Tag: American history
I Supported the Invasion of Iraq
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Twenty years after the United States led a coalition to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the conventional wisdom is now that the postwar fiasco proved that the war was a mistake from its inception. The war, as it was executed, was indeed a disaster, but there
We’re Living in a Golden Age of Fatalism
When I was in school, American history was taught as a series of triumphs over wrongs that belonged to the past. Slavery was evil, but the Civil War ended it; then the civil-rights movement ended segregation. The vote was extended to more and more Americans—starting with white men, then women, Black people, and finally even 18-year-olds—thus fulfilling the promise of democracy. There was no atoning for the near elimination of Native Americans, but somehow it didn’t invalidate the
The States Have Never Been United
Is it news that people are angry with Marjorie Taylor Greene?
This week, the Georgia Republican took advantage of Twitter’s newly liberalized character restrictions to do what she does best: suggest something unhinged, and sit back while her political opponents’ heads explode in white-hot rage.
“We need a national divorce,” she tweeted. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this.” The next day, she followed up
The Forgotten Ron DeSantis Book
History works for Ron DeSantis as an argument. It would be a mistake, though, to think he doesn’t care about it deeply or hasn’t devoted serious deliberation to his own understanding of the American past. In fact, his biography indicates a great respect for the discipline. DeSantis reportedly received special praise for his performance in an Advanced Placement U.S. history course at Florida’s Dunedin High School before he graduated in 1997. He majored in history at Yale during some
Can I Teach Faulkner in DeSantis’s Florida?
In my senior Southern Literature class, I’m about to teach Go Down, Moses, William Faulkner’s great novel about how racism has warped America. I ask my students to think about the stories Faulkner tells: the dispossession of the Chickasaw people, the enslaved woman who drowns herself in despair, and the white family struggling to accept that the admired patriarch who built their Mississippi cotton kingdom also raped his own daughter. Here at Florida State University, in the capital city
Don’t dismiss Justin Amash’s critique of the house
Representative Kevin McCarthy’s protracted fight to become speaker of the House last month raised a big, seldom-discussed question about American democracy: What sort of institution should the House of Representatives be? Should a partisan speaker control if or when a bill or amendment is introduced to advance the program of the coalition that vested the speaker with power? Should power reside in committee chairs, perhaps assigned by seniority, who develop subject-area expertise and command commensurate deference from their colleagues? Or
America Is on the Right Track
Negativity is by now so deeply ingrained in American media culture that it’s become the default frame imposed on reality. In large part, this is because since the dawn of the internet age, the surest way to build an audience is to write stories that make people terrified or furious. This is not rocket science: Evolution designed humans to pay special attention to threats. So, unsurprisingly, the share of American headlines denoting anger increased by 104 percent from 2000 to
Is the War on Drugs to Blame for the Fentanyl Crisis?
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
What should be done about fentanyl? Has it affected your family or community?
Send your responses to [email protected].
Conversations of Note
In The Washington Post, a series of articles on fentanyl includes a lot
The Man Who Mastered Minor Writing
1959 was a good year for American fiction: Philip Roth published “Goodbye, Columbus,” Saul Bellow unleashed “Henderson the Rain King,” and Evan S. Connell, Jr., made his quiet début with “Mrs. Bridge.” You’ve probably heard of the first two writers, but chances are you don’t know the last. Connell’s slender book, split into a hundred and seventeen short sections, peers into the life of India Bridge, a white, upper-middle-class matron living with her husband, three children, and a Black maid
Is This the Tastiest Thanksgiving Ever?
Congrats! You are probably about to eat the very best Thanksgiving meal of your life.
Maybe your turkey is drier than a World Cup fan in Qatar, or maybe you overcommitted and nothing is ready by 8 p.m. Maybe you’re making the same exact menu as last year. But if you round up every single Thanksgiving dinner in the United States—all the birds and pies and mac and cheeses and green-bean casseroles—on average the meal will be just marginally, imperceptibly