October 2017 Acquisitions

Books:
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence Inequality in America, 2003, 2017.
William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past, 2004.
John Fogerty, Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music, 2015.
Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1946-1973, 2017.

DVDs:
X: The Unheard Music, 1986.

"The Trump Administration's Authoritarian Moment Is on the Verge of Materializing"

"So Trump is likely to adopt a self-defense based on huge assertions of arbitrary power. 'A president cannot obstruct justice through the exercise of his constitutional and discretionary authority over executive-branch officials like Mr. Comey.' Those words appeared in a Wall Street Journal op-ed posted Sunday afternoon by two well-known Republican lawyers. They are about to become the official White House position—and when they do, you'll find yourself with little maneuvering room to prevent them from becoming your position as well. You will have to haul that position along with you into the 2018 elections, or (even more dangerously) the elections in 2020 or 2022, by which time even more of this scandal will have come to light.
"You need to wonder whether the avoidance of blowback from Fox News in November 2017 is worth the risks hurtling at you in the weeks ahead."

David Frum at The Atlantic gives warning to Republican senators.

"'You Either Have It or You Don't Have It. And If You Have It, You Can't Get Rid of It.'"

"Prejudices borne of past violence are difficult to overcome. For more than a century following Luther, Christian reformers and their political allies across Europe battled with the Catholic Church-aligned Holy Roman Empire. Catholics slaughtered Protestants; Protestants slaughtered Catholics; and both persecuted groups like the Anabaptists, who championed adult rather than infant baptism. Most traditions did not develop their distinctiveness by accident; many religious leaders staked their lives on their particular interpretation of the Bible."

Emma Green at The Atlantic looks at the state of ecumenism five hundred years after Martin Luther.

And at The Nation, Elizabeth Bruenig reviews new books on Luther.

"Startling Report Finds Evidence Democrats May Have Attempted To Influence 2016 Election"

"'It's shocking in the least to discover the DNC dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars to shape the American democratic process; however, we are confident this hidden attempt at influencing the election had little to no effect on the final vote totals.'"

From The Onion.

"This Is What the Trump Abyss Looks Like"

"And this base support is unshakable. It is not susceptible to reason. No scandal, however great, will dislodge it--because he has invaded his followers’ minds and psyches as profoundly as he has the rest of ours. He is fused with them more deeply now, a single raging id, a force that helps us understand better how civilized countries can descend so quickly into barbarism. In a country led by a swirling void, all sorts of inhibitions slowly slip away. Nativism, racism, nationalism: these are very potent catalysts of human darkness. Usually it is the president who takes responsibility when these demons appear to emerge, and attempts to refute, or discredit or calm them. But this one amps them up."

Andrew Sullivan laments at New York.

The Fat Man

"'After John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Fats Domino and his partner, Dave Bartholomew, were probably the greatest team of songwriters ever,' Dr. John told Rolling Stone in 2004. 'They always had a simple melody, a hip set of chord changes, and a cool groove. And their songs all had simple lyrics; that's the key.' Domino himself, who preferred to let his music rather than image do the talking, was typically modest about his accomplishments: 'Everybody started callin' my music rock and roll,' he once said, 'but it wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playin' down in New Orleans.'"

David Browne at Rolling Stone writes an obituary for Fats Domino.

"How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students"

"The erosion of reason does no favors for the campus or the left. Much of the history of the last century goes to show that equality, freedom, and reason rise and fall together. But Bloom's barrages of contempt, however viscerally launched, do not point the way toward an educational system that might serve democracy in crisis. In a world that mocks reason and, day by day, debases democratic potential, the American mind surely needs no further triviality, no further nihilism, no further closure. What it needs is an opening to our better angels. What it needs is the joy that comes when human beings reason our way through our troubles toward light."

Todd Gitlin at The Chronicle of Higher Education rereads Alan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind thirty years later.

And Nicholas B. Dirks writes in 2015 that "It is hard to avoid a feeling of nostalgia for the virulent days of the 'culture wars.'"

"I Don’t Think Trump Is a Conservative"

"I could attempt an answer, but I suspect it would stretch my actual knowledge beyond acceptable limits. Yes, other conservative parties are more flexible, but as you acknowledged in your piece, I can't imagine even a moderate conservative movement in this country that would embrace single payer.  But, yes, there is a unique radicalism of the GOP.  And Trump is just one indication of that."

Jonathan Chait at New York interviews Charlie Sykes, author of How the Right Lost Its Mind.

As does Isaac Chotiner at Slate.

"Is This the Strange Death of Irish America?"

"What happened to Irish America, that closed, intense world I know mainly from movies and books? How could I make sense of its drying up and blowing away, unmourned? Here's one version of its disappearance. At some point since 2000, I noticed that the right-wing chorus pontificating from screens in bars and shops was filled by men with names like Hannity, O'Reilly, and Buchanan. Nobody else seemed to care, so I let it go as one of those oddities that interested only me. Then came Bannon's ascension as Trump's eminence grise, and it seemed impossible to ignore. This can't be accidental. Why have these white men come to the fore, rather than a more multicultural Catholic cohort—a Pole, an Italian, a German, and so on?"

Van Gosse at History News Network looks for "an Irish America I can embrace."

"The Clash Between the Desire to Do Meaningful Journalism and the Desire to Be Near Fame"

"For all the great music writing that Rolling Stone has produced, Wenner has also enjoyed being friends with rock stars and has been known to value those friendships at the expense of editorial credibility, or simply good taste. He's long given certain stars the right to edit their own interviews before going to press, and the line between criticism and hagiography has frequently blurred, particularly as Wenner and his favorite artists have aged. See this five-star review of Mick Jagger's 2001 solo effort Goddess in the Doorway, penned by the publisher himself, or more recently, the time Rolling Stone declared U2's eminently forgettable Songs of Innocence the best album of 2014. Hagan reveals that Wenner demanded the ranking personally. ('My dictate. By fiat, buddy. That's that.')"

Jack Hamilton at Slate reviews Joe Hagan's Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine.

Don't Take the Bait

"In the social media age, where reality takes a backseat to propaganda, the chances of organizing a campus 'quarantine' against Spencer are nil. The best we can hope for is that students and administrators take heed of the uproar-over-nothing in Gainesville—and take a cue from the woman who posed the 'you're all so ugly' question. There is a valid argument that the kind of pernicious evil Spencer represents needs to be confronted and 'answered' in some way when he comes to town. But the proper approach is not to inflate his importance; it's to treat him as the mere pimple he is."

Bob Moser at the New Republic criticizes how college students react to neo-Nazis.

"And You Lynch Negroes"

"Moscow never abandoned these tactics, which became known as 'whataboutism,' even after the Soviet Union collapsed. Russian propaganda outlets like Russia Today—now known as RT—have always focused on domestic strife in the United States, be it homelessness or Occupy Wall Street or the Ferguson protests. The Facebook ads focusing on divisive issues like Black Lives Matter are just another page from the old Soviet handbook. The difference this time is that the Russians got better at penetrating the American discussions on these fraught subjects. They became a more effective bellows, amplifying the fire Americans built."

At The Atlantic, Julia Ioffe explains the legacy of Soviet propaganda in the United States.

"Some of Whom Have Been Visiting the Store Since Childhood"

"Although he'll be shuttering Alias' original location, Paeper has faith in the book business. 'It isn't dire. I do think that there's room for bookstores,' he said. 'I believe in these places.'"

Agatha French at the Los Angeles Times reports the closing of Alias Books in West Los Angeles after fifty-eight years.

"A Form of Liberalism That Routinely Blends Self-Righteousness with Upper-Class Entitlement"

"Most people on the left think of themselves as resisters of authority, but for certain of their leaders, modern-day liberalism is a way of rationalizing and exercising class power. Specifically, the power of what some like to call the 'creative class', by which they mean well-heeled executives in industries like Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
"Worshiping these very special people is the doctrine that has allowed Democrats to pull even with Republicans in fundraising and that has buoyed the party's fortunes in every wealthy suburb in America."

Thomas Frank at The Guardian reacts to the fall of Harvey Weinstein.

"People Like Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Nathaniel West Did–the Doors Did It–So It Was Time For an Update"

"The songs X recorded for Los Angeles were the most typically punky they had in their repertoire–the Ramones-y opener 'You're Phone's Off the Hook, but You're Not'; the ominous 'Johnny Hit and Run Paulene' with its 'Johnny B. Goode' intro; the pure sludge of 'Nausea,' offset by Manzarek's organ. Doe based the springy title track's sardonic lyrics on a friend who'd moved to London and subsequently had a nervous breakdown. 'She'd just gotten fed up with it,' he says. 'She had lived there for a couple of years and she became more and more racist and stereotyping people. And to be honest there was a lot of shock value in tended in the lyrics. I wanted to show the dark side or underbelly of Los Angeles.'"

Kory Grow at Rolling Stone talks to X upon the band's fortieth anniversary.

"This Is, to Be Blunt, Political Suicide"

"You would think that parties of the center-left would grapple with this existential threat to their political viability. And some have. One reason Britain's Labour Party has done well in the last couple of years is that it has recognized the legitimacy of the issue. During the Brexit referendum, their leader, Jeremy Corbyn, expressed ambivalence toward remaining in the EU, careful not to lose his working-class base to the Europhobic right, recognizing the fears so many of his own supporters had about the impact of mass immigration on their lives, jobs, and culture. Even someone as leftist as Corbyn chose to be a pragmatist, trying to gain power, rather than a purist who might otherwise condemn his own voters as deplorable. And this is one reason why I have dwindling hopes that the Democratic Party will be able to defeat Trump in 2020."

Andrew Sullivan worries about immigration politics at New York.

"Without Strong Governments and Effective Laws, They Believed, Liberty Inevitably Degenerated Into Licentiousness and Eventually Anarchy"

"I have been researching and writing about the history of gun regulation and the Second Amendment for the past two decades. When I began this research, most people assumed that regulation was a relatively recent phenomenon, something associated with the rise of big government in the modern era. Actually, while the founding generation certainly esteemed the idea of an armed population, they were also ardent supporters of gun regulations."

Saul Cornell at The Conversation discusses "Five types of gun laws the Founding Fathers loved."

"Political Parties Aren't Sports Teams"

"If the Democrats were able to affirmatively define what they did stand for, Sanders might not appear to be such a threat. Unfortunately, summarizing their own principles is where Democrats struggle. Identity-based slogans like 'I'm With Her,' and 'Stronger Together' failed to galvanize the Democratic base in the last election, and core Democratic interests, such as labor, have been alienated since the 1990s when the New Democrats dismissed them in favor of banking interests and the technocracy. By contrast, Bernie easily makes the case for his brand of democratic socialism: it's an embodiment of the very 'progressive' values that Barbara Boxer insists she, Hillary Clinton, and the rest of the Democratic Party support. It's about guaranteeing people the basics in life: healthcare, education, well-compensated work, and making sure a tiny cabal of rich people doesn't control the lives of everyone else. Unless the Democratic Party doesn't stand for those things, it's hard to see what they could possibly object to about Sanders' agenda."

Briahna Joy Gray at Current Affairs writes that "Bernie Sanders Isn't A Democrat… Thank God."

"Liberals and the Left Haven't Been Sufficiently Cognizant of the Political Problems Caused by Refugee Flows and Immigration"

"The people who care about maintaining liberal democracies and abiding by international law and giving genuine refugees a fair shake need to push back against this nativist rhetoric and the far-right parties. But we also need to be conscious of the fact that mass migration of people on a regular basis is not going to be sustainable because at a certain point it becomes too much for a society, especially a society that's constructed as a generous welfare state, to handle."

Isaac Chotiner at Slate interviews Sasha Polakow-Suransky, author of Go Back Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy.

"The Funniest Superhero Movie in Years"

"So Batman, over about an hour and 45 minutes, has to learn to let people in, even the villains who clearly bring him great joy. Somehow, the film (credited to a horde of writers including Community's Chris McKenna and the novelist Seth Grahame-Smith) stretches this into a feature-length story, though it feels a little thin at times. The film works best when it’s furiously lobbing jokes at the screen, à la Airplane!, rather than trying to construct a meaningful action-movie narrative. The expected happy ending feels a bit more pat than The Lego Movie's radical meta-twist, but it's largely earned (partly because Cera's voice work as young Robin is surprisingly, and hilariously, heartfelt)."

David Sims at The Atlantic reviews The Lego Batman Movie.

"We Were More Together Than We Are Now"

"The color line was guarded by the gatekeepers of real estate agents and police officers who held the border against black residents foolish enough to rent a house, order a vodka tonic or cruise down a traffic circle in the wrong neighborhood.
"By necessity, the segregated Santa Ana neighborhood became the cultural hub for black Orange County residents, bound together by churches, clubs, barbershops, beauty salons, and barbecue restaurants with the smoky tang of Texas--the home state for many black migrants."

In a 1994 Los Angeles Times article, Doreen Carvajal discusses the fading of what was Orange County's most prominent black neighborhood.

"Our Problems Are Deep and Broad and Stretch Back Decades"

"But for all the reasons discussed above, people have gradually disengaged from the status quo. Something has cracked. Citizens have lost faith in the system. The social compact is broken. So now we're left to stew in our racial and cultural resentments, which paved the way for a demagogue like Trump."

Sean Illing at Vox reports from a conference of political scientists discussing the future of American democracy.

All Fell Down

"Primal therapy was an offshoot of cultural movements that began coalescing in the 1960s and surfaced in the 1970s. 'There was also a belief that repressive strictures of society were holding people back. Hence a therapy that was to loosen the repression would somehow cure mental illness. So it fit perfectly,' John C. Norcross, distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, tells Fox."

Jason Daley at Smithsonian writes about the death and life of Arthur Janov.

"Represents a Sharp Break in Our National Political History"

"Never before has American democracy been so debased that roughly one-third of the nation can dictate its politics. (Even the slave power oligarchy of the 1850s managed to mobilize electoral pluralities and majorities.) Never before has an American Administration lied as continuously and as brazenly as Trump and his minions have, not simply as self-protection but as calculated insults to reason, gaslighting not just the nation but the entire world. Never before has an Administration’s supporters—today, the ruling one-third of the country—shown such an ardent willingness not merely to accept its mendacity but to get off on it, to the point of thrilling to possible criminal interference in our national elections by a hostile nation, so long as it gives the finger to the other side. Finding similarities in our past to this state of affairs brings to mind the French proverb, that to understand everything is to pardon everything—only, in this case, to analogize too much is to understand too little."

Sean Wilentz at Democracy says that Donald Trump is sui generis.

"We All Need to Know His Name"

"Part of the problem is that LGBTQ people cannot just be added into history textbooks like women suffragettes or African-American freedom fighters, because the history of gay liberation is not just about fighting for equality. As Shively's life shows, gay liberation often sidestepped concerns about state-sanctioned rights; in fact, Shively and many others of his generation fundamentally rejected the pillars of American society--religion, capitalism, and the family."

Jim Downs at Slate discusses Charles Shively.

The Myth of the Trump Democrat

"To the extent that Obama-Trump voters were identified as those who voted for the 44th president in either 2008 or 2012, it is important to remember that Obama won pretty big the first time around: According to exit polls, he won 9 percent of self-identified Republicans and 20 percent of self-identified conservatives. He also won independents—a category that includes a lot of people who usually vote Republican—52/44.

"But there's more than incidental evidence that apparent Obama-Trump voters aren't loyal Democrats who suddenly flipped because Trump was appealing to their material or cultural interests: They supported Republicans down-ballot, too:"

Ed Kilgore at New York reads Dana Milbank's article about how the Democratic Party should target disaffected voters.

"Nation Schedules Recurring Monthly Benefit Concert To Streamline Tragedy Response Process"

“This scheduling is just a more practical and efficient way for us as a nation to come together and support our fellow Americans when they need help most. If we can’t stop these tragedies from happening, at least we can keep ourselves organized.”

From The Onion.

Columbiana

Edward Burmila at The Nation and Heather Cox Richardson at We're History discuss the history of Columbus and Columbus Day, respectively.

Was There Then

"'I was caught up in the excitement of it all,' Lester says. 'I'm so sorry to everybody for that review, but the enormity of it was captivating. We were reviewing a moment in history and staking our part in it. It was like seeing the great behemoth of a spaceship in Close Encounters. You felt awed into submission.'
"'You want the record to be good because you're into the band,' says Hopkins. 'And you want it to be good because that means it's going to sell well and that's going to help the magazines sell well. But I was surprised that there wasn't a dissenting voice. When a band gets to that level, there's always someone who says, 'Hold on a minute,' but there wasn't [for Oasis].'"

In a 2016 Guardian article, Dorian Lynskey revisits 1997's Be Here Now.

"Alas, There's No Reason to Think Bannon Is Wrong"

"What's striking is that this so-called war between the establishment and the populists always ends in the same way: with the establishment absorbing elements of the populist agenda to win elections. Seen in this light, these so-called insurgencies or civil wars never really hurt the Republican Party. Rather, they give it more energy by riling up the base. The gamble that Bannon is making is that religious extremism will create a more powerful GOP."

Jeet Heer at the New Republic argues that the Republican Party is "Getting Even Stronger."

"How Will You Pay for the Pony?"

"You might find Clinton's question intuitively reasonable. If you promise to fight for big things, then you should draw a detailed road map to the treasure chest that will fund them all. After all, the money has to come from somewhere.
"But what if I told you that your intuition was all wrong? What if it turned out that the government really could give everyone a pony—and a chicken and car? That is, so long as we could breed enough ponies and chickens and manufacture enough cars. The cars and the food have to come from somewhere; the money is conjured out of thin air, more or less."

In the Los Angeles Times, Stephanie Kelton explains how "Spending precedes taxing and borrowing."

"This Shooting Isn't About Gun Control We Refuse To Pass, It's About Access To Mental Health Care We're Continuing To Gut"

"By Paul Ryan"

From The Onion.

Wouldn't Back Down

"In that line resides the promise of America, and rock and roll, and the intercontinental railway, the interstate highway system, and Microsoft and Apple and Google and even Facebook. As I said, later Petty would sound pinched writing about women, and maybe he didn't understand what he was writing about them. But an American girl, raised on promises, is everything this country is about."

Bill Wyman at New York remembers Tom Petty.

"It Is Such a Strong Image, It's So Hard to Resist It"

"In the house (now a museum) where Mondrian grew up, in the Dutch town of Amersfoort, they've put together a sound and light show on what happened to Mondrian's work when he first went to New York in 1940, fleeing the Nazis who considered his art degenerate.
"In the New World, the vibrancy and the music took him further down the road he was already on. Those colors and those shapes took new form, and became what is considered his masterpiece. He called it 'Victory Boogie Woogie.'"

Mark Phillips at CBS Sunday Morning visits the Netherlands for a retrospective of Piet Mondrian's art.

"As Offensive as a Confederate Monument?"

"'The parallels are very obvious to us,' says Santa Monica activist Oscar de la Torre, a school board member, founder of the Pico Youth & Family Center and a prominent leader of the campaign to remove the mural. 'The European conquistadors, they practiced slavery. There was rape. There was murder. There was genocide.'"

Jason McGahan in the LA Weekly discusses the debate over the 1941 mural, History of Santa Monica and the Bay District, at Santa Monica City Hall.