Its been the most dominant narrative in our society. It doesnt happen in schools. 2023 Cond Nast. Were informal with waiters. Still, the Bush Administration has, almost deliberately at times, brought anti-Americanism to unprecedented levels, acting under the illusion that, if America does something, it is right and will be seen as right. As I wrote in the piece, there is a sense among some of Iraqs neighbors that Iraqis, by allowing the Americans to overthrow Saddam and install a Shiite-majority government, have betrayed the Arab cause and represent a pro-Iranian Shiite front that threatens Sunni Arab countries. They also have deep confidence in his ability to make their work better. Comment. I think there are two questions. His reference points all seem to go back to Roosevelt and Truman and trade unions. I ended up travelling through Europe and the Middle East for about a month, with two weeks in Baghdad. Bluntly, re: NewsGuild, what it comes down to for me is that I would never hire an agent who had lied to or about me, Mr. Taub wrote to a WhatsApp group for staff writers after the incident. But I would like to call it Equal America, which is a deep, old American drive to be as good as anyone else, to have no one able to say, Im better than you. Packer, the author of the books The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (2013) and The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq (2005) talked to me about what it was like to report his story. Track elected officials, research health conditions, and find news you can use in politics, business, health, and education. What are celebrities, after all? First of all, I agree about Obama. Assigned reading, Professor John Nelson the unconnected george packer new yorker, 92, 35, october 31, 2016, pp. Smart America is the meritocracy. A new generation discovers that its hard to balance work with a well-lived life. Hillary Clinton stepping down as Secretary of State. By the whim of the editor, she replied. The article, Packer said, kept eluding me. Its a phrase Palin used during the 2008 campaign. [6], Packer was a Holtzbrinck Fellow Class of Fall 2009 at the American Academy in Berlin.[7]. 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? member, warned that a strike could last months and do immense damage. 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 . Twitter reacts to Kentucky crushing Auburn,Auburn was unable to keep up in the second half. And this is really the story of my adult life, from the late nineteen-seventies onward. "Long engagements". I recently spoke by phone with Packer, who is a staff writer at The Atlantic and was previously a staff writer at The New Yorker. I try not to use it for books more than I have to, he said, because I see a real value in walking into a bookstore and seeing things jump off the shelves.. We are not just different but better, and in some ways we must crush you. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. But youre right: in politics, its barely got a toehold. And in a way you can see they have followed each other in power from one decade to the next. At the same time, you may not sell those policies through the frame of specific identities. The answer to your question depends on how much can be achieved by this movement. The younger generation of employees is to the left of its elders on issues of substance. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Were nave. 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. (Ive had a front-row seat to that and continue to at The New York Times, and wrote about the trend last year.). The utilitarian reason is a good one. George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is the author, most recently, of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.. Betrayed, from the issue of April 2, 2007. A month after releasing long-lists of 10 in each of the four . But no writers turned up at a protest outside Cond Nast headquarters on May Day, and none appeared to be present at a march outside the home of Cond Nasts global chief content officer, Anna Wintour, on June 8. And Just America has rightly said, Thats not working for a lot of Americans who still are second-class citizens.. What accounts for the level of incompetence in the American administration of postwar Iraq? We are having history wars at the momentin state legislatures, in school districtsand we are bringing up parts of our history that have been suppressed and that have to be brought to the surface. George Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and (most recently) the author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. Amazon can be difficult to write about -- the company would not confirm to the New Yorker facts as simple as how many employees it has in Seattle or how many Kindles it has sold. You are referring to Roosevelts jab at Woodrow Wilson in the years before America entered the First World War: A milk-and-water righteousness unbacked by force to the full is as wicked as and even more mischievous than force divorced from righteousness. No one wants to come out in support of either righteousness or watery milk (I know I dont), but, unfortunately, Roosevelts cult of force doesnt answer the hardest questions of foreign policy, either. In his new book, Adam Hochschild remembers a time when a crusade for democracy abroad released a demonic spirit of intolerance and violence at home. It doesnt happen in jobs. The conversation made clear how inconsistent benefits and pay were among writers, and many left angry at Cond Nast over the opaque and uneven system. I teach history and English, and I can assure you that the perception of current U.S. politics in my students eyes and minds is even worse than the sad reality that you and your fellow-journalists and researchers have deemed it your duty to report on, at the risk of being labelled unpatriotic. The easiest-to-understand element of the dispute involves the wages of the production employees, the group that includes everyone from fact checkers to social media editors. All rights reserved. For more information:. But the only people with real leverage over him wont use it. She told them, two people in the room said, that the guild could protect them from being fired and could even defend them against misguided editorial choices, if, for example, an editor she cited Arianna Huffington suddenly wanted everyone to write about sleep. the democrats lost the white working class. Carolyn Kellogg is a prize-winning writer who served as Books editor of the Los Angeles Times for three years. She joined the L.A. Times in 2010 as staff writer in Books and left in 2018. All rights reserved. But it seems to me to come out of a pre-modern sensibility that goes back to the New Deal. When youre been an industry for a long time, you cant imagine things differently. New Yorker staff writer George Packer is the winner of the 2013 National Book Award in Nonfiction for "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America." He reported extensively on the Iraq war, both for the New Yorker and in his 2005 book . You write, Because people still live their lives in an actual place, and the nation is the largest place with which they can identify. Its all particularly personal at The New Yorker, where the campaign has pitted a culture built on personal relationships and deep trust against a group of employees who reject the idea that they should be subject to the whims of any boss, no matter how benign. While the union won headlines by marching to Ms. Wintours house, which was guarded, disappointingly, by two low-key men in shapeless cotton shirts, Ms. Wintour has no real involvement in The New Yorker. I feel the same about our country. Its like loyalty to whats yours. Some of the material in this article is also drawn from reporting on this topic by my colleagues Noam Scheiber and Marc Tracy. In his new book, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, George Packer writes that the United States is in a state of disrepair, brought about primarily by the fact that inequality undermined the common faith that Americans need to create a successful multi-everything democracy. The book opens with an essay on the state of the U.S. during the pandemic, and then offers sketches of four different visions of the country: Free America, of Reaganism; Smart America, of Silicon Valley and other professional lites; Real America, of Trumpist reaction; and Just America, of a new generation of leftists. [1] His parents taught at Stanford University: his mother, Nancy Packer (ne Huddleston), was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in the Creative Writing Program and later professor of English, and his father, Herbert L. Packer, was a distinguished professor of law, and the author of numerous books and articles. By George Packer. Ive read and heard that many Vietnamese felt abandoned at the end of the Vietnam WarI highly recommend Frank Snepps book Decent Interval, about the last days of the Americans in Saigon. Even when the result is considered a success, as in Nikole A lot of people think of Just America as a response to Trump, too, which is why its interesting that youre defining it as just as much a reaction to Smart America. Then it took on a new, more global life in the years between the fall of the Soviet Union and the attacks of September 11th, as a book by your compatriot Josef Joffe, berpower, arguesa reaction against the sole superpower. The Republicans exploited it. And unlike organizers in the 1930s, the NewsGuild has social media. How much power can employers exercise over their employees? . And maybe we needed that. It has set off reflections on their status and revealed the rare bond and unusual deference many of them feel toward Mr. Remnick. He has tried to be reassuring, even as the prospect of putting out the print magazine without editorial staff members looms. Anyone can read what you share. But, for fairness, it was necessary. You have expressed Iraqi opinions in your own words. 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. That doesnt mean it ignores racism, discrimination, disfranchisement, and the history of all of these. George Packer, writer at the New Yorker and author of the new book "The Unwinding: An Inner History Of The New America." He also recently wrote the New York Times op-ed " Celebrating Inequality . But somehow, maybe because of where he comes from or what kind of career hes had, he doesnt feel like a very modern figure. My worry is that the philosophical and practical direction of this movement is making those achievements less likely. The Talk of the . In this episode, Andrew is joined by George Packer, the author of Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, to explore the four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, Smart America, Real America, and Just America. Its not smart to lose touch with the basic feelings of large numbers of voters if you hope to get those votes. And that has left the most prominent writers mainly watching from the sidelines in recent weeks as a bitter labor dispute has consumed their beloved magazine. 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. 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. November 2, 2022. George Packer. Peeling back all the ways Amazon and publishing are entangled, Packer said, took forever., Although Packer shines a critical light on Amazon, he said he believes that the company has provided a seductive level of customer satisfaction; he himself is a customer. If you bloc most Americans into identity groups, George Packer says, if you create monoliths, you will end up not speaking to their actual, as people say, lived experience., Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. The House report describes both a catastrophe and a way forward. I wonder how much its in the control of, say, one side of the political spectrum to bring the other side back. Because I wanted to write about the whole arc of the war in their lives, I spent many hoursin a couple of cases, two full daystalking with them. Smart America is where I mostly live, but its no longer a meritocracy, if it ever was. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. And they all come, in some ways, from that original passion for equality. It doesnt help in policy because you wont know what works and what doesnt, and it doesnt help politically because I think most people still have the idea that individual effort makes a difference and that it should be rewarded. Its because of the courage and openness of the people I spoke with that I was able to tell this story. Am I really prepared to say its over? If your goal is to slow climate change, or reverse inequality, or stop racism, or rebuild democracy, you will need the national solidarity that comes from patriotism. How do you do this without engaging in a nationalism that people dont like, which is I think the reason that liberal, progressive politicians have always had trouble doing it? All rights reserved. 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. It means were better. Once trust is built in the course of long conversations, the details that a story requires start to surface. But they were also suspicious of the NewsGuild, and began a parallel set of meetings with its rival, the Writers Guild of America, East. And Mankoff responded accordingly: "What I absolutely take satisfaction in is that, as I leave as cartoon editor, I leave The New Yorker and my successor with a bumper crop of new and talented cartoonists who came in under my tenure," Mankoff told the Washington Post's Michael Cavna. We had to end a pandemic. He doesn't theorize about it. Why did ISIS allow its negotiations with Jordan to collapse? By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Packer was a columnist for Mother Jones and was a staff writer for The New Yorker from 2003 to 2018. They are as intimate as they are grand, and they offer themselves for worship by ordinary people searching for a suitable object of devotion. A deal was finalized late last month. It has an aggressive quality. Last Best Hope was inspired, Packer says, by "political pamphlets from other periods of crisis.". It wasnt. They would like security and order, however possible. THE Roaring '20s was the decade when modern celebrity . It never rains on a Twitter picket line. One point of view is that you have to be aware of racism and different identities and different inequalities if you want to take the step of improving everyones life. At the depth of his crisis in trying to leave the Party . Packer is married to writer and editor Laura Secor. Across the board, American institutions have failed. It was a white Christian-nationalist narrative that said, Your free trade, your immigration, even your corporations and monopolies have not improved a lot of towns, and rural areas have sunk and are in deep trouble, and have some of the same serious problems that the inner cities have had for decades. And so, when Trump came along, in 2015, he intuited in his reptilian way that the old, sunny, optimistic Reagan message didnt cut it, and that something more dark and nativist and ugly would appealthat people didnt want to hear how good things were. So theres affirmative action, theres diversity hiring, theres childrens health insurance. Does Packer think thats viable? The employees ultimately backed down, rejecting the notion of unionism for what seemed in part to be cultural reasons. why is my cookies pen blinking purple is there mobile coverage across the nullarbor hillside funeral home obits He is best known for his writings for The New Yorker and The Atlantic about U.S. foreign policy and for his book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq.Packer also wrote The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, covering the history of the US from 1978 to 2012.In November 2013, The Unwinding received the . 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. His decency, his dignity, his ability to explain what democracy isIm not sure well ever see that again. This seems like the only way that face-to-face interactions between Americans from wildly different backgrounds could happen. The financial crisis of 2008 was years in themaking and has had a lasting impact onAmerican political life. We are blunt. By George Packer. Without some emotional impetus, its impossible for me to spend months (in this case, three), travel thousands of miles, and take risks in reporting a story. In his new book, " Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal ," George Packer writes that the United States is in a state of disrepair, brought about primarily by the fact . Officials, research health conditions, and the Middle East for about month! 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