Weekly Reader

If he ever conceded so, Obama would likely insist nevertheless that the truth doesn’t matter nearly as much as maintaining faith in the American project. “I’m not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America,” Obama writes in another excerpt published in The Atlantic, “not just for the sake of future generations of Americans but for all of humankind.” But he clearly understands, too, as Biden surely does on some level, that our situation is bleak. “I’m convinced that the pandemic we’re currently living through is both a manifestation of and a mere interruption in the relentless march toward an interconnected world, one in which peoples and cultures can’t help but collide,” he writes. “In that world—of global supply chains, instantaneous capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorist networks, climate change, mass migration, and ever-increasing complexity—we will learn to live together, cooperate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish.” It’s a passage far less inspirational than it is chilling—evidence that as determinedly as he might disparage cynicism, Obama knows exactly what horrors await us in the years to come and that the curmudgeons and cranks on the left are, again, substantively correct about the trajectory we’re on.

But this collection and operationalization of biometric data — at the border, at the entrance to an office, on the floor of a warehouse — is not some neutral means for assessing the risk a given individual poses, with respect to Covid-19 or any other hazard, any more than biometric data in general simply represents the reality or perceived reality of someone’s identity. Such biometric forms of control replicate already existing biases about who must bear the brunt of surveillance technologies, marking out particular populations for more intensive scrutiny. This was true when concerns about terrorism after 9/11 led to the sorting of foreign workers, immigrants, asylum seekers, and noncitizens into “desirable” and “undesirable” categories, as David Lyon explains in Surveillance, Power and Everyday Life. It was also true with predictive-policing algorithms, which, as Ruha Benjamin and Simone Browne have intensively catalogued, were first deployed against Black populations.

The great myth that underpins policing in the United States is that it remains a purely local affair, with police responding to the safety needs of individual neighborhoods. Setting aside the numerous federal law enforcement agencies, the grants to municipalities from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, and the nationwide professional and fraternal organizations that cops belong to, what unifies police in the United States today is their global reach. It is common today to hear criticisms of the militarization of US policing. But beneath this trend is a much-older process that has ebbed and flowed over time: the globalization of US policing.

Debs’s approach to the “popularity question” differs from one of his ideological heirs, Bernie Sanders. After languishing in minor party obscurity through the 1970s, Sanders dropped the most radical planks of his platform (including socializing the economy’s commanding heights) and gained political office by pursuing policies thwarted not by lack of popularity but by the plutocratic order. Often, his goal has been less to gainsay prevailing opinion — though he’s done plenty of that, too — than to press for public sentiment to be reflected in public policy. Popular social democratic reforms like taxing the rich, funding public programs, and boosting worker power are his bread and butter.

If your political aspirations are mainly about getting a seat at the table, these appointments may feel worth lauding. But they are in many ways symbolic gains, a point that even some of those who celebrate such symbolism can accept. Their takeaway is that girls will see these women in these jobs and realize “they can do that, too”—not that they will also have the means to do it or that it will necessarily improve many other women’s lives. It’s a regression to the kind of individualistic, girlboss feminism we have been trying to pull away from but that still has a powerful hold on those who posit a commitment to “gender equality” largely confined to who holds the power, not what they do with it.

Books Read In 2016

  1. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
  2. A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story by Diana Butler Bass
  3. The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer
  4. The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade by Susan Wise Bauer
  5. Heavy Metal Music In Britain by Gerd Bayer
  6. The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy by Maggie Berg
  7. The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy: Practical Tips for Staying Safe Online by Violet Blue
  8. Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolano
  9. Nazi Literature In The Americas by Roberto Bolano
  10. The Unknown University by Roberto Bolano
  11. The Secret History of Science Fiction by T.C. Boyle
  12. The Sorcerer's Daughter: The Defenders of Shannara by Terry Brooks
  13. Letters, 1941-1985 by Italo Calvino
  14. Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History Of The Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang
  15. Lion's Pride: The Turbulent History of New Japan Pro Wrestling by Chris Charlton
  16. X-Men: Days Of Future Past by Chris Claremont
  17. Disgrace: A Novel by J.M. Coetzee
  18. Panther In The Hive by Olivia A. Cole
  19. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman
  20. The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History and How We Can Fight Back by Alan Collinge
  21. Secret Identity Crisis: Comic Books and the Unmasking of Cold War America by Matthew J. Costello
  22. Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier
  23. Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems by Mahmoud Darwish
  24. Star Trek Archives: The Best Of Peter David
  25. Women In Class Struggle by Marlene Dixon
  26. Mystery Science Storybook: Bedtime Tales Based on the Worst Movies Ever by Sugar Ray Dodge
  27. The Life Engineered by JF Dubeau
  28. Husker Du: The Story Of The Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock by Andrew Earles
  29. On Literature by Umberto Eco
  30. Selected Essays, Poems, and Other Writings by George Eliot
  31. Picture Windows: How The Suburbs Happened by Elizabeth Ewen
  32. False Choices: The Faux Feminism Of Hilary Rodham Clinton by Liza Featherstone
  33. Welcome To Night Vale: A Novel by Joseph Fink
  34. The Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael Fournier
  35. Nirvana's In Utero by Gillian Gaar
  36. Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman
  37. The Game of Our Lives: The English Premier League and the Making of Modern Britain by David Goldblatt
  38. Imagine: Living In A Socialist USA by Frances Goldin
  39. Anxiety: A Short History by Allan V. Horwitz
  40. Queen Of Chaos: The Misadventures Of Hillary Clinton by Diana Johnstone
  41. The Walking Dead Volume One by Robert Kirkman
  42. The Walking Dead Volume Two by Robert Kirkman
  43. Capitalism: A Short History by Jurgen Kocka
  44. Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It by Gina Kolata
  45. State & Revolution by Vladimir Lenin
  46. Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller
  47. Milton and the Post-Secular Present: Ethics, Politics, Terrorism by Feisal Mohamed
  48. All Star Superman by Grant Morrison
  49. Alice Munro's Best: Selected Stories by Alice Munro
  50. Batman & Green Arrow: The Poison Tomorrow by Dennis O'Neil
  51. The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized, History by John Ortved
  52. Game Boy World: 1989: A History of Nintendo Game Boy, Volume One by Jeremy Parish
  53. The Apology by Plato
  54. The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin by Corey Rubin
  55. Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance by Goerge Saliba
  56. The Assasination Complex: Inside The Government's Secret Drone Warface Program by Jeremy Scahill
  57. Batgirl 2012 Annual by Gail Simone
  58. Lumberjanes Volume One by Noelle Stevenson
  59. Lumberjanes Volume Two by Noelle Stevenson
  60. The ABCs Of Socialism by Bhaskar Sunkara
  61. The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia by Patrick Thorpe
  62. The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010 by Selina Todd
  63. The Monsters Of Education Technology by Audrey Watters
  64. Lumberjanes Volume Three by Shannon Watters
  65. Lumberjanes Volume Four by Shannon Watters
  66. Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber
  67. Race Matters by Cornell West
  68. Crisis On Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman
  69. A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

Worth Reading: Spring Break Edition

I spent a lot of time over spring break clearing out bookmarks and saved articles from Instapaper. Normally I post this list when I get to ten, but here are twenty articles worth reading: