The Atlantic 2016-03

Presidential Politics and the ISIS Trap p.15 Can America Put Itself BackTogether? A three-year, 54,000-mile journey reveals surprising sources of strength. ByJames Fallows MARCH 2016 Clashof the T H E AT L A N T I C .C O M Critics: Leon Wieseltier on A.O. Scott Can Trevor Noah Break Through? The Leftist Originsof the Rabid Right







OF NO PARTY OR CLIQUE CONTENTS | MARCH 201 VOL. 317–NO. 2 Features Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics, a nonproit that targets underserved students in New York, has quadrupled in size since it opened ive years ago. 50 The Math 58 How America 74 “Let’s Go 86 Liquid Assets Revolution Is Putting Itself Take Back Our Back Together Country” BY ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN/ BY PEG TYRE PROPUBLICA BY JAMES FALLOWS BY STUART REID What’s behind the A maverick investor is surge in American teens Three years of reporting, What happened when 11 buying up water rights in the who are highly luent traveling by small plane to audacious exiles armed West. Could his plan solve in high-order math dozens of towns and small themselves for a violent the region’s water crisis? cities, uncovered revival night in the Gambia and reinvention that belie the popular perception of a nation in decline. Photograph by ERIN PATRICE O’BRIEN THE ATLANTIC MARCH 2016 3

CONTENTS | MARCH 201 VOL. 317–NO. 2 Dispatches BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY 24 28 What China Could The Future of Learn From Richard Fraud-Busting How we’ll stop scams before Nixon The country’s growth is they occur inexorably slowing. The wrong response could BY MARIA KONNIKOVA make that problem much worse. BY SEBASTIAN MALLABY FOREIGN POLICY 15 The Terror Trap Presidential candidates claim that attacking ISIS will make Americans safer. The opposite is true. BY PETER BEINART SKETCH STUDY OF STUDIES WORKS IN PROGRESS 18 26 32 Can This Man Face Value Tying Paris Back Save U.S. Soccer? Why we’re terrible at Together An expert teacher’s eforts reading faces—yet quick to to rescue the sport from Can expanding the Métro mediocrity, by starting with judge them unite the city and its troubled banlieues? its coaches BY NAOMI SHARP BY HENRY GRABAR BY AMANDA RIPLEY Departments Poetry 8 85 The Conversation The Wren 108 BY DAVID BAKER The Big Question Who is the greatest supporting player of all time? 4 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

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CONTENTS | MARCH 201 VOL. 317–NO. 2 The Culture File BOOKS 38 Critic Without a Cause Criticism can be fun, A. O. Scott promises, genially evading serious cultural debate. BY LEON WIESELTIER THE OMNIVORE BOOKS 34 46 Why We Still Miss The Elusive Maggie Thatcher Jon Stewart Why distorting The Daily Show host, Mrs. T. has been Trevor Noah, is smooth and a popular literary charming, but he has yet to ind an edge that’s equal to pastime the political moment. BY LEO ROBSON BY JAMES PARKER BOOKS 42 The Leftist Origins of the Rabid Right What modern conservatism owes to apostates from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum BY SAM TANENHAUS Essay On the NOAH: EVAN AGOSTINI/INVISION/AP Cover 96 Where Have You Gone, Photograph by Adam Voorhes Annie Dillard? Why America’s latter-day Thoreau, who has been silent for nearly a decade, may have run out of words in her quest to renovate the soul BY WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ 6 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

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THE CONVERSATION RESPONSES & REVERBERATIONS The Silicon Valley Suicides In the December cover story, Hanna Rosin asked why so many kids in Palo Alto have taken their own lives. The cover article on the spate happening and why. Hanna She vividly depicts a rushing eighth grade, one of my best of teen suicides in Palo Alto Rosin touches on the possible train, which is especially trig- friends attempted suicide. provides an up-front discus- inluences of race, poverty, gering, as well as Cameron She had, and still has, bipolar sion of the issue and helps parenting, and school expec- Lee’s parents reading his disorder and depression. address the harmful stigma tations in seeking explana- suicide note … surrounding mental illness tions for the problem. But The main “why” of suicide and suicide. Suicide has West Coast secular thinking Furthermore, Rosin is mental illness. Stress can important biological under- has now so infected socio- neglects to mention in detail heighten mental illness and pinnings and is amenable to logical study that it does not the eforts that our commu- cause depression, but there interventions. Efective treat- seem relevant to Rosin to nity has made. Though she is no evidence showing that ment for depression can work seek any correlation between briely mentions the recent stress is what led to any of wonders too. Our communi- spiritual values and practices Unmasked documentary and these suicides. ties and families need to talk and the presence or absence Gunn [High School]’s “A about mental illness and of suicide trends. This is like Titan Is …” project, there I agree that we have a stress suicidal thoughts openly and studying disease data without are many other initiatives problem at Gunn. We should matter-of-factly, just like factoring in germ theory. working to improve school address mindfulness on we would about any other climate and address the campus. We should address medical condition. We need Don Kammerdiener stigma surrounding mental the stigmatization of mental to encourage those who are health. These eforts include illness. We should be ofered sufering and their families to RICHMOND, VA. the Sources of Strength multiple paths to success seek treatment, and empha- peer-mentoring program at from the very beginning of size that seeking help is a sign As student journalists, we [Palo Alto High] and Gunn, elementary school, as well of strength, not weakness. are mindful of the national the “Changing the Narrative” as diferent views on what Only in this way will we stem guidelines on suicide report- series in Gunn’s Oracle, and success is. Rosin interviewed the tide. ing outlined by the National the Save the 2008 campaign. me for this article, and she Institute of Mental Health. completely disregarded Maria A. Oquendo, M.D. These recommendations … EXCERPT FROM AN EDITORIAL IN everything I had to say that are imperative in reducing the PALO ALTO HIGH SCHOOL’S wasn’t “Gunn is known as the PRESIDENT-ELECT, AMERICAN media coverage’s efect on VERDE MAGAZINE suicide school in the middle- increasing copycat suicides. school communities.” PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION Rosin clearly violates these I was the vice president of ARLINGTON, VA. guidelines, which caution ROCK (Reach Out, Care, There are kids who are against descriptive accounts Know), a suicide-prevention pushed along by their parents The Silicon Valley suicides of the act of suicide itself club. I helped my friends who and have their whole lives are a cause for mourning, and the publication of the were struggling with depres- planned out for them. This and we should make every contents of a suicide note. sion and suicidal ideation. In happens everywhere across efort to understand what is the country. But publicizing 8 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

this issue using the suicides in I did not know either of the those who committed suicide, college. The diference my hometown, where there is kids who killed themselves. remember the events of those between success and failure. no connection between this However, I—unlike you— days. And I can assure you, The diference between and the kids who committed was there to witness what those days will always be happiness and misery. suicide, is just painful and happened on campus both of imprinted on my mind and harmful to a group of people those awful days. I saw the on the minds of my peers. I remember not being able trying to heal. looks on everyone’s faces as So please, Ms. Rosin, do not to sleep well on Sunday nights, the morning went on, and felt claim we are lucky that we waking up covered in sweat I do not have “Stockholm the awful knot in my stomach have young minds that can from nightmares that I had syndrome” from this. It is not telling me that something had rebound from trauma. just failed a test. I dreaded embarrassing that we have gone terribly, terribly wrong. I Sundays because it meant had so many suicides here. listened as my teachers read Megan Valencia I just inished my weekend We are sensitive about being aloud the robot-like school basketball tournament—my interviewed, because our statements telling us what PALO ALTO HIGH CLASS OF 2015 precious outlet from voices have not been heard had happened. I like to think PALO ALTO, CALIF. academics—and now faced and apparently continue to that our campus wears a mask a whole week of immense not be heard. of happy perfection most days, Like many others, I read “The pressure at school. I felt the but on those days that mask Silicon Valley Suicides” in this pressure coming from all I didn’t love high school. I crumbled. Kids all around month’s Atlantic and it led me around me—my parents, my am so glad to be out of Palo me collapsed, crying and to relect on my own experi- peers, and worst of all, myself. Alto and with people who shaking with the knowledge ence at Palo Alto High School. I felt that I had one shot at are passionate about what that nothing would ever be high school and that my I’m passionate about. But the same. Our entire campus The pressure to succeed in GPA, SAT score, and college when Rosin characterizes the descended into an uncertain high school is all too familiar applications were the only people I spent four years with, silence, broken only by the to me. I distinctly remember barometers of my success … crying on the quad with, as cries of those who had lost the being a freshman in high soulless zombies, I take issue most. Counselors and teach- school, overwhelmed by the As each year of high school with that. ers hovered around us, but belief that my GPA over the passed by, I realized that even as much training as they had next four years would make though there was pressure Allyna Mota Melville received and as much as they or break my life. My daily to be great, I had to make a knew about suicide, I could thought process was that personal choice not to deine GUNN CLASS OF 2015 tell that they, too, knew there every homework assign- myself by my success and PALO ALTO, CALIF. was nothing they could do. ment, every project, every accomplishments. I learned test could be the diference. through my brother, my Hanna Rosin’s article posed That was the worst part, Ms. The diference between a pastor, and my friends that my this question: “Why are Rosin. There was nothing I or great college and a mediocre so many kids with bright the teachers or the counsel- prospects killing themselves ors or the parents could do BAROMETER in Palo Alto?” This ques- to make it better. Because it tion was representative of could not be ignored and it The most-read magazine stories from 2015 on TheAtlantic.com the insensitivity with which could not be resolved and it Ms. Rosin approached this most certainly was not going 1 topic. to be okay. What ISIS Really Wants Ms. Rosin, I agree with you Ms. Rosin, your article has Graeme Wood (March) that the extreme pressure reopened our barely healed of Palo Alto schools most wounds. Your article ends 2 certainly plays a signiicant with this line: “They’re kids, The Coddling of the American Mind role in “kids killing them- so they can still forget.” My selves.” While you under- criticism of this line is twofold. Greg Lukianof and Jonathan Haidt (September) estimated the role of mental First, calling us “kids” is illness in your article, I patronizing, and belittles our 3 understand why you did so. thoughts and feelings. Even The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration You were trying to ind the if at that time we weren’t anomaly in Palo Alto that adults by conventional Ta-Nehisi Coates (October) causes these awful events, standards, I can assure you and while mental illness that we certainly all grew up 4 (and the stigma surround- on those days. Second, even I, The False Gospel of Alcoholics Anonymous ing it) is absolutely part of a “kid” unrelated to either of the problem, stress in Palo Gabrielle Glaser (April) Alto schools is the thing that stands out the most. 5 Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe? Jefrey Goldberg (April) THE ATLANTIC MARCH 2016 9

THE CONVERSATION identity and my worth were in do know that I’m proud to THE BIG QUESTION more than my grades. Grow- be from Palo Alto, a resilient ing up my parents always community that I see striving On TheAtlantic.com, readers answered January/February’s Big Question said, “Do your best and trust to learn how to better support and voted on one another’s responses. Here are the top vote-getters. God with the results.” When and care for each other. I hope I learned to truly understand that my personal experience Q: What Is the Greatest what that meant, it was like a can remind someone else that weight had been lifted of my they are worth so much more Collaboration of All Time? shoulders. than their accomplishments. 5. The Wright brothers. time: Calvin and Hobbes. Separating myself from my Jeremy Lin Orville and Wilbur showed — Katie Cross results is not an easy lesson the world how man could fly. and I’ve had to relearn this POINT GUARD, 2. On the Western Front in every stage of my life. The NBA’S CHARLOTTE HORNETS — Graham Walker during World War I, the world will always need you PALO ALTO HIGH CLASS OF 2006 Christmas Truce of 1914 to accomplish more, do more, EXCERPT FROM A FACEBOOK POST 4. When the sperm was a temporary cease-fire succeed more. After I got “collaborates” with the self-imposed by German into Harvard there was the I am an Asian Indian parent egg in the fallopian tube. and British troops, illus- pressure to get good grades and my two children gradu- Without this interaction, trating man’s essential and stand out at Harvard. ated from Gunn recently. there’d be no other humanity at its finest. After Linsanity there was As immigrant parents, we collaboration. the pressure to have great worked very, very hard to give — Dan Fredricks performances every night, our children an education we — William S. Owen to become an All-Star, to did not have: one that empha- win championships. I still sized the joy of learning (with 3. Ink and paper, because 1. The Beatles’ Lennon- dream big and give my all in less emphasis on grades and without it there wouldn’t McCartney dyad irrevers- everything I do, but I know tests), creativity, and balance have been the second- ibly changed popular music. that success and failure are between school and outside greatest collaboration of all both leeting. activities, and redeined what — Alessandro Columbu success means. I gave up a When I was a freshman at Silicon Valley career to be a about mental health, and Thank you for writing this, Palo Alto High, a classmate full-time mom, to listen to many of our health-care Ms. Rosin. I have two children who sat next to me commit- my children and support their programs do not adequately who went to a public high ted suicide. I remember passion, to be there for them, cover mental illness. The school a few towns north of having diiculty register- and to help this community. I college-admissions process Palo Alto, and the news of ing what had happened. A have lived in many communi- and the high-school struc- these suicides—which comes year later, a friend commit- ties, and I have found Palo ture are not conducive to all too frequently—haunts me, ted suicide. I saw up close Alto to be caring, honest, and the mental-health needs of as I’m sure it does most other the pain and devastation open-minded. our young people. I am not local parents. While the pres- of their loved ones and in convinced this is a Silicon sure at my kids’ school wasn’t my community. I realized I knew some of the children Valley problem alone, or an quite as intense, our school, then that there are so many who took their lives on the Asian cultural problem, or a too, regularly sends graduates burdens we don’t see the train tracks. I know some of problem with our medical to Stanford, UC Berkeley, and people around us carrying. I the parents whose children establishment. UCLA, as well as Ivies and told myself that I would try to sufered depression, acknowl- other selective schools. be more sensitive and open edged it, and tried everything All I know is that the factors to other people’s struggles. they could to ind help. Every contributing to these suicides I agree that aluence day I cross those train tracks are complex and that this has a corrupting inluence We may not have the and ask why. What could I community is addressing on parents’ expectations of answers to how to completely have done? This is true of them. We are not afraid to be their kids, but I also believe solve these issues, but we every parent here. judged and we are not stuck the blame lies very much at can take more time to really between fear and denial. We the feet of college admis- listen to each other, to reach I agree with some of the have not waited for Rosin’s sions, including the ranking out and have compassion for issues Hanna Rosin raised. article to spur discussions, system of U.S. News & World one another. I don’t have any But something she did not soul-searching, and conversa- Report, test prep for the SAT, great insight and I don’t know address: Many teenagers in tions between many diferent and, yes, the fact that a third exactly what it’s like to be a this country are depressed. ethnic and economic groups. or more of the slots at some high-school student today. I These kids don’t know how public colleges are given to to get help or cannot aford Lakshmi Sunder out-of-state students, making help. There is a stigma PALO ALTO, CALIF. 10 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

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THE CONVERSATION the competition for spots do nothing to improve their peers, “and worst of all, myself,” issuing summonses to people akin to the admissions race at chances of admission. And he writes. It was, in other words, whose only ofense was being selective private colleges. And since there are so many high- just there, preloaded. If I hope caught with less than 25 grams it’s no wonder competition is quality students these days, to accomplish anything with of pot, rather than arresting so ierce: The cost of attend- universities would probably this article, it’s to get people to them. Many advocates claim ing UCLA versus attending end up with classes that are pause and acknowledge that: that such arrests are still the University of Michigan, just as strong as those admit- The pressure is just there, and it happening, but these claims for example, is about half ted under the current system. doesn’t matter anymore whose lack deinitive evidence. Or for a resident of California. fault it is. they say oicers add a spurious There’s strong motivation Matthew Warburg second charge, such as “burning to put pressure on one’s kid How to ix it? Someone marijuana,” in order to it the when the total four-year bill is LAKE FOREST PARK, WASH. pointed out to me that in eras arrest criteria. $100,000 versus $200,000 past, there was usually a robust for an out-of-state public Hanna Rosin replies: youth counterculture—hippies, In any case, overall school, or even more for a antimaterialists, riot grrrls, marijuana-possession arrests private college. The Verde editorial mentions grunge fans, punk rockers. Now have declined dramatically the guidelines on suicide report- it’s hard to name one such group. since the policy took efect— All that said, the bottom ing. I followed them faithfully. Educators, mental-health there were more than 27,000 line is that parents have to get I left out many details I knew experts, and parents might one in 2014—and summonses have real. Gunn is a toxic environ- about the suicides and the day do their part to dial back risen. But Hamm’s complaint ment. Period. I don’t care how suicide notes, and included a the single-minded achievement its neatly with the theme of the “good” the school is; it can’t lengthy testimonial from some- culture, as the people in Palo article: de Blasio’s inability to be all that great if 42 kids are one who had attempted suicide Alto have already started to do. please some of the very activists hospitalized or treated for and then learned to live a But, kids, I leave it to you. you might expect to applaud his suicidal ideation. healthy life. Ultimately, though, policies. the goal of those guidelines is De Blasio’s Record Put limits on your kids’ not to keep reporting on suicides Corrections activities. Don’t allow them vague and hidden in the back In December, Molly Ball proiled to take more than one or two pages of a newspaper. It’s to keep New York Mayor Bill de Blasio Molly Ball’s “The Equal- Advanced Placement classes kids safe and healthy. And in (“The Equalizer”). izer” (December) referred to in a given year. If they are this case, part of that is getting the “Democratic heritage of up until 2 a.m. every night people to really face the pres- I enjoyed Molly Ball’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt doing homework, something sures on high-school kids, and de Blasio proile. However, and Fiorello La Guardia.” is amiss. You, Mom and Dad, how those pressures are making it’s not accurate to say that Although he was an ally of can put the brakes on. them miserable. his administration has FDR’s, La Guardia was a “stopped arresting people Republican. SAlfin My aim was not to single caught with small amounts out Palo Alto. I reported there of marijuana.” In fact, there In “The Double Life of THEATLANTIC.COM COMMENT because it’s an example you were more than 17,300 John le Carré” (James Parker, can’t ignore. But the scene is not arrests for marijuana posses- December), James Jesus Colleges can do quite a bit to all that diferent in Los Angeles sion in New York in 2015. Angleton was identiied as prevent teen suicides, and or Houston or Washington, D.C., the head of the CIA. Angleton quite easily. How? By setting or any place where families have Ted Hamm, Ph.D. never led the agency, though a minimum standard for money and high expectations. he would go on to become the admission (let’s say a 3.5 GPA In all these places, kids are being CHAIR, JOURNALISM AND head of counterintelligence. and an 1800 SAT score), and deined a little too much by their NEW-MEDIA STUDIES, then using a lottery system achievements. To contribute to The to randomly select students ST. JOSEPH’S COLLEGE NEW YORK Conversation, please e-mail from among all applicants Whose fault is it? That’s hard BROOKLYN, N.Y. [email protected]. Include who qualify. to say. What’s interesting about your full name, city, and state. Jeremy Lin’s Facebook post is Molly Ball replies: There would be a lot less that he can’t locate a single pressure on students to source for the crushing pressure The phrase small amounts is overachieve, since that would he felt—it came from parents, key here. In November 2014, the NYPD adopted a policy of EDITORIAL OFFICES & CORRESPONDENCE The Atlantic considers unsolicited manuscripts, fiction or nonfiction, and mail for the Letters column. Correspondence should be sent to: Editorial Department, The Atlantic, 600 New Hampshire Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20037. Receipt of unsolicited manuscripts will be acknowledged if accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. Manuscripts will not be returned. E-mailed manuscripts can be sent to: [email protected]. 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DISPATCHES “Hopeful squires [in China] have made IDEAS & PROVOCATIONS offerings like a March 2016 bouquet of meat … and a declaration of love composed with 1,001 hot dogs.” — Robert Foyle Hunwick, p. 17 •FOREIGN POLICY The Terror Trap Presidential candidates claim that attacking ISIS will make Americans safer. The opposite is true. BY PETER BEINART F OR CLOSE TO A DECADE, it’s worth remembering that during Before the Gulf War, the Saudi the trauma of the Iraq War left the Cold War, the United States had native Osama bin Laden and his asso- Americans wary of launching relatively few troops in the Arab and ciates had focused on supporting the new wars in the Middle East. Muslim world. When Ronald Reagan mujahideen, who were ighting to repel That caution is largely gone. Most of the was elected president, Central Com- the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. leading presidential candidates demand mand, which oversees U.S. military But after the U.S.S.R.’s withdrawal from that the United States escalate its air war operations in the Middle East and Cen- Afghanistan in 1989, al-Qaeda turned in Iraq and Syria, send additional Special tral Asia, did not even exist. All of this its attention to the United States, and Forces, or enforce a bufer zone, which changed in 1990, when Saddam Hus- in particular to America’s military pres- the head of Central Command, General sein invaded Kuwait, and President ence in Saudi Arabia. In 1992, al-Qaeda Lloyd Austin, has said would require de- George H. W. Bush dispatched 700,000 issued a fatwa calling for attacks on ploying U.S. ground troops. Most Ameri- troops to expel him and defend Saudi American troops in the Middle East. cans now favor doing just that. Arabia. After the war was won, thou- After the United States intervened in sands stayed to deter Saddam, and to Somalia later that year, Somali reb- The primary justification for this enforce no-ly zones over Iraq. els allegedly trained by al-Qaeda shot new hawkishness is stopping the Islamic State, or ISIS, from striking the United States. Which is ironic, because at least in the short term, America’s intervention will likely spark more ter- rorism against the United States, thus fueling demands for yet greater mili- tary action. After a period of relative restraint, the United States is heading back into the terror trap. To understand how this trap works, Illustration by EDMON DE HARO THE ATLANTIC MARCH 2016 15

DISPATCHES •FOREIGN POLICY down two Black Hawk helicopters. In world witnessed 343 suicide attacks from campaign the following month. Since 1995, al-Qaeda operatives took credit for bombing a joint U.S.-Saudi military 1980 to 2003, about 10 percent of them then, ISIS seems to have moved from facility in Riyadh. And in 1996, a truck bomb devastated a building housing U.S. against America and its allies. From merely inspiring attacks against the Air Force personnel in the Saudi city of Dhahran. (Although Saudi Hezbollah 2004 to 2010, by contrast, there were West to actively planning them. Novem- carried out the attack, the 9/11 Commis- sion noted “signs that al-Qaeda played more than 2,400 such attacks worldwide, ber’s attacks in Paris, writes Byman, some role.”) That same year, another al-Qaeda fatwa declared, “The latest and more than 90 percent of them against were the “irst time that ISIS has devoted the greatest of these [Western] aggres- sions … is the occupation of the land of American and coalition forces in Iraq, signiicant resources to a mass-casualty the two Holy Places”: Saudi Arabia. On August 7, 1998, the eighth anniversary Afghanistan, and elsewhere. attack in Europe.” Afterward, ISIS re- of the beginning of that “occupation,” al-Qaeda bombed America’s embassies Many of those attacks were orches- leased a video warning the people of in Kenya and Tanzania. trated by al-Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate, France: “As long as you keep bombing The fact that al-Qaeda justified its attacks as a response to American “oc- which in 2006 established the Islamic you will not ind peace.” cupation” makes them no less reprehen- sible, of course. And al-Qaeda might well State of Iraq. After weakening in 2007 In the wake of the Paris attacks, the have struck American targets even had the U.S. not stationed troops on Saudi and 2008 (when the U.S. paid Sunni Republican presidential candidate soil. After all, as a global superpower, the United States was involved militarily all tribal leaders to fight jihadists), the Marco Rubio declared that the reason across the world in ways al-Qaeda inter- preted as oppressive to Muslims. Islamic State strengthened again as the ISIS targets the West is “because we Still, it’s no coincidence that bin Obama administration’s inattention have freedom of speech, because we Laden and company shifted their fo- cus away from the U.S.S.R. after Soviet allowed Iraq’s Shia prime minister, Nuri have diversity in our religious beliefs … troops left Afghanistan and toward the United States after American troops al-Maliki, to intensify his persecution because we’re a tolerant society.” Yet entered Saudi Arabia. Key advisers to George W. Bush recognized this. After of Sunnis. Then, after Syrians rebelled only weeks earlier, ISIS had downed a U.S. forces overthrew Saddam in 2003, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolf- against Bashar al-Assad, the Islamic Russian airliner over the Sinai, thus tar- owitz said one of the beneits “that has gone by almost unnoticed—but it’s State expanded across Iraq’s western geting the distinctly intolerant regime of huge—is that by complete mutual agree- ment between the U.S. and the Saudi border into Syria, later renaming itself Vladimir Putin. The Islamic State’s jus- government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia.” The the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. tiication for that attack was identical to United States, he reasoned, had thus eliminated “a huge recruiting device for Signiicantly, when the last American the one it gave for its attack on France: al-Qaeda.” troops left Iraq, in December 2011, ISIS It was bombing Russia because Russia The problem was that to remove thou- sands of troops from Saudi Arabia, the did not follow them home. “In its vari- had bombed it. United States sent more than 100,000 to invade and occupy Iraq. A dramatic ous incarnations,” notes Daniel Byman, All of which suggests that the more surge in terrorist attacks against Ameri- can and allied forces ensued. As Robert a counterterrorism expert who is a pro- America intensiies its war against ISIS, Pape, the director of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism at the Uni- fessor at Georgetown, the Islamic State the more ISIS will try to strike Ameri- versity of Chicago, has enumerated, the “focused first and foremost on its im- cans. And the more terrorism ISIS man- mediate theater of opera- ages to carry out, the tions.” Although ISIS was The Islamic more fiercely America happy if people inspired State was will escalate its air at- by its message struck tacks, thus creating the Western targets, it made bombing civilian casualties that, little efort to orchestrate Russia according to the Inter- such attacks. Research because national Crisis Group’s fellows at the Norwegian Russia had Noah Bonsey, “tremen- Defence Research Estab- bombed it. dously help the narrative lishment detected only of a jihadi group like the four ISIS-related plots in Islamic State.” If the pub- the West from January 2011 to May 2014. lic reaction to Paris and the December But beginning in the fall of 2014, the attack in San Bernardino is any guide, number of ISIS-related plots in the West continued jihadist terrorism will also spiked. The Norwegian researchers lead to a rising demand for American counted 26 from July 2014 to June 2015 ground troops. That, argues the French alone. What explains the rise? The most ISIS expert Jean-Pierre Filiu, would be plausible explanation is that the Islamic the worst trap America could fall into, State started targeting Western coun- because ISIS wants to cast itself as the tries because they had started targeting Islamic world’s defender against a new it. In August 2014, the United States crusader invasion. began bombing ISIS targets to protect Dthe Yazidi religious sect in northern ESPITE THESE DANGERS, there is a case for attacking ISIS. Part of Iraq, which ISIS was threatening with extermination. France joined the air it is humanitarian: Millions of people 16 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

now live in a caliphate in which many BIG IN … A man from Wuhan sculpted women cannot leave their homes un- his girlfriend’s likeness in less accompanied by a man, and reli- CHINA sand before proposing to her. gious minorities can be sold as slaves. Allowing ISIS to expand, and poten- IMMODEST PROPOSALS brides fierce, plenty of tially threaten Jordan or Saudi Arabia, young people approach SINA would produce misery on an epic scale, N OTHING says Throughout much of marriage as a kind of intensify the refugee crisis already Marry me! like the second half of the business deal, and assess roiling Europe, and destroy America’s 99 iPhones— century, moreover, the their partner’s creden- reputation as the underwriter of Middle except, perhaps, 4,500 government discouraged tials accordingly. Men Eastern order. diapers. Or 99,999 chilies. elaborate weddings. must typically bring a These are some of the Even now, public displays home and financial secu- But the war isn’t being sold on these unusual tokens of love of afection are frowned rity (and in many cases a grounds. The presidential candidates that prospective grooms upon by the older car) to the table; women are not telling Americans that a greater have been flourishing in generations—hence the are encouraged by their short-term terrorist threat is the price one of the world’s tough- novelty of conspicuous families to practice they must pay to liberate oppressed Arabs, est marriage markets. proposals, which in many hypergamy—that is, to protect friendly regimes, and prevent a cases go viral on social marry up. Marital rivalry greater danger down the road. Instead, One Guangzhou media and sometimes has already caused rural candidates are promising, at least impli- businessman arranged a even make the nightly “bride prices” (essen- citly, that if America intensiies its war, fleet of luxury cars in the news. The craze reflects tially, reverse dowries the terrorist threat will decrease. shape of a heart before a tendency among the paid to brides’ parents) popping the question. A younger generation to surge; an extravagant What happens when they’re proved wealthy suitor in Linyi felt toward flamboyant proposal is now one more wrong? In a political environment that nothing less than a gestures, particularly way for a prospective where candidates won’t admit that ISIS convoy of expensive romantic ones—but it’s groom to enhance his attacks are partly a response, albeit a vehicles, including two also symptomatic of just desirability and status. monstrous one, to the United States’ Ford Raptors and a how high the stakes have own use of force, further attacks will Lamborghini Gallardo become for the modern Of course, the high- leave Americans even more bewildered with a giant teddy bear Chinese marriage. pressure sell does not and terriied than they are now. Some strapped to its rear, always succeed. One will gravitate to politicians who prom- would do for his girlfriend. For many men, per- suitor in Qingdao set ise that with greater force, including The immodest proposal manent bachelorhood himself on fire after a ground troops, they can deliver a deci- is not just a rich man’s is not a hypothetical car filled with expensive sive military victory. Other Americans, game, though: Hopeful fear, but a real dan- gifts failed to win over desperate for a quick ix, will support squires of humbler tastes ger. Chinese parents his beloved. And the further assaults on the rights of Mus- have made oferings like have long prized male Guangzhou man who felt lims in the United States. Both impulses a bouquet of meat, a heirs, and the one-child his marriageability would will help the Islamic State. And America message spelled out with policy, recently abol- best be demonstrated will slide deeper into the terror trap. lychees, and a declaration ished after 35 years, led via an ofer of 99 iPhones of love composed with many parents to abort was ultimately rejected. The core problem is that most politi- 1,001 hot dogs. female fetuses. Accord- Perhaps his girlfriend cians are still selling war on the cheap. ing to one estimate, the feared that someone who They won’t admit that, no matter how China has little tradi- country will by 2020 had spent so much on convinced Americans may be of their tion of creative propos- have at least 24 million gadgets doomed to rapid good intentions, the violence the U.S. als, in part because, into “surplus” men ages 20 to obsolescence would not, inlicts overseas will lead others to try the 20th century, most 45. With competition for himself, prove a shrewd to do violence to it. The more fervently marriages were arranged. investment. the U.S. tries to kill ISIS supporters, the — Robert Foyle Hunwick more fervently they will try to kill Amer- icans. And in today’s interconnected world, they will have more opportuni- ties to strike than ever before. Wars, even necessary ones, are usu- ally costly for both sides. If the men and women running for president won’t admit that, they shouldn’t be demand- ing war at all. THE ATLANTIC MARCH 2016 17

Can This Man with no professional soccer expertise— Save U.S. Soccer? might help them advance the sport. An expert teacher’s eforts to rescue the sport from Among teachers, Doug Lemov is a mediocrity, by starting with its coaches sort of celebrity. He’s spent years study- ing great educators, creating a taxon- BY AMANDA RIPLEY omy of techniques they use to manage common challenges (like deiant kids or AMERICANS PERFORM about inally getting serious about girls’ sports, tired kids or kids who need a lot of time as unimpressively in soccer the American women will likely face to learn something that other kids learn as they do in education. stifer competition in the years ahead. quickly). Each year, he trains thousands In both cases, the United of teachers around the world to use States has sufered from a lack of focus American soccer officials are there- these tactics. He’s also written a popular and rigor, despite significant invest- fore humble in a way that other sports book called Teach Like a Champion and ments. More than 4 million kids are executives are not. “We need to improve, co-founded a chain of public charter now registered in American youth- or in a few years, all those people we’ve schools in the Northeast. soccer leagues—more than in any other gotten to pay attention [to soccer] will country—and yet the U.S. has never drift away,” says Neil Buethe, the head When U.S. Soccer irst reached out produced a Lionel Messi or a Cristiano of communications for the U.S. Soccer to Lemov, in 2010, the organization Ronaldo. The men’s national team still Federation, the sport’s governing body in was already in the midst of a wholesale struggles to compete internationally. the United States. “A win only happens reformation. Four years earlier, soccer The women’s team just won the World if our players get better, and our players executives had toured the world, study- Cup, a shining accomplishment, but its only get better if the coaches get better.” ing what other countries did differ- players owe their success more to speed ently. They had learned, among other and athleticism than to technique; with This thinking has led U.S. Soccer oi- things, that kids in other nations spent powerhouses like Germany and France cials to an unconventional idea: that a less time playing soccer games than did teaching expert they irst read about in their American counterparts, and more The New York Times Magazine—a man time practicing. In response, the federa- tion created its own youth league, called the U.S. Soccer Development Academy, modeled after international best prac- tices. Top youth-soccer clubs could apply to join, if their coaches agreed to get licensed and follow a new model for training. The academy now com- prises 152 soccer clubs across the U.S., which have produced more than 180 professional players. Still, oicials felt that more could be done. “For 20 years, we had focused al- most exclusively on closing our global gap in the technical and tactical compo- nents of the game,” says Dave Chesler, U.S. Soccer’s director of coaching devel- opment. “In doing this, perhaps we had lost perspective on the quality of our delivery—a k a the essential mechanics of teaching. ” Chesler, who had himself spent 15 years as a high-school chemis- try and physics teacher before becoming a full-time soccer coach, realized after reading about Lemov in The Times Mag- azine that he had never transferred some of his own best teaching techniques to the field. He made immediate modifi- cations to his coaching—for example, slowing down practices and focusing 18 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC Illustration by JOHN CUNEO

more on watching the players, making teachers, need practical training and clear how to solve it, they struggle.” sure each one demonstrated every step in a drill before moving on—and he sent meaningful feedback to do well. Teach- Jürgen Klinsmann, a former soccer copies of Lemov’s book to his national staf. And then he asked Lemov for help. ers rarely get that support; coaches star in Germany who now coaches the Lemov was thrilled to hear from U.S. almost never do. And so, with Chesler’s U.S. men’s team, has remarked that Soccer. But he was nervous, too, like a fan- boy unexpectedly pulled up onstage. He help, Lemov set about identifying spe- it’s hard to get Americans to see that a understood teaching, and it so happened that he loved soccer, but he didn’t know cific tactics coaches could learn from soccer coach cannot be “the decision whether his work would translate for coaches—or whether they would listen. great teachers—establishing rituals so maker on the ield,” but should instead L EMOV STARTED PLAYING soccer drills start faster, say, or helping play- be a guide. “This is a very diferent ap- when he was about 7 and still has the build of an athlete, tall and broad- ers get comfortable making mistakes proach,” he told USA Today. “I tell them, shouldered. He was never a star, but he managed to win a spot on the Hamilton in practice. So far, Lemov has trained ‘No, you’re not making the decision. The College soccer team through constant, solitary practice. It was a highly in- about 200 coach educators, who in turn decision is made by the kid on the ield.’ ” eicient process, he now realizes, akin to learning French by sitting in a room, teach rank-and-ile coaches around the Outside the U.S., most soccer players alone, with a French-English dictionary. Like many American soccer players, he country. He and U.S. Soccer have also learn to play independently very early was largely coached by people who lacked expert knowledge of the game. Once, at created an online lesson that will be on; from the day they can walk, they a friend’s house during his senior year in college, he found a dusty videotape on required viewing for tens of thousands are kicking a ball every free moment. defensive tactics, which demonstrated how best to bend your knees and angle of volunteer coaches seeking the federa- In the process, they gain both physi- your body when confronting an oppo- nent. Lemov felt blindsided. The advice tion’s entry-level license. cal and mental dexterity. “That’s not made sense, but he’d played defense for 14 years, and he’d never heard it. “All my This training will not look familiar to always [been] the case here,” says Jared life I’d been yelled at to ‘defend,’ ” he says, “but no one had ever told me how to do it.” American adults who learned to play soc- Micklos, the Development Academy’s These days, he spends more time cer at more traditional practices—where director. “We didn’t have a lot of un- watching his own children on the soc- cer ield than he does playing. He has they ran laps to warm up structured play where kids seen them coached well, which fills him with gratitude. But he’s also seen and then waited in lines to The United could develop creativity. It them coached poorly. One of his son’s take practice shots on goal. States was a lot of tournaments coaches sometimes yelled negative, Little kids don’t need highly has never and pressure and sideline perplexing things. “He would speak in structured warm-ups, ac- produced parents and trophies.” these riddles: ‘Where should you be?’ ” cording to U.S. Soccer; they a Lionel Not knowing the answer, the boy would arrive ready to move. And Messi. In the absence of back- stand still, afraid of making a mistake. kids of all ages should be alley pickup games, soccer Lemov found the scene heartbreaking players in the United States and also familiar; he’d had the same feeling many times before, standing in touching a ball as often as must develop their skills in the back of classrooms, watching well- intentioned teachers lounder. possible, without wasting any time wait- supervised practices. That’s why high- This coach, Lemov knew, was gener- ing around. Throughout practice, players quality coaching is so essential to nur- ously donating his time and doing what he thought was right. But coaches, like need productive, quick feedback in a cul- turing world-class American players. “If ture that encourages them to take risks we want better players, we need better and make mistakes. coaches,” Micklos told me. “In order to Soccer, it’s sometimes said, is a play- get better coaches, we gotta coach them.” er’s game. The 22 people knocking a ball Oaround a big ield are bound by few rules. N THE FIRST truly cold night of the fall, a group of coaches from all Predictable patterns rarely occur. As a result, coaches can’t succeed by design- over Virginia gathered inside a rec center ing plays and ordering players to execute in Arlington to learn from Lemov. The them, as they can in, say, football. Play- scene was noticeably diferent from his ers have to make judgment calls in the teacher trainings, where audiences tend moment, on their own. to be disproportionately female and to This means that rote skills, while es- clap a lot. The assembled coaches, most sential, are not in themselves adequate. of them men, most of them wearing Adi- “The thing that makes elite players is de- das jackets, were a little less airming, a cision making,” Lemov told me. “They bit more jocular. (One had written “God” need to integrate not just how to do on his name tag.) Still, Lemov addressed something but whether, when, and why.” them with the same gentle intensity that He sees parallels to the diiculty many he uses with teachers. “I appreciate the American students have solving problems work that you do,” he said, taking pains independently. “If you give [American] to make eye contact with each coach kids a math problem and tell them how to through his small, wire-frame glasses. solve it,” he said, “they can usually do it. As he does with teachers, Lemov But if you give them a problem and it’s not asked the coaches to write up sample THE ATLANTIC MARCH 2016 19

FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF “The Case for Reparations” “This is required reading. I’ve been wondering who might ill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates. His examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory.” —TONI MORRISON “An instant classic.” —ISABEL WILKERSON, author of The Warmth of Other Suns A SPIEGEL & GRAU HARDCOVER, eBOOK, AND AUDIOBOOK @TANEHISICOATES

DISPATCHES •SKETCH lesson plans describing their practice to the other coaches. “You’re a little bit wondering what would happen,” he said, drills, predicting errors that players nervous in that situation,” he told me “if you did just one drill instead of three would be likely to make along the way later. “I’ve never been given feedback and layered on challenges within that (accidentally fouling another player, in front of 18 people.” one drill.” White agreed that might be say, or letting the ball drift too far from worth trying. Then Lemov closed with their feet), and describing the ways they Lemov described what he’d seen, the ultimate compliment: “I’d let my son would try to correct these mistakes. using words rarely strung together on a play for you.” With that, White smiled Next he played a short video of a girls’ soccer ield: “Competitive, joyful, and for the irst time all night, and the two soccer practice in which players fumbled intelligent.” White nodded, looking wor- men shook hands. through a poorly explained drill. (The ried. Lemov asked him how he thought girls had been asked to do too many the practice had gone and listened care- Amanda Ripley is a senior fellow at the things at once, a classic mistake.) He fully. Finally, he made a suggestion so Emerson Collective and the author of called on the coaches by name, just as he delicately worded that it almost seemed The Smartest Kids in the World. trains teachers to do, asking small ques- tions to check that they understood what OFF WITH THEIR BEARDS! he was teaching. “What did you notice, T.J.?” “Why didn’t the girls understand, THE REVOLUTION THAT ended the reign of beards occurred on Ryan?” He puts the question before the September 30, 331 B.C., as Alexander the Great prepared for a deci- name so that everyone feels compelled sive showdown with the Persian emperor for control of Asia. On to contemplate an answer. Lemov takes that day, he ordered his men to shave. Yet from time immemorial the mechanics of teaching deadly seri- in Greek culture, a smooth chin on a grown man had been taken ously, in hopes that his pupils will too. as a sign of efeminacy or degeneracy. What can explain this un- Before the lesson ended, he’d called on precedented command? When the commander Parmenio asked everyone, including “God.” the reason, according to the ancient historian Plutarch, Alexander replied, “Don’t you know that in battles there is nothing handier to Finally, the coaches headed outside grasp than a beard?” But there is ample cause to doubt Plutarch’s to observe one of their own, T. J. White, explanation. Stories of beard-pulling in battles were myth rather leading a practice. White explained than history. Plutarch and later historians misunderstood the order the irst drill to a group of 20 not-quite- because they neglected the most relevant fact, namely that Alexan- adolescent boys, and soon the frigid air der had dared to do what no self-respecting Greek leader had ever illed with shouts. “Over here!” “What done before: shave his face, likening himself to the demigod Her- are you doing?” “Yes!” “Back corner!” acles, rendered in painting and sculpture in the immortal splendor For an hour, they played happily, pay- of youthful, beardless nudity. Alexander wished above all, as he ing no attention to the scrum of adults told his generals before the battle, that each man would see himself watching from the sideline. as a crucial part of the mission. They would certainly see this more clearly if each of them looked more like their heroic commander. At the center of the group stood Lemov, who was busy taking notes. He — Adapted from Of Beards and Men: The Revealing History of Facial Hair, by timed how long White took to explain each new activity. Could he have been Christopher Oldstone-Moore, published by the University of Chicago Press in January quicker, so that the kids stayed engaged and spent more time playing? Lemov counted the number of quality touches on the ball per minute. Were all the kids getting lots of chances to play? He watched to see whether White had de- signed the drills in such a way that he could easily look at all the kids at once and assess whether they had mastered a given skill before moving on. As White ran his practice, he called on players to check for understanding, just as Lemov had. He gave the kids breaks, but they were short, so as to keep things moving. His voice remained calm and positive throughout. When the practice ended, White jogged over Illustration by JOE MCKENDRY THE ATLANTIC MARCH 2016 23

DISPATCHES •BUSINESS a national melancholia, culminating in 1979 with Jimmy Carter’s hand-wringing What China in what came to be known as his “mal- Could Learn From aise speech,” even though Carter never Richard Nixon used that term. In today’s China, where the government hates nothing more than The country’s growth is inexorably slowing. The wrong to express weakness, the signals may not response could make that problem much worse. be so obvious: Xi Jinping is not about to don a cardigan and ruminate about “a BY SEBASTIAN MALLABY crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.” But A N ANXIOUS SUPERPOWER during the following decade, to 3.2 per- China’s economic slowdown is nonethe- is confounded by a troubled cent a year. Even though growth of less likely to take an insidious toll on the economy. For a generation, more than 3 percent may sound robust Chinese psyche. The country’s growth its growth has been en- by today’s standards, at the time it felt has slowed from an average annual vied; now that growth is decelerating ghastly. Time magazine lamented in rate of about 10 percent in the 2000s to sharply. For decades, it has shaped and 1974 that “middle-class people are being an estimated 6.9 percent in 2015. And guided its economy via tight control of pushed into such demeaning economies although the new rate remains impres- its banks; now that lever is malfunction- as buying clothes at rummage sales”; a sive relative to that of most countries, ing. For years, it has carefully managed year or so later, its cover asked, “Can the deceleration—and hence the shock its exchange rate and limited the low of Capitalism Survive?” In September 1975, to expectations—is sharper than that capital across its borders; now the dam is after President Gerald Ford survived experienced in the United States four cracking. To anyone who keeps up with two attempts on his life in quick suc- decades ago. the news, the superpower would seem cession, an adviser named Alan Green- easy to identify: China. But for those span responded with a memo about the Indeed, China’s slowdown may be with a long memory, it could just as well “nihilism, radicalism, and violence” that especially tumultuous because its soci- be the United States of the Nixon era. seemed to grip some Americans. When ety is under acute stress. Pollution, in- New York City lirted with bankruptcy, equality, corruption, and precipitous Like China today, the United States its plight was taken as a symbol of urbanization have complicated the coun- of the 1970s experienced an abrupt broader moral and cultural decay. try’s growth miracle: A range of studies economic slowdown. Its economy had inds that economic progress has yielded expanded by 4.4 percent a year, on aver- People are happiest when they experi- surprisingly few gains in self-reported age, during the go-go ’50s and ’60s, but ence better-than-expected progress. The life satisfaction; in fact, among poor growth slowed by about one-quarter U.S. deceleration of the 1970s brought on Chinese in urban areas, life satisfaction since 1990 has declined. Slower and more balanced growth, involving a shift away from dirty manufacturing, may eventually ease some of these stresses. But the slowdown’s immediate efect will be greater insecurity, as companies that had bet aggressively on limitless growth ind themselves lumbered with unproit- able factories or empty apartment blocks. Many will lay of workers or go bust. If China’s slowdown were temporary, this might not matter much. But the country’s deceleration is likely to be- come more severe. China’s growth has been founded upon exports, yet there is a limit to how much China’s trade sur- plus can expand without triggering a protectionist backlash. China’s growth has also been powered by favorable demography, but as today’s missing chil- dren become tomorrow’s missing adults, the ratio of workers to dependents will 24 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC Illustration by JUSTIN RENTERIA

deteriorate and the demographic divi- on Americans at the start of the 1980s. commission in 1970. But the president dend will give way to a demographic tax. Most crucially of all, China’s growth has In today’s strange economic cir- found the commission’s ideas toxic. been built on an extraordinary level of investment, recently financed by an cumstances, inflation poses no imme- “There’s going to be a lot of crockery bro- extraordinary level of debt. But, as we shall see presently, this road to riches diate threat to any major nation, China ken,” a White House aide warned him: leads over a clif. China’s economic mir- acle is very likely at its end. included. But if China’s leaders follow The reformers were suggesting freer D OWNSHIFTING IS ALWAYS Nixon in resisting an inevitable slow- competition, which would end the credit painful, but politicians often make it more painful—and ultimately more down, the penalty will show up else- droughts in key patches of the economy— destabilizing—than it needs to be. That was certainly the case in the U.S. in the where. By trying to boost growth with low but also push weaker (yet politically 1970s, and Chinese leaders would do well to learn from America’s experience. The interest rates and government-directed vocal) lenders to the wall. Seldom eager irst and most important lesson is to ac- cept the slowdown gracefully. Denial and lending, China will add to its debt bur- to elevate principle above politics, Nixon resistance only make the problems worse. den, which already jumped from 134 per- decided to do nothing. In the absence of Like China’s current leadership, Richard Nixon feared the political fallout cent of GDP in 2007 to 217 percent in an intelligent reform plan, inance was from a slowdown, and so resisted hard. He bullied the Federal Reserve into the second quarter of 2014, according to left to modernize haphazardly. Excluded conjuring up a stimulus, just as China’s ruling State Council recently directed McKinsey. In itself, that ratio is manage- by regulation from the mortgage busi- the People’s Bank of China to cut inter- est rates. He propped up the defense able, but the trajectory isn’t: The debts of ness, banks experimented with foreign contractor Lockheed, much as China’s government supports large state-owned the government, and of the banks that ventures—and squandered their share- enterprises. He unleashed government- sponsored lenders to shovel credit into are efectively a part of it, are expanding holders’ capital on drunken Latin Amer- the economy—for the mortgage-inance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie at about twice the rate of the economy, ican lending. Unable to coast on cheap Mac, substitute China’s state-owned banking behemoths. according to the China watcher Michael deposits, savings-and-loan associations Inevitably, Nixon’s efforts to force Pettis—which is to say that debt is piling tried to compensate with racier invest- growth above its natural level stoked inflation, to which the president re- up much faster than the country’s ability ments. The resulting savings-and-loan sponded with almost-communist con- trol measures: A new Price Commission, to repay it. Like the U.S. four decades ago, crisis would eventually cost U.S. tax- led by Donald Rumsfeld, tried to freeze prices by diktat, drawing unenforceable China will discover that a reality-defying payers more than $100 billion. distinctions between apples and apple- sauce, popped and unpopped corn. Not stimulus only makes matters worse. China today is in a similar quandary. surprisingly, the controls cracked after a short period; inlation resumed, and The second American lesson for Caps on deposit interest rates allow the rest of the 1970s were a staglation- ary nightmare. In sum, by denying the China concerns inancial reform. Again, banks to vacuum up cheap capital and inevitability of the slowdown, Nixon helped set the country on a path to this was a challenge Nixon refused to lend it to favored companies; if the gov- double-digit inflation, wiping out sav- ings and eventually forcing the Fed to face squarely, even though most econo- ernment messes with this system, much respond with extremely tough medicine, which inlicted back-to-back recessions mists urged him to be bold. crockery will be broken. But By the time of his inaugu- China’s the status quo is unsustain- ration, America’s outdated society able. The artificially low re- system of capping bank- is already turns to savers represent a deposit rates—the same sort under vast hidden tax on Chinese of system that still exists in acute families, crimping consump- China—had been rendered stress. tion and forcing China to rely dysfunctional, and for rea- unhealthily on investment sons that contemporary spending to power growth. China watchers would quickly recognize. And because politics determines who Once upon a time, the caps had usefully gets the cheap loans that are made possi- forced down banks’ cost of capital, allow- ble by capped deposit rates, capital lows ing them to make cheap loans to the to political cronies rather than to the industries that fueled growth. But as the innovators who have the best ideas. The U.S. economy developed and the inan- result is a machine for expropriating sav- cial system grew more sophisticated, ers and then squandering the proceeds. new types of savings vehicles sprang Sooner rather than later, China needs up, ofering market-linked interest pay- a inancial system that generates fewer ments; because those market rates were bad loans, makes better use of savings, more attractive, savers voted with their and frees consumers to become the wallets. As deposits migrated from banks engine of the nation’s economic growth. to upstart rivals, small businesses, which The inal American lesson for China relied on bank loans, found credit hard concerns the exchange rate. In the post- to come by. Home buyers faced a similar war era, the United States pegged its credit crunch. currency to gold, much as in recent years Acknowledging the case for change, China has mostly pegged its currency to Nixon appointed a financial-reform the dollar. But in August 1971, as part THE ATLANTIC MARCH 2016 25

•STUDY OF STUDIES Such judgments can defy logic. Subjects play- DISPATCHES Face Value ing a trust game invested more money with a player of his attempt to boost growth, Nixon Why we’re terrible at reading faces— who had a trustworthy abandoned the gold link, allowing the yet quick to judge them face than with one who dollar to fall precipitously against the didn’t—even when the currencies of America’s trading partners. BY NAOMI SHARP two players had the China now seems tempted to pursue a same reputation [7]. cautious version of this strategy, and for T HE TRUTH was We might scof at the Another study reported similar reasons: Devaluing a currency written all over her ancient Greek belief in that jurors needed less and thereby boosting exports is seduc- face. The eyes are the physiognomy—assessing evidence to convict a tive. But exchange-rate regimes work window to the soul. From character on the basis person with an un- best when a currency is either truly our clichés, you would of facial features—but trustworthy face [8]. And ixed to a peg or allowed to loat freely; think that we could read we unwittingly practice a researcher focusing the middle ground is treacherous. If a faces like they were … it daily. Recent research on the Israeli-Palestinian country begins devaluation but stops well, open books. In fact, shows that while there’s conflict found that a short of allowing its currency to reach the skill has more in practically no evidence Palestinian peace ofer- its natural level, investors will expect common with dancing, that faces reveal charac- ing was more likely to the currency’s value to fall further, and or writing confessional ter, we nonetheless be- be accepted by Jewish will therefore withdraw money from the poetry: People tend to Israeli respondents if it country. As that happens, their expecta- was attributed to a politi- tions may well become self-fulilling. to do it. cian with “babyfacedness” Most of us can’t dis- Nixon thought he could follow de- contradiction. A person’s valuation with a new, reixed exchange tinguish between cer- face may not reflect her rate. But his efforts failed embarrass- ingly, compounding the volatility of the contextual clues. In U.S. Army War College dollar. Likewise, China discovered last one study, participants summer that a modest depreciation can create expectations of more deprecia- whether faces in photos tion, triggering a burst of capital light. A were showing pain or renewed exodus of money in November sexual pleasure about a suggested that the danger was still pres- ent. The currency turmoil in January watched silent videos underscored the point. of the same person Nixon’s setbacks in the 1970s serve to faking pain, they couldn’t features seem more appear competent are remind Westerners not to judge others tell which was which. A trustworthy; those with too arrogantly. But at the same time, they computer was correct lower eyebrows appear CEOs of successful com- stand as a warning. When navigating big 85 percent of the time [2]. more dominant [5]. In panies [12]. This makes a economic transitions, halhearted policy Computers were also bet- another study, people certain sense. If everyone adjustments are usually inadequate, ter at telling that a person were ready to decide assumes strong-chinned and the costs of timidity will be more was smiling out of mild whether an unfamiliar Stanley is an assertive than just inancial. In the U.S. the costs frustration rather than face should be trusted person, he’s more likely included a decline of public trust in institu- genuine delight [3]. after looking at it for just to become one. Perhaps tions, a spate of national self-questioning, 200 milliseconds. Even by treating others as and eventually an embrace of radical And yet, as bad as we when given a chance to though their face reveals remedies: aggressive deregulation, mon- are at reading expres- look longer, they rarely their character, we etarism, deicit-fueling tax cuts. If China sions, we jump to all changed their mind [6]. prompt them to become cannot navigate its deceleration more kinds of conclusions the people we assumed deftly, Xi’s successor may one day be based on people’s faces. them to be. reduced to addressing his countrymen about lost national conidence. Perhaps THE STUDIES: [3] Hoque et al., “Exploring [6] Todorov et al., “Evaluating Enemy” (Political Communica- a Chinese magazine will even pose the Temporal Patterns in Classify- Faces on Trustworthiness After tion, July 2012) question “Can Communism Survive?” [1] Hughes and Nicholson, ing Frustrated and Delighted Minimal Time Exposure” (Social [10] Olivola et al., “Social Attri- “Sex Diferences in the Smiles” (IEEE Transactions on Cognition, Dec. 2009) butions From Faces Bias Human Sebastian Mallaby is a senior fellow at Assessment of Pain Versus A ective Computing, July– [7] Rezlescu et al., “Unfakeable Choices” (Trends in Cognitive the Council on Foreign Relations and Sexual Pleasure Facial Expres- Sept. 2012) Facial Configurations Afect Sciences, Nov. 2014) the author of a forthcoming biography of sions” (Journal of Social, [4] Todorov et al., “Social Attri- Strategic Choices in Trust [11] Mazur and Mueller, Alan Greenspan. Evolutionary, and Cultural butions From Faces” (Annual Games With or Without Infor- “Channel Modeling: From West Psychology, Dec. 2008) Review of Psychology, 2015) mation About Past Behavior” Point Cadet to General” (Public [2] Bartlett et al., “Automatic [5] Oosterhof and Todorov, (PLOS One, March 2012) Administration Review, March– Decoding of Facial Move- “The Functional Basis of Face [8] Porter et al., “Dangerous April 1996) ments Reveals Deceptive Pain Evaluation” (Proceedings of Decisions” (Psychology, Crime [12] Graham et al., “A Corpo- Expressions” (Current Biology, the National Academy of Sci- & Law, May 2010) rate Beauty Contest” (Manage- March 2014) ences, Aug. 2008) [9] Maoz, “The Face of the ment Science, forthcoming) 26 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC Illustration by MARCO GORAN ROMANO

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DISPATCHES In the future, this technology could go beyond e-mail filtering to also flag text messages, interactions on social media, messages on dating sites, even years-long “friendships.” Aaron Emigh, ZapFraud’s interim CEO, told me he’d stopped a woman from wiring money to a “fellow widow” she’d met on a Christian site for grieving people. He hopes that as natural-language analytics evolves, such warnings can be wholly automated. •TECHNOLOGY 2 Truth Filters A similar approach could help The Future combat fraud by flagging false state- of Fraud-Busting ments on social media. (Disinformation creates opportunities for con artists to How we’ll stop scams before they occur proit. In 2015, for instance, a scammer posted a fake Bloomberg article with BY MARIA KONNIKOVA news of a Twitter buyout ofer—moving markets and making a little cash in the H UMANS ARE startlingly bad 1 Suspicious Story Lines process.) CORBIS at detecting fraud. Even when Spam ilters are supposed to block we’re on the lookout for signs e-mail scams from ever reaching us, but Kalina Bontcheva, a computer sci- of deception, studies show, criminals have learned to circumvent entist who researches natural-language our accuracy is hardly better than chance. them by personalizing their notes with processing at the University of Shef- information gleaned from the Internet field, in England, is leading a project Technology has opened the door to and by grooming victims over time. that examines streams of social data new and more pervasive forms of fraud: to identify rumors and estimate their Americans lose an estimated $50 bil- In response, a company called Zap- veracity by analyzing the semantics, lion a year to con artists around the Fraud is turning to natural-language cross-referencing information with world, according to the Financial Fraud analytics: Instead of lagging key words, trusted sources (such as PubMed, for Research Center at Stanford University. it looks for narrative patterns symptom- medical information), identifying the But because computers aren’t subject to atic of fraud. For instance, a message point of origin and pattern of dissemi- the foibles of emotion and what we like could contain a statement of surprise, nation, and the like. Bontcheva is part of to call “intuition,” they can also help the mention of a sum of money, and a a research collaboration called Pheme, protect us. Here’s how leading fraud re- call to action. “Those are the hallmark which plans to lag misleading tweets searchers, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, expressions of one particular fraud and posts and classify them by severity: and computer scientists think technol- e-mail,” Markus Jakobsson, the com- speculation, controversy, misinforma- ogy can be put to work to fight fraud pany’s founder, told me. “There’s a tre- tion, or disinformation. however it occurs—in person, online, or mendous number of [spam] e-mails, but over the phone. a small number of story lines.” 3 In-the-Moment Warnings Picture yourself walking down the street when a man approaches and asks for bus fare; he says he lost his wal- let and needs to get home. Right away, your phone buzzes with a notiication: Stay away. He’s a fraud. The same voice has been asking for money in differ- ent locations all week. Such a possibil- ity sounds far-fetched, but your phone A BRIEF CIRCA 300 B.C.: In the earli- 1496: A 20-year-old 1704: A Frenchman claiming to 1863: President Lincoln CHRONICLE est fraud attempt on record, Michelangelo forges an be a native of Formosa (modern- signs the False Claims OF FRAUD a Greek merchant tries to sink ancient sculpture of Cupid day Taiwan) publishes a book Act to counter the sale his ship and collect insurance. and sells it to a cardinal. describing made-up customs like of fraudulent supplies drinking viper’s blood for breakfast. to the Union Army. HISTORY 3 0 0 B.C. 1500 1700 1800 1850 Illustration by ALVARO DOMINGUEZ 28 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

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DISPATCHES •TECHNOLOGY company already gathers information in fraud can also be funneled directly 6 Enhanced Lie Detection WIKIMEDIA/WASHINGTON GREEN FINE ART/SHUTTERSTOCK from all the phones in its network, and to potential victims. AARP has been re- No method of fraud prevention several tech irms are developing voice- viewing recordings of hundreds of fraud- will be perfect. “You can put seven biometrics software that can identify ulent phone calls obtained by the FBI in locks on your door, ingerprint technol- individuals and even catch emotional order to analyze the persuasive tactics ogy, a retinal display. And you forget to patterns that may indicate deceit. used by con artists, and then teach- close the window,” Moran Cerf, a pro- ing its members about those tactics. fessor of business and neuroscience at “It’s not far of that our smartphone For instance, fraudsters use some- Northwestern University and a former or watch is listening in to all of our con- thing known as “phantom fixation”— hacker, told me. “The only way to pre- versations and understanding them,” encouraging you to focus on a huge vent fraud completely is to eliminate Emigh told me. “It opens up the possibil- future gain that far outweighs any humans from the process. They are the ity of employing [fraud-prevention] tech- investment you might need to make in weakest link.” nology across lots of in-person domains, the present. Studies show that telling not just e-mail.” Imagine, he said, that a people about such techniques can help When scammers do make it through fraud-prevention company has enough them recognize a hoax. our safeguards, new lie-detection tech- data on your behavior—where you are, niques could prove useful after the what you’re doing (an increasingly likely 5 Minority Report for Fraud fact. Over the past few years, methods reality, given the ever-expanding capa- Perhaps one day we’ll be able to that involve analyzing fleeting facial bilities of cellphones and Americans’ identify and block not just scams but expressions or screening for a certain willingness to trade personal privacy the scammers themselves—before they pheromone associated with stress have for convenience), and so on—to be able even target their irst victim. shown promising results. to give a heads-up anytime someone tries to take advantage of you. “If you’re Each year, the Association of Cer- The most widely anticipated ap- an elderly couple who gets a panicked tified Fraud Examiners conducts a proach, however, involves watching call from a hospital in Mexico that your study of known scammers. It looks at what goes on inside the brain. At the grandson is in a coma, it’s red-lagged demographic information, distinguish- University of Pennsylvania, an associ- because he’s not in Mexico,” Emigh said. ing characteristics, and patterns of ap- ate professor of psychiatry named Dan- We would have a constant spy watching proach in order to gain insights on the iel Langleben studies the ways in which us—but one that does its best to act as types of people most likely to commit neural activity can signify lying. Langle- our friend and protector. fraud in the future. In 50 years, Bruce ben hypothesizes that suppressing the Dorris, the organization’s vice presi- truth requires additional cognitive op- 4 Spotting Trends dent and program director, told me, “I erations that can be detected by fMRI. Another approach comes from Big wouldn’t be surprised if you could iso- He also looks for so-called concealed Data—combing statistics to ind patterns late precisely who those individuals are.” information, which indicates that peo- that should tip us of to fraud. By analyz- ple know something they shouldn’t: ing all the companies that sell a certain As our understanding of fraud Does your brain scan show that you rec- kind of product, for instance, you could evolves, we might one day be able to de- ognize a fraud victim, for instance, after flag anything anomalous—one firm’s velop predictive algorithms that could you said you don’t know him? In a forth- sudden spike in canceled contracts, for identify would-be con artists based on coming paper, Langleben and his team example—that might indicate sketchy patterns of behavior. Or perhaps we’ll report that the fMRI-based method out- activity. The method is similar to the use brain scans. Some scientists claim performed traditional polygraphy by at one employed for credit-card fraud that brain scans can reveal psychopathic least 14 percent. alerts—if you don’t usually travel abroad tendencies. What if we could similarly and suddenly buy groceries in Panama, identify characteristics of likely con “There’s one caveat to all of this,” your transaction is flagged—but on a artists, and then intervene before they Langleben said. “What’s really impor- much bigger scale. A company called cause trouble? tant is how you ask the question. A Sift Science is attempting something lawed questioning technique can’t be along these lines; it uses proprietary “It’s possible that 50 years out,” Emigh helped by a fancy scanner.” algorithms to analyze data trends and told me, “authorities will be able to igure discern patterns of possible fraud. out the plausibility of fraud and identify Maria Konnikova is the author, most potential bad actors. There’s also a pos- recently, of The Conidence Game: Information gleaned from patterns sibility, of course, that we decide that’s Why We Fall for It … Every Time, and a not the world we want to live in.” contributing writer for The New Yorker. 1920: Charles Ponzi 192 : An Austro- 1989: Nigerian fraudsters 2015 206 : Neuroscientists collects about $15 mil- Hungarian con man send messages via telex to learn how to identify lion in eight months known as “The Count” British businessmen, seek- 199 : British police arrest characteristics of through his fraudulent sells the Eifel Tower to ing a small investment for John Myatt for forging paint- investment company. a scrap-metal dealer. a huge future payof. ings by Monet, van Gogh, brain scans. Matisse, and other masters. 1900 1950 2000 PREDICTIONS 2 0 5 0 30 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

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DISPATCHES •WORKS IN PROGRESS 4 1, 2, 3: RATP-ING-ISABELLE BONNET; 4: DUBASSY/SHUTTERSTOCK; 5: WIKIMEDIA; 6: JOEL ROBINE/AFP/GETTY; 7: MICHEL SPINGLER/AP; 8: ISOCHRON FROM APUR, MÉTRO-LINE INFORMATION FROM SOCIÉTÉ DU GRAND PARIS; 9 (RENDERING : KENGO KUMA AND ASSOCIATES Tying ParisBack trafic. Link business districts, Together airports, and universities. Ease social ills by knitting Can expanding the Métro unite the city together the French capi- and its troubled banlieues? tal’s isolated and troubled banlieues, much as the initial BY HENRY GRABAR Métro construction 5 did for the outlying districts of S EVERAL STORIES station. Seventy men on the Paris proper at the dawn of world’s largest fresh-produce beneath the streets world’s slowest train to Paris. the 20th century. market, a handful of univer- of the 17th ar- sities, most of the region’s rondissement, a tunnel- Here begins the most Once the drill now inching public housing, and several boring machine 1 25 feet in ambitious new subway its way underneath the 17th small cities with population diameter is grinding through project in the Western world. arrondissement has reached densities higher than that of the wet Parisian earth. The extension of Line 14 is the existing Line 14 terminus, Paris itself. Not even one in After a few hours of gains, but the first leg of the Grand it will reverse course and five of the region’s residents engineers pause the drilling Paris Express, a $25 billion head—like all future subway live inside the French capital’s long enough for the machine expansion of the century-old construction in Paris—back boundaries—a lower ratio of to lock together the curved Paris Métro 4 . By the time toward the suburbs. Those core population to suburban trapezoids of concrete that the project is completed in suburbs don’t look much like population than in London, form the tunnel wall 2 . Dig, 2030, the system will have their American equivalents. Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, build, repeat. The cycle gained four lines, 68 stations, Europe’s largest business Hamburg, Milan, or Rome. continues through the night, and more than 120 miles of district (La Défense) lies every night, with the whole track. Planners estimate that outside Paris, as do the The region’s transporta- sunken work site 3 proceed- the build-out will boost the tion system hasn’t caught up ing south 40 feet a day to- entire network’s ridership by to this reality. The founding ward the Gare Saint-Lazare, almost 40 percent. engineer of the Métro, Ful- Paris’s second-busiest rail gence Bienvenüe, is said to The goals: Reduce the have endeavored to place a smog-choked region’s car station within 400 meters of every point in Paris—a goal 1 nearly realized within the 3 2 32 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

6 9 8 GRAND PARIS 7 EXPRESS MÉTRO EXPANSION Estimated completion date EXISTING 2019 2022 2025 2030 Paris city limits The area within 45 minutes The area within 45 minutes in 2005 began 7 , will for of Clichy-sous-Bois via of Clichy-sous-Bois via the first time find central public transportation in 2013 public transportation in 2030 Paris within a 45-minute train ride 8 . The town of city limits. But beyond the RER commuter rail, protrude will run north and east of Saint-Denis, the site of the Boulevard Périphérique, the like spokes from a hub. Train Paris, through Seine-Saint- standof between police and ring road that bounds Paris, travel between neighboring Denis, the poorest of the the terrorists who struck the tracks of the Métro and Parisian suburbs often re- 96 departments in France. Paris in November, will be its long-distance partner, the quires a long and ineficient Among French cities with at home to the project’s larg- journey into and then back least 50,000 people, six of est train station. Designed out of Paris. To a strap- the seven with the highest by the Japanese architect hanger, suburban Paris is a percentage of foreign-born Kengo Kuma, the junction is series of islands linked to the residents are in Seine-Saint- expected to handle 250,000 Parisian mainland but not to Denis. Residents of Clichy- passengers a day 9 . one another. sous-Bois 6 , where the riots that swept the region Benoît Quessard, an Three of the new lines urban planner for the local government, told me that 5 he sees the expansion as not merely “an economic wager but also a social one.” In this sense, it will test an old Parisian belief about the Métro conferring, beyond convenience, a kind of citizenship on its riders. In 1904, four years after the first line opened, the writer Jules Romains predicted that the system would be a “living, fluid cement that will succeed in holding men together.” THE ATLANTIC MARCH 2016 33

Te CULTURE FILE THE OMNIVORE Why We Still Miss Jon Stewart The Daily Show host, Trevor Noah, is smooth and charming, but he has yet to ind an edge that’s equal to the political moment. BY JAMES PARKER I T’S A PSYCHIC LAW of the American workplace: neo-fascist bouncy castle, began to rise wobblingly over the By the time you give your notice, you’ve already left. country? Kick out the Mexicans. Ban the Muslims. Mock the You’ve checked out, and for the days or weeks that disabled. Restore America. He’s saying what everybody thinks, remain, a kind of placeholder-you, a you-cipher, we’re told. Indeed he is: Trump isn’t a demagogue; he’s a one- will be doing your job. It’s a law that applies equally man mob. Now, right now, was when we needed Stewart, our great perforator of mental tyrannies. Who else could pick out to dog walkers, accountants, and spoof TV anchor- the semitones in the hot comic men. Jon Stewart announced drone of the Donald’s voice? Who else could puncture the that he was quitting The Daily ideological bloat? Who else could parse this phenomenon Show in February 2015, but for us as it traveled from a joke to beyond a joke to … ? he stuck around until early So ine then. Go. Say good- August, and those last months night, Jon Stewart, and let’s have a look at the new guy. had a restless, frazzled, long- What’s his name? Trevor Noah. Who? Okay, he’s black, lingering feel. A smell of a 32-year-old comedian from South Africa, a sharp cultural ashes was in the air. The host operator in his own country (apparently) but a sweet naïf himself suddenly looked quite in this one. Hell of a gamble, Comedy Central. I salute you. old: beaky, pique-y, hollow- And at irst, yes, it was pleasant to see young Trevor smiling cheeky. For 16 years he had away and deeply dimpling in the Stewart seat, the seat that shaken his bells, jumped and had lately grown gray hairs. He was fresh and he was sleek. jangled in his little host’s The show’s format—the mono- logue delivered to the cam- chair, the only man on TV era, then the segments with the correspondents, then the who could caper while sitting interview—was unchanged, behind a desk. Flash back to his irst episode as the Daily Show host, succeeding Craig Kilborn: January 11, 1999, Stewart with loppy, luscious black hair, twitching in a new suit (“I feel like this is my bar mitzvah … I have a rash like you wouldn’t believe.”) while he interviews Michael J. Fox. Was he leaving us now? Really? Deserting us just as the gargantuan shadow of the Trump campaign, that 34 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC Photograph by JAKE CHESSUM

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and the writing hadn’t sufered appreciably since The vowels and turtle pronouncements of Mitch the handover. The idea seemed to be that Noah, Culture File McConnell; the mean, back-of-the-classroom while coyly advertising his outsider status (“Black snickering of George W. Bush. Behind the news Friday—or, as we call it back in Africa, Friday”), THE OMNIVORE stuf there was a submerged 16-year-long stand- would simply and smoothly channel the geist of up act going on about Stewart’s life, his frailty, his The Daily Show. In nuking aging body. And how he could pounce on a guest! the news- And he was handling it, bless him, handling givers and Take January 24, 2012: Elizabeth Warren, who the material, distributing rays of easy charm. petarding is running against the handsome pickup driver The Trump gags sounded good in that clipped, the pundit Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race, is musical South African accent, and they even had class, Jon on The Daily Show. Stewart asks a question about a new global vibe: Trump as “the perfect African Stewart tax cuts and Warren (click, whirr) goes into her president.” And that little TV blandishment that became stump speech: “I grew up in an America”—pufs of Stewart could never quite get comfortable with, one of them. mist from the rhetorical atomizer—“that was still the “We’ll be right back” at the end of a segment? investing in the middle class. That was the principal It tripped of Noah’s tongue. His body language function of Washington and how it spent money … was relaxed; where the old guy had hunched over It’s how kids like me, the daughter of some, you his desk, with satirical voltage crawling hairily know, guy who sold fencing, ended up—” And, as out of his wrist-holes, the kid sat back and rode Warren is about to say “as a professor,” Stewart it. Triumph. Come to my arms, my beaming boy! interrupts, full of faux concern: “You didn’t know his name?!” It’s exquisite, Warren’s suddenly Slowly, though, it began to sink in: the dimen- revealed boiled-in-the-bag folksiness, and behind sion of our loss. Jon Stewart was gone—our sanity, that the absurd image of her father the anonymous our balance. This had of course been the 10-ton fencing guy, who sired her and then ran of to sell irony of his career: In nuking the news-givers, more fences. There is a laugh, and then a delayed, petarding the pundit class, he became one of deeper laugh as Warren slows down and inally them—became, in fact, the pundit/news-giver stops. Pop goes the platitude; political speech has for a generation of viewers. As far back as 1969, collapsed, and now the conversation can begin. Renata Adler described “that natural creator of discontinuous, lunatic constituencies, the media.” Trevor Noah is good; he’s very good. He’s In 1976, Paddy Chayefsky’s Network raised this never in a lap or a dither, and when he wanders perception to the level of prophecy, with a rained- (as he occasionally does) into a comedic dead on, mad-as-hell Howard Beale heralding the spot, there’s no fear in his eyes. I’m still enjoy- age of the crank with a microphone, the Great ing the way his taut, spherical head and sunny Splintering and the end of the singular, authori- personality occupy the space left by the raddled tative, Cronkitic voice. In 1994, the British show Stewart. His impression of sleepy Ben Carson— The Day Today, a fake news program, parodied eyes shut, head back, murmuring in a kind of with surreal brutality the style of the news, the intellectual narcolepsy—is tremendous. When noise of the news, news itself as a production. he and correspondent Hasan Minhaj do a bit on TV news should have been impossible after The conservative Islamophobia—“White ISIS,” as they Day Today, but naturally it wasn’t. call its adherents, or “WISIS”—the fact that both men have brown skin gives the gag, and the anger Reverence for the news, however, news-idolatry, behind the gag, a planetary resonance. was eroding steadily—to the point where, by 1999 and the start of Stewart’s tenure on The Daily Show, It took time, don’t forget, lots of time, for Jon the only type of news one could take seriously was Stewart to build his persona and his audience the fundamentally unserious. And so satire, which on The Daily Show—night after night and week appears to be hocking loogies from the margins but after week of showing up and applying himself in fact takes its bearings from a higher authority, to events, pulling his faces, delivering his lines. came blushingly to occupy the middle. There was He wasn’t always a heavyweight. Trevor Noah, Jon Stewart on CNN’s Crossire in 2004, smack currently a very able lightweight, needs time too. in the moral center, sitting like a barbed lotus But he won’t get any. As a culture, we’re not about between the blah on the right (Tucker Carlson) to nurture this talent, to give it room to grow. Our and the blah on the left (Paul Begala), destroying patience was exhausted long ago, by some other them both with divine satirical perspective and guy. We’re going to pass judgment and move on. insisting all the while that he was just a comedian. There’s a reason Simon Cowell is so rich. Impress us today or get thee hence. So it comes to this: It’s Stewart was a virtuosic performer, super- now or never, Trevor. nimble of tongue. His show had institutional memory—his characters (Jersey Guy, Jewish James Parker is an Atlantic contributing editor. Granny) and his impressions: the mud-bubble 36 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

IN HER OWN WORDS FOR THE FIRST TIME A MOTHER REFLECTS ON AN UNIMAGINABLE TRAGEDY “[Sue Klebold] was an ordinary suburban mother before Columbine . . . but in the wake of that tragedy, she found the strength to extract wisdom from her devastation . . . The ultimate message of this book is terrifying: you may not know your own children, and, worse yet, your children may be unknowable to you. The stranger you fear may be your own son or daughter.” –Andrew Solomon, FROM HIS INTRODUCTION FILLED WITH HARD-WON WISDOM AND COMPASSION, A MOTHER’S RECKONING IS A POWERFUL AND HAUNTING BOOK THAT SHEDS LIGHT ON ONE OF THE MOST PRESSING ISSUES OF OUR TIME. LEARN MORE ABOUT SUE’S CHARITABLE GIVING VISIT AMOTHERSRECKONING.COM CROWN

BOOKS everything. Rilke’s poem figures prominently in his book and he analyzes it skillfully, though Critic Without a Cause he puts it in the company of the chic stunts of Marina Abramović. He describes its theme as Criticism can be fun, A. O. Scott promises, genially the “momentarily disruptive impact of art on the evading serious cultural debate. equilibrium of everyday consciousness.” Scott is a cultivated man—one of his chapters consists BY LEON WIESELTIER in not much more than a run through Aristotle, Pope, Keats, Shelley, Arnold, Emerson, Addison “Y O U M U S T C H A NG E YO U R L I F E .” Those are DeWitt, R. P. Blackmur, Elizabeth Hardwick, the severe and startling words that conclude a Robert Warshow, and Susan Sontag—and he renowned sonnet Rilke wrote in 1908, after an yields to nobody in his belief in the power of encounter with an ancient marble torso in the art. But the implications of its power make him Louvre. They suggest that an experience of art is jittery. Surely there is nothing momentary about the aftermath of the revelation in Rilke’s poem. akin to a conversion experience, that an encoun- And there is nothing “hyperbolic,” as Scott says there is, about the poet’s imperative to alter one’s ter with art confers not only ravishments but also obligations, that a sense life, at least not for the poet. of the beauty of existence entails a sense of the gravity of existence. Even “People say this kind of thing all the time,” Scott explains. “Magazines publish surveys in which the most transient of impressions may be a summons—a call to a commit- celebrities are asked to name the book, ilm, or song that changed their lives.” Indeed they do. Why ment, to a spirit of seriousness about what is at stake in a life. It is an exor- is this important? Who cares what celebrities do? The vulgarization of “you must change your life” bitant demand. into the American pastime of personal growth may be less an indictment of Rilke and his preferred Rilke, of course, was an athlete of transformations and an addict of trans- state of concentration, and more an indictment of us and our preferred state of dispersal. When it igurations; the distinction between feeling and swooning was sometimes lost comes to the question of what bearing the lower realities of American culture should have upon its on him; and he was comically without humor. For a certain contrary impious higher ambitions, Scott regularly acquiesces in too much. “Culture now lives almost entirely under temperament, the commandment at the end of “Archaic Torso of Apollo” will the rubric of consumption,” he proclaims. Speak for yourself, friend. The ight for the integrity of seem obnoxious, the pomp of an aesthete. (“Rilke was a jerk,” wrote Berryman aesthetic experience is not over. with a vengeful hilarity.) Still, correcting for all the programmatic ejacula- tions of the Rilkean spirit, there is something inescapable about the poem’s injunction. It represents a lasting challenge to lazy habits of demystiication, and to the contemporary idols of irony and charm. Perhaps there is nothing ridiculous, after all, about grandeur and consecration and transcendence and a single view of the world. Perhaps one should not return unchanged from a museum. Perhaps a decision does have to be made. A. O. Scott is of many minds about this, as he is of many minds about 38 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC Illustration by DOUG C HAYKA

Scott is not a ighter, he is a man on the scene. The set about investigating the fundamental nature And so he continues, in the leveling voice of the Culture File of taste”), as is profundity. In light from intel- wised-up idealist that characterizes the whole lectual heaviness, Scott arrives at intelligent of his book: A take is an weightlessness. Every notion is lipped this way opinion that and that; the answer to every question is yes and Relatively few are likely to heed the instruc- has no no; the proliferating examples from all the arts tions Rilke inferred … Honestly, who has the aspiration to (Scott is vain about his range) overwhelm the time? Schoolchildren, tour-group visitants a belief, an observations that they are designed to illustrate; disgorged from buses, solitary students, impression the general impression is one of an uncontrol- honeymooners, and the handful of actual that never lable articulateness. Scott does not think his Parisians wandering the corridors will no hardens into thoughts; he convenes them. There is not a sign doubt resume whatever lives they were lead- a position. of struggle anywhere. ing before they came. BETTER LIVING The interest of Scott’s book lies not in its And so they should. Rilke did, too. After he left THROUGH contribution to the solution of the problems it the Louvre, he continued to eat breakfast, lunch, CRITICISM: treats, but in its exempliication of our moment in and dinner. The challenge that he issued in his American culture and American cultural journal- poem was, rather, an inward challenge—whether HOW TO THINK ism. It is an accurate document of the discourse the refreshment of the senses and the reine- ABOUT ART, of “takes.” This movie, that book, this poem, that ment of the mind that attends an experience PLEASURE, painting, this record, that show: Make a smart of art can be made somehow to last, so that BEAUTY, AND remark and move on. A take is an opinion that one comes to live more significantly in the TRUTH has no aspiration to a belief, an impression that commonplace, at a higher plane of conscious- A. O. SCOTT never hardens into a position. Its lightness is its ness. Honestly, who does not have the time? Penguin appeal. It is provisional, evanescent, a move in But such a duty discomits Scott. He honors the a game, an accredited shallowness, a bulwark heights but gladly descends from them, all the against a pause in the conversation. A take is while wondering anxiously whether something expected not to be true but to be interesting, and a little less sublime, a more easeful ideal of the even when it is interesting it makes no trouble- engagement with art, does not shrivel him into a some claim upon anybody’s attention. Another fan or a consumer. The anxiety is fully warranted. take will quickly follow, and the silence that is a mark of perplexity, of research and relection, B ETTER LIVING THROUGH CRITICISM: will be mercifully kept at bay. A take asks for no How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, ailiation. It requires no commitment. and Truth—the title is a kind of reverse trigger warning. It ofers friendly assurance to Better Living Through Criticism is a triumph anyone who might be daunted by its vast abstrac- of the nonailiated and the noncommittal. Near tions. It is a promise of fun, which may be the only the end of the book, Scott declares about his fel- form in which we are now prepared to take our low critics that “whether we’re cheerleading or intellectual medicine. Scott’s subject is the nature calling bullshit, our assessment has to proceed of criticism, which is his profession (he is a movie from a sincere and serious commitment.” The critic for The New York Times) and his vocation, commitment that he has in mind is unclear: He and he broaches his subject, which is as ancient as seems to be referring to nothing more speciic Aristotle and Longinus, with a preening account than a faith in the universal possibility of art, so of his Twitter war with Samuel L. Jackson about that the critic may become more inclusive in his The Avengers. As I say, fun. search for beauty. It is an excellent scruple, but it is exceedingly general. It is a commitment that is About criticism Scott has various things to the opposite of a choice. When it comes to mak- say—“that it is an art form in its own right; that ing choices more concretely among works and it exists to enhance the glory of the other arts; styles and doctrines and ideals, Scott is like Isabel that it is an impossible activity; that it is neces- Archer: He is a little on the side of everything. sary and vital to human self-understanding; that “Choosing is the primal and inevitable mistake it can never die; that it is in perpetual danger of of criticism,” he asserts. In its context—he is extinction”—but his thinking vanishes into a discussing the querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, jovial blur of local perceptions and easy para- the conlict between the ideology of the old and doxes. The reader will learn many things about the ideology of the new, and arguing wisely that criticism but inally not much. These pages are neither position should be dismissed—Scott’s full of big ideas chatted away. Philosophy is sentence is understandable, but in the context triled with (“Immanuel Kant, having nothing of his entire book it is a damning admission, a better to do in the Prussian city of Königsberg, gafe of conviction. THE ATLANTIC MARCH 2016 39

S C OT T’S AVER SION to philosophical The sense of intellectual urgency. Why are staunchly and aesthetic commitment; his genial Culture File held and carefully defended principles “pseudo- refusal to take any side in the quarrels principles”? They may be wrong, but the fervor over fundamentals; his merry satisfaction with a BOOKS with which they are espoused is not what proves life of sampling and commenting, of “graz[ing] or disproves them. Perhaps it is their speciicity among the objects”; his habit of correcting high A sense of that counts against them, their exclusion of other thought with the social and economic lowdown correctness principles; but this exclusion is not coerced, it (his ilm reviews are often compromised by the about one’s is reasoned, and anyway every principle does same winking worldliness)—all of this begins to considered not go with every other principle and so every look like the anti-intellectualism of an otherwise opinions is principle cannot be right. And “diicult dialecti- earnest intellectual. Scott ofers many alibis for not mental cal work” is hardly antithetical to “allegiance.” his methodological shiftiness. He deplores, for dogmatism— Where is the crime in partisanship? Intellectually example, “our stubborn inability to see things it is mental honest attachment is as common as intellectually as they are”: self-esteem. dishonest detachment. There are parties, more- over, to which it is an honor to belong. A sense of Attempts to direct the practice of criticism, correctness about one’s considered opinions is to discipline our attention in order to pre- not mental dogmatism—it is mental self-esteem, vent or minimize error, typically force an un- the conidence that comes from having gone to comfortable choice: we are instructed to look the trouble of rigorously defending a view, and at the shape or the substance, the outward it is thoroughly compatible with an awareness of aspect or the inner, often invisible core, the one’s fallibility. vessel or the essential stuf that has illed it up. Scott describes criticism as a realm of “intu- Scott does not grasp that the fullness of ition, judgment, and conjecture,” but he has a vision he seeks may occur not before the work dubious gift for judgment that shirks choice. His of analysis and absorption, but only after it. A likes and his dislikes are never conining, or all-in; irst look is a literal look. The controversies of they do not inhibit his lighthearted promiscuity, interpretation—choices about sense and meaning his Arts and Leisure roaming, which in his pages and value and truth—are what reveal a thing in looks merely like curiosity and an appetite for his all its aspects. Believing is one of the conditions profession. As for the sciences, modesty is hardly of seeing. “Ordinary objects” are never “simply all they teach: They progress by defying the limits themselves,” except for secular mysticism of the of what is known, and they owe their excitement sort that Rilke pursued: “What if we are here just in part to the immodesty of the astonishments for saying: house, bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit that they claim to know. tree, window …” But when we say those words, how much have we said? So let us learn to stretch again. The impos- sibility of perfect certainty does not condemn Like almost everyone on almost every street us to a vapidly uncertain life, to a life of small corner, Scott preaches epistemological humility. thoughts about small things, as if all we can be It is one of the chief platitudes of the day. We are are metaphysicians or shoppers. It all depends inite creatures with inite standpoints. We work on the scale that we elect for our questions, on in the dark and we do what we can. Everything how high we aim. What we do not need now is is tentative and nothing is certain. We live after another cheerful exhortation to aim low. Scott Hume and after Hayek. A dream of deinitiveness disdains, for the partiality of their perspectives, is a will to power. And so on. Scott similarly abhors the pessimism about movies that was expressed “brazen declarations of certainty.” He takes inspira- by some of his precursors. Yet there is more tion from “the essential modesty and rigor of the wisdom about the art of cinema to be found in scientiic method.” “To participate in a debate on the complaints of Agee and Farber and Kael and just about any topic,” he writes scoldingly, “is to Denby and Thomson than in Scott’s garrulous state an allegiance, to declare oneself a partisan, and complacent musings, precisely because they and the diicult dialectical work of discerning state an allegiance. They are animated by large the good, the beautiful, and the true is lost in the principle and an unembarrassed grand view of the noise of contending pseudoprinciples.” Maybe art. They are criticism. Scott believes in criticism, Isabel Archer had the proper theory of knowledge. and he believes in art, pleasure, beauty, and truth, but most of all he believes in brunch. S C OT T’S BOOK PRE SENT S a ine occa- sion to offer some resistance to all this Leon Wieseltier is an Atlantic contributing editor relaxation, to broaden our understanding and the Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow in Culture and of intellectual possibility and to toughen our Policy at the Brookings Institution. 40 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

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BOOKS out of the whale: He wrote of his exemplary role, WCA/AP; LAWRENCE JACKSON/AP; WALLY FONG/AP; CHAD RACHMAN/AP as the accuser in the Alger Hiss spy trial (“the The Leftist Origins Great Case”), that he had miraculously prevailed of the Rabid Right “against the powers of the world arrayed almost solidly against” him. But what of the bon vivant What modern conservatism owes to apostates from Hitchens, who didn’t ever quite leave the left and the opposite end of the ideological spectrum whose ideological arabesques came in the pages of The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and The Nation and in BY SAM TANENHAUS what he once described as “the guilty companion- ship of the green room, where rivals forgather to  A PARADOX OF 20th-century American politics is that remove makeup and more or less behave as if they its most sustained ideological movement, modern all know they’ll be back sometime next week”? conservatism, was the brainchild of ex-Communists who had been disillusioned by the crimes of the Soviet T HE DIFFERENCES AREN’T LOST revolution or caught on the wrong side of factional on Oppenheimer. While in principle disputes. Estranged and unhappy, they went in search his subjects ofer a model of political of a new god and helped create it—in the mirror image, it has often seemed, engagement, the character of the apostates of the one that failed them the irst time. Together they were “Stalin’s gift changes over the course of his narrative, which to the American Right,” John Patrick Diggins wrote in Up From Commu- spans nearly a century. Put most simply, they nism (1975), his account of four writers who exiled themselves from the left become less serious, relecting a broader decline and then wandered like restless spirits before inding refuge in the pages of in America’s ideological life. Chambers was a poète William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review in maudit and an acclaimed literary Bolshevik in the the 1950s and early 1960s. 1920s who then slipped underground to supervise a spy ring that eventually infiltrated the State In Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century, In 1948, Whittaker Chambers testiied before Congress Daniel Oppenheimer, a writer and a that Alger Hiss had been in the Communist underground. director of communications at the Uni- versity of Texas at Austin who was born Department. Burnham, his contemporary, was the year after Diggins’s book came out, a theorist and a leader of the Socialist Workers reprises and updates the history of politi- Party, a favorite subaltern of Leon Trotsky’s when cal defectors. To Oppenheimer’s credit, Trotsky was trying to organize the anti-Stalinist his own politics, which seem somewhere revolt from exile in Mexico. on the left, don’t intrude on the absorb- ing stories he tells. He begins with the Chambers and Burnham were relatively young ex-Communists Whittaker Chambers men, in their mid-30s, when they gave up the and James Burnham, then discusses two revolution because the facts of the Soviet Union renouncers of liberalism, Ronald Reagan and Norman Podhoretz, and closes the circle with two casualties of the ’60s–’70s radical left, David Horowitz and Christo- pher Hitchens. “The ex-believers—the heretics, the apostates—are the prob- lem children of any politics, in any time,” Oppenheimer writes. But the problem, he suggests, isn’t theirs. It’s ours. So quick to denounce or praise, and to demand to be told which side everyone is on, we forget that politics also ofers parables of second thoughts and transformation. Ideological changelings, if we catch them mid-light, remind us that “belief is complicated, contingent, multi-determined.” They can show us, too, “how hard it is to be a person in the world, period, and how much more confusing that task can become when you take on responsibility for repairing or redeeming it.” Repairing and redeeming set the bar awfully high, and imply a reli- gious mission. This was true enough for Chambers, the Soviet spy turned impassioned anti-Communist, who really did think of himself as Jonah spat 42 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

had become too ugly to justify. Their withdrawals The Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal orga- were principled, agonized, and ennobling, Oppen- Culture File nization that emphatically excluded Communists. heimer argues. Each came away from the experi- His sin was not being punitively anti-Communist ence with important lessons to teach. In addition Ronald Reagan enough for the ex-Communist Burnham. to his eloquent testimony against Hiss, which David Horowitz amounted to a kind of public seminar on under- Christopher Hitchens O PPENHEIMER OMITS ALL OF ground Communism, Chambers wrote his great this because, I think, he wants us to see memoir, Witness. A book of power and harrowing these early “ex-believers” at their best beauty, it is evidence, Oppenheimer believes, that and register the contrast with later, more openly Chambers’s “imagination was at its most capacious self-serving and opportunistic igures. Reagan’s and subtle only once he had become a conserva- apostasy was the irst of a new kind, in Oppen- tive.” Burnham wrote two classics of mid-century heimer’s telling—less a fraught reckoning with realpolitik—The Managerial Revolution and The the forces of history than a canny repositioning Machiavellians, studies in power and the rise of keyed to the changing climate. Never enrolled in “elites” (a term he helped popularize)—along with the revolution, Reagan was a thriving member of later books on Cold War strategy that were closely Hollywood’s liberal left and a longtime leader of read in their day, including by policy makers in the Screen Actors Guild, sometimes tangling with the Eisenhower administration. labor activists who didn’t grasp, as he did, “the fundamental decency, virtue, and productivity At the same time, these two men, dissimilar of the American people,” Oppenheimer writes. though they were, shared an apocalyptic, even In the 1950s, while still a Democrat but moving catastrophic, worldview. Chambers notoriously rightward, Reagan closely studied Witness and said he had forsaken “the winning side for the National Review, whose most august presences losing side,” and Burnham, too, seemed in thrall were Chambers and Burnham. Reagan combined to the revolutionary vision up to the end. The their teachings with the free-market principles free world was threatened with extinction, and he espoused as a spokesman for General Elec- in its blind optimism seemed to welcome doom, tric. The result was his uniquely sunny brand of while on every side concealed enemies spun the conservative homiletics, which sounded hopeful global “web of subversion,” as Burnham put it, even when it included dark warnings that Medi- at home and abroad. care was the irst step toward serfdom and would lead to “other federal programs that will invade This extremism also showed in other ways, every area of freedom as we have known it in this which Oppenheimer doesn’t discuss. Chambers’s country until one day … we will wake to ind that post-exit period included nearly a decade at Time we have socialism.” Reagan had an outsize abil- magazine, where he became Henry Luce’s favorite ity, Oppenheimer argues, to “discern the simple ideological enforcer, keeping liberal journalists in truth beneath the surface complexity.” line during the last stages of World War II, when Cold War tensions were already beginning to This may sound patronizing. But apostates surface. Correspondents, including Theodore often cast themselves as pilgrims who have trav- H. White in China, were shocked to see the facts eled the long, arduous route toward purifying they had painstakingly gathered in the ield fed into simplicity. Chambers certainly did. So did the Chambers’s newly built anti-Communist thresher. ultrasophisticated Podhoretz, a brilliant editor and an accomplished literary critic. “Clarity is Along with his geopolitical writings, Burnham courage,” he told Oppenheimer in an interview produced journalism tinctured with McCarthyism. for Exit Right. “Everything was simple” once he In his essay “The Case Against Adlai Stevenson,” realized he was a conservative after all. “There published in 1952 in The American Mercury, the was nothing esoteric. There was a simple truth “case” included a dossier on Stevenson’s adviser behind everything.” This reversed the teachings Arthur Schlesinger Jr. “Schlesinger is married of his mentor Lionel Trilling, who had himself to the sister of John K. Fairbank, of Harvard,” lirted with radicalism in the 1930s but had come Burnham wrote. to distrust “the haunted air” of ideology, whether of the left or the right. An English professor at It would be a cruel thing to hold a man to Columbia University, Trilling was the oracle of blame for his brother-in-law. But Schlesinger moral “complexity” and “difficulty”; his own has taken explicit political as well as personal prose exuded nuance and dialectical inesse. He responsibility for the bona ides of Fairbank— was dismayed when Podhoretz, as the editor of of whom it has been testiied under oath that Commentary, promoted radical anarchists like he was a member of the Communist Party. Paul Goodman, and was dismayed again when In fact, as Burnham knew very well, Schlesinger was a New Deal Democrat and a co-founder of THE ATLANTIC MARCH 2016 43

he read the manuscript of Podhoretz’s memoir The the death-struggle atmosphere they brought to Making It (1967), with its candid self-celebration Culture File politics. Even the genial Reagan favored steamy and its picture of social climbing within the “fam- rhetoric: His “evil empire” is the cartoon version ily” of Manhattan intellectuals. Trilling advised BOOKS of “the focus of concentrated evil of our time,” Podhoretz not to publish it, predicting that it as Chambers called Communism in Witness. would be ruthlessly panned and Podhoretz’s What unites Similar formulations are back in vogue today on reputation would sufer. He was right. Only later, these the right—in the hothouse catchphrases radical plunged into anguish, did Podhoretz reinterpret apostates Islamic terrorism and clash of civilizations, and the attacks on his book as being covertly, but isn’t their in the casual assertion that President Obama’s profoundly, political. His social scorekeeping and experiences, policies are transparent appeasements that have odes to success weren’t mere lapses of taste. They but the “betrayed” the nation. were an embrace, however tentative, of “middle- death class American values,” and so were a threat to struggle This is the tone of fanaticism—or, perhaps, the “radical party line” followed by Manhattan’s they “the fanatical style,” a variation on what Richard literary snobs. brought to Hofstadter called “the paranoid style.” Hofstadter politics. was careful to say he was describing not a clinical I N T H E S PAC E O F a generation, from condition, but a constructed outlook. Its con- the late 1930s to the late 1960s, we have EXIT RIGHT: THE spiratorial themes grew out of a particular “way gone from a revolutionary whose decision PEOPLE WHO of seeing the world and of expressing oneself.” to quit the Communist underground involved So, too, with the current style of conservative long months of hiding from possible assassins, LEFT THE LEFT discourse. It assumes the presence of concealed to a fixture at Manhattan after-parties whose AND RESHAPED enemies, but also stresses, even more than the dark night of the soul began with unfriendly THE AMERICAN “paranoiacs” did, the bad faith of liberals who are book reviews and being dropped from Jackie unwilling and possibly unable to acknowledge Kennedy’s guest list. And the descent contin- CENTURY how dire things really are—or to call evil by its ues, as the personal doesn’t just merge with the DANIEL OPPENHEIMER true name. political but swallows it whole, and as ideologi- cal heresy becomes its own form of postmodern Simon & Schuster A telling moment in the recent history of apos- exhibitionism. This brings us to David Horowitz, tasy came in 1999, when Hitchens, all but mad- the former Berkeley radical and Ramparts editor dened with hatred of Bill Clinton and giddy with whose disenchantment with Bay Area leftism has impeachment fever, swore out an aidavit against yielded a franchise that includes the series Black the Clinton loyalist Sidney Blumenthal, implicating Book of the American Left—volume eight, The him in the president’s alleged crimes. Hitchens and Left in Power (From Clinton to Obama), is due out Blumenthal were old friends, quite like Chambers in September—along with varied digital projects. and Hiss, as many noted at the time. Hitchens Horowitz runs FrontPage Magazine (“Rename himself (cast as Chambers) was delighted by the the Racist Democratic Party” is a typical feature), comparison and its “heroic exaggeration.” In the online journal of the David Horowitz Free- fact, it showed how the stakes had changed. The dom Center, a Web site whose services include “tragedy of history,” in Chambers’s famous phrase, listing college campuses friendly to anti-Israel spoken during congressional hearings, had been “terrorists.” cheapened into sex farce. Exit Right ends with a sympathetic but Back in 1948, Chambers’s accusations against unsparing portrait of the “professional apostate” Hiss struck many as unseemly, the ratting-out of Christopher Hitchens, who bounded from one a friend, and some suspected hidden motives. At crusade to the next. His ardent support for the one point, the junior House member leading the Iraq invasion in 2003 forced him into awkward investigation, a 35-year-old Richard Nixon, asked collusion with neoconservatives (Podhoretz, for Chambers what reason he might have for accusing one) whom he had once reviled, and then into Hiss. Did he bear him a grudge? “I have testiied hectoring denunciations of critics of the Bush against him with remorse and pity,” Chambers administration even as the war turned bad and the said, but “so help me God, I could not do other- only defenses he could muster were against “the wise.” Remorse and pity are words seldom used weakest arguments made by the silliest people,” in politics today. But they had meaning for the in Oppenheimer’s estimation. original apostates, who recognized that blame began with themselves, even if it didn’t always But Chambers and Burnham stumbled too, end there. and had long histories of misaimed and mistimed zeal. What unites these apostates, in any case, isn’t Sam Tanenhaus, a contributor to Bloomberg their life experiences, each unlike the others’, but Politics and Bloomberg View, is writing a biography of William F. Buckley Jr. 44 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

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BOOKS Thatcher told him that Dostoyevsky’s novel The Possessed had helped her understand the pressing The Elusive Maggie problems of the day, he wondered in his journal Thatcher “when, how, she got round to this. Did she read the novel, see its contemporary relevance herself, Why distorting Mrs. T. has been a popular or was that pointed out to her by someone? I fear literary pastime probably the latter.” (His skepticism was well founded: The someone was apparently the jour- BY LEO ROBSON nalist Malcolm Muggeridge.) In any case, reduc- ing a classic novel to a kind of political how-to M ARGARET THATCHER, though a prodigious guide plays right into the prevailing image of consumer of economics textbooks and briefing Thatcher among the literary set: someone who, documents, and a frequent spouter of Bible passages, in the writer Jonathan Raban’s words, “doesn’t has been widely considered deaf to literature. Even appreciate doubleness, contradictions, paradox, a besotted admirer like the novelist Anthony Powell irony, ambiguity.” One famous anecdote has her found it hard to take her reading seriously. After pulling out a copy of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty at a meeting and pronouncing, “This is what we believe.” Novelists, in turn, invite the charge of being 46 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC Illustration by CRISTIANA COUCEIRO

blinkered about Margaret Thatcher, undisposed The the 24-year-old IRA foot soldier assigned to plant to see her except in melodramatic terms. As Culture File the bomb. Lee moves among the three characters’ D. J. Taylor notes in his new book, The Prose perspectives, so that we know more than any one Factory: Literary Life in England Since 1918, she Novels about of them does—an efect exacerbated by hindsight. has been treated as “an almost mythical igure … Thatcherism for whom the techniques of realist iction seem tend toward In an author’s note, Lee says that he has tried sadly inadequate.” Novels about Thatcherism satire and to “imagine myself ” into the gaps in the historical tend toward satire and even farce—Jonathan even farce. record. That efort leads him to devote most of the Coe’s What a Carve Up! being perhaps the classic novel to invented characters and to incidents that instance. Novels portraying Thatcher herself veer HIGH DIVE take place before the bombing, which he saves toward Gothic fantasy: the prime minister as mon- JONATHAN LEE for very near the end. Lee is interested in Brigh- ster, stripped of her name—in The Satanic Verses, ton not just as the site of memorable death and she is Mrs. Torture—and sometimes of more than Knopf destruction, or of imminent death and destruction. that. In Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time, we are He’s intent on social portraiture, evoking a place told about “a convention in the higher reaches where people inhabit lives that have registered no of the Civil Service never to reveal, by the use of seismic wave of Thatcherism—a seaside town in personal pronouns or other means, any opinion as the 1980s, with its customs and rituals. Upon irst to the gender of the prime minister.” In The Line of meeting Freya, we learn how the locals respond Beauty, the winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize, to rare days of September sunshine: Alan Hollinghurst achieved a breakthrough, por- traying Thatcher as a lightning rod and exploring They threw of their drizzled raincoats and precisely the extremities of response to which his raided drawers for gaudy shorts. They cooked emotive predecessors had succumbed. themselves on towels and bobbed about on waves. Gulls tottered across rocks, heads In High Dive, the celebrated young British dipping low and feet lifting high, the motion novelist Jonathan Lee puts the prime minister mirrored by a kid checking his shoe soles for in even clearer perspective. Lee’s third novel, chewing gum. the irst to be published in the United States, is a work of social realism that treats the historical Navigating between the once-in-a-lifetime and Thatcher (variously identiied as Maggie, Mrs. T., the day-to-day, Lee trains a slyly comic eye on the the Prime Minister, and the Lady) in a balanced way that reverie crashes up against mundanity. rather than partisan way. She gets no walk-on Moose cares about Thatcher as an aspect of his own role—unless you count a momentary glimpse ambitions, and though he tells himself to “rein in of shoes “that could be hers”—but she serves as his excitement” at the prospect of talking to her more than just a screen onto which others project “at the big drinks function and then again maybe their illusions. Her presence enables Lee’s novel over breakfast,” he also can’t resist imagining the to bypass a crude critique, or cartoon version, of Grand acquiring renown “as the Lady’s favourite the period in order to portray individual lives hotel—her mentioning it in interviews—and people loundering and changing in the midst of social beginning to call it, colloquially, the Lady Hotel.” and political upheaval. The novel’s epigraph, a few Then he decides that it “perhaps wasn’t a good idea, lines from Czesław Miłosz’s poem “Ars Poetica?” that the Lady Hotel sounded like a cheap King’s that begin “how diicult it is to remain just one Cross brothel.” A mood that begins in airborne person,” signals the literary values of human fantasy ends on a note of earthbound caution: complexity and luidity that Lee steers by here. “You had to be extremely careful, in the hospi- tality industry, with both names and numbers.” T HE NOVEL UNFOLDS at the Grand Moose proceeds to remember the tale of a hotel Hotel, in Brighton, during the run-up that called a suite the George IV, only to sufer a to the 1984 Conservative Party Confer- peeved inquiry about the other three George suites. ence, which was overshadowed—though not interrupted—by an Irish Republican Army bomb If Moose represents the (quickly deflated) that killed two men and three women. Philip Finch, view of Thatcher as superwoman—and a route also known as Moose, is the hotel’s unassuming to advancement, and an object of desire—the deputy general manager and the divorced father Irish characters promote the monstrous view of the disgruntled Freya, who is in the process of of Thatcher, just as readily undercut. One of deciding whether to apply to university. During them sums up her egregious failures of sympa- her occasional shifts at reception and in the bar, thy: “Watching soldiers starve. Being brutal to Freya encounters a man who identiies himself as the poor. Ignoring the north and the west.” Yet Roy Walsh, but whom the reader knows to be Dan, in the interplay between Dan and his boss, the IRA taskmaster Dawson McCartland, Lee makes sure to probe the philosophical frailties of their THE ATLANTIC MARCH 2016 47

anti-Thatcher position. Dawson asks Dan dur- The before the party conference, Lee observes that ing their irst encounter whether he’s a “fan” of Culture File because of Thatcher’s assault on the unions, he empathy. “I don’t know,” Dan replies. “I suppose is eligible for only six days’ sick pay a year. But so.” Later, Dan appears to settle his moral qualms BOOKS instead of dwelling on the irony that a punitive about republican violence by appealing to an ethi- social policy prevents an ill deputy manager of a cal argument: Making politicians feel vulnerable on “Margaret seaside hotel from recovering fully, the better to their own doorstep could mark “the beginning of Thatcher prepare for a visit from the author of that policy, the end of apathy … the start of an understanding.” was a person Lee permits Moose to remember the beneits of other her actions: “It was true, too, that a couple of years But immediately afterward, Dan admits to people had ago it was impossible to sack bone-idle staff.” enjoying the more banal and brutal thrill of under- made up.” Most literary portraits of Thatcher and Thatcher- cover life, “the sprint of adrenaline in your blood” ism have done without such “too” sentences. and the relief it brings from other feelings. “There was something nimble about deceit. He tried and Lee’s novel could have done without the long failed to remember a time when he’d felt appalled interlude that fills in a backstory for Moose, a at the thought of it all.” And when Dan’s doubts cuckolded middle-aged everyman who turns return, he realizes that the noble justiication he out to be that very un-English type, the faded has borrowed from Dawson has a worm of hypoc- jock-god. It’s not hard to spot the influence of risy at its center. In the inal pages, Dawson talks John Updike’s Rabbit and Philip Roth’s Swede about Thatcher’s “lack of empathy, her inability (from American Pastoral) on Lee’s fallen athlete. to imagine herself into other people’s shoes.” Once “destined for great things”—a champion Dan notes that “Dawson did not talk about the cricketer, soccer player, runner—“the Finch,” as victims in the Grand.” Lee isn’t implying moral he was known in his glory days, proved to be, in equivalence, drawing a neat parallel between the a curious reprise of Freya’s verdict on Thatcher, IRA’s and the British government’s heartlessness. “a character other people had made up,” and his His novel’s subtler suggestion is that judging the promise came to nothing. Lee alludes to Updike’s empathy of others is an elusive exercise—and that line about giving the mundane its “beautiful due” speaking the language of empathy is no guarantee and makes a number of strained eforts to do so that you possess it. using Updike’s tone and manner. “M A R G A R E T T H AT C H E R H A D But he had no need to introduce his what- nothing to do with real life,” thinks might-have-been subplot or his cut-price version of Freya Finch, the novel’s voice of the American sublime. If only Lee had seen, with unillusioned clarity, a perspective that escapes his otherwise astute eye, that they would be mere both her father and the terrorists. “Margaret distractions from all the inventive things that he Thatcher was a person other people had made does with Margaret Thatcher and that Margaret up.” Lee agrees, but at the same time takes note of Thatcher does for him. the very real efect of Thatcherism as a domestic force. When Moose sufers a heart attack shortly Leo Robson is a regular contributor to the New Statesman. COVER TO COVER THE STANZAS that February 1862. renowned for working hymns “seemed to made Julia Ward That bit of trium- miracles with Laura let out a whole his- The Civil Howe famous came Bridgman at the tory of domestic Wars of to her during a night phant patriotic lore Perkins Institution unhappiness.” In Julia Ward at the Willard Hotel is familiar. Far more for the Blind—did one of them—about Howe in Washington, D.C., fascinating are the everything he could a millstream that a in 1861, after she had personal tribulations to impede his wife’s proud miller couldn’t ELAINE spent the day visit- that the feminist critic quest for creative tame (the parable was S H OWA LT E R ing Union troops. The Elaine Showalter freedom. obvious)—Howe made poem she scribbled probes in her unfail- history again when SIMON & SCHUSTER down in the predawn ingly vivid—and fair- She wrote anyway she burst into slang: darkness went on to minded—biography. and, without warn- “Wow! but it wrought enjoy a viral success Domestic power ing him, published its will.” Howe, Showal- as yet unmatched by struggles made the now-forgotten poems ter discovers, was evi- any other verse in Howes’ marital union that exposed, and dently the first writer The Atlantic, where an unending misery. fueled, their strife. As outside of Scotland to “Battle Hymn of the Howe’s domineering an appalled Nathan- use the word wow. Republic” appeared in husband—Samuel iel Hawthorne said, Gridley Howe, these other battle — Ann Hulbert 48 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC

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AmWehuraeictna’stnibnteehheiingnshdw-tohhredoseaurrremgheaitighnhly RTehveolMutaitohn By PEG TYRE An end-of-semester board-game party in Man- hattan for students of the Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics program. BEAM teaches New York City kids from low-income communities to view math as exploration. 50 MARCH 2016 THE ATLANTIC