Reading to be a good citizen #2
In searching for answers to what happened last November, I haven’t tried calling random people in West Virginia who voted for Trump as Nicholas Kristof suggested. I just staying in my living room with a beer in hand, and tried to let writers tell me what we should have all seen coming — Trump was going to win. These readings have not provided solace, but have helped understand just how far we sunk. I guess that is something, right?
(Skip the first two reviews if you want to avoid Trump)
Insane Clown President
When I woke up from the news-hibernation, sometime around mid-January, there was really only one writer to help process what had just happened. It was the same man who in 2010 described Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”.
The book is a collection of Taibbi’s articles for Rolling Stone over the course of eighteen months leading up to the election, but the opening chapter analyzing the election results is all you really need (to throw up a little in your mouth).
Taibbi’s harrowing criticism of the process for electing presidents in the 21st Century makes the Trump election seem inevitable in hindsight. The recession was only over for elites, not for hundreds of thousands of white voters in the rust belt.
In the January 25, 2017 issue for Rolling Stone, Taibbi’s colleague wrote a story about Macomb County in Michigan as the bellwether for Trump’s win. Obama won the county in ’08 and ’12, but it had turned Trump in ’16. When Obama said he got the economy out of a ditch with the bailouts, the crowd looked around and said to themselves, “Is he kidding? we’re still in a ditch!”
The recovery passed over many Americans, and they were looking for someone to name the problem, and find a scapegoat. The scapegoat was the other — the coastal elites, the bankers, and immigrants.
Yes, Trump was an elite himself, but he was not an intellectual, and yes, he did not have experience in any government position, but he knew “reality” television. Ultimately, the presidential election timeline and event is reality television, and it is usually boring television.
Taibbi astutely write,“Any program that tried to make stars out of human sedatives like Scott Walker and Lindsey Graham needed new producers and a new script.” A majority of Americans do not want to hear policy for eighteen months. What could be more exciting than having a candidate turn debates into verbal WWE matches?
Trump did not just flip the script on the normal way of running for president — — he kicked the script into the chimney and burned the whole house down. Instead of dog whistles to the racists, he just handed them a bone. He did not kiss the establishment rings, and converted the media’s annoyance and disrespect into approval from viewers. You could almost describe it as masterful if it did not so clearly make the case for how far we have fallen as a nation, or we have always been like this, and the constant twenty-four hour news cycle and all the tweets just threw it in all our faces. As Taibbi writes, “A system unable to stop this must be very sick indeed.”
“I thought I understood the American right. Trump proved me wrong
Rick Perlstein
In 2008, Mayor Nagin announced to the residents of New Orleans, myself included, that the “Big One” was coming, and we needed to evacuate. I was sitting on the interstate at the time, already planning to leave, and the warning sign heard over the radio made everyone push down on the accelerator a bit harder. Hurricane Gustav was coming. In order to pass the time, as we drove up to Birmingham, my friend and I read to each other passages of Perlstein’s Nixonland.
LBJ had won in a landslide in ’64, and then Nixon won in ’68. What happened? The book explores the rise of Nixon and his Silent Majority. Everyone underestimated the former Vice President, but Nixon’s ability to speak to people’s fears of a violent, and unruly America worked really well. The Great Society turned into a trimming of Government’s fat. The fat being the part that tried to solve big problems for Americans, and not just for White Americans. The aspirational government of healthcare for all, affordable housing, and equal schools appeared to erode.
But then Obama won a few months after we evacuated. Everything changed. Despite McCain bringing the right-wing fringes of the party to the forefront when he made Palin his VP, the ugly head of American white nationalism appeared to have died off. The United States elected a black man with the middle name Hussein. I called my fellow Gustav evacuee that night as I drove from one election-night party to the next, and said, “Nixonland is dead.” Two steps forward. We had shed our ugly past. That was the story.
To Perlstein, in his writing on Goldwater and Nixon, the conservative movement in post-war America was not violent or nativist. He spent hundreds of pages exploring the different stages and theories of small-government conservatism, but in this article, he tells us that he missed a glaring issue. There was a much darker underbelly of white nationalism seeded into every conservative campaign. It could no longer be overlooked.
America evolved and became more equal, but there were still strong elements of something much more extreme. One step forward, two steps back. Americans had packed Madison Square Garden for a Nazi rally in the 1930s. After the Kent State shooting, 58% of Americans believed the students deserved to be shot. Gail Sheehy observed a blue collar worker in the Bronx say, “If I was Nixon, I’d shoot every one of them.” Three steps back.
Perlstein also explores the great bait and switch by fear mongering politicians, who point blame at immigrants and people of color, only to spend their time in power giving tax cuts to the rich. I found it fascinating that Perlstein pokes holes at his own political theory. He thought the conservative moment took a bath and scrubbed out the more reactionary forces, but unfortunately, it is still there, as strong as ever.
Startup
The world of tech might be too surreal for non-fiction. It just does not seem to sit right knowing that all this madness might be true, but we still desperately want writers to lift the veil of tech office culture. Doree Shafrir’s engaging debut — as cute as it is horrific- is the perfect reflection of our times (in the bubble of $600M valuations with very little revenue).
In order to digest the tech madness, the best medium might be fiction. The truth is unreal, and the fiction is too real. We need to read about love triangles, deteriorating relationships, unwanted advances by male bosses on their younger female employees, and scorned lovers to distract ourselves from the sadness of our new Gilded Age. Shafrir accurately blends the century old stories of love interests with the communication tools of the 21st Century, and we can’t turn away.
What happens when your boyfriend’s “Uber for strollers” goes bust and you are a tech reporter angling for a story from his friends? Can the relationship stay intact? How do you continue to lead your tech company into its next round of fundraising when you are sending naked pics to one of your first employees (who is now dating someone else)? They are tech-sector problems, but also workplace and relationship issues that are important, and we want to find out if the characters will prevail in New York City’s updated rat race towards working somewhere that is “changing the world.”
As the tech sector grows up, companies are wrestling with how it creates a safe environment for women. This book, and the news coming from Uber and others, proves the status quo is currently not working. Men in power seem to make a lot of stupid decisions. It is not surprising, but still alarming, and worth highlighting. Shafrir’s first novel is a fun little primer into the tech world for the outsiders, and an accurate reflection that will resonate with the insiders as well.
Option B
Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
At a quick, superficial glance, Sheryl Sandberg may not be the most endearing narrator — she’s extremely wealthy, and Lean In could be tone deaf at times. But in actuality, her writing voice is engaging, thoughtful, and self-deprecating. I always thought that Lean In was an excellent career guide for both sexes, and her latest book is an important guide to build resilience and grit.
The unspeakable, and most horrific tragedy occurs to the Sandberg family when her husband collapses and dies while on vacation together in Mexico. Sandberg’s writing creates vivid images of the moments we all wish will never happen to us, as she recounts the seconds before the tragedy that forces her to second-guess routine decisions. I was struck by the image she weaves together of not being allowed in the ambulance in a foreign country as her husband gets whisked off to the hospital, and how much fear and hopelessness must have been running through her veins. She also describes the aftermath of the funeral when her kids collapse on the ground, not being able to move forward. Sandberg wonders if her kids will ever recover from this trauma, and it is hard to imagine how the pain and sorrow gets better. But with Adam Grant’s helpful anecdotes of how others dealt with pain and suffering, Sandberg moves on, and shows how the “resilient” muscle can be rebuilt and strengthened.
The book helps all of us think of how any kind of setback can help build character and strength. It is a quick read, but also too emotional at times, forcing us to take a pause, and go do something else to clear our heads. Sandberg’s writing about her own experience is heartbreaking, and her pain becomes our pain. It takes talent to bring so much emotion out of the reader. She knows her flaws, acknowledges her mistakes, and takes us through one important life lesson after enough with incredible poise. She does not have to open up and share — her career at Facebook keeps her busy, but we are all a bit better off because of her willingness to work through her family’s horror and pursuit of Option B in a public forum.
Here is an insightful interview with Sandberg and Elizabeth Alexander, who also lost her husband in the New York Times .
