The Talk of the . Its a phrase Palin used during the 2008 campaign. They are as intimate as they are grand, and they offer themselves for worship by ordinary people searching for a suitable object of devotion. Maybe we needed someone who could think outside the really toxic divisions that we live with. They're scared of doing something that might look a little unsafe. Or are they admitting Iraqis as immigrants and permitting them to integrate with the general population? I think its illiberalism is mostly in our culture: in media, in universities and schools, in philanthropies, arts organizations. He is best known for his writings for The New Yorker and The Atlantic about U.S. foreign policy and for his book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq.Packer also wrote The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, covering the history of the US from 1978 to 2012.In November 2013, The Unwinding received the . George Packer at the 2013 Texas Book Festival, Last edited on 16 February 2023, at 15:10, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, "Geoffrey Canada on Giving Voice to the Have-nots", "Our Man by George Packer review Richard Holbrooke and American power", "2013 National Book Awards Go to McBride, Packer, Szybist, Kadohata", "James McBride, George Packer win National Book Awards", "Announcing the National Book Critics Awards Finalists for Publishing Year 2013", "2017 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grantee: George Packer", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Packer&oldid=1139717922, 2017 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant to complete, This page was last edited on 16 February 2023, at 15:10. the democrats lost the white working class. For more information:. The President and his new national-security adviser, John Bolton, are in an especially bad position to respond to the atrocities in Syria. President Ashraf Ghani is an expert on failed states. Am I really prepared to say its over? 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. Narrator: George Packer; Length: 19 hours 46 minutes; Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc. "Certain folks, frankly, don't support us in leadership roles." ++++ She does know that Chicago isn't even a majority-white city, right? And we can get into the reasons why, but I think its both increasingly illiberal philosophicallywhich scares me, since we have so much illiberalism in our society right nowand its politically perverse and fails to understand American voters in some basic ways that it needs to if it wants to make real change. I think nationalism is destructive. 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 . The Devastating New History of the January 6th Insurrection. Smart America is where I mostly live, but its no longer a meritocracy, if it ever was. There was some craziness there, but over all this was inevitable, and it had to happen, and this is how history functions? Ben Rhodes was the Presidents speechwriter, foreign-policy adviser, and confidant. The nineteen-sixties are on my mind a lot. He doesn't measure or model it. They originally thought of it as a [Jeff] Bezos piece, he said. Packer argues that seismic economic shifts during a single generation have created a country of winners and losers, leaving the social contract in pieces and setting citizens adrift to find new paths forward. An organizer for the NewsGuild who was present, Nastaran Mohit, told the writers she had avoided involving them in the original organizing drive because she knew how close many of them were to management, and she was worried theyd snitch. (Ive had a front-row seat to that and continue to at The New York Times, and wrote about the trend last year.). The gathering was, many noted, probably the first time that so many of the magazines scattered staff members had ever been in one room, and someone invited the Magnum photographer Peter van Agtmael to document it. Packer was born in California around 1960. Sarah Palin was the early warning sign that Free America was breaking up. His 2021 book Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal describes the fragmentation of American society in recent decades into four mutually antagonistic "four Americas": "Free America" (economically liberal), "Smart America" (educated, affluent and socially liberal), "Real America" (white rural precariat) and "Just America" (urban, progressive and economically disadvantaged). We had to end a pandemic. Its like loyalty to whats yours. Right. Per the Census survey from last year: White Alone: 45.3% Black Alone: 29.2% . As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. It seemed like a way to jolt the picture productively. February 3, 2015. 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. "I am a black woman -- let's not forget," she told the New Yorker. Few journalists are as respected by, and respectable to, liberals as The Atlantic's George Packer. And if you bloc them that way, if you create monoliths, you will end up not speaking to their actual, as people say, lived experience. His reference points all seem to go back to Roosevelt and Truman and trade unions. And youre right that eight years of Obama in some ways gave us Trump. Some salaries start as low as $42,000 a year, and remain under $60,000 after 20 years on the job. Obama did what you are talking about, in terms of making compromises in the way he talked about certain issues. New Yorker staff writer George Packer is the winner of the 2013 National Book Award in Nonfiction for "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America." He reported extensively on the Iraq war, both for the New Yorker and in his 2005 book . 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. Or maybe a little less, because the motives of Trump voters are very hard to break down. They reflect . Really, nihilism is the only word for it. No matter what happens, Mr. Remnick told writers on one recent Zoom call, he would not ask them to cross virtual picket lines. in 2015 and has continued apace. Id call that Real America. 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. After a month in office, he has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties. I still am looking for some way to describe us as a people, as Americans. THE Roaring 20s was the decade when modern celebrity was invented in America. Are junior employees apprentices or a permanent creative underclass? 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 . I agree. IN "The Assassins' Gate," his chronicle of the Iraq war, George Packer tells the tale of Drew Erdmann, a young American . He will discuss the Bush administration policies that created the current situation in Iraq and the effects of the war on domestic politics and American life. Add that to the extreme difficulty of Iraqis emigrating to the West (Sweden is the exception), and they are basically unwelcome all over the world. This is a really important impulse and corrective that were going through right now. The fourth America is also a rebellion. Publish date: January 15, 2008; Language: English; ISBN: 9781436147613; 4.06 (2619 ratings) Regular Price: 29.99 USD. That doesnt mean it ignores racism, discrimination, disfranchisement, and the history of all of these. The article, Packer said, kept eluding me. 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. He also wrote about payments Amazon gets from publishers, often in the form of discounts -- information that is rarely shared. Its also a gateway into the real money books, movies, speaking gigs or other opportunities in the broadening economic landscape for brand-name writers. 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.. George Packer is an award-winning author and staff writer at The Atlantic.His previous books include The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (winner of the National Book Award), The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, and Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (winner of the Hitchens Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography). And unlike organizers in the 1930s, the NewsGuild has social media. But in times of widespread opportunity, the distance between gods and mortals closes, the monuments shrink closer to human size and the centrality of celebrities in the culture recedes. In the best tradition of Carlyle and Swift, he spends much of the first half of the book . The 96-year-old magazine, known for its revered writers and sophisticated audience, is being consumed by a labor dispute. This post has been corrected. When he came back from book leave in mid-2013, Packers New Yorker editors suggested the idea to him. Some of the large pieces, which are chopped up and welded onto the rest in roughly 20-page blocks, began as articles in The New Yorker, where Mr. Packer is a staff writer. American history is one way to get in touch with it. But she also said the NewsGuild believed the writers were misclassified as contractors, when they were really akin to full-time employees, and she laid out a path for them to join the union. Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Award, George Packer is a venerated staff writer for The New Yorker-with four tours on . The utilitarian reason is a good one. I dont much want to live in the republic of any of them, Packer writes. But the support Mr. Remnick retains among the signature writers is deep. The Will Smith-Chris Rock slapping incident (also known as "Slapgate" or "The Slap") took place during the 94th Academy Awards on March 27, 2022, when actor Will Smith walked onstage and slapped comedian Chris Rock across the face during Rock's presentation for Best Documentary Feature.The slap was in response to Rock's joke about Smith's wife Jada Pinkett Smith's shaved head, which she had . I found my subjects through word of mouth and previous experience. And thats probably an inevitable outcome. . Maybe this says that the Democratic Party is about to undergo something big. I dont think you can persuade people. What did George Toma say about why the Super Bowl 57 field was so slippery? This is an excellent question, and a huge one. And one of them is national service. "A place in history". She joined the L.A. Times in 2010 as staff writer in Books and left in 2018. Its all particularly personal at The New Yorker, where the campaign has pitted a culture built on personal relationships and deep trust against a group of employees who reject the idea that they should be subject to the whims of any boss, no matter how benign. But why does neither of them appeal to you? They have roots in history, but they are shaped by new ways of thinking and living. As I wrote in the piece, there is a sense among some of Iraqs neighbors that Iraqis, by allowing the Americans to overthrow Saddam and install a Shiite-majority government, have betrayed the Arab cause and represent a pro-Iranian Shiite front that threatens Sunni Arab countries. 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But, really, Smart America takes on the parameters set by Free America: deregulation and free trade and open immigration. I very much enjoyed this piece, because it seems to fit with the thoughts you expressed in your book The Assassins Gate, which I read with great interest. I dont know enough to agree or disagree., But in terms of telling the story, it was helpful. Can Clinton win it back? He doesnt fit. Away from the fun-house mirrors and the bullhorns of cable news and social media, peoples views are more nuanced and less easy to caricature. Last Best Hope was inspired, Packer says, by "political pamphlets from other periods of crisis.". The book is kind of a quarrel with myself because, on the one hand, I am in a state of utter disgust and rage at the Republican Party, and its lies, its conspiracies, its racism, its cynicism. But I mean it in a larger sense. Has the Arab League taken an interest in the plight of displaced Iraqis? But no writers turned up at a protest outside Cond Nast headquarters on May Day, and none appeared to be present at a march outside the home of Cond Nasts global chief content officer, Anna Wintour, on June 8. Theres been nothing like it since the 1930s. He is the author of several books, including The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, and The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq, which was named one of the ten best books of 2005 by the New York Times and won the New York Public Librarys Helen Bernstein Book Award and an Overseas Press Club book award. The Unlikely Spy Daniel Silva 2003-05-06 #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva's celebrated debut novel, The Unlikely Spy, is . None of them are original, and a lot of them are long shots. He was a supporter of the Iraq war. George Packer (born ca. In general, our concepts of things like 100 Year Floods and 1000 Year Floods are . Packer was a columnist for Mother Jones and was a staff writer for The New Yorker from 2003 to 2018. A talk by author George Packer, author of the new book, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq. In one recent Zoom call, writers even complained to Mr. Remnick of their fears of being bullied on Twitter if they diverge from union talking points. And, if there is a return to that, then Im happy. I think you lose a lot of people who simply dont see themselves that way. On one recent Zoom call with union leaders, Mr. Wright, a former Teamster and longtime W.G.A. The union includes 120 people and there are about the same number of staff and contributing writers. We had a President who sowed division, and the result is that hundreds of thousands are dead. 40 Lightfoot must have known what was coming on Tuesday because she laid down the race/woman card over the weekend. Buy on Bookshop. His latest book, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal was released in June 2021. On every trip to Iraq, I have met remarkable American individuals in military and civilian ranks, but, like most people I have talked to about Iraq, I am stunned by the level of general American incompetence there. But the desire to be equal, I think, is still there as a driving passion. He was previously married to Michele Millon. Nobody was interested in a union rep coming between them and Mr. Remnick on editorial decisions. Im afraid it will take years for America to recover its international prestige; at the very least, it will take a change of Administration. One point of view is that you have to be aware of racism and different identities and different inequalities if you want to take the step of improving everyones life. Human Rights in North Korea to Stay on UN Security Council Radar,US News is a recognized leader in college, grad school, hospital, mutual fund, and car rankings. 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 . Far creepier, however, are the some of the more "complex" explanations for Bales's crime, notably one proffered by Iraq war supporter and neocon-enabler George Packer, in the New Yorker, who denounces "the smugness of the antiwar crowd" and instructs us to avoid "easy condemnations." After all, says Packer, The employees ultimately backed down, rejecting the notion of unionism for what seemed in part to be cultural reasons. George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is the author, most recently, of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.. INSIDE STORY: "A new bipartisan push for paid family leave," by CNN's Dana Bash and Abbie Sharpe: "'We live in the greatest nation in the world, and we do so many things well, but when . How do you understand that? 467 pp. These are all obviously pie in the sky, because people are trying to do this and right now, with Congress, it isnt happening. I teach history and English, and I can assure you that the perception of current U.S. politics in my students eyes and minds is even worse than the sad reality that you and your fellow-journalists and researchers have deemed it your duty to report on, at the risk of being labelled unpatriotic. You say at the end of the book that you dont particularly want to live in any of the four Americas you define. Im identifying, to some degree, with my parents, who were in their forties and on a college campus during the student revolution, and it was not an easy time. Obama was more candid. Track elected officials, research health conditions, and find news you can use in politics, business, health, and education. Richard Armitage, when I interviewed him, placed the blame on a complete lack of accountability at the highest levels. "They originally thought of it as a [Jeff] Bezos piece," he said. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Republicans arent united with one another, never mind with Joe Biden. They loom larger in times like now, when inequality is soaring and trust in institutions governments, corporations, schools, the press is falling. To me, thats like saying Do we stop looking at the data on poverty because there are disparate outcomes among different groups? No. The New Yorkers union, for instance, tweeted and then deleted its solidarity with Palestinians from the river to the sea, a phrase that some interpret as threatening violence. Trump threw a great deal of accelerant onto smoldering discontent. 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. But some also shun its blunt and adversarial language. BLOG; AUTHOR ARCHIVE; VIDEOS; PODCASTS; PHOTOS; PRESS; Why Print Journalism Survives: George Packer on "The Unwinding," Charlie Hebdo, and More. Palin used during the 2008 campaign thinking and living onto smoldering discontent remain under $ 60,000 20! Admitting Iraqis as immigrants and permitting them to integrate with the general population Presidents,... Talked about certain issues warning sign that Free America: deregulation and Free trade and open immigration of all these... Mean it ignores racism, discrimination, disfranchisement, and respectable to, as! Trade and open immigration a staff writer for the New Yorker editors suggested the to... From 2003 to 2018 Mother Jones and was a staff writer in Books and left 2018!, and a huge one thats like saying Do we stop looking at the data on poverty there! About, in philanthropies, arts organizations through right now the Best tradition of and. 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