The Atlantic: The First White President

To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies. The repercussions are striking: Trump is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. But more telling, Trump is also the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a “piece of ass.” The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape (“When you’re a star, they let you do it”), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy—to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification. Barack Obama delivered to black people the hoary message that if they work twice as hard as white people, anything is possible. But Trump’s counter is persuasive: Work half as hard as black people, and even more is possible. [...]

Asserting that Trump’s rise was primarily powered by cultural resentment and economic reversal has become de rigueur among white pundits and thought leaders. But evidence for this is, at best, mixed. In a study of preelection polling data, the Gallup researchers Jonathan Rothwell and Pablo Diego-Rosell found that “people living in areas with diminished economic opportunity” were “somewhat more likely to support Trump.” But the researchers also found that voters in their study who supported Trump generally had a higher mean household income ($81,898) than those who did not ($77,046). Those who approved of Trump were “less likely to be unemployed and less likely to be employed part-time” than those who did not. They also tended to be from areas that were very white: “The racial and ethnic isolation of whites at the zip code level is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support.” [...]

Part of Trump’s dominance among whites resulted from his running as a Republican, the party that has long cultivated white voters. Trump’s share of the white vote was similar to Mitt Romney’s in 2012. But unlike Romney, Trump secured this support by running against his party’s leadership, against accepted campaign orthodoxy, and against all notions of decency. By his sixth month in office, embroiled in scandal after scandal, a Pew Research Center poll found Trump’s approval rating underwater with every single demographic group. Every demographic group, that is, except one: people who identified as white. [...]

This transfiguration is not novel. It is a return to form. The tightly intertwined stories of the white working class and black Americans go back to the prehistory of the United States—and the use of one as a cudgel to silence the claims of the other goes back nearly as far. Like the black working class, the white working class originated in bondage—the former in the lifelong bondage of slavery, the latter in the temporary bondage of indenture. In the early 17th century, these two classes were remarkably, though not totally, free of racist enmity. But by the 18th century, the country’s master class had begun etching race into law while phasing out indentured servitude in favor of a more enduring labor solution. From these and other changes of law and economy, a bargain emerged: The descendants of indenture would enjoy the full benefits of whiteness, the most definitional benefit being that they would never sink to the level of the slave. But if the bargain protected white workers from slavery, it did not protect them from near-slave wages or backbreaking labor to attain them, and always there lurked a fear of having their benefits revoked. This early white working class “expressed soaring desires to be rid of the age-old inequalities of Europe and of any hint of slavery,” according to David R. Roediger, a professor of American studies at the University of Kansas. “They also expressed the rather more pedestrian goal of simply not being mistaken for slaves, or ‘negers’ or ‘negurs.’ ” [...]

Obama allowed that “blacks in particular have been vulnerable to these trends”—but less because of racism than for reasons of geography and job-sector distribution. This notion—raceless antiracism—marks the modern left, from the New Democrat Bill Clinton to the socialist Bernie Sanders. Few national liberal politicians have shown any recognition that there is something systemic and particular in the relationship between black people and their country that might require specific policy solutions.

read the article or listen to the podcast

The New York Review of Books: The Crackdown in Cambodia

These closures appear to be a veiled targeting of institutions backed by the United States, whose foreign policy Hun Sen has long criticized. But Hun Sen sent a less ambiguous message after his government arrested Kem Sokha, president of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party: he justified the arrest with the startling accusation that the US government was conspiring with opposition leaders to topple Cambodia’s government. [...]

That opposition movement has slowly grown to pose a credible threat to Hun Sen in next year’s election. During the last general election, in 2013, Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party lost a quarter of its seats and won by less than 5 percent, its poorest showing in fifteen years—despite widespread allegations of vote rigging. This small margin of victory led many observers to believe that the Cambodian National Rescue Party had in fact won the election. Hun Sen’s government, and not election officials, announced the vote’s result, which was then protested by thousands on Phnom Penh’s streets. The leader of the opposition party in that election, Sam Rainsy, was banned from Cambodian politics six months ago, and now lives in exile. [...]

Hun Sen’s latest crackdown stems both from the threat to his grip on power and his strategic move away from the United States and toward China. The Chinese government reacted to Kem Sokha’s arrest predictably, emphasizing stability over any concerns about democracy. Booming Chinese investment has helped to drive Cambodia’s economic growth, from new high rises towering over Phnom Penh to giant hydroelectric dams on Cambodia’s extensive river network. But Cambodia, one of Asia’s poorest countries, remains dependent on aid from the United States and other Western powers to finance more than 30 percent of the government’s budget, and also for preferential export terms to the US from its large garment industry. [...]

Hun Sen’s government has been accused of land grabs, illegal logging, and widespread corruption. Over the past two decades, more than a dozen journalists and human rights activists have been killed, including the prominent political commentator Kem Ley, assassinated last year in a Phnom Penh coffee shop. The trial for that murder bordered on farce: a Cambodian court accepted the accused killer’s detailed confession, as well as his claim that his name was “Chuop Samlap,” which means “meet to kill.” Such flagrant abuses of power will only grow with a weaker local press.

read the article

The New York Review of Books: Soccer’s Culture of Corruption

Most modern team sports were codified in Victorian Britain, partly in the hope of distracting schoolboys from masturbation. But the British saw little point in playing against foreigners, and many major international sporting bodies were created by the French. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association was founded in Paris in 1904 by seven continental European countries. FIFA controlled the rules of soccer and oversaw national federations. Yet it was always a weak regulator, with little say over professional clubs. Its power derived from its one prestigious property: the quadrennial men’s World Cup, first played in Uruguay in 1930. [...]

Beginning in the 1980s, Havelange expanded the tournament, creating more places for Asian and African teams. And so the rights to broadcast and sponsor the World Cup became ever more valuable. But Havelange’s tiny FIFA staff lacked the skills to market them. (In 1974, the organization’s Zurich headquarters had twelve employees.) Horst Dassler, whose father had founded the soccer shoe manufacturer Adidas, a much larger operation than FIFA, bought many rights directly from Havelange. Dassler paid him kickbacks, and the Brazilian flew suitcases of cash first-class between Rio and Zurich. [...]

That election set the template for Blatter’s rule. World Cups kept generating more money: FIFA’s revenues rose from $308 million in the four-year cycle through 1998 to $5.7 billion in the four years through 2014. This was largely because in an interconnected world, people from China to the US were now watching soccer. Blatter nevertheless took credit for “developing” the game—FIFA’s supposed mission. He passed on chunks of the loot to national and continental soccer barons, in payments that were typically couched in the language of “development.” A FIFA grant, often handed over by Blatter’s staff on the eve of a FIFA presidential election, was supposedly meant to fund facilities in the official’s country. Indeed, some national federations, especially in Africa, couldn’t even afford a phone line. But these payments were not monitored, and if the official slipped the money into his jacket pocket, nobody would complain. [...]

The FBI and others uncovered corruption in World Cup bids far into the past. It now seems that Germany paid bribes to host in 2006, as did South Africa in 2010. Warner, Blazer, and a co-conspirator got a $10 million payment from South Africa, disguised as support for the Caribbean’s “African diaspora.” Warner also insisted that an ailing eighty-five-year-old Nelson Mandela fly to Trinidad to beg for his vote.

read the article

Jacobin Magazine: The Left After Charlottesville

But the debate over antifa cannot be at the center of left political discussion. I am less concerned about being murdered by a neo-Nazi than I am about the lack of access to quality health care. I am more exercised about the suppression of voting rights and the damage it does to democracy in the here and now than the damage simply represented by Confederate statues. This is not to dismiss the efforts to tear down Confederate statutes. What lies in the public commons, after all, needs to represent the kind of country we want the United States to be. But we shouldn’t allow the conflagration to cloud our vision. [...]

The first is universal health care: Medicare for All. The Republicans’ haphazard bid to scrap the Affordable Care Act showed that even an extremely flawed version of “universal” coverage was still popular enough to scuttle repeal attempts. Now, according to recent polling, public support for single-payer is on the rise. Even centrist Democrats like Kamala Harris are getting on board. After decades of struggle, universal health care is, if not right around the corner, at least on the near horizon. [...]

There’s another reason to prioritize the push for universal health care. Far-right organizations like the Traditionalist Workers Party have begun making overtures to poor whites in places like Appalachia by talking about jobs and access to quality health care. We can’t allow a pitch for decent health care, or an argument for good jobs, to be used as a gateway to fascism. [...]

We can’t let facile narratives about “poor whites” drive the discourse on racism in American society. The white supremacists that marched in defense of the Robert E. Lee statue included many well-off, college-educated whites that would have no qualms throwing away the lives of poor white Americans. They would also destroy the lives and aspirations of African Americans, Jews, Latinos, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community.

read. the article

The Atlantic: What the Iran Deal Can Teach America About North Korea

The North Koreans will be watching what happens to the Iran deal, and it will be every bit the test of American credibility that Obama’s famous “red line” crisis over Syria was. Obama’s failure to punish the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons—after having declared their use a “red line” that would entail “enormous consequences” for Syria if crossed—was widely criticized, including in these pages. In his own defense, Obama dismissed the question of credibility in this context as “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone.” That view does enjoy some support in foreign policy circles, with some positing that theorists and policymakers have fetishized credibility to such an extent that it can pull the United States into wars that aren’t in its national interest. [...]

Still, Haley is right in her assessment: Countries’ track records matter. Without some level of predictability, all international agreements would fall apart. Moreover, the failure to see diplomatic solutions through can put countries in a worse position than they were in before negotiations started. And in focusing on Tehran’s track record, she fails to consider what her administration’s own actions are telling the world about the United States. [...]

Today, America is facing a mischievous Iran, whose nuclear program was curtailed by the nuclear deal. This summer, the UN nuclear watchdog verified the country’s compliance with the agreement for the eighth time since its implementation started less than two years ago. The Islamic Republic remains a challenge in a number of arenas, including its human-rights track record, support for terrorist groups, and general regional activities, as Haley correctly noted in her speech. But as America’s allies and negotiating partners—France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, along with China and Russia—have stated repeatedly, the deal is working in its narrow aim of limiting Iran’s nuclear program. Haley said as much when she stated that “the deal was constructed in a way that makes leaving it less attractive.” In other words, while the deal isn’t perfect, alternatives to it are far worse. [...]

The United States shouldn’t make military or diplomatic decisions based solely on what will maintain its credibility. After all, credibility should be a means, not an end in itself. But the United States can’t continue to lead international processes designed to sanction countries and bring them to the table—and thereby avoid using force—without it.

read the article

Vox: Here’s Vladimir Putin’s weirdly on-point analysis of North Korea

it’s strange to think of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a reliable source when it comes to geopolitical analysis. Yet when Putin talked about the US-North Korea nuclear standoff in a press conference on Thursday night, his assessment of the situation matched far more closely with what you hear from US experts on North Korea than anything that the Trump administration has said.

Putin’s core point is that the central strategy of US policy under Trump, Obama, and Bush — attempting to pressure North Korea into giving up its nuclear program — has now conclusively failed. North Korea now believes that its nuclear arsenal is its best deterrent against an American invasion, and hence will not give it up no matter how much the United States tries to push them. [...]

That isn’t the Trump administration’s view. Just this week, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley called for “the strongest sanctions” to pressure North Korea into giving up nukes “before it's too late.” Yet the consensus position among America’s North Korea experts is that it is, in fact, too late: that nothing the US can do to Kim Jong Un could offset the deterrent value of his nuclear weapons. [...]

Finally, Putin argued that the best way to handle the nuclear crisis going forward is through negotiations — for the US and North Korea to develop better lines of communication in order to avoid a crisis escalating into a war that no one wants.

read the article

Quartz: Saudi Arabia is learning that preparing for life after oil is easier said than done

Just over a year after launching the plan, Saudi Arabia is going to redraft it by “stripping out some areas earmarked for change and extending the timeline of other targets,” as well as “change existing initiatives and add new ones,” according to the Financial Times (paywall). Apparently, the rethink is because Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plans were overly ambitious. [...]

Such an unbalanced economy is dangerous when energy prices slump, as they have since 2014, with crude oil falling from above $100 per barrel to around $50 today. This has blown a hole in Saudi’s budget, forcing it to burn through its reserves and borrow billions to finance its deficit. This year, Saudi Arabia’s GDP growth is set to be “close to zero,” according to the IMF. Meanwhile, renewable energy is steadily becoming more competitive with fossil fuels. [...]

Saudi Arabia is looking to raise money by partly privatizing its state-owned behemoth of an oil company Saudi Aramco, in what will be the world’s largest IPO. Alongside the economic transformation plan, proceeds from the Saudi Aramco stake sale—scheduled for next year, but possibly subject to delay (paywall)—will be vital to funding the huge investments necessary to shift the country away from its reliance on oil.

read the article

Quartz: A major US church decided to remove memorials to Confederate leaders

Leaders of the National Cathedral in Washington, DC voted on Sept. 6 to immediately remove two stained-glass windows that honor generals of the Confederate Army in the US Civil War. The decision comes after two years of deliberation over whether the windows are “an appropriate part of the sacred fabric of a spiritual home for the nation,” according to church leaders. [...]

Previously, cathedral leaders justified these controversial Confederate windows, telling visitors on tours that their presence “underscores the building’s role as a repository of American memory, carrying the very wounds of war within its walls.” That is no longer sufficient, they believe. [...]

The reason for the delay, they explained, was that they sought alternative solutions, like perhaps contextualizing the windows somehow. However, the cathedral leaders wrote, “the recent violence in Charlottesville brought urgency to our discernment process…. The continued presence of white supremacy, anti-Semitism and other forms of hate in our nation cannot be ignored—nor will they be solved simply by removing these windows or other monuments.”

read the article

America Magazine: Steve Bannon says Catholics "need illegal aliens to fill the churches"

Mr. Bannon was the subject of a much-discussed article written by two associates of Pope Francis earlier this summer, in which they condemned what they see as a growing relationship between Catholic and evangelical fundamentalists in the United States.

Following Mr. Trump’s decision on Tuesday to rescind the program that could affect up to 800,000 young people currently living in the United States, Catholic bishops reacted strongly. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the decision “reprehensible.”

“The bishops have been terrible about this. By the way, you know why? You know why? Because unable to really...to come to grips with the problems in the church, they need illegal aliens, they need illegal aliens to fill the churches,” Mr. Bannon said, according to the transcript published by CBS News. “That’s—it’s obvious on the face of it. That’s what—the entire Catholic bishops condemn him. ... They have—they have an economic interest. They have an economic interest in unlimited immigration, unlimited illegal immigration.”

read the article