New
York, NY—(March 21, 2019)—The New Republic today published its April 2019 issue with a cover
story that details the banal, evil, all-destructive reign of Mitch McConnell.
In “Nihilist in Chief”, Alex Pareene
classifies McConnell as “a man serenely unbothered by anything he’s done to get
his power or anything he’s done with it, having few friends but many allies.”
Pareene, like many others before, seeks to unearth what makes McConnell tick.
“Once you
realize McConnell has already achieved his life’s dream, and ascended to the
limits of his ambition, his behavior suddenly starts to make more sense. He’s
not trying to cap off his career with a legislative masterstroke, because he
doesn’t care about legislation. He already won. He’s the Senate majority leader,
his parliamentary prowess is regularly feted, and he has already left his legacy indelibly inscribed on the
highest court in the land.”
The
New Republic’s April issue
also features timely pieces regarding political ideals that jeopardize the
world’s health, modern issues facing the
U.S.’ aging population, climate change,
what the ‘left’ needs to consider to win in America, and more.
[FEATURES]
Sarah Posner explores how key congressional Republicans have
been sidling up to nativist and authoritarian leaders across the globe, long
before President Trump came on the scene in “Right Makes Right,” produced in partnership with Type
Investigations. In her piece, she points out that “for years, Republican
members of Congress, lobbyists, and political consultants have worked to forge
bonds with far-right leaders across Europe...you might call this loose
federation of fellow travelers for the nativist global right the strongman
caucus.” She warns that this group of leaders, now somewhat validated by
Trump’s election and continued similar alliances, will pose a challenge to
future administrations who will try to stem “the ominous global advance of
right-wing strongmen.”
In
“The Plague Years,” Maryn McKenna details
how the rise of right-wing nationalism is jeopardizing the world’s health.
McKenna notes that the worldwide effort to eliminate diseases such as measles
or polio is not failing because vaccines are faulty, but rather because a “rise
in nationalist politics, which is causing countries to turn inward, harden
their borders, and distrust outsiders” is in turn causing these diseases to
multiply across the globe. Nativism discourages cross-border cooperation and
threatens public health systems, making the risk for a catastrophic breakout of
disease even greater. “This is the perverse legacy of nationalism in power: By
stigmatizing immigrants, xenophobia can turn the lie of the ‘dirty foreigner’
into truth,” writes McKenna. But “pathogens pay no respect to politics or
to borders. Nationalist rhetoric seeks to persuade us that restricting visas
and constructing walls will protect us. They will not.
“
Ken Silverstein examines the lasting effects of the 1965
Indonesian massacre in “Blood Money.” In
addition to the obvious casualties of a political massacre that claimed the
lives of at least 500,000 civilians, Indonesia’s once-vibrant labor movement
and other civil-society groups were quashed to the point of no recovery. Silverstein
explores the continued reign of political elite – also bolstered by foreign
businesses and factories – who benefited from “The Massacre Premium.” In a
country where “workers are ransacked of their wages, their job security, their
collective bargaining rights, and their freedom to protest their treatment,”
the influence of “the historical amnesia that lurks behind Indonesia’s
wage-theft regime” has continued to prevent them from organizing to protect
themselves and their rights.
[U.S.
& THE WORLD]
To win in America, the left must decide what it
means to win abroad. That’s the crux of Greg
Grandin’s “The Home Front.” In
his piece, Grandin asks the
question, “Can progressives put forward an internationalism that isn’t linked
to war and corporate power?”. His answer: social democrats “will have to
dismantle the engines of expansion themselves. Cut the military budget;
euthanize the fossil-fuel industry; fetter finance; close the bases, and bring
the troops home.”
Kristen
R. Ghodsee’s “Electing for Autocrats”, Ghodsee reveals how U.S.-led regime change breeds future demagogues.
Ghodsee states, “The instability that results from recasting a country’s
economy has a subtler impact than military intervention, but it can be just as
traumatic… .” She concludes, “As Democrats embrace the fight against domestic
inequality, we also need a foreign policy that links the promotion of democracy
with targeted efforts to prevent drastic disparities in income, even if this
means constraining privatization and economic liberalization.”
Benjamin
Kunkel in “Can American Foreign Policy Be Greened?”
argues for why we need a Marshall Plan to fight climate change. Such a plan
would promote, “the greening of capitalist economies over the next dozen years
or so, not only to keep global warming within tolerable bounds but to preserve
capitalist civilization for its ultimate socialist or communist takeover.”
Stephen
Wertheim makes the case
against American military supremacy in “How
to End Endless War.” Wertheim believes the time is now to question the
assumption that the U.S. “maintain global military dominance, regardless of
circumstances, forever”. He writes, “The burden of proof now falls on those who
favor a large military role, and they must justify not only the purposes they
seek but also the perils that outsize power poses when the vicious and the
reckless get to swing the sword.”
In “Senior
Moment,” Rachel M. Cohen
addresses the 18 million baby boomers that will reach retirement age between
2020 and 2030. Cohen writes, “...Within the last few decades, retirement and
senior care have become some of the most intimidating and untenable costs
people face in their lifetimes, a burden more crushing than paying for college
or buying a house.” Retirement will most likely feature prominently in the 2020
race. “Politicians who address retirement understand they can reach not only
the elderly, but those who care for them,” says Cohen.
[BOOKS
& THE ARTS]
In “Adventures
in Modernism,” Jeet Heer dives into the unlikely, energizing friendship of
Hugh Kenner and Guy Davenport, by examining the hefty and sturdy two-volume
set, Questioning Minds: The Letters of
Guy Davenport and Hugh Kenner, edited by Edward M. Burns. Heer notes that
the volumes illustrate the intense friendship between the two writers, a
consequential union that remade them both. He writes, “…Questioning
Minds is a monument to the strange and wonderful relationship of two
oddballs uniting to make an odd couple.”
Christine
Smallwood reviews Sally
Rooney’s new novel Normal People and
explores how she puts into words a generation’s beleaguered idealism as “the
first great millennial author.” In “Great
Expectations,” Smallwood writes, “many good writers and all great ones have
only one story to tell, even if they find different ways of telling it. With
Rooney this is especially pronounced.” With a writing style “built for the
Instagram age,” Rooney’s novels capture human intimacy in a way most
millennials will relate, “usually portrayed as messy and chaotic.”
“The
Dean” by Max Holleran examines how the founder
of the Bauhaus school, Walter Gropius, made a vital political community out of
the ruins of war in a review of Gropius:
The Man Who Built the Bauhaus by Fiona MacCarthy. “Gropius’s legacy cannot
be judged by his biggest structure but rather by the huge influence he had over
a range of artistic mediums. As the Bauhaus turns 100 years old, it stands in
contrast to an architecture defined by glass-and-steel towers, emanating little
more than an aesthetic of power,” writes Holleran.
Can Frida Kahlo’s things tell us what drove her?
In “Fridolatry,” Rachel Syme reviews a captivating new
exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of the artist’s personal items alongside her
paintings and drawings. “Kahlo’s obsession with painting her own image wasn’t
to cast herself as a hero; it was an exploratory process, an experiment in
fusing a life into art. The shelves and shelves of merchandise seem to fulfill
a prophecy she never spoke,” writes Syme. “The Brooklyn Museum show tells a
different story.”
Geoffrey
Wheatcroft’s “Never Sorry”
details historian Eric Hobsbawm’s awkward embrace of the Establishment in the
authorized biography by Sir Richard J. Evans, Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History. Wheatcroft notes, “Evans’ book is
thoroughly researched, largely based on Hobsbawm’s own copious papers, but
diligence is not matched by a sense of proportion or lightness of touch.” He
continues, “The book is far too long, more chronicle than biographical work of
art, and Evans writes with plodding earnestness, aggravated by the fact that he
is in such awe of his subject.”
Poems by Michael
Prior and Jana Prikryl are
featured this month. For Res Publica, Editor-in-Chief Win McCormack examines whether civic republicanism can help save
the planet in “How Green Was My Virtue”.
The entire April 2019 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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