Living in the USA

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Pence faced an impossible task in the VP debate Wednesday night – defending Trump’s inaction on the pandemic; but Kamala Harris also faced challenges: she couldn’t be an angry black woman. Harold Meyerson comments.
also: Ohio SenatorSherrod Brown talks politics and history, and the lessons Biden should learn from his recent reelection in Ohio, where he won by 8 points in a state Hillary lost by 6.
plus: “Totally Under Control” is Alex Gibney’s powerful new documentary on Trump’s Covid-19 failures – Ella Taylor comments.
Finally, we remember John Lennon – tomorrow, Oct. 9, would have been his 80th birthday.  10-8-2020

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Trump made no attempt in the first debate to win over undecideds- so what WAS his plan? And what is to be done to make future debates more bearable? Harold Meyerson comments.
Plus: Ella Taylor on women in politics on TV this week: “Mrs. America” with Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly; “The Glorias,” with Julianne Moore as Gloria Steinem, and “All In,” a voting rights documentary featuring Stacey Abrams.  1-01-2020

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Trump’s rush to fill the Supreme Court vacancy will help Biden in several ways, Harold Meyerson says–first of all, by making the Republican threat to Obamacare an urgent issue. Harold is editor-at-large of The American Prospect.
Also: Refugees—after World War II in Europe, and today. Historian David Nasaw explains—his new book is The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons, from World War to Cold War.
Plus: Hacking your mind: We make many of our decisions, including political ones, NOT on the basis of what we “think,” but rather on feelings, intuition, and habits. New work by social scientists helps explain how this works for Donald Trump — that’s the argument of a new series on PBS called “hacking your mind.” Ella Taylor has our review. 9-24-20

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We are in “one of the most perilous and fraught moments for American democracy since the mid-nineteenth century,” says Chris Hayes; what’s hopeful is that “the movement we’ve seen in the streets is the largest protest movement in American history.” Chris of course hosts “All In” weeknights on MSNBC; he’s also editor-at-large of The Nation, and he spoke recently with Katrina vanden Heuvel at a Nation magazine online event.
Plus: Covid-19 is the disease that reflects all our social and economic illnesses: that’s what Manuel Pastor says, he’s director of the Equity Research Institute at USC. He reports on who’s got the dangerous jobs and who’s unemployed, which kids have computers and internet connections for at-home classes, and which don’t, and whether Trump’s effort to recruit Latino voters in key states might work.
Also: Russian efforts to interfere with our elections – that’s the subject of a new HBO documentary by one of our favorite documentary makers, Alex Gibney. He’s got footage from inside Russian “troll farms” and videos unearthed from the Russian deep web to reveal the “agents of chaos” who were key players in our elections. Ella Taylor has a review – she’s our resident TV critic.  9-17-20

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Rick Perlstein talks about the rise of Reagan, from what seemed like a career-ending defeat in the 1976 GOP primary, to his narrow victory in the popular vote in 1980–and how the darkness of the culture war has shaped the Republican Party that Trump came to dominate. Rick’s long-awaited book, 1100 pages long, is “Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980.”
Also: Katie Porter, the new member of Congress who flipped a longtime Republican district in Orange County, talks about defending the postal service and about ending student loan debt.
Plus: we’ll talk about politics on TV in 1968 with Ella Taylor — and about a new documentary, called “The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show,” when his guests included Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and also Aretha Franklin. And it’s streaming now on Peacock.  9-10-2020

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The Republican National Convention was hard to watch, but Harold Meyerson did it for us. He reports on the highlights (Melania, dressed like Fidel) and the low moments (Kimberly Gilfoyle, sounding like Mussolini).
Also: The Children’s Hour, stories about Don Jr., Ivanka, Little Eric, and Tiffany, told by Amy Wilentz. Today: the kids go to the convention!
Plus: Our TV critic Ella Taylor recommends the six-part documentary “Immigration Nation” on Netflix, and the 72-episode drama “A French Village,” about collaboration and resistance in WWII – on Prime.  8/27/2020

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The pandemic has slowed the speed of life under capitalism, Naomi Klein suggests in her recent conversation with Katrina vanden Heuvel—and that has created greater empathy and solidarity, expressed in the unprecedented support for the Movement for Black Lives. But the “Screen New Deal”—the virtual classroom and workplace—are bringing greater isolation and increasing corporate power.
Also: Trump’s rushing to develop a vaccine and declare victory over Covid-19 just before the November election – whether or not the current research, “Operation Warp Speed,” has succeeded. Gregg Gonsalves explains the challenges to the researchers, and the dangers posed by Trump: an ineffective vaccine that will create more resistance and skepticism about future vaccines. Gregg teaches epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health. He’s also the winner of a MacArthur genius fellowship.
Plus Ella Taylor talks about the new film “Boy’s State” – it’s about 1100 teenage boys in Texas brought together by the American Legion to organize a state government. And no, it’s not a horror movie – it’s a documentary.
Finally, Your Minnesota Moment: Ilhan Omar defeats a well-funded opponent.  8-13-20

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We’ve been told many times that Trump won the 2016 election because his populist appeal won the white working class. Populism is the problem, in this view — populism mobilized the irrationality, bigotry, & authoritarianism of the white working class. Tom Frank say that’s all wrong — he wrote the classic “What’s the Matter with Kansas?,” and now he has a new book out: “The People, NO: A Brief History of anti-Populism.”
And Ella Taylor reviews “A Thousand Cuts,” a documentary about fascism in the Phillipines – where the regime of President Rodriguez Duterte has killed 30,000 people, claiming they were drug dealers – and drug users.  It’s on PBS Frontline.
Also: Mike Davis talks about LA in the Sixties –the huge nonviolent direct action campaign for integrated housing that came before Watts. The defeat of that campaign, in a statewide referendum, was one of the things that made the Watts rebellion, 55 years go this month, inevitable.  8-6-2020

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The Feds vs the Protests in Portland: David Cole, National Legal Director of the ACLU, explains what’s at stake there.  He also proposes one way to reduce police misconduct: reduce enforcement of misdemeanors, which account for 16 million arrests annually.
And Ella Taylor reviews a documentary on the ACLU’s legal battles of the past few years–the fight for immigrant rights, voting rights, abortion rights and LGBTQ rights.
Also, Mike Davis talks about LA in the Sixties –the fight in those years against the LAPD and for black lives continues today.  7/30/2020

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Trump’s “performative authoritarianism” is a campaign ploy designed for Fox News—that’s what Harold Meyerson says about Trump sending federal forces into the streets of Portland to grab activists off the streets.  Harold is Editor at Large of The American Prospect.
Plus: it’s time to disarm the police—that’s what Don Guttenplan argues.  He’s editor of The Nation.
And film critic Ella Taylor is back with virus-time TV recommendations: this week, two Netflix shows about Brazil: an animated feature on migrant labor, and a documentary about the crisis of democracy there.  7-23-2020