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The Rules of the United Airlines Fight or Flight Club
The Official United Airlines Dress Code
The Year in Jelani Cobb

China and the Legend of Ivanka

The most beautiful woman in ancient China was born in 506 B.C., when the country was fractured into rival kingdoms. According to legend, Xi Shi’s beauty was so transcendent that, when met with her countenance, fish forgot to swim, geese sank from the sky, the moon hid its face, and flowers turned away in shame. After Xi Shi came of age, her native Yue Kingdom was defeated by the neighboring Wu and was forced to become its tributary state. The King of Yue, a strongman named Goujian, who had been subjected to humiliation under Wu, plotted revenge. By his decree, ministers searched far and wide for the most captivating beauty in the land and dispatched her as a gift to the Wu Kingdom. The rest of the story goes as you might expect: Xi Shi was found and delivered to the Wu King, who became so entranced by her beauty, charm, and wit that he neglected military and political affairs. His kingdom fell into shambles, a conveniently enfeebled target for Guojian’s eventual capture.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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The New Yorker Cover That’s Being Replicated by Women Surgeons Across the World
When China’s Dinner Partner Went To War
Uber’s New H.R. Policies for Female Employees

Sergio Garcia’s Triumph of Persistence

In 1999, as he was playing in the final round of the P.G.A. Championship, at the age of just nineteen, Sergio Garcia reached the eighteenth hole one shot behind the leader, Tiger Woods. As he stood on the tee, he reportedly said, “Guys, I’m having so much fun. This is so great, I don’t even care if I win.” All week, the crowds had thrilled to the young, good-natured Spaniard. He made par on the eighteenth, took second place in the tournament, and declared the week the greatest of his life. The sport of golf seemed to have, along with Woods, a second prodigy on its hands. It would, it appeared, be just be a matter of time before Garcia—El Niño, they called him—won his first major tournament.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Tiger Woods and the Amazing 1997 Masters
Tiger Woods: How Low Can He Go?
The 2015 Masters: The “New Tiger” Avoids Embarrassment

The Despair of Learning That Experience No Longer Matters

Of all the accounts of the plight of the white working class that appeared during the 2016 election, the work of the married Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton seemed to cut most deeply. In 2015, Case and Deaton published research finding that although mortality is declining for virtually every other demographic group in every developed country, it has been rising for middle-aged white Americans since the early nineteen-nineties. The increase, they argued, was due almost exclusively to what they called “deaths of despair”—suicides, drug and alcohol poisoning, and chronic liver disease. During the campaign, their findings raised the possibility that whatever energies had consumed the white working class were not limited to political or cultural grievances but had a more pathological source, one that showed up in the United States but nowhere else.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Death of the Tunnel Tree
When John Berger Looked at Death
Kissing the Dead

Was Trump’s Strike on Syria Legal?

The moral case for President Trump’s strike on Syria is uncontroversial. Bashar al-Assad is a heinous dictator who has been terrorizing his own people for years, and the most recent crime against innocents of which he’s been accused—indiscriminately killing dozens of civilians with a banned chemical poison in the village of Khan Sheikhoun—was particularly grotesque.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
When China’s Dinner Partner Went To War
The U.S. Air Strike in Syria: First Thoughts

When China’s Dinner Partner Went To War

Standing soberly beside Donald Trump on Friday morning, as cameras recorded them preparing to enter Trump’s peach-colored Florida country club, Xi Jinping mustered only a Mona Lisa smile. It seemed to contain the question that unites more than a few around the world these days: How, in God’s name, did we get here—and where are we going?

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Was Trump’s Strike on Syria Legal?
What Bill O’Reilly Means to Fox News
The U.S. Air Strike in Syria: First Thoughts

What Bill O’Reilly Means to Fox News

One afternoon last month, when I was reporting a Profile of Tucker Carlson, I met him in the cafeteria at the Fox News Channel headquarters, in midtown Manhattan. During the interview, we were briefly interrupted by Bill Shine, the co-president of Fox News. When Carlson told Shine that he was doing an interview, Shine responded mischievously. “Why isn’t he interviewing O’Reilly?” Shine said. “His ratings are bigger!”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
When China’s Dinner Partner Went To War
The U.S. Air Strike in Syria: First Thoughts
The New Dark Art of Trump Towerology