I think there was some evidence of that in the results of the 2020 election, and I think its going to continue to happen. . As Real America is a rebellion against the ossified libertarianism of Free America, Just Americawhich is a difficult term, because it doesnt quite capture itis a generational rebellion against the complacency of Smart America, which had promised, As long as you get an education and work hard and play by the rules and go as far as your God-given talents will take you, you will have a successful life. And the generation that came after Clinton, the millennials, found out that this wasnt true, and that the sanguine promises of their liberal parents just didnt resonate. But other tensions revolve around the sense that the junior jobs only rarely offer promotions into the ranks of writers, and no clear career path. This post has been corrected. Politicians are always letting the public off the hookit might be the most unforgivably dishonest thing they do. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Ad Choices. At the same time, you may not sell those policies through the frame of specific identities. George Packer. And those are mostly Black farmers who have been dispossessed through decades by the Department of Agriculture and by state and local governments. He reports that men employed by Americans as . Her influences were Brandeis, La Follette, Frances Perkins. She told them, two people in the room said, that the guild could protect them from being fired and could even defend them against misguided editorial choices, if, for example, an editor she cited Arianna Huffington suddenly wanted everyone to write about sleep. The basic division that I began to see begins with libertarianism, which I call Free America, which is Reagans America. ), None of us want to do anything that could jeopardize the magazine we love. It might require a book to answer. BUT, most of us would like to be able to get health insurance.. And this is really the story of my adult life, from the late nineteen-seventies onward. George Packer, writer at the New Yorker and author of the new book "The Unwinding: An Inner History Of The New America." He also recently wrote the New York Times op-ed " Celebrating Inequality . A lot of people think of Just America as a response to Trump, too, which is why its interesting that youre defining it as just as much a reaction to Smart America. George Packer (born ca. How do you understand that? A talk by author George Packer, author of the new book, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq. Because I think the two things that have driven us to the state of frenzy were in right now are, one, the rise of a multiracial, multicultural America in the last half century and, two, the decline of industrial America into the postindustrial service economy, which has been so bad for so many people. Packer, the author of the books The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (2013) and The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq (2005) talked to me about what it was like to report his story. Fitzgerald intuited that, with the old restraining deities of the 19th century dead and his generations faith in man shaken by World War I, celebrities were the new household gods. America in Iraq. But, in comparison with Iraq, America acquitted itself with a measure of honor by evacuating and resettling its Vietnamese friends in the United Statesa hundred and forty thousand of them by the end of 1975. That is Bidens project. I agree. This is an excellent question, and a huge one. I dont know where else it could happen. Some 20 of the writers, many of them marquee names, were getting together to decide how to react to the surprise announcement that their less heralded colleagues fact checkers, copy editors, web producers, social media editors were forming a union and demanding raises. The book achieves this mainly by tracing the lives of various individuals from different backgrounds through the years. For more information:. In his new book, " Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal ," George Packer writes that the United States is in a state of disrepair, brought about primarily by the fact . But there are other issues where I dont think this helps at all, either in politics or policy. Trump barely won, and I think Obama would have been elected to a third term. Then Ben Taub, an investigative reporter, asked Ms. Mohit why she had told their unionizing colleagues that the NewsGuild was also organizing the writers. Feb 04 2015. The book proposes my own narrative, although it doesnt claim it as a narrative. A new mood of activism has swept through the home of the mascot Eustace Tilley.CreditNick Little. The Gazelle Project -- that was me, Melville Houses Dennis Johnson told Packer. 1960) is a US journalist, novelist, and playwright. Journalist George Packer's article in the March 26 issue of The New Yorker magazine is called "Betrayed: The Iraqis Who Trusted America the Most.". And Just America: its a necessary slap in the face to my generation and to the complacency of most Americans, who dont want to know the history of race in this country. Chambers-like. I dont want to become two countries. But your point is valid, and I think that partly explains the Packers' willingness to continue pushing cap charges into the future with these restructures. From the episode: Andrew Keen: One of the chapters [in your book] is called "Make America Again," rather . His essays and articles have appeared in Boston Review, The Nation, World Affairs, Harper's, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, among other publications. Can the rightward forty-five per cent of the country at this point be talked to? When he came back from book leave in mid-2013, Packers New Yorker editors suggested the idea to him. But, really, Smart America takes on the parameters set by Free America: deregulation and free trade and open immigration. Like many Germans of my generation, I am fully aware of the fact that we owe the U.S., and it breaks my heart to see a good friend choose the path of (self) destruction. I dont think you can persuade people. G eorge Packer's incisive, deftly argued book about the moral and political quandary of the United States begins and ends with his declaration: "I am an American." The statement is self . That I have much more skepticism about, because of social media, because of the conservative information environment. According to Packer, in the place of the old stories, "four rival narratives have emerged, four accounts of America's moral identity" two on the right, and two on the left. At the depth of his crisis in trying to leave the Party . Syria has been more hospitable, following the Baathist ideology of Arab brotherhood, but even Syria has made it difficult for Iraqis to work, and its open-door policy has begun to close. Browse archives for February 04, 2015. But many writers also see what The New Yorker offers as a good deal: a prestigious place to publish that allows them to retain the rights to their work. He doesn't theorize about it. Hes in a strong position. So theres affirmative action, theres diversity hiring, theres childrens health insurance. I think youre right. Packer describes the decline of America from a very specific . But, for fairness, it was necessary. The answer to your question depends on how much can be achieved by this movement. And its also becoming more illiberal. They are as intimate as they are grand, and they offer themselves for worship by ordinary people searching for a suitable object of devotion. George W. Bush has not said anything about Iraqi refugees, probably because they represent a political embarrassment, and the rest of the government has been extremely sluggish in addressing what is now a crisis. But it seems to me to come out of a pre-modern sensibility that goes back to the New Deal. Bluntly, re: NewsGuild, what it comes down to for me is that I would never hire an agent who had lied to or about me, Mr. Taub wrote to a WhatsApp group for staff writers after the incident. If Just America can reform policing, and make our criminal-justice system less barbaric, and close the wealth gap, and close the achievement gap, then Id say all the angst that comes from reading Twitter and the exchange of vitriol that goes on all the time in our culture and in our media will seem trivial. Soon the superstitious mariners and passengers . And that was a really potent story that Reagan told, and that the Republican Party lived by for decades, and to some extent still does. All rights reserved. . Her passions are breaking up monopolies, regulating corporationsclass struggle, really. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. 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Working as the kind of writer that Brooks has sometimes been, but going far beyond that, he takes you into the lives of real Americans, at least one or two of whom will resemble any likely reader of the book, as they discover, sickeningly, that they're ensnared and blocked by forces beyond their . In many ways, this reminds me of the nineteen-sixties, and millennials and boomers have a lot more in common than either side has acknowledged. In their place, four rival narratives have emerged, four accounts of America's moral identity. I recently spoke by phone with Packer, who is a staff writer at The Atlantic and was previously a staff writer at The New Yorker. They sat in a big circle and, like the millennials only a few of them are, shared details of their own compensation arrangements. 467 pp. I very much enjoyed this piece, because it seems to fit . The younger generation of employees is to the left of its elders on issues of substance. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Were informal with waiters. One lingering quibble is that your sense of liberal righteousness strikes me as the milk-and-water variety that Theodore Roosevelt warned against. Buy on Bookshop. Well, I think Smart America is the one its closest toin a sense, its one generation overthrowing the previous one, children overthrowing parents. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, George Packer, a staff writer from 2003 to 2018, has covered the Iraq War for The New Yorker and has also written about the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone, civil unrest in the Ivory Coast, the megacity of Lagos, and the global counterinsurgency. George Packer broke with the magazines tight-lipped traditions by sharing details of his own deal with Cond Nast. He is also the author of the books The Assassins Gate and The Unwinding. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Barack Obama failed to change the direction of the country, whether a more progressive form of patriotism is possible, and whether the cultural controversies roiling American institutions are an inevitable result of inequality. He labels these four distinct expressions of contemporary American culture: "Free America" (center-right and libertarians), "Smart America" (center-left meritocratic elites), "Real America" (Donald Trump's . The author of The Assassin's Gate (2005), The Unwinding (2013), and a recently published biography of Richard Holbrooke, Our Man, Packer has written for bastions of liberal thought from the New York Times Magazine to The New Yorker in a distinguished, decades-long career. After a month in office, he has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties. Twitter reacts to Kentucky crushing Auburn,Auburn was unable to keep up in the second half. Im in favor of putting together an exit strategy for Iraq, but Im also sure that if we were to leave most of the territory in the near future, the country would erupt in bloodshed of a scope that we havent seen in a long time. He has tried to be reassuring, even as the prospect of putting out the print magazine without editorial staff members looms. the Its not smart to lose touch with the basic feelings of large numbers of voters if you hope to get those votes. Join our community book club. All rights reserved. What are celebrities, after all? The best way to make it is to get government out of the way and to cut taxes and deregulate and set us free in order to use our industry and talent to make something new. (April 29, 2013). Our Man George Packer 2019-05-09 From one of America's greatest non-fiction writers, an epic saga of the rise and fall of American power, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, told through the life of one man. One thing thats been said is that people on the left claim to speak for women, or people of color, and then, when it comes to the ballot box, Joe Biden overwhelmingly beats all the other Democrats with Black voters. The editor, William Shawn, responded with pained, elegant letters, warning that collective bargaining would undermine the friendly, gentle, free, informal, democratic atmosphere that made The New Yorker special. Were arrogant. Obama was more candid. Nationalism is a word I avoid as a positive. Right. But that is precisely the problem: Packer - I believe, and please correct me if I am wrong - has no training in North Africa's history and politics and I don't think he has spent much time there except for these quick hit trips for the long New Yorker piece (again, please correct me if I am wrong). We dont want so strong a union that mediocrity reigns and its impossible to get rid of poor performers. Iraqs population is largely Arab, with the major exception being the Kurds. Well, I agree. In the message, a copy of which I obtained, Ms. Mohit said the union was in communication with the writers but could not be open and public with the fact that we are organizing the staff writers.. Union activists tend to be less charitable, and feel hes trying to have it both ways. 2023 Cond Nast. By the whim of the editor, she replied. Almost half a century later, the ghost of the scandal that launched Woodwards career haunts the Trump White House. Or is there something about Americans that limits our capabilities in this type of project? It was a white Christian-nationalist narrative that said, Your free trade, your immigration, even your corporations and monopolies have not improved a lot of towns, and rural areas have sunk and are in deep trouble, and have some of the same serious problems that the inner cities have had for decades. And so, when Trump came along, in 2015, he intuited in his reptilian way that the old, sunny, optimistic Reagan message didnt cut it, and that something more dark and nativist and ugly would appealthat people didnt want to hear how good things were. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. But I have also come to believe that Iraq represents a larger failure than just that of individuals in the Bush Administration or the Administration as a whole. And maybe we needed that. Their father's background was Jewish and their mother's Christian. They would like security and order, however possible. And I think thats necessary, because weve demonized one another through social media, through isolation during the pandemic, to a point where people are unrecognizable and have been cast in terms of good and evil. It has an aggressive quality. He summarized what he saw as the consensus view in another WhatsApp message to colleagues. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. In the best tradition of Carlyle and Swift, he spends much of the first half of the book . They originally thought of it as a [Jeff] Bezos piece, he said. Theres been nothing like it since the 1930s. 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