New York, NY—(September 20, 2018)—The New Republic today published its October issue, which features an incisive cover story by Bryan Mealer that explores a liberal’s search for God and faith in a divided country. In “The Struggle for a New American Gospel,” Mealer declares, “To defeat hatred and creeping fascism and begin the healing of this nation, we—all Americans—need a new social gospel, and not just one that makes liberals feel comfortable.”
Additional
information about the October 2018 issue is included below.
[FEATURES]
In “Israel’s
Season of Discontent,” Joshua Cohen questions whether the Jewish State has
abandoned the American diaspora seventy years after its founding. Cohen writes,
“To be sure, Netanyahu feels as betrayed by American Jewry as American Jewry
feels betrayed by him, and it’s difficult to tell to what degree these feelings
have been motivated by disgust and spite (Netanyahu hating American Jewish
naivete, American Jews hating Netanyahu’s cronyism and violence), and to what degree
they’ve been motivated by opportunism and self-interest (Netanyahu wanting the
evangelical money and political cover, American Jews wanting to shore up their
credentials on the identitarian left).”
Scott
Sayare explores whether
French security law has turned holding Islamist ideas into proof of a crime.
The association de malfaiteurs terroriste
statute, loosely translated as “terrorist criminal association,” remains
the primary tool of counterterror magistrates today. Sayare notes in “Terrorist by Association,” that “Civil
libertarians have long argued that association
de malfaiteurs terroriste criminalizes ideas” and that France has never
taken these criticisms particularly seriously. He continues, “Thousands of
Islamists have been arrested and many hundred convicted under the association law, and French security and
intelligence officials long hailed the statute as the reason that since 1995
not a single Islamist attack had been carried off on French soil.”
[U.S.
& THE WORLD]
In “Best
Coast,” David Sarasohn explains
how the West Coast’s early conservatism has caused Democrats from the region to
be uniquely suited to challenge President Trump. Sarasohn argues that because
“The West Coast has created a platform that is almost the polar opposite of Trump’s
xenophobia, protectionism, and environmental carelessness,” West Coast
Democrats have a real shot at the White House in 2020.
Lee
Drutman examines how
much the Democrats will have to compromise the party’s liberal economic and
social principles in order to win a House majority in “A New Suburban Strategy”. The party could safely move left on
economic issues and still win suburban voters, believes Drutman. Instead, he
observes, “in these pivotal suburban swing districts, the party has
consistently supported corporate-friendly candidates who can raise tons of
money (often because they have personal networks of wealthy friends and
business associates) and who present a ‘moderate’ face to upscale suburban
voters”.
“Going
for Broke” by Alexander Sammon questions how
accurately a candidate’s personal debt indicates a lack of fiscal
responsibility in an age when about 80 percent of Americans owe money. “The
sheer ubiquity of debt may have begun to change how Americans see the issue—as
a structural condition more than a personal failing—and therefore how they see
candidates who owe money,” Sammon considers.
Bryce
Covert explores the
enduring scam of corporate tax breaks in “Long
Cons”. “Ultimately, these deals aren’t just about corporations looking to
get a windfall where they can,” Covert explains, “It’s politicians, too, who,
through their desire for a quick and easy win, end up robbing their
constituents of money that could be much better spent elsewhere”.
In “What
Trump Gets Right on Trade,” John B. Judis claims there is an important
truth behind President Trump’s attack on globalization. “Globalization has
undermined the fundamental promise of liberalism: to provide economic and
social security and upward mobility,” states Judis.
Geoffrey
Wheatcroft analyzes the
potential outcomes for the United Kingdom during the uncertainties that
surround Brexit. In “The Trouble With
Brexit,” Wheatcroft states
“Brexit could bring a new golden age of prosperity—or British industry grinding
to a halt,” but most likely “a lot of political grandstanding”.
[BOOKS
& THE ARTS]
“All the Rage” by Rebecca
Solnit explores what the literature
of female anger can achieve by examining three new books, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya Chemaly, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of
Women’s Anger by Rebecca Traister and Eloquent
Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper. Solnit
writes, “These books arrive at a moment when a lot of women have changed and
too many men have not—and some are, in fact, retreating into revved-up misogyny
and rage against the erosion of their supremacy. Women no longer obliged to
please men may finally be able to express rage, because we’re less economically
dependent on men than ever before, and because feminism has been redefining
what’s appropriate and acceptable”.
David Sessions reviews A History of America in Ten Strikes by Erik Loomis, which examines the American workers’ struggle to pair militancy with political power. In “A More Perfect Union,” Sessions explains that what Loomis’s book perhaps does best is “remind us that the promise of the labor movement, despite its many failures and compromises, has always been to make everyday life more democratic. American labor militancy has always been about more than pay, with workers seeking respect and fairness in the workplace.” He concludes that in order for a twenty first-century labor movement to succeed, it will need to “revive that promise, and show sidelined, disaffected Americans that democracy begins at work”.
In “The Crack-Up,” Rachel Syme explores how BoJack Horseman, a cartoon sitcom whose title character is a melancholic, middle-aged stallion, brilliantly reckons with grief. Syme notes that “Midway through the show’s new season, BoJack (voiced by Will Arnett) wears a charcoal suit and stands at a pulpit next to a coffin. His mother has died. For over 20 full minutes, with no interruption, he delivers a brilliant, pained, rambling eulogy”. At the end of the eulogy, she continues, “he looks up, and we finally see his audience: a confused-looking room full of reptiles, icking their tongues. He is in the wrong funeral parlor. The ordeal sends him on a long bender, a dizzying descent toward tragedy. But for a moment, the show conveys all the ache of another person’s loss, whether he is man or beast”.
“Personality Clash” from J.C. Pan examines the uses and abuses of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) by looking at The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing by Merve Emre. How did the MBTI establish such wide appeal? Pan notes that according to Emre the answer lies in its early-twentieth-century roots and is both by design and in practice, a tool of workplace management. He concludes, “Maybe after all this time, the significant distinction between types isn’t between the Is and the Es, or the Ps and the Js, but between those who engineer our workplaces for productivity and those who must engineer our personalities to fit them”.
“Bad Faith” by George
Scialabba answers the question of whether atheists think too much like
believers by exploring Seven Types of
Atheism by John Gray. Scialabba writes, “God’s inexplicable reticence has
always made life difficult for theists. John Gray thinks that such problems
with theism shouldn’t make most atheists any more confident about their own
outlook ... Seven Types of Atheism
does not offer a
rigorous or exhaustive taxonomy of nonbelief. The seven sections mainly provide
a convenient way of organizing Gray’s likes and (more often) dislikes”.
In “Divided States” Michael Kazin delves into Jill Lepore’s new book, These Truths: A History of The United States, and how it captures a history of American contradictions. “For [Lepore], the United States has always been a nation wrestling with a paradox, caught between its sunny ideals and its darker realities,” writes Kazin. He continues, “Throughout the book, Lepore takes particular delight in tracing how both Americans with power and those without made effective use of new forms of media either to advance the ideal of equality or to betray it”.
Poems by Tess Taylor and Jericho Brown are featured this month. For Res Publica, Editor-in-Chief Win McCormack explores individual freedom and the public square in “False Concepts of Liberty Pt. 2”.
The entire October 2018 issue of The New Republic is available on newsstands and via digital subscription now.
For additional information, please contact newrepublic@high10media.com.
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