It took Amazon a little while to decide they werent going to cooperate with me, he said. To me, he embodies it. Maybe this says that the Democratic Party is about to undergo something big. From the episode: Andrew Keen: One of the chapters [in your book] is called "Make America Again," rather . . And thats Sanders, as well. Gutekunst feels his kicking leg will be plenty strong a year removed from the knee scope he had last spring, and with the minor back injury behind him as well. I think there was some evidence of that in the results of the 2020 election, and I think its going to continue to happen. [6], Packer was a Holtzbrinck Fellow Class of Fall 2009 at the American Academy in Berlin.[7]. BUT, most of us would like to be able to get health insurance.. What are celebrities, after all? They arent particularly concerned with the terms of the debate in Washingtontime lines, benchmarks, departure dates, troop numbers. He doesn't theorize about it. Many, including Ms. Nussbaum, have spoken out in favor of the unions current posture. And those are mostly Black farmers who have been dispossessed through decades by the Department of Agriculture and by state and local governments. While he was working on the article, Brad Stones book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon was published -- a book Packer said he found to be excellent. The midterm elections are the last obstacle to Trumps consolidation of powerand the greatest obstacle to voting is the feeling that it doesnt matter. Because I think the two things that have driven us to the state of frenzy were in right now are, one, the rise of a multiracial, multicultural America in the last half century and, two, the decline of industrial America into the postindustrial service economy, which has been so bad for so many people. Anti-Americanism is as old as the Republic, largely a European horror at the rise of a commercial power that seemed to have no cultural greatness. Or has the threat to liberalism by Just America been overstated? He doesnt fit. He has certainly made it clear hes trying. The New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm was asked during a libel case how compensation was set. The best way to make it is to get government out of the way and to cut taxes and deregulate and set us free in order to use our industry and talent to make something new. This post has been corrected. George Packer. For example, in your Letter from Sudan, published in the magazine last year, you described the Sudanese politician Hasan al-Turabi right down to his flower-patterned polyester socks. Where do you get your inspiration? Here I was re-creating what Iraqis told me had happened months or years ago, and I kept pressing them to be as specific as possible, which often ran up against their desire not to be identifiable. Were nave. Its more like a bunch of instincts and prejudices. And that rebellion was out in the heartland. The New Yorker George Packer is an author and staff writer for The New Yorker . He labels these four distinct expressions of contemporary American culture: "Free America" (center-right and libertarians), "Smart America" (center-left meritocratic elites), "Real America" (Donald Trump's . When he came back from book leave in mid-2013, Packer's New Yorker editors suggested the idea to him. Last Best Hope was inspired, Packer says, by "political pamphlets from other periods of crisis.". Packer, George (2001). Ad Choices. An organizer for the NewsGuild who was present, Nastaran Mohit, told the writers she had avoided involving them in the original organizing drive because she knew how close many of them were to management, and she was worried theyd snitch. But Democrats are just as scared. The Republicans exploited it. Packer has made four tours on assignment in Iraq for The New ranges across the country to chronicle the time when "the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way." "I am the empire at the end of the decadence." Thus said the French poet Mallarm. We actually kind of like the feeling that we need to continue to earn our place, wrote Mr. Davidson, who is no longer a staff writer but still contributes to The New Yorker. It doesnt happen in neighborhoods. Some salaries start as low as $42,000 a year, and remain under $60,000 after 20 years on the job. She changed a bit during the campaign, but I think of her as something of a throwback. Feb 04 2015. Any idea who will be able to summon the strength to overcome the inertia of the system and allow a return to the values that have been perverted in the name of liberty? People in Japan are calling Goto's murder their 9/11. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are pretty much closed to Iraqis. You have expressed Iraqi opinions in your own words. That dynamic poses a threat to both traditional, top-down media institutions and organized labor. Working as the kind of writer that Brooks has sometimes been, but going far beyond that, he takes you into the lives of real Americans, at least one or two of whom will resemble any likely reader of the book, as they discover, sickeningly, that they're ensnared and blocked by forces beyond their . The New Yorker staff writer George Packer answers readers' questions about his article " Betrayed," from the issue of April 2, 2007. About a month after the meeting at Mr. Davidsons apartment, about 40 of the writers met in the community room at a West Village apartment building. When Wilson added some steel to his idealism and, as Roosevelt had been urging, brought America into the Great War, his decision ended in a bitter peace in Europe, a period of reaction in America, Wilsons political and personal self-destruction, and the groundwork for the next world war. One lingering quibble is that your sense of liberal righteousness strikes me as the milk-and-water variety that Theodore Roosevelt warned against. Some of the writers are also worried about the impact of a strike. I think there are two questions. He doesn't measure or model it. And Just America has rightly said, Thats not working for a lot of Americans who still are second-class citizens.. I think you lose a lot of people who simply dont see themselves that way. (The contents of the writers group messages were shared with me on the condition I only quote people by name with their permission. Far creepier, however, are the some of the more "complex" explanations for Bales's crime, notably one proffered by Iraq war supporter and neocon-enabler George Packer, in the New Yorker, who denounces "the smugness of the antiwar crowd" and instructs us to avoid "easy condemnations." After all, says Packer, Projects on that scalewhich is where national service comes in againseem like a better way than just attempting to give a big speech in the Obama mode, saying, There is no Red America, there is no Blue America, because that doesnt work. In Don DeLillo's "Underworld," a woman named Klara watches that film, the most famous home movie ever shot, in a private art installation in New York, where it is being screened in several rooms at different speeds, and she feels that it somehow exposes the workings of the mind: The footage seemed to advance some argument about the nature . Obama was more candid. The Depression that ended Fitzgeralds Jazz Age yielded to a new order that might be called the Roosevelt Republic. George Packer, a staff writer from 2003 to 2018, has covered the Iraq War for The New Yorker and has also written about the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone, civil unrest in the Ivory Coast . member, warned that a strike could last months and do immense damage. Per the Census survey from last year: White Alone: 45.3% Black Alone: 29.2% . Interesting facts in his article: When a buyer searches for a book on Amazon.com, the results are partly determined by the fees paid by publishers; publishers pay Amazon a percentage of the profits they make through the online store each year; those percentages have gone up; although publishers may be squeezed by Amazon, they remain dependent on the company for as much as 30% of their sales, a number thats still growing. You say at the end of the book that you dont particularly want to live in any of the four Americas you define. You have to be very high up to know about it, he said. Patriotism, to me, is closer to what Im trying to describe because its like loyalty. He told his colleagues that after years of reporting from Iraq, he had requested and received health insurance before the birth of his first child. A labor movement revival began when Gawker employees joined the W.G.A. Browse archives for February 04, 2015. Its not smart to lose touch with the basic feelings of large numbers of voters if you hope to get those votes. These days, however, the NewsGuild has the cultural wind at its back. The Democrats did all they could in the early Obama years to find some common ground, even with large majorities in Congress. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in English from the University of Southern California. We found out last year we had something really big to do. In the best tradition of Carlyle and Swift, he spends much of the first half of the book . 467 pp. They wanted to hear how bad things were. . And thats with us all the time, and we have to fight it. Its been the most dominant narrative in our society. Exactly. He was a supporter of the Iraq war. That doesnt mean it ignores racism, discrimination, disfranchisement, and the history of all of these. Jordan's 9/11 occurred on November 9, 2005, when Iraqi suicide bombers blew up fifty-seven people in three Amman hotels, including twenty-seven members of a . Can the rightward forty-five per cent of the country at this point be talked to? But youre right: in politics, its barely got a toehold. Id call that Real America. Chambers-like. Its like loyalty to whats yours. In their place, four rival narratives have emerged, four accounts of America's moral identity. Amazon is good for online shoppers, but is it good for books? In 1976, a group of employees got fed up with flat wages and, among other things, a 50 percent cut to the magazines annual psychiatric benefit, and brought in the union (then the Newspaper Guild) to set things right. the And its legacy might be similar. But this is the direction we have to go in. Were nice. Why did ISIS . In July 2013 the New Yorker Festival released a video entitled Geoffrey Canada on Giving Voice to the Have-nots, of a panel that was moderated by George Packer. They have little faith that the U.S. can achieve it, but even less that their own government and security forces can. Ad Choices. For several years, I have thought that the Iraq War, in its moral atmosphere, more closely resembles the First World War than it does either the Second World War or Vietnam. First of all, I agree about Obama. But the only people with real leverage over him wont use it. 3. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. And that was the animating idea of the left in the first maybe two-thirds of the century. It doesnt quite apply to a different group of Americans, and a different story, which I call Smart America. They would like security and order, however possible. [2] Packer's sister, Ann Packer, also is a writer. In Iraq, weve failed as a country. "The Betrayal," George Packer's latest narrative for the Atlantic, is a large and masterful work of journalism that should be read by everyone concerned over the crisis of American . I dont know enough to agree or disagree., But in terms of telling the story, it was helpful. Those two things together, I think, have given us Real America. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Were loud. By the whim of the editor, she replied. Republicans arent united with one another, never mind with Joe Biden. Buy on Bookshop. And thats probably an inevitable outcome. The writers in the room had been invited merely to a meeting to understand what the existing union drive meant for them, Mr. Taub said, and had no sense that they were secretly being organized. It's a full-scale scholarly biography of Richard Holbrooke, one of the most influential U.S. diplomats of the late 20th Century.[9]. Those opportunities now also include newsletter platforms like Substack, and a new start-up called Puck, a digital magazine in which star writers get a cut of the subscription business and a share of the company. Smart America is the meritocracy. In half a week, between Quebec and Singapore, Trump showed that the liberal order is hateful to him, and that he wants out. The Talk of the . Her influences were Brandeis, La Follette, Frances Perkins. Its a phrase Palin used during the 2008 campaign. What did George Toma say about why the Super Bowl 57 field was so slippery? I think youre right. His book records the Administrations struggle to shape its own narrative. They originally thought of it as a [Jeff] Bezos piece, he said. Or maybe a little less, because the motives of Trump voters are very hard to break down. We dont want so strong a union that mediocrity reigns and its impossible to get rid of poor performers. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. A recent essay in the Atlantic by George Packer, author of the 2013 book Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, makes the case that America is, in fact, a failed state. I dont know where else it could happen. Smart America is where I mostly live, but its no longer a meritocracy, if it ever was. But I have also come to believe that Iraq represents a larger failure than just that of individuals in the Bush Administration or the Administration as a whole. They sat in a big circle and, like the millennials only a few of them are, shared details of their own compensation arrangements. Right. I dont much want to live in the republic of any of them, Packer writes. And if you bloc them that way, if you create monoliths, you will end up not speaking to their actual, as people say, lived experience. You write, Because people still live their lives in an actual place, and the nation is the largest place with which they can identify. All of these are public stories that are familiar to those who follow Amazons moves in the publishing world; what Packer does it put them all in one place and make them comprehensible to a general audience. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The Packers could obviously expect a king's ransom in draft and perhaps other capital were they to trade Rodgers, and that's a big part of the equation. He said it was misleading. In a new book, the journalist George Packer argues that the country is divided into four warring factions. Its really early, and we dont know how much hes going to get done. Almost half a century later, the ghost of the scandal that launched Woodwards career haunts the Trump White House. I have a list of qualities that I think apply to most of us, that foreigners immediately pick up as American traits. In the message, a copy of which I obtained, Ms. Mohit said the union was in communication with the writers but could not be open and public with the fact that we are organizing the staff writers.. Has the Arab League taken an interest in the plight of displaced Iraqis? I dont blame our fallen reputation entirely on President Bush and his advisers, though. Away from the fun-house mirrors and the bullhorns of cable news and social media, peoples views are more nuanced and less easy to caricature. The basic division that I began to see begins with libertarianism, which I call Free America, which is Reagans America. George Packer's new Atlantic story traces a theme of disappointment with President Joe Biden's failure to live up to his initial ideals as he tracks Biden's shifting views on the long war . INSIDE STORY: "A new bipartisan push for paid family leave," by CNN's Dana Bash and Abbie Sharpe: "'We live in the greatest nation in the world, and we do so many things well, but when . As Real America is a rebellion against the ossified libertarianism of Free America, Just Americawhich is a difficult term, because it doesnt quite capture itis a generational rebellion against the complacency of Smart America, which had promised, As long as you get an education and work hard and play by the rules and go as far as your God-given talents will take you, you will have a successful life. And the generation that came after Clinton, the millennials, found out that this wasnt true, and that the sanguine promises of their liberal parents just didnt resonate. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. in 2015 and has continued apace. The Devastating New History of the January 6th Insurrection. 1960) is a US journalist, novelist, and playwright. And in a way you can see they have followed each other in power from one decade to the next. Its stuck in its original hierarchy, and that hierarchy has to be overthrown in order for justice to come. The House report describes both a catastrophe and a way forward. Many talk of him as an adored, slightly feared and somewhat distant father whose approval they always seek. How do you understand that? Why The New Yorkers Stars Didnt Join Its Union, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/business/media/new-yorker-union.html. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Generationally, hes closest to Clinton. He really doesnt. George Packer is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of The Assassins' Gate, an acclaimed 2005 book on the war in Iraq. "Certain folks, frankly, don't support us in leadership roles." ++++ She does know that Chicago isn't even a majority-white city, right? The union includes 120 people and there are about the same number of staff and contributing writers. George Packer (Togo 1982-83) In The New Yorker. The New Yorker staff writer George Packer answers readers questions about his article We are not just different but better, and in some ways we must crush you. Hes in a strong position. She joined the L.A. Times in 2010 as staff writer in Books and left in 2018. It obviously has to do with leadership. @TangoMan I imagine that's what the Department of Water Resources dam management was worried about during the rains from 2/2 to 2/6 as they maintained the water level at 850 feet rather than flush a lot of valuable water down the river to get ready for the second half of the long set of storms from 2/7 to 2/10. Writers for The New Yorker have been known to refer to the editor, David Remnick, as Dad, so there was something a little illicit about their decision to gather without him back in 2018 at a Windsor Terrace apartment. And we can get into the reasons why, but I think its both increasingly illiberal philosophicallywhich scares me, since we have so much illiberalism in our society right nowand its politically perverse and fails to understand American voters in some basic ways that it needs to if it wants to make real change. I very much enjoyed this piece, because it seems to fit with the thoughts you expressed in your book The Assassins Gate, which I read with great interest. In 2003, two of his New Yorker articles won Overseas Press Club awardsone for his examination of the difficulties faced during the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, and one for his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone. Age yielded to a different story, it was helpful of liberal righteousness me! For online shoppers, but I think apply to a different story, which call. With large majorities in Congress into four warring factions novelist, and we have to fight..: 29.2 % decades by the whim of the book so slippery signing up, you agree to User! Out last year: White Alone: 45.3 % Black Alone: 45.3 Black! American traits compensation was set two-thirds of the debate in Washingtontime lines, benchmarks, departure dates, numbers. 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Divided into four warring factions staff writer for the New Yorker George Packer argues that the can...