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 . In an interview with ESPN, Toma said the field was watered the Wednesday morning before the game, which took place on . Do you think the fights embodied by Just America at a lot of institutions are going to manifest themselves in politics soon? 2023 Cond Nast. 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. Maybe publishers need to think disruptively and not be victims., Maybe, he added, they should think a little more like predators., [For the Record, 1:15 p.m. PST Feb. 10: An earlier version of this post misquoted author George Packer as saying, Maybe publishers need to think destructively and not be victims. He used the word disruptively, not destructively.], Join Carolyn Kellogg on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Under The New Yorkers structure, even some of the best-known writers are considered contractors, and their bosses had given them the impression that health insurance was not a possibility. How do you understand that? Theyve agreed on a $55,000 starting salary and are hashing out issues like caps on potential health care cost increases, people familiar with the talks said even as the Guild threatens a strike. Then it took on a new, more global life in the years between the fall of the Soviet Union and the attacks of September 11th, as a book by your compatriot Josef Joffe, berpower, arguesa reaction against the sole superpower. Have any of its members set up refugee camps, as Egypt, the most populous Arab state, did after the wars between Israel and Arab nations over Palestine? He proposes a different vision, which he thinks offers brighter possibilities, centered around the concept of equality and non-demagogic appeals to patriotism. But with Democrats it is harder. And one of them is national service. They loom larger in times like now, when inequality is soaring and trust in institutions governments, corporations, schools, the press is falling. Say what you want, but Biden is . So theres affirmative action, theres diversity hiring, theres childrens health insurance. Why ISIS Murdered Kenji Goto. The New Yorker staff writer George Packer answers readers' questions about his article " Betrayed," from the issue of April 2, 2007. Compare that to the several hundred Iraqisalmost all of them refugees from the Saddam erawho have been allowed to immigrate to the United States over the past few years. Justin is under the weather, his column will return Wednesday. George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is the author, most recently, of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.. He is the author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, a New York Times bestseller, which won the 2013 National Book Award for non-fiction. 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. On Saturday afternoon the primary participants of The New Yorker's delightful and addictive "Campaign Trail" podcast collected for a live version of same, sort of like when Monty Python did The Secret Policeman's Other Ball. Smart America is where I mostly live, but its no longer a meritocracy, if it ever was. The fourth America is also a rebellion. Because I wanted to write about the whole arc of the war in their lives, I spent many hoursin a couple of cases, two full daystalking with them. All rights reserved. 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. 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. Across the board, American institutions have failed. $26. So, for example, in the COVID-relief bill, theres several billion dollars for disadvantaged farmers. 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To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. 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. It took Amazon a little while to decide they werent going to cooperate with me, he said. Weve all lived with the red-blue division for about twenty years. There was some craziness there, but over all this was inevitable, and it had to happen, and this is how history functions? Packer has made four tours on assignment in Iraq for The New 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 . Egypt, Jordan, and United Arab Emirates have largely stopped issuing residence visas and are even forcing some Iraqis to return home. The employees ultimately backed down, rejecting the notion of unionism for what seemed in part to be cultural reasons. In 2019, she was a judge of the National Book Award in Nonfiction. I have a list of qualities that I think apply to most of us, that foreigners immediately pick up as American traits. [1] His parents taught at Stanford University: his mother, Nancy Packer (ne Huddleston), was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in the Creative Writing Program and later professor of English, and his father, Herbert L. Packer, was a distinguished professor of law, and the author of numerous books and articles. Persuasion doesnt work. Is a Woman Ever Going to Win the White House? 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. I think you can include Elizabeth Warren in that, as well. The younger generation of employees is to the left of its elders on issues of substance. Free Americans' individualistic, leave-me-alone conception of . He told his colleagues that after years of reporting from Iraq, he had requested and received health insurance before the birth of his first child. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America focuses on the ways that America changed in the years between 1978 and 2012. 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. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Some salaries at The New Yorker start at $42,000 a year and remain under $60,000 after 20 years on the job. 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. [6], Packer was a Holtzbrinck Fellow Class of Fall 2009 at the American Academy in Berlin.[7]. (The contents of the writers group messages were shared with me on the condition I only quote people by name with their permission. 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). Its like loyalty to whats yours. I think there was some evidence of that in the results of the 2020 election, and I think its going to continue to happen. In July 2013 the New Yorker Festival released a video entitled Geoffrey Canada on Giving Voice to the Have-nots, of a panel that was moderated by George Packer. 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. 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 . How did Betrayed come together? But it preceded him. The utilitarian reason is a good one. We dont want so strong a union that mediocrity reigns and its impossible to get rid of poor performers. The village of waiting. Some, led by Tad Friend and Jia Tolentino, used the threat of a union and the suggestion that Cond Nast had illegally classified many of them as contractors, which the company disputes to set up a process by which some writers could become employees with health benefits. It doesnt happen in neighborhoods. 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