De Turbo Blog

Dit is de blog van Tim de Gier, Nieman Fellow, Journalist. Writings in both Dutch and English

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P.G. Wodehouse with Winston Churchill in Leicester during the 1923 general election campaign. (via)

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A note to identity politics

Reminder: Identity politics and economic justice are not mutual exclusive.

Previous elections were ruined, and lost to Trump, for a big part, by the Clinton campaign making the whole thing about identity (’you criticize me just because I’m a woman’ & ‘Bernie Sanders voters are just naive white college kids’). But now, after the elections, many democrats blame identity politics for the loss against Trump. That’s also not right. It’s very important that Obama was the first president and that a woman came so close to the US presidency. Those are real victories. The problem with Clinton was that she had very few to offer aside from that. She rolled mostly on identity and that was problematic, because aside from being a woman, she was Bill Clintons wife, a famous New Yorker, a very white woman, and longtime member of the political establishment.

Identity politics is not a bad thing, but it’s not a complete political program. It needs the backup of a longterm view on at least world politics, the economy and poverty.

The political center is blaming everything. Everything except these pale years of economic austerity and deregulation, that Clinton wanted to continue. Identity politics is the next bogus culprit.

If you find this interesting, follow Adam Johnson on twitter. And read his latest piece: Lashing Out at ‘Identity Politics,’ Pundits Blame Trump on Those Most Vulnerable to Trump.

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Try to praise the mutilated world

Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June's long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You've seen the refugees going nowhere, you've heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth's scars. Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.

By Adam Zagajewski Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh (and via)

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The 10 best things I've read during the Elections 2016

I posted this today on twitter (click here to see the tweetstorm). This is the full list. Let me know if I’m missing a crucial piece?

1. Hillary’s Millenial Problem

@emmettrensin: There is no pathology here. Only politics. It’s maddeningly simple.

2. Divided by meaning

This brilliant piece by @chrisarnade on the philosophical differences between Trump voters and Clinton voters.

3. When Truth Falls Apart

How the audience doesn’t trust any media anymore, by @MariaBustillos. Not The New York Times, nor Fox, nor twitter.

4. Would Progressive Economics Win Over Trump’s White Working Class Voters?

It’s not easy to recover from years of faux-liberal politics, says @rortybomb.

5. I’m with the banned

This was hilarious, and frightening. @pennyred with the biggest Trump-trolls at the RNC.

6. The Obama Doctrine

A huge (HEWGE) article on Obama’s foreign policy with a glimpse on what Hillary will do. Probably more intervention.

7. Why many political journalists don’t get politics

This one by @BrianBeutler on how political journalists can only see politics as a spectacular game.

8. Withering on the Vine

These elections were also the twilight of liberal politics. Thomas Frank of the @thebafflermag wrote brilliantly about the politicians whose minds refuse to leave Martha’s Vineyard.

9. Are Polls Ruining Democracy?

Jill Lepore of the @NewYorker wrote this great, historical essay on the problems of polling.

10. The Trump-Putin Fallacy

And finally: I read back this piece of @maschagessen several times. How blaming Putin for Trump is a failure of imagination.

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Sometimes I miss this place: Cambridge in the drizzle. Photo: Deanshu.com.

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Einstein on newspapers. In Nieman Reports.

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Unheimisch. This is ‘The Poacher’ by Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum.

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This is Jenny Saville’s work ‘Rosetta II’. What a painting.

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Uit ‘Olijven moet je leren lezen’ van Ellen Deckwitz.

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PG Wodehouse wrote this in 1945, and, well.... (Freddie de Boer on Twitter)

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Tumblr is giving me a hard time. Whatever I do, it keeps logging me out. So I've been away for a bit. Sorry. Here's a first print of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and his greetings to my writing teacher.

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Today at Lippmann House, the headquarters of the Nieman Fellows in Cambridge, we had a coffee with Per Wästberg, the chairman of The Nobel Committee for Literature.

Wästberg is 82 now and has a marvelous career. He’s a Harvard grad from the fifties, a human rights activist who got kicked out of Africa for fighting the apartheid regime, editor of the big Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, writer of about forty books (essays, fiction, poetry) and longtime ambassador for Press Freedom. He was quite open talking to us. Some things he said:

- There are five members of the Swedish Academy that form the Nobel Committee for Literature. They operate in much secrecy. They hide their books in fake covers, close the curtains while they talk, avoid e-mail contact, allow no cell phones in the room. And they keep a shortlist that gets updated regularly. Nominees are often on the list for years. They only talk about the list in public when a nominee passed away.

- One writer that was about to get the award was Ryszard Kapuściński, but he passed away on the operation room. A majority in the committee wanted him to get the prize.

- Wästberg regrets that Borges didn’t get the prize (too close to Pinochet), and Nabokov (too much style, too few substance, according to the then committee) and Graham Greene (lost by one vote)

- They awarded Doris Lessing about 25 years too late, when she was already 88

- Mario Vargas Llosa was the only one in his time showing some real happiness with the prize (’he was jubilant’)

- Now Wästberg reads one book a day, often while listening to classical music. No guilty pleasures, just good old ‘Hoch-kultur’

- He keeps three desks for his own writing: one for poetry, on for investigative journalism and one for fiction writing

- Sometimes writers try to bribe him. One Iranian writer sent him a bag full of pistachios, which we all thought was the best bribe ever

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Bernie & Allen Ginsberg hanging out together. 'America I've given you all and now I'm nothing'

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Why is there so few critique on Trump in the US media?

According to Glenn Greenwald it's because the media (like The New York Times and NPR) still think their work is objective. They don't like writing that Trump calls for hatred and violence, because that's seen as opinion, activism, and bias.

Greenwald is right. But more so, I think, the media need to make money and they're terribly afraid to be called 'New York liberals' and lose the favor of the Trump voters.

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Already missing Obama’s gentle foreign policy

It took me about four hours, but I’ve read the lengthy Atlantic profile on Obama’s foreign policy in The Atlantic: The Obama Doctrine. It's great fun to read how Obama deals with China (important!), Russia (not so important) and ISIS (no direct threat).

This is a summary: Obama doesn't want the US to do stupid shit and get involved with things that don't directly affect the US, which is probably smart these days. Also: he had to keep off the Washington elite and the media that wanted him to do more (bombing, mostly) all the time. The liberation day for Obama was the moment when he decided not to do anything after Assad crossed the red line of using chemical weapons in Syria.

Slightly more concerning is Hillary, who's more about powerplay and dominance and pressures Obama to show more teeth. That's probably good for the polls, but bad for the world. Obama doesn't only want to stay out of Middle Eastern conflict because that's good for the US, but also because that's good for the world.

I'm already missing Obama.

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Awesome Louis van Gaal by @NewYorker illustrator @stan_chow.