February 2016 Acquisitions

Books:
Christian G. Appy, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity, 2016.
Ed Brubaker et al, Batman by Ed Brubaker, 2016.
Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, The Fade Out, Act 3, 2016.
Chris Claremont et al, Essential X-Men, Vol. 2, 2005.
Joe R. Lansdale, Jonah Hex: Shadows West, 2014.
Raymond McNally and Radu Florescu, In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires, 1994.
Doug Moench et al, Batman: Prey, 2012.
Greg Rucka et al, Star Wars: Shattered Empire, 2015.
Chrissy Teigen, Cravings: Recipes for All the Food You Want to Eat, 2016.
Peter J. Tomasi et al, Batman: Arkham Knight, Vol. 1, 2016.
Genevieve Valentine, Catwoman, Vol. 7: Inheritance, 2016.
Len Wein et al, Showcase Presents: The House of Mystery, Vol. 1, 2006.

"A Clever Historical Reference" or "Stupider Than Anybody Previously Believed"?

"More interesting is Trump's language. Four times in the interview, he repeats the phrase 'I know nothing.' That is the exact wording used by 19th-century nativists. The 'Know-Nothing Party' is sometimes misremembered in the popular imagination today as signifying ignorance. In fact, the phrase was used by nativists who belonged to secret societies pledged to support only native-born Protestants for public office. When questioned about the groups, members were instructed to state 'I know nothing.' It is striking to see modern nativist Donald Trump repeat this precise formulation as an answer to an analogous question (his subterranean support from a politically radioactive secret society)."

Jonathan Chait at New York reacts to Donald Trump's difficulty in disavowing white supremacists (and argues that Trump is the consequence of conservatives' historical use of racism).

And Philip Bump at The Washington Post reminds readers of the arrest of Trump's father at a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1927.

"The Republican Primary Has Become a Pro-Wrestling Contest"

"That is why the only possibly effective response is the one Marco Rubio introduced on Thursday night—and has really had fun with since. Rubio has found what could be Trump's kryptonite, the substance that might conceivably peel his supporters away from him.
"That substance is ridicule."

James Fallows at The Atlantic explains how to confront Donald Trump.

"That Once-Unthinkable Scenario"

"I'll stop short of predicting that a third-party insurgency will ultimately happen.
"But it seems obvious that it could deny Trump the White House. And for that reason, the threat of a third-party challenge may be the conservative movement's strongest piece of leverage over a man who seems to be thwarting them at every turn. As long as Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz could still win the nomination, a third-party plot might cause Trump to reverse his own loyalty pledge in the event he loses. But if and when Trump has the nomination clinched, I expect, at the very least, that movement conservatives will make a lot of noise about a third-party challenge. It may be their last best chance to wrest concessions from the billionaire."

Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic asks, "Would conservatives dare to greet a Trump victory with their own third-party challenge?"

David Corn in Mother Jones writes that Republican leaders are reaping what they have sown with Trump.

And Philip Rucker and Robert Costa depict in The Washington Post depict the "Republican Party's Implosion."

"No, the Senate’s Supreme Court Blockade Has Never Happened in American History"

"It is certainly true that Biden, like Schumer, was demanding broader latitude for the Senate. Both these remarks are within the historic tradition of senators tussling over how much say their chamber should have in the ideology of a new justice. But neither of them advocated flat-out blocking the president from any nomination, however moderate or well-qualified.
"And maybe the old system, in which social norms dictate that the Senate allow the president to put his ideological imprint on the Court, is simply untenable in a polarized age. Maybe that system was bound to perish. (That's the case I made.) And maybe the Democrats would have wound up becoming the party to kill that old system if they found themselves in the position Republicans currently occupy. But the clear fact is that they didn't kill that system and they didn't create the new one that is taking its place. The current Senate Republicans did."

Jonathan Chait at New York reacts to the Senate Republicans announcing that they will refuse to consider the president's choice of a new Supreme Court justice.

"What the Spectacle Had to Offer Ordinary Working American Women Was Another Story"

"Hillary Clinton is not a callous or haughty woman. She has much to recommend her for the nation's highest office: for one thing, her knowledge of Washington; for another, the Republican vendetta against her, which is so vindictive and so unfair that I myself might vote for her in November just to show what I think of it. And she has, after all, made a great effort in the course of the past year to impress voters with her feelings for working people.
"But it's hard, given her record, not to feel that this was only under perceived pressure from her primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders. Absent such political force, Hillary tends to gravitate back to a version of feminism that is mainly concerned with the struggle of professional women to rise as high as their talents will take them. No ceilings.
"As I sat there in the Best Buy Theater, however, I kept thinking about the infinitely greater problem of no floors."

Harper's runs an excerpt from Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal.

"Just the Win That Clinton Needed"

"By winning, Team Clinton doesn't just score delegates—it proves its theory of the race. The Clinton campaign believes that Sanders' strength and enthusiasm is illusory; that it reflects the peculiar demographics of Iowa and New Hampshire—rural states with few minorities—more than any pro-Bernie tide in the Democratic Party. Nevada, in other words, was a test. If Clinton lost, then it presaged a tighter race in South Carolina and beyond, and possibly one that ended with a Sanders nomination. Now, instead, we have a race that essentially looks like it did in the beginning of the year. Clinton has the advantage, and barring a catastrophic decline with black voters, she'll march steadily to the nomination."

Jamelle Bouie in Slate reacts to Hillary Clinton's victory in the Nevada caucus.

And Jeff Stein at Vox argues that Bernie Sanders's strategy is faltering.

The Onion gives credit for Clinton's success to the "baleful, pitch-black tide of fate."

"A Party That Will Need to Significantly Change Its Ideological Direction—or One on the Verge of Breaking Apart"

"The white working-class base of the party has been devastated by stagnating wages, globalization and de-industrialization, and various forms of social and cultural breakdown. And through it all the Republican Party has offered little beyond tax cuts for the wealthy and stern, moralistic reprimands ('Stop whining and get a job!'). That's hardly a strategy inclined to generate long-term loyalty and enthusiasm for the party.
"But that's just the beginning."

Damon Linker at The Week looks at Donald Trump and the Republican primary in South Carolina.

And Jonathan Chait at New York reacts to Trump's South Carolina victory.

As does Michael Brendan Dougherty at The Week.

And Robert P. Jones at The Atlantic calls Trump supporters "nostalgia voters," while Ben Mathis-Lilley at Slate issues a warning about what making "America great again" means.

"The Death-Struggle Atmosphere They Brought to Politics"

"This is the tone of fanaticism—or, perhaps, 'the fanatical style,' a variation on what Richard Hofstadter called 'the paranoid style.' Hofstadter was careful to say he was describing not a clinical condition, but a constructed outlook. Its conspiratorial themes grew out of a particular 'way of seeing the world and of expressing oneself.' So, too, with the current style of conservative discourse. It assumes the presence of concealed enemies, but also stresses, even more than the 'paranoiacs' did, the bad faith of liberals who are unwilling and possibly unable to acknowledge how dire things really are—or to call evil by its true name."

Sam Tanenhaus in The Atlantic reviews Daniel Oppenheimer's Exit Right: The People Who Left and Left and Reshaped the American Century.

Is Donald Trump "Bringing Anti-Catholicism Back"?

"The fear that Catholic politicians are pawns of Roman bishops and will pay homage to a foreign potentate rather than supporting their own republic is well established, and anti-Catholic bigotry has a rich lineage in the United States and elsewhere. Evangelical Protestants, a consistently Republican-leaning group that Trump hopes to court, are historically mistrustful of Catholicism and have grown increasingly wary throughout Francis's tenure—going so far as to warn conservative Catholics that the Pope is moving the church to the left."

In The Washington Post, Christine Emba identifies a new, but old, development in the presidential race.

"The Dogmas Are Simply Too Essential to Their Identity"

"The reason Democrats treat these professionals so respectfully in everything from trade deals to urban bike paths is because that is simply who the Democrats are today. Read through the party's favorite works of political theory from the last few decades and you repeatedly encounter the same message: the highly credentialled experts and innovators at the top of the nation's hierarchy of achievement belong there by virtue of their brilliance. That these people also happen to be colleagues and classmates of leading Democrats only reinforces the party's identification with them. Liberals love to mock the One Percent and their self-serving ideology, but they themselves serve the needs of the top 10% just as blindly."

Thomas Frank in The Guardian writes "that sinking the New Deal consensus wasn't the best idea after all."

Construction Time Again

"Griffin was inspired by the German and Russian painters from that era and created his own version of the paintings while making photographs of business leaders, politicians, and personalities. Although he's unsure who came up with the term Capitalist Realism, Griffin likes it."

David Rosenberg in Slate talks with photographer Brian Griffin.

"Has All the Progress of the Past 100 Years Come Undone?"

"The authors are at their best when they tease out these unexpected connections. If Vietnam's role in advancing civil rights provides one example, the way Vietnam simultaneously created new means of police brutality provides another. In the wake of the Watts riots of 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson funneled millions of dollars to local police departments, training police in military techniques developed in Southeast Asia. And as the authors make clear, many of the policies we associate with modern conservatism, from 'law and order' policies to deregulation, found key liberal sympathizers. The crackdown on urban black citizens began under Johnson while deregulation found a hero in Jimmy Carter."

Eric Herschthal in Slate reviews Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Thomas J. Sugrue's These United States.

"Crazy Nut Donald Trump Thinks George W. Bush Was President on 9/11"

"In fact, Trump has not claimed that Bush had specific knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. He said, 'George Bush had the chance, also, and he didn't listen to the advice of his CIA.' That is correct. Bush was given numerous, detailed warnings that Al Qaeda planned an attack. But the Bush administration had, from the beginning, dismissed fears about terrorism as a Clinton preoccupation. Its neoconservative ideology drove the administration to fixate on state-supported dangers—which is why it turned its attention so quickly to Iraq. The Bush administration ignored pleas by the outgoing Clinton administration to focus on Al Qaeda in 2000, and ignored warnings by the CIA to prepare for an upcoming domestic attack. The Bush administration did not want the 9/11 attacks to occur; it was simply too ideological and incompetent to take responsible steps to prevent them."

Jonathan Chait at New York responds to conservative reactions to Donald Trump's description of George W. Bush.

And David Frum at The Atlantic wonders if Republicans are members of "a functional political party."

"For the Apollo 11 Conspiracy to Be True, How Many People Would Need to Be Part of the Secret?"

"Just over 400,000, says Oxford University physicist and cancer biologist David Robert Grimes. Grimes, who is also a journalist, has published a new mathematical equation in the journal PLOS ONE that estimates how long a large-scale conspiracy can last before someone behind the scenes intentionally or unintentionally pulls back the curtain."

Joshua Barajas at PBS Newshour writes about the probabilities of accurate conspiracy theories.

"The Element of Tragedy and Failed Promise Is a Crucial Factor"

"Wilson provides the link between pop and the undisputed greatness of Tin Pan Alley songwriters like George Gershwin, whom he idolised. The miracle of Brian's melodic gifts, like those of Lennon and McCartney, even prompts comparisons with Mozart and Schubert. As Tom Petty puts it in the documentary, 'I don't know if he's a genius or not, but I know that that music is probably as good a music as you can make... as you can write.' The particular appeal of his genius lies in the fact that the Beach Boys were the very obverse of hip - the unlikeliness of these songs growing out of disposable surf pop - and in the singular naivety and ingenuousness of his personality."

In a 1995 Independent article, Barney Hoskyns ponders Brian Wilson.

"That's Because We Have Seen the Dangers of Technology Firsthand"

"Since then, I've met a number of technology chief executives and venture capitalists who say similar things: they strictly limit their children's screen time, often banning all gadgets on school nights, and allocating ascetic time limits on weekends.

"I was perplexed by this parenting style. After all, most parents seem to take the opposite approach, letting their children bathe in the glow of tablets, smartphones and computers, day and night.

"Yet these tech C.E.O.'s seem to know something that the rest of us don't."

Nick Bilton in a 2014 New York Times article reports that "Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent."

"The Mortality of Supreme Court Justices Is an Element of Wild Randomness in the American Political System"

"What happens next—or, what would have happened under the old rules of American politics—is that the president names a successor. Senate Republicans might object to a particular successor on the merits, arguing that an individual candidate is too extreme, or scandal-plagued, or otherwise unqualified. But the old rules no longer apply, because they are not rules at all, they are mere social norms. The consistent pattern in Washington over the last two decades is that any social norms that stand between one of the parties and power inevitably falls by the wayside. For instance, the Senate used to apply what it called a 'Thurmond Rule'— again, not a rule but a norm—according to which the Senate would not confirm any new judicial appointees during the last six months of a presidential election year. Conservatives have already demanded the extension of the 'Thurmond Rule' to the entire year, and the Republican Senate has mostly complied. Influential conservatives are already demanding that the Senate block any Obama appointee at all."

Jonathan Chait at New York reacts to the death of Antonin Scalia.

As does Paul Krugman in The New York Times.

Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker writes that Scalia "mostly failed."

And in the Los Angeles Times, Melvin I. Urofsky challenges Scalia's "originalism."

"Trump, in Other Words, Has Become the Unlikely Tribune of the White-Working Class"

"Now, when you add it all up, it turns out that nobody has done worse the past 30 years than the working-class in countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and France. Their inflation-adjusted incomes actually fell over this period. It was the richest people in the richest countries and, even more so, middle-class people in emerging-market countries who did the best. China, though, really belongs in a category all its own here. It's that bump all by itself in the middle.
"This chart is really a Rosetta stone for politics today—and not just in the U.S. Almost every rich country has their own anti-trade, anti-immigrant party."

Matt O'Brien at The Washington Post presents what "May Be the Most Important Chart for Understanding Politics Today."

"Henry Kissinger Is Thus a Litmus Test for Foreign Policy"

"The sparring during Thursday's Democratic presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders over whether Henry Kissinger is an elder statesman or a pariah has laid bare a major foreign policy divide within the Democratic Party.
"Clinton and Sanders stand on opposite sides of that divide. One represents the hawkish Washington foreign policy establishment, which reveres and in some cases actually works for Kissinger. The other represents the marginalized non-interventionists, who can't possibly forgive someone with the blood of millions of brown people on his hands."

Dan Froomkin at The Intercept argues that "Kissinger is an amazing and appropriate lens through which to see what's at stake in the choice between Clinton and Sanders."

"It's Fans Doing the Show for the Fans"

"'As much as I'd like to sing "Surf's Up," my voice is pretty far from Wilsonesque,' says Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate. 'But I flashed back on my buddy [R.E.M. guitarist] Peter Buck enthusiastically handing me a cassette of "The Beach Boys Love You" when we first met in 1983. It was way off my radar, but it's a great album, and "Let Us Go on This Way" is right in my vocal wheelhouse.'"

Don Waller in the Glendale News-Press previews Wild Honey's upcoming Beach Boys tribute concert.

"Universities Aren't Companies"

"The fundamental difference between academia and the private sector is that in the private sector, profits are the only truth. In the academic sector, the only truth—according to the Mount St. Mary's mission statement, for goodness' sake—is the truth. Or at least it should be. Now, it seems little more than a cynical view—or a nihilistic one."

Rebecca Schuman in Slate weighs in on the threat to academic freedom in Maryland.

"A Rousing Success, or a Disappointment?"

"Progressive dismay has stalked the Obama administration from the very beginning, when liberals bemoaned the $787 billion stimulus, signed into law a few weeks into Obama's presidency, as underwhelming. Essays like this one by Rick Perlstein, bemoaning the Obama presidency as a lost opportunity, appear regularly. The liberal pundit Bill Press has a new book, Buyer's Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down, the thesis of which is self-explanatory. One blurb reads, 'Bill Press makes the case why, long after taking the oath of office, the next president of the United States must keep rallying the people who elected him or her on behalf of progressive causes. That is the only way real change will happen. Read this book.' The author of the blurb is none other than Bernie Sanders.
"To say the least, I do not share that assessment." 

Jonathan Chait at New York argues that the Clinton versus Sanders is a battle over President Obama's legacy.

"Unprecedented Disrespect"

"It is his final budget blueprint, his last chance to put his vision for the future in front of voters and Congress, but Republicans will not even pretend to give President Obama's last budget plan any serious consideration, a brush off that upends decades of decorum on Capitol Hill.

"For more than four decades, congressional leaders have invited the President's budget director to Capitol Hill to– at the very least– ceremoniously testify about the proposed vision, but this year, Obama's budget director Shaun Donovan was stiffed."

Lauren Fox at Talking Points Memo reports on a decision that epitomizes congressional Republicans during the past seven years.

And Russell Berman The Atlantic writes how Illinois Republicans illustrate the problem. 

"Tuesday's Results Should Sting"

"Yet she now has a very real reason to worry. Her team tried its hardest to tamp down expectations in the lead-up to Tuesday's primary and will continue to do everything it can to spin the loss into something resembling an inconsequential footnote, a challenge that becomes more difficult the further she finishes from Sanders in the final New Hampshire count. But while Tuesday's results won't decide the nomination, the results can be discounted only so much. Sanders had the wind at his back in New Hampshire over the past few months, but the state can't be mistaken as hostile territory for Clinton. Bill Clinton used a surprise second-place finish in the 1992 primary as a springboard to the nomination that year and went on to win the state in the general election both that fall and four years later. In 2008, Hillary beat then–Sen. Barack Obama by nearly 3 points in New Hampshire, surprising pollsters in the process. This year, she had the backing of the state's Democratic governor, Maggie Hassan, and the state's sole Democratic senator, Jeanne Shaheen. She led Bernie by roughly 40 points this past summer and had regained a polling lead as recently as December."

Josh Voorhees in Slate reacts to Bernie Sanders's victory in the New Hampshire primary.

And David Brooks in The New York Times writes that he already misses President Obama.

"My Special Place in Hell"

"But most especially, it is a special place in hell women find themselves in when they hear women who know precious little about what we face within the healthcare system because their positions of privilege and power afford them all they could ever need.  Imagine that special place in hell I might have avoided, and please do not ask me to turn my support to anyone based on anything other than a firm commitment to achieving real good for all people."

Donna Smith at Common Dreams responds to Madeleine Albright's criticism of Bernie Sanders's female supporters.

"A Bond That Altered Both Lives and Affected Those of Millions of Others"

"Looking back more than 40 years after the death of Malcolm X, Ali shared his regrets: 'I wish I'd been able to tell Malcolm I was sorry, that he was right about so many things. Malcolm X was a great thinker and an even greater friend.... If I could go back and do it over again, I would never have turned my back on him.' Ali's understanding of the enormity of the loss of Malcolm X is one that he doesn't bear alone."

Robert Anasi in the Los Angeles Times reviews Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith's Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X.

"Free the Country and the World From the Thrall of Neoliberal-Neoconservative Politics"

"Sanders is not really a socialist, just an old fashioned liberal; and his views on foreign policy are more or less of a piece with those of conventional Democrats. But even in these areas, he is a whole lot better than Clinton, and as good as anyone else who could run for national office as a Democrat. On economic, environmental, and social policies, his views are not only better than Clinton's; they are better than we Americans have any right to expect–after having wallowed for so long in the neoliberal-neoconservative miasma that the Clintons promote.
"I can therefore live with Sanders' politics; it is more than good enough."

Andrew Levine in CounterPunch calls on Democrats to "Smash Clintonism."

"A Fetish of the Swoon"

"The connective thread with all these sensations is the relinquishing of control, the scary bliss of losing orientation and agency.
"I don't think it's too much of a reach to imagine that this had some kind of semi-conscious resonance for a generation that felt powerless. It's quite hard to reconstruct how bleak things seemed in the late '80s and early '90s; in both Britain and America, conservative governments were in third-term ascendance, and mainstream popular culture from hair metal to Hollywood seemed be in sync with the rightward shift. For many—not all, but many—this encouraged resignation, a withdrawal verging on hibernation. That's why American nu-punks L7 wrote their anti-slacker anthem 'Pretend We’re Dead' as a wake-up call from apathy. That's why Welsh nu-punks Manic Street Preachers declared that they hated Slowdive more than Hitler—for being so dreamily disengaged, advocates for reverie rather than revolution."

Simon Reynolds at Pitchfork reviews the new CD box Still in a Dream: A Story of Shoegaze 1988-1995.

"Grounded in Liberalism as Seen Through a Mid-20th Century Catholic Lens"

"In the four decades since the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade, the political debate over abortion in America has become stale and polarized, with two sides utterly divided and little change in public opinion. But in the years leading up to Roe, many people's views on abortion didn't fit neatly into either liberal or conservative ideology. In fact, early anti-abortion activists viewed their cause as a struggle for civil and human rights, of a piece with social programs like the New Deal and the Great Society."

Emma Green in The Atlantic reviews Daniel K. Williams's Defenders of the Unborn.

Structuralist or Managerial?

"The financial crisis has reignited the debate among progressives over how aggressively to regulate the modern financial sector. But it also reveals this underlying tension between different progressive visions of governance. Mainstream progressives have tended to take the same line as Clinton and Obama, emphasizing an approach to economic regulation that prioritizes pragmatic, expert oversight. By invoking a different progressive tradition that offers an alternative to both an overly optimistic faith in top-down technocracy, and to the scorched earth deregulatory zeal of conservatives, Sanders is shifting the terms of the debate. Progressives may share a desire to redress the problems of private power and economic inequality, but they will have to also address these questions about how best to accomplish those aims. By renewing an older progressive tradition in the spirit of Brandeis and the antitrusters of the first Gilded Age, Sanders has raised a challenge that progressives will have to grapple with, whatever the outcome of this race."

K. Sabeel Rahman in The Atlantic asserts that Bernie Sanders is reviving Louis Brandeis's "curse of bigness" argument.

"First Came to Los Angeles to Investigate Communism in the Movie Industry in 1938"

"Dies was barking up the wrong trees, but he wasn't the only dog sniffing around. Before Pearl Harbor, Americans weren't supposed to be concerned with what was going on in Europe. The only political party that made anti-Fascism part of its agenda was the Communist Party, so to express anti-Nazi or anti-fascist sentiment was to mark oneself as a communist. It was more common and more accepted to be against the United States' involvement in another costly war, and there were isolationists on both sides of the aisle in Congress. A number of congressmen attacked Hollywood for allegedly producing propaganda designed to encourage the American people to support intervention abroad."

Karina Longworth in Slate discusses pre-Cold War congressional investigations of Hollywood communists.

"How The Iowa Caucuses Work"

"A caucus is a system of voting for people who wish casting a ballot could be three hours longer and include being lectured to."

From The Onion.


And Lily Rothman in Time explains why anyone cares in the first place.