July 2018 Acquistions

Books:
Kevin Eastman and Simon Bisley, Fistful of Blood, 2016.
Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here, 1935, 2014.

DVDs:
Legend of the Silver Screen: The Gene Autry Collection, 2004.
The Notebook, 2004.
TCM Greatest Classic Legends Film Collection: Doris Day, 2012.

"What About the Responsibility of the Institutions and the Society"?

"In a paper called 'Patriarchy, Power, and Pay: The Transformation of American Families, 1800–2015,' Ruggles wrote that out-of-wedlock births and the decline of marriage didn't just happen because hippies preached free love or because scientists invented the birth-control pill. 'There must be a source of exogenous pressure for people to reject the values with which they were raised,' he wrote. 'Between 1800 and 2000, that pressure was exerted by an economic revolution.'
"The revolution he refers to is actually several: the rise of wage labor in the 19th century, the post-World War II economic boom and union wages that often allowed one parent to stay home, the subsequent decline in men's wages that accelerated during Ronald Reagan's presidency and continues, the corresponding entry of more women into the workplace, and other macro shifts that produced the inequalities of today. 'I think it is kind of ridiculous to say the reason for social problems is that people do not have good enough morals,' Ruggles says."

Brian Alexander at Slate talks to critics of the "success sequence."

"Unbridled Passion"

"The attack, like many others to come during his decades on the political battlefield, never fazed him.
"'If it's radical to oppose the insanity and cruelty of the Vietnam War, if it's radical to oppose racism and sexism and all other forms of oppression, if it's radical to want to alleviate poverty, hunger, disease, homelessness, and other forms of human misery, then I'm proud to be called a radical,' he told a scrum of reporters at his campaign headquarters."

Rachel Swan at the San Francisco Chronicle reports the death of former congressman and Oakland mayor Ron Dellums.

"Trump Is the Enemy of the Left's Enemy"

"Ackerman asserts that the Russia investigation has produced 'an atmosphere of nationalist fervor and anti-Russian paranoia.' Robin has decried 'basically a form of moral panic.' The ideological impulse producing these sentiments is fairly straightforward. Russiagate casts Trump as an opponent of American sovereignty, and to the extent one views the weakening of American sovereignty as a positive good, Trump's position appears sympathetic. Relatedly, Trump has occasionally attacked the idea that the United States government is more admirable or democratic than authoritarian states like Russia. Trump 'said some things that were true,' wrote Robin during the campaign, 'Like this: "When the world sees how bad the United States is and we start talking about civil liberties, I don't think we are a very good messenger."' His realpolitik alliance with Russia, and his premise that America has no right to hold its political system above Russia's, strikes a chord in some precincts of the left."

Jonathan Chait at New York asks, "[w]hy Are So Many Leftists Skeptical of the Russia Investigation?"

"The Time Is Up for Happy Fantasies of Office-Park Centrism and Professional-Class Competence"

"Trumpism is the future for the Republican party–it delivered Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Iowa too. Wisconsin, of all places, is now a battleground state. In the hands of a real politician, Trumpism has the potential to romp even farther.
"Beating the right cannot simply be a matter of waiting for a dolt in the Oval Office to screw things up. There has to be a plan for actively challenging and reversing it, for turning around the fraction of working class voters who have been abandoning the Democratic party for decades."

As Thomas Frank says goodbye to The Guardian, he slams the Democrats on his way out.

"A Funky Break That Would Live Forever"

"A majority of the rap world was quick to follow in Marley's footsteps, as newly-affordable sampling equipment proliferated. While James Brown songs provided a rich source of tight, hard grooves to loop and rhyme over, the rapidly developing sound of hip-hop demanded innovation on an almost weekly basis, creating a huge demand for fresh breaks and catchy drums producers could manipulate.
"Enter Lenny Roberts, a Bronx-based music aficionado who had made some impact providing bootleg compilations of popular breakbeat tracks for DJs earlier in the decade."

Robbie Ettelson at Medium provides a history of the Ultimate Breaks & Beats series.

"Tariffs Are Rigged Against Them"

"In the 1920s, Republicans returned to power and resumed their protectionist agenda, but when crop prices fell, Midwesterners again turned on the party. Chastened by Taft's experience, President Herbert Hoover promised to aid farmers by raising agricultural tariffs. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 did protect crops, but it also radically increased the duties on manufactured goods, provoking a trade war with Europe at the worst possible time. As the Great Depression spread misery across the country, voters blamed Hoover's tariff. In 1932, they elected FDR in a landslide and pummeled the GOP.
"Reduced to a perennial minority, Republicans finally abandoned their protectionist doctrine and embraced free trade. The ferocious tariff debate that had dominated American politics since the nation's founding slipped into the shadows, remembered only by historians and economists.
"Until Donald Trump."

At The Atlantic, Michael Wolraich discusses taxes on imported goods, past and present.

"This Long-Standing Tendency on the Right"

"The idea that the left is depraved, corrupt, and ruthless has been an important strain of American conservatism since the movement began. But in the Trump era, it has metastasized. Right-wing policy ideas have been so thoroughly discredited—does anyone even argue anymore that trickle-down economics will ensure mass prosperity?—that the only apparent reason for conservatism's existence is to fight back against evil liberals. This is, of course, not the sign of a healthy political movement. The right's support for McCarthy has been a long-standing embarrassment for American conservatism. Its embrace of Trump may be history repeating itself."

David A. Walsh at The Washington Monthly explains that "[s]ince the 1950s, the conservative movement has justified bad behavior—including supporting Donald Trump—by persuading itself that the left is worse."

"It's Real Simple. Putin Is a Kleptocrat"

"He's stealing a lot of money from his country. The money that he's stealing from his country has to go somewhere. So he puts this money into the hands of Russian oligarchs who become his trustees, and they hold this money offshore. In order to steal this money, he's got to commit grave crimes. Sometimes he has to kill people, like he killed my lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.
"What the Magnitsky Act does is it says that people who commit human rights abuses in Russia and elsewhere can have their assets frozen in the United States and have their visas canceled and have their assets frozen under something called the U.S. Treasury sanctions or the OFAC sanctions list. Why Putin cares about this so much is that it puts his entire business model as kleptocracy at risk. If he's committed crimes, which we can prove that he has, crimes like the murder of Sergei Magnitsky and others, and he has assets overseas, which we can identify, then those assets will be frozen.
"So he feels like all the hard work that he’s done over the last 18 years—all the stealing that he's done, all the people he's had to take hostage and torture and kill—all that hard work is going to be for nothing if that money gets frozen."

At Slate, Jacob Weisberg interviews Bill Browder.

And Adam Davidson at The New Yorker adds an explanation of Russian sistema.

"Next to This Stupendous Transformation, All the Culture Wars and Flag-Fights and Stupid Tweets Fade into Insignificance"

"According to Josh Bivens, of Washington's Economic Policy Institute, you can trace the slow decline of US workers' bargaining power in the historical statistics. As the years go by, it requires ever lower levels of unemployment to ignite the wage growth that was once the hallmark of good times. 'The decades-long campaign by employers to kick away any sources of economic leverage enjoyed by typical workers seems to have worked,' he tells me. 'These workers now get real wage increases only during white-hot labour markets.'
"This is the central story of the last four decades, the vast social engineering project to which all our recent presidents and both parties have contributed."

Thomas Frank at The Guardian writes that the American economy's problem is "not the possibility that workers might prosper, but that they're not prospering yet."

"Great-Power Competition Is Now Back"

"European elections now shift the power balance between America and Russia in a way they haven't since the 1980s. In countries like the Philippines, they also shift the power balance between America and China. This could easily erode the fragile norm against secret interference on behalf of particular candidates that has emerged in the United States since the Cold War. Imagine an election in Italy or France between a pro-Russian political party and a pro-American one. I suspect that some of the hawks who are most upset about Russia's interference in recent American and European elections would support American interference to meet fire with fire. Trump himself may have little interest in meddling to defeat a pro-Russian party, since he seems to consider American and Russian interests closely aligned. But it's not hard to imagine him embracing Cold War–style political subversion in U.S. adversaries like Venezuela or Iran. Before becoming national-security adviser, John Bolton declared, 'We once had a capacity for clandestine efforts to overthrow governments. I wish we could get those back.'
"Washington's current burst of nationalist indignation, like the one that followed 9/11, is both vital and dangerous if not tempered by an awareness of America's own capacity for misdeeds."

Peter Beinart at The Atlantic warns that "historically, American meddling has done far more to harm democracy than promote it."

"If You Seek a Culprit, Blame Capitalism"

"It took more than 40 years in the political desert, however, until Harrington's strategy was so decisively vindicated—40 years in which the economy grew steadily harsher. In the 1970s and '80s, the constraints that unions and New Deal legislation had placed on corporate conduct had yet to fully erode. During that time, the Los Angeles DSA chapter, in which I was active, never had more than roughly 350 members (one of them a spy from the Ed Davis-Daryl Gates-era Los Angeles Police Department). Today, the L.A. chapter has close to 1,500 members, campaigning for rent control, for shuttering ICE, for single-payer health insurance. Most are millennials, who need no instruction in how our economic system curtails prosperity and breeds plutocracy."

Harold Meyerson in the Los Angeles Times writes that "American socialism is having one hot summer."

"I Am Not Being Alarmist, I Am Simply Stating the Facts"

"Because of the actions taken by governments during and after that crisis, including, I should add, by aggressive steps by my administration, the global economy has now returned to healthy growth. But the credibility of the international system, the faith in experts in places like Washington or Brussels, all that had taken a blow.
"And a politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment began to appear, and that kind of politics is now on the move. It's on the move at a pace that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago."

The Guardian publishes a transcript of Barack Obama's speech in Johannesburg, South Africa.

All Change and Back to 1994

"On the one hand, like Welsh's Trainspotting, early Oasis songs spoke of a Thatcherite scorched earth in which nothing was worth working for and the simulated escape route offered by drink and drugs seemed like the only option. But at the same time, and much more radically, Oasis also wrote songs–Live Forever and Acquiesce–of rare optimism and euphoria, songs that seemed to hint that some sort of spectacular collective recovery might be won in the teeth of the 80s nightmare."

In a 2014 Guardian article, Alex Niven argues that "we could do a lot worse than look beyond the stereotyped accounts of the 90s and try to recover their undertow of disaffection and supressed idealism."

"This Is... Unprecedented"

"When Churchill condemned Chamberlain's 'long series of miscalculations, and misjudgments of men and facts,' he still admitted that Chamberlain's 'motives have never been impugned.' Trump's have. And that distinction is crucial to understanding what's happening. Calling Trump's behavior appeasement, in other words, pre-emptively grants that Trump is trying to help his country rather than himself, even though those two interests are to his mind plainly opposed. Trump has made his loyalties clear, and they are not to the country he governs.
"This should not be surprising. Trump has made no secret of the fact that he operates according to naked self-interest—many of his followers like that he is (I use the term loosely) 'a businessman,' that he openly bragged that not paying taxes 'makes me smart.' Nor is it news that Trump views America as a resource for his and his associates' personal enrichment. The only time he spends with its people are when they are customers at his own properties or his fanatical base at rallies. His attitude toward Putin makes sense, then. Russia's 'election meddling' was done to help elect Trump. Trump benefited enormously from those efforts, and he is not in the habit of condemning those who personally benefit him until they stop. Putin—as Coats has been at pain to point out—hasn't stopped."

Lili Loofbourow at Slate writes that Donald Trump "is willingly and actively trading against his country, as its president."

"Conscious Tool. Useful Idiot. Those Are the Choices"

"Whatever the balance of motivations, what mattered was that Trump's answers were indistinguishable from Putin's, starting with the fundamental claim that Putin's assurances about interference in U.S. democracy ('He was incredibly strong and confident in his denial') deserved belief over those of his own Department of Justice ('I think the probe is a disaster for our country').
I am old enough to remember Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon telling lies on TV, about Vietnam in both cases, and Watergate for Nixon. I remember the travails and deceptions of Bill Clinton, and of George W. Bush in the buildup to the disastrous Iraq War.
"But never before have I seen an American president consistently, repeatedly, publicly, and shockingly advance the interests of another country over those of his own government and people."

James Fallows at The Atlantic reacts to Donald Trump's bizarre press conference with Vladimir Putin.

"'Historians Can Never Forget That It Is a Debate They Are Interpreting'"

"Journalist and author E.J. Dionne once observed that we are a nation conceived in argument. None of these were more important than the meaning attached to the Constitution, which played such a central role in creating our sense of nationhood. I would caution my conservative friends from trying to hijack the meaning of the Constitution for their own ends by playing the trump card (no pun intended), that the founders were all in agreement with modern right-wing politics. How could this be true when they didn't even agree among themselves about how to interpret the Constitution? Instead, lets debate the issues of our day so the American people can make an informed choice without resorting to historically dubious claims."

Donald J. Fraser at History News Network asks, "What do historians make of originalism?"

"Common Values and Interests"

"Stenner, for example, notes that 'all the available evidence indicates that exposure to difference, talking about difference, and applauding difference … are the surest ways to aggravate [the] intolerant, and to guarantee the increased expression of their predispositions in manifestly intolerant attitudes and behaviors. Paradoxically, then, it would seem that we can best limit intolerance of difference by parading, talking about, and applauding our sameness … Nothing inspires greater tolerance from the intolerant than an abundance of common and unifying beliefs, practices, rituals, institutions and processes.'"

Sheri Berman at The Guardian argues that Trump opponents should "the type of 'identity politics' that stresses differences."

"The idea was that white skin privilege was actually harmful to white people, because despite the fact that they were granted some advantages over black people, they ended up even more entrenched in their condition of exploitation precisely by accepting these advantages. As a result, they did not build a movement across racial boundaries to fight their common oppression. The fact that the idea of white privilege is used today to show why we can't possibly unify—that's a reversal of the core idea."

And in a 2017 Seattle Weekly article, Kelton Sears interviews Asad Haider.

Requiem for the CD

"Consider that the biggest-selling CD box set remains Columbia Records' 1990 reissue of Delta blues genius Robert Johnson's recordings—a landmark moment that moved this cornerstone artist into the 20th century mainstream. Streaming services such as Spotify also carry the Johnson collection (of course without any of the recording information or historical context available in the liner notes) but it's only available to them because someone assembled it for the CD. It's fine, but there's no fun in it."

Marc Weingarten at the Los Angeles Times writes that "it might be a good moment to acknowledge that the compact disc had more impact on music than we care to admit, and that it can still provide us with pleasure even now."

Palms Court

"'What LA adds to that, which no city, no people had ever thought to do before, and maybe for good reason, is to plant palms systematically as street trees,' says Farmer. The young city, wanting to attract people to a world of sunshine and cars, planted tens of thousands of palm trees. And they weren't just on big boulevards: Los Angeles planted them everywhere. Tiny residential streets, parks, anywhere. Places designed for tourists—boardwalks, beaches, wealthy hills, even sports arenas like Staples Center, where the Lakers and Clippers basketball teams play—were especially tended to. And they made sure the palms were watered."

Dan Nosowitz at Atlas Obscura explains why Los Angeles has so many palm trees.

Football's Coming Home

"There was one moment of alarm when Broudie telephoned and said there was a problem. 'I thought "Oh shit!"' Blaskey says. 'This song was meant to be our saving grace, everything was resting on it.' It turned out that, in a moment of unassuming genius, he was concerned he had written two choruses. 'I think that's where the magic of the song actually was,' Blaskey continues. 'Frank and David's delivery and lyrics were phenomenal, but for Ian to come up with a song with two choruses …'"

Nick Ames at The Guardian recounts the story of "Three Lions," by Baddiel, Skinner & Lightning Seeds.

"A Few New Shades of Gray to a Story That Has All Too Often Been Told in Black-and-White"

"'From a hard-nosed business perspective,' observes Doherty, with sober detachment, 'the blacklist was a splendid success.' Through their carefully choreographed efforts to expunge the studios of any and all known Communists and fellow travelers, the Hollywood moguls were able to convince Washington and the movie-going public that they were at core true patriots. Loyal Americans, like the housewife who wrote to Hedda Hopper, could go to the movies with a clear conscience. To jeopardize the ample box-office profits on which they relied was, for most studio producers, and for a sizeable number of writers, directors and actors, not an option."

Noah Isenberg at The New Republic reviews Thomas Doherty's Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist.

"But When We Cherry-Pick the Past for Icons of Female Rebellion, Are We Really Serving Women, or History?"

"In 2007, Ulrich wrote a book revisiting her accidental feminist slogan, explaining the roots and resonance of her phrase, and the slippery notion of behavior, good or bad. As Ulrich is well-aware, the catchy slogan is misleading out of context—her actual essay subjects were the well-behaved women remembered, not forgotten, in those pious sermons. But Ulrich's real point is not that we need to change how women behave, but instead, how we 'make' history. According to a 2016 Slate survey, fully 75 percent of more than 600 trade history books on the previous year's New York Times best-seller list had male authors. Biography subjects, meanwhile, were more than 70 percent male. But done right, women's history offers more than a corrective to the heroic narratives that men have written for generations. Annette Gordon-Reed's work on Sally Hemings made it impossible to keep telling the same story about Thomas Jefferson. Hemings, of course, did not have the freedom to be a rebel—her good behavior, within the inhuman constraints of her life, allowed her to survive. But in Gordon-Reed's hands, her story, and her presence in history, proved transformative. Done right, women's history changes history."

Joanna Scutts at Slate challenges the idea that well-behaved women seldom make history.

"Trump Is Himself the Ultimate Expression of Putin's Anti-Factuality"

"Snyder sees Trump as very much a junior partner in a larger Russian project, less a cause, more an effect. He worries, too, that slowly before Trump—and rapidly after Trump—America is becoming like Russia: a country on a path to economic oligarchy and distorted information. Trump's attitude to truth again and again reminds Snyder of the Russian ruling elite: The Russian television network RT 'wished to convey that all media lied, but that only RT was honest by not pretending to be truthful.'"

David Frum at The Atlantic reviews Timothy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom.

"It's Not an Emotionally Satisfying Tradition"

"The point is merely to keep liberal democracy vibrant, to sustain its legitimacy, and to protect its institutions. That's why I favor a slowdown in immigration (too much demographic change too fast can destabilize a society); and why I favor more redistribution through taxes right now (because economic and social inequality are delegitimizing the entire capitalist order). And that's why I loved Barack Obama. In his heart and mind, he is and was a moderate conservative, trying to blend new social realities with the long story of America, rescuing capitalism from itself, extending health care but through the market, shifting foreign policy incrementally toward Asia, and ending irrational, budget-busting, entropy-creating wars. He desperately tried to keep this country in one piece, against foam-flecked racism and know-nothingism on one side and left-wing ideological purity and identity politics on the other. And he almost did.
"And this is why I despise Donald Trump: He exhibits no concern for the broader social good if it in any way conflicts with his own immediate psychic needs. He is indifferent to the collateral damage of his ego. He has embraced the most dangerous form of identity politics—that of the majority. There is not an institution or custom or alliance or constitutional norm Trump won't vandalize at a second's notice. He cares little for the generations ahead of us (see the debt and the environment); nor respects the wisdom of the past (see his desire to obliterate the idea of an independent Justice Department or the NATO alliance); he is a lonely, maladjusted id, with Western civilization as a plaything in his hands. And Republicanism—in its shameful embrace of this monster, its determined rape of the environment, destruction of our fiscal standing, evisceration of our allies, callousness toward the sick, and newfound contempt for free trade—has nary a conservative bone in its putrefying body."

Andrew Sullivan at New York reacts to Anthony Kennedy's announced resignation from the Supreme Court.