8-16-kirshner-tooze

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/reviews/adam-tooze-crashed-global-financial-crisis-know-nothing-nativism/"></div>We are now a full decade removed from the Global Financial Crisis — ancient history by contemporary cultural standards, as seen in the collective forgetting culminating with the cavalier dismantling of the not-much-but-better-than-nothing Dodd-Frank reforms. So it is an opportune moment to step back and assess the crisis as history, which is the mission of Crashed by Adam Tooze, one of the leading historians of his generation.
In this sprawling, ambitious, undisciplined, and often deeply insightful book, Crashed makes a number of astute observations — noteworthy ledes that are too often buried in the particulars. Global in scope, if with an emphasis on the U.S., the Eurozone, and Eastern Europe, Tooze perceptively identifies the roots of and continuities attendant to the crisis, strengths that are most evident in the book’s treatment of the American case. In particular, Crashed argues convincingly that the Global Financial Crisis both exacerbated and, in the heat of the moment, obscured, troubling trends afoot within the United States. Our current civil catastrophe can only be understood in this context.
America painted itself into a political corner with three regrettable decisions: the 1990s Clinton-Democrats embrace of Wall Street and the Robert Rubin/Larry Summers-championed dismantling of financial regulations that followed; the Republican renunciation of fiscal responsibility, with the massive, skewed-towards-the-wealthy George W. Bush tax cuts; and the catastrophic choice to embark on the long, costly and ruinous Iraq War, an act of geopolitical self-mutilation. These blunders aggravated the growing problem of income inequality and social stratification — and were also suggestive of a diffusion of international power and relative American decline. (In this context, globally the crisis “appeared as one more sign of America’s fading dominance.”) It also elicited widespread popular revulsion against the guardians of the status quo, resulting in the astonishing victory of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, as well as the nomination of the “patently unqualified” Sarah Palin for Vice President of the United States by the Republican Party. A “laughingstock of the world” her popularity at home should have been a canary in the coal mine for the emergence of a powerful anti-rationalist, know-nothing political undercurrent in American politics.
These points, and others, are established in Tooze’s concise, well-argued introduction, which articulates the main themes of the book, including why the Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath “are essential to understanding the changing face of the world today,” the need to situate that crisis in “its wider political and geopolitical context,” and to understand how the seemingly distinct traumas in the Eurozone that followed are “essentially interrelated” phenomena. This all sounds right, and promising. Unfortunately, the 600-plus pages that follow often read like they are flowing from the pen of an accomplished international affairs columnist with a globetrotting byline for a leading broadsheet. That is not necessarily a bad thing. But it is incongruous, and arguably not the optimal dedication of the talents of a gifted historian known for a massive, meticulous, prize-winning study of the economic pressures related to the Nazi War effort, and more recently a celebrated account of the emergence of America as a world power during and after the First World War.
The first three parts of the Crashed are disadvantaged by the fact that they mostly cover well-trodden ground. The book does feature a must-read chapter on how the massive provision of global liquidity by the Federal Reserve saved the world’s financial system from completely imploding. “Acting in the enlightened self-interest of the U.S. financial system,” and without debate or fanfare, the Fed “made itself into a lender of last resort for the world.” Left implicit is that the antonym of “enlightened self-interest” is “America first” — a chilling thought to keep in mind when the next financial crisis comes knocking. But more generally, library shelves are already packed with volumes on the crisis and how it unfolded; standouts include 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, by Simon Johnson and James Kwak, Martin Wolf’s The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned — and Still Have to Learn — from the Financial Crisis, as a well as the valuable, detail-laden Financial Crisis Inquiry Report and countless memoirs and journalistic accounts. And much of what we really need to know boils down to one sentence from Alan Blinder: “it was shameful business practices, coupled with regulatory neglect, that got us into this mess.”
Similarly, despite particularly strong passages on Greece, it is difficult for discussions of the profound pathologies of the Eurozone system, the important but overcautious American stimulus, and the misguided, politically-motivated resurgence of austerity measures to do more than add a pitch-perfect voice to a crowded chorus. This puts tremendous pressure on the final quarter of the book, “Aftershocks,” to have something new to say. It does, but even here the narrative shares too many of the less welcome qualities of the first three parts of Crashed — breathless, blow-by-blow accounts (often day-to-day and even hour-by-hour), featuring minute details that add more color than substance.
This is unfortunate, because there are some real aces among the many cards that Tooze has scattered on the table. Crashed develops an impressive thesis with its shrewd, eagle-eyed contextualization of the contemporary American catastrophe, homing in on two moments, one before the Global Financial Crisis and the other after its (apparent) resolution. In 2006, Barack Obama, then in his second year as the junior Senator from Illinois, warned that the failure to address the concerns of those who have been made less secure by stagnant incomes, growing inequality and economic globalization will lead to greater nativism, protectionism and “anti-immigration sentiment.” But this was under-appreciated by an ensconced, centrist Democratic party (and it was not just Republicans, but elite Clinton Democrats who could not race fast enough though the gilded revolving doors of the Wall Street/Washington DC axis). And Obama’s re-election in 2012 was misunderstood as the “triumph of centrist liberalism,” with the Global Financial Crisis contained, and the “Palin tendency” fading.
As Tooze argues convincingly, this was a mirage, and “the presidential race of 2016 turned out to be more about the financial crisis of 2008 than 2012 had been” — as suggested by the startling successes of should-have-been barely fringe candidates like an obscure democratic-socialist from Vermont, and a malevolent, race-baiting reality TV star. But both major parties failed to reckon with the meaning of 2008, especially in the broader context of the years leading up to it: widening inequality, increasing globalization, and a decade of long, losing wars. The Clintons had cut the party loose from the vestiges of its New Deal roots, and it was not to his credit that Obama, “by inclination a bipartisan centrist” stocked his Treasury department with Rubin/Summers backbenchers.
Trump’s victory, however, was not simply the result of an out-of-touch Democratic Party. He first had to capture the Republican nomination, without an hour of political experience or a hint of commitment to any of the Party’s core principles. Yet he steamrolled through a formidable field. If the Democratic Party faced the challenge of deep divisions deriving from Main Street dissatisfaction with its establishment class, the GOP was unrecognizable and in utter disarray. As Tooze puts it, “If someone had written a script as to how an economic crisis and democratic decay would lead to a nationalist backlash in the United States, this denouement might have seemed a little cartoonish.”
Crashed doesn’t offer an easy way out of this mess. But in terms of its diagnosis, there is a great book lurking within the widely separated covers that hold this one together. Hopefully readers will come away with a clear-eyed understanding of the important observations on offer, but there is a real risk that they will instead become lost and disoriented under an avalanche of details.
<div class="at-below-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/reviews/adam-tooze-crashed-global-financial-crisis-know-nothing-nativism/"></div>

Adam Tooze&#8217;s Crashed: From the Global Financial Crisis to Know-Nothing Nativism

Adam Tooze&#8217;s Crashed: From the Global Financial Crisis to Know-Nothing Nativism

kirshner-718-image

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/surviving-emerging-dark-age-towards-new-counterculture/"></div>So, here’s the thing: this is not going to get better anytime soon. And there comes a point when you are lost so deep in a dangerous forest that as night approaches it becomes necessary to think not only about rescue, but also of shelter and survival. This is not defeatism — I’m not suggesting we stop fighting the good fight — on the contrary, we need to go the full Churchill here, and “fight on the beaches […] fight on the landing grounds […] fight in the fields and in the streets,” and, above all, to “defend our Island, whatever the cost may be.”
But we have to face this long struggle, between what Reinhold Niebuhr described as the children of darkness and the children of light, with the understanding that the children of darkness currently have the upper hand, and may hold the reins of power indefinitely. Because the problem is not that Donald Trump is president. Yes, he is an ignorant, narcissistic, morally bankrupt, instinctively-authoritarian racist whose dumpster-fire diplomacy will leave us exposed and vulnerable on the world stage.
But Trump himself is almost beside the point. Why we are where we are — at the brink of a new Dark Age — is not because we are in the hands of this malevolent huckster. It is because despite all of his unprecedented, decency-shattering transgressions, one on top of the other, and in the face of routine revelations of staggering malfeasance that leave Spiro Agnew looking like a choir-boy, he retains the support of a large and critical mass of the American public. The fault lies not with our train wreck of a tin-pot President, but in the ruin of our society — a problem whose depths were exposed not when Trump won the general election, but revealed by his stunning, steamrolling capture of the Republican nomination. You can make the argument that frustration with out-of-touch Democratic elites allowed a squeaker of an election to slip from their hands, but Democrats had nothing to do with the jaw-dropping spectacle that was the self-immolation of the Republican Party. Our country’s crisis is rooted in a deep-seated social-cultural pathology, one that is much more troubling, and dangerous, than its noxious symptom.
If this, then, is what America has become, what are we supposed to do? First and foremost, it is necessary to recognize the stakes of this struggle. This is not an issue of left versus right. (Trump is not remotely a conservative — he is a faux-populist nativist white-nationalist.) This is a millennial contest between liberal civilizationalists and cult-of-personality authoritarianism. Black and White. Right and Wrong. It can be hard for people who consider themselves sophisticates to grasp this simplicity and steel themselves to act accordingly. In my case, for example, as a professor of international politics, I spend most of my time preaching nuance, complexity, and perspective. In general, to evaluate international conflicts, it is necessary to see both sides of an argument, how the same events can be understood from contrasting points of view, and to recognize and process the plausible merits of each. Similarly, in crafting foreign policies, the best choice is rarely shiny and obvious, standing out from foolish and wrongheaded alternatives, but rather requires sifting through a number of compromised, imperfect options, well aware that advocates of a different approach may be right. As the extraordinary thinker Raymond Aron <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/raymond-aron/the-dawn-of-universal-history/9780465004089/">once explained</a>: “It isn’t every day that a Dreyfus affair allows you to invoke truth against error.”
But sometimes it does. And this is one of those times. It is therefore crucial to overcome the comforting instinct to normalize, and the laudable counsel of qualification. This is an existential crisis between the enlightenment and absolutism, one that we in the West thought had been settled by 1945. Given these stakes, the first thing to do is set aside normal politics — those quarrels are now a side-show. With luck, there will be plenty of time in the future to argue over the appropriate marginal tax rate; until then, the common defense of civilizational values must take precedence over policy disputes. This, too, does not come naturally. Conservatives of principle have been asked to do something that sounds straightforward as rhetoric but is actually daunting in practice: to put country ahead of party. Those of us who commonly vote Democratic have not (yet) been tasked with this responsibility (but it would be naïve to discount the possible emergence of illiberalism from the left) — and we should welcome those principled souls who have done so to aid this epic struggle, and appreciate and applaud the nobility of their sacrifice. Even those with whom we have spent decades in pitched disagreement.
And with all possible allies, we must defend our island — which, if it is in minority dissent, as I think likely — will be something of a scattered archipelago, one that will host a new counterculture dedicated to keeping the lamps of civilization alive, so that it can reemerge if and when these new dark ages run their wretched course. There are historical precedents for such efforts. Subcultures of artists and intellectuals under communism in Eastern Europe, for example, tended to modest embers under starkly oppressive conditions for more than four decades; we would do well to learn from these and other experiences.
But defending our island means, above all, preserving the shared values of civilization. Primary among these is a commitment to rationality, to truth, and to the free expression of ideas. The authoritarians will come, as they always do, for those who express ideas that deviate from the party line. It will be necessary to be vigilant against threats to, and race to the defense of, the most important outlets of such expression: the media, the arts, and the universities (all of which, along with, for some reason, psychotherapists, are among the first groups targeted for terror by neo-fascists). This will at times require some gritted teeth — as the old cliché goes it is only unpopular speech that needs defending, and that can be a real drag at times. But annoying expression is an inescapable part of the price to be paid for freedom of expression.
A second line of defense is to reject tribalism in all its forms. To judge every individual as Martin Luther King hoped we would, not “by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” — and to hold others to this standard when they are judging us. And while we’re at it, let’s insist on considering each case on its individual merits, on waiting out the thoughtful deliberation of due process before drawing conclusions, and renounce the notion of guilt by accusation or affiliation (again, the rejection of all three of these tenets are the hallmarks of authoritarianism). We are not mobs. The internet and social media empower those who are disposed to pick up torches and pitchforks, and it may be that the great American experiment in self-government has not survived contact with Twitter. So one final piece of advice — let’s be a little wary of the internet, and when staring at our screens, follow Lou Reed’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTlsSXNT2bg">admonition</a>: “don’t believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear.” Lou wasn’t screaming “fake news”; on an album appropriately called New York, he was reminding us to check the facts, and not get taken.
But much of the country has been taken. Our island is at risk, and cult-of-personality authoritarianism — perhaps the most un-American form of governance imaginable — is on the rise both at home and abroad. We can fight, and we should fight, and we must look to protect the marginalized and the vulnerable — the forces of oppression always come for them first, and work their way inward from the margins. But we must also tend to the lamps of civilization, and keep them burning.
I was never a big fan of Ted Kennedy, but he was at his best in low moments. His funeral oration for Bobby set the standard, but it is his concession speech at the 1980 Democratic National Convention that points the way forward now: “The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
<div class="at-below-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/surviving-emerging-dark-age-towards-new-counterculture/"></div>

Surviving the Emerging Dark Age: Towards a New Counterculture

francisco_franco_escoltado_por_la_guardia_mora_visita_san_sebastian_una_vez_finalizada_la_guerra_8_de_8_-_fondo_marin-kutxa_fototeka

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/spanish-civil-war/"></div>The Spanish Civil War, fought between 1936 and 1939, was one of the defining conflicts of the 20th century. It pitted those loyal to the democratically elected government of the Republic against anti-democratic nationalists, led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. As an ideological dress-rehearsal for the visible-on-the-horizon Second World War, the conflict attracted international attention. The fascists — Hitler’s Germany and Italy under Mussolini — provided crucial support for the nationalists. The Western democracies, divided and queasy about the role of communists among the loyalists, kept their distance. This did not stop many of their citizens of conscience from rallying to the loyalist cause. George Orwell was shot through the neck for his efforts, which he recounted in Homage to Catalonia. Virginia Woolf’s nephew, Julian Bell, lost his life as a volunteer ambulance driver.
It did not end well. With the West looking the other way, the remnants of the idealistic left had little hope (a metaphor for the lost cause: Orson Welles met with Ernest Hemingway to provide the voice-over narration for a pro-loyalist documentary, and the two men promptly got into a fistfight). The nationalists won the war, and Franco’s brutal, bloody, proto-fascist dictatorship gripped Spain for the following four decades. If you want to take the measure of a mid-century man (or a woman — here’s to you, Violet Bonham Carter, among others), find out where they stood on the Spanish Civil War.
We face such a moment again. I refer not to the resort to arms — and I will pause here to make that unambiguously clear — but rather to the moral weight of the current crisis confronting the future of the American Republic. The stakes here are not about partisan politics — Republicans now love him, but other than his plutocratic bona-fides, Trump is barely a Republican — rather, they are about what we are, and what we may become. The Trump Presidency is not normal, and it is dangerous to our democracy.
Think twice before you shake your head in disagreement. There is an overwhelming urge to normalize this still-unfolding catastrophe (and luckily so far still untested-by-crisis administration), but that self-soothing instinct is naïve at best. We are in the hands of an ignorant narcissistic nativist with deeply rooted authoritarian instincts, one who thinks nothing of undermining the free press or an independent judiciary if it will buy him ten minutes of political advantage. Trump, who lords over the executive branch as if it was a banana-republic-style family business — complete with a coterie of pampered princelings – has done a hundred things that would have once brought utter ruin to any reputable political figure. (It is impossible to keep up with these transgressions, which come along like streetcars, but let’s use “good people” among the neo-Nazis as a generic place holder.) These characteristics, all of them, are deeply, disturbingly, and fundamentally anti-American. When there is a bull in the china shop, one is not inclined to take note of each plate shattered. But they are, one by one, the norms that had guided our civilization.
People of good conscience must stand up to this. To do otherwise, as a wise young man once put it, is to turn your head, and pretend that you just don’t see. It is necessary not to fall prey to the normalizing temptation, and to say plainly “this is not right” — even if, in the end, we lose. And we very well might lose. The Trump coalition is strong; its opposition is divided. With regard to the former, consider the pattern observable since before the election: Trump does something repugnant. His polling numbers drift downwards, and then slowly rebound, to a relatively low but still firm base. Although Trump’s approval numbers are at precedent-setting lows for a first year presidency, in a larger sense they are mind-bogglingly high. And it is that latter point which matters.
The robust Trump coalition is composed of three powerful single-issue cohorts, and Trump is assiduously serving their interests — and he will continue to do so. They are:
The Look-the-Other-Way Wealthy. There is a large group of wealthy Republican voters who care about one thing and one thing only: they want to pay less taxes. (They also enjoy eliminating any government regulations, wise or unwise, when this might boost business profits.) Trump cut their taxes. They are very pleased. For them, nothing else matters, and they will tolerate and rationalize the embarrassing mess that comes with it. This is a bad way to run a country. It is important to understand that Trump is not Hitler — and that it is unproductive to engage in such cavalier name-calling. (That said, it is impossible not to notice his similarities with Mussolini: the lack of rooted commitment to any political principles other than self-aggrandizement, the insecure obsession with the superficial trappings of power, the boasting and general buffoonery.) But one characteristic we share today with Germany in the early &#8217;30s is that wealthy conservatives then were willing to put up with much of what they saw as Hitler’s absurdities, nonsense, and excesses in order to get what they wanted — and convinced themselves they would be able to use and control him (and were catastrophically wrong on both counts). Here the parallels are indeed chilling. It is likely, and I mean this, that Trump really could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and Wall Street would look the other way at what Fox News would describe as the “hotly contested mid-town controversy” as long as taxes remained low.
The Hypocritical God Squad. Trump has spent his adult life as a decadent hedonist, and, aside from the dark ribbon of racism that threads its way through his past, as a liberal on social issues, especially regarding sex questions (too liberal, his wives and the wives of his friends might mutter). But Trump will appoint conservative judges. Lots and lots of them. Because he could not care less (a new medievalism will not affect him personally), and the politics are obvious. For some, everything simply boils down to abortion. Others seem much more obsessed with homosexuality. This is bizarre. Yes, the Old Testament makes clear that such things are not allowed — but its prohibitions against it, and a litany of sexual practices, are buried in the text. Now consider some of The Ten Commandments, which presumably are the most important laws to follow for one to be in the good graces of the lord. They include: “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,” no lying, no stealing, no coveting . . . read the whole list, Trump bats at best .200 — this is the guy who is going to do god’s work for you? There is no point in trying to untangle the logic here, but be certain of this: Trump will continue to appoint conservative judges, and these people will never leave him.
The Disaffected White Working Class. Racists and white nationalists love Donald Trump, and for good reason. But the attention-getting ugliness of these cretins obscures a much larger group whose political sensitivities are more complex. It has been a difficult few decades for the working class, especially but not exclusively the unskilled, who have been disadvantaged by technological change, aspects of globalization, and an increasingly business-friendly legal and regulatory environment, trends which were exacerbated by the deep recession that followed the global financial crisis — ground zero for the rise of American populism. On top of all this, members of the white working class tend to view the rhetoric of ascendant identity politics with resentment and alarm. Struggling to stay afloat and facing declining prospects for themselves and their children, they may enjoy aspects of white privilege — but it sure doesn’t seem like it to them. They don’t feel personally responsible for everything that’s bad in the world, and don’t enjoy being told that they are. And not surprisingly, many have concluded that if we now live in a world defined by confrontational tribalism and identity politics, they need to get in the game. Who speaks for them? Donald Trump. It matters little that in bread-and-butter terms he will provide them with nothing, and likely less than that. They still sleep better at night thinking that the President of the United States is “one of us” — and will look out for us, rather than them.
In sum, Trump has a stable and powerful base of support, which was enough to win — and could be enough to win again. Because we are back again at the Spanish Civil War – not simply because this is the existential, character-defining, right-versus-wrong epochal struggle of our time – but because the anti-Trump coalition is riven with profound divisions. The never-Trump conservatives, whose fortitude in standing by their principles is to be applauded, are too few and too marginalized to save us. This struggle, if it is to be won, will be won by the left.
But the American left, like the Spanish Loyalists, are at each other’s throats — over issues that are not easily resolved. Three overlapping themes define these profound fissures.
Largely drawn along generational lines, there is the new illiberal left versus the old guard. These cohorts hold dearly perspectives that are fundamentally incompatible. The millennial progressive is too easily caricatured, but many such young people today favor prohibitions against forbidden speech, are quick to presume guilt-by-accusation or association, emphasize group identity over individual responsibility, and can be intolerant of opposing perspectives, even when proffered in the form of thoughtful civil discourse. These attributes are, of course, the very opposite of the prizes that most &#8217;60s leftists fought pitched battles to win: the revolution against censorship, the right to explore unflinchingly previously taboo subjects, exaltation of the inalienable rights of every individual, and the discipline and wisdom to consider every case individually on its merits. For this group, Lenny Bruce died for their freedom; nowadays young progressives would ban his performances from their campuses.
A second division is over priorities: some on the left place a priority on cultural issues, others on economic concerns. There is no right and wrong here – both protecting vulnerable populations and confronting the contemporary crisis of inequality and unequal opportunity are noble endeavors. My hunch is that it is savvier politics to place economics first, both because it most easily crosses political lines, and because there are real questions as to whether radical, self-perpetrating wealth disparities are compatible with a functioning democracy. A case can be made for either approach, but the danger is that disagreements over priorities (especially within a now less-tolerant-of-deviations-from-the-party-line left) will lead to conflicts that undermine the prospects for achieving shared objectives. There is discomforting precedent for this — the progress of the women’s movement in the 1970s was hampered by exactly such a rift, at times bitter, between factions that favored a cultural or economic emphasis.
Finally, there are the liberal civilizationalists and the radical disrupters. The latter group includes that most bizarre category of people — and apparently they exist — who voted for wide-eyed socialist Bernie Sanders in the primaries and then cast a ballot for the rapacious robber-baron Trump in the general election — which is sort of like voting first for matter and then for anti-matter. But this heartbreaking manifestation of dissociative disorder illustrates the attitude of the radical disrupters on the left: that “anything is better than this.” Liberal civilizationalists know that things could actually be worse – much, much worse – and are inherently wary of breaking things apart first and asking questions later, in the hopes that what follows might be better (that sort of thinking, one would be wise to remember, is what brought us the Iraq War and all that followed). This is not to suggest that leftist insurgents did not have much to protest with regard to the establishment elites of the Democratic Party, personified by its flawed Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, who, with her cohort, became ensconced in the magical bubble of the ruling class. It is not a small thing to fail to understand that one who aspires to be President of the United States should not rake in over 20 million dollars in “speaking fees” in the two years before the election. Or that although it is perfectly reasonable for a Secretary of State to seek the advice of one of her experienced predecessors, it is a very different thing to boast of enjoying the celebrity company of the odious Henry Kissinger in social settings.
Still. At the moment of the general election, it was a choice between a deeply flawed but capable candidate, and an unqualified, noxious know-nothing, who paraded his gleeful disregard for everything America claimed to stand for in its finest moments. Yet he won, and he could win again, if all good people don’t recognize the depths of the danger we face, set aside every other concern, and dedicate themselves to his political defeat — ideally a crushing political defeat, that we might rout this disease from our system. After that, feel free to return to politics as usual. But as long as Trump is in office, and Trumpism has legitimacy, this is the Spanish Civil War. History is watching.
&nbsp;
<h6>Image: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco#/media/File:Francisco_Franco_escoltado_por_la_Guardia_Mora_visita_San_Sebastián_una_vez_finalizada_la_guerra_(8_de_8)_-_Fondo_Mar%C3%ADn-Kutxa_Fototeka.jpg">Franco arriving in San Sebastian in 1939</a></h6>
<div class="at-below-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/spanish-civil-war/"></div>

This is the Spanish Civil War

21152893001_f3f53a5930_k

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/america-america/"></div>“Appalled by the state of affairs, realizing the greatness and the nearness of the danger . . . and thinking, as men are apt to think in great crises, that when all had been done they still have something left to do, and when all had been said they have not said enough, again called on the captains one by one . . . he reminded them of their country, the freest of the free, and of the unfettered discretion allowed to all in it to live as they pleased.” [Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 7.69.2] <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/america-america/#more-2985" class="more-link">Read more</a>
<div class="at-below-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/america-america/"></div>

America, America

8567813820_57dc199e5f_o-1038x576

8567813820_57dc199e5f_o

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/kardashian-candidate/"></div>It is well within the range of the plausible that the next President of the United States will be an ignorant, authoritarian game-show host peddling an improvised basket of incoherent, would-be catastrophic economic and foreign policies, the wreckage of which, ironically, would offer nothing that might improve the lot of his core supporters. <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/kardashian-candidate/#more-2293" class="more-link">Read more</a>
<div class="at-below-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/kardashian-candidate/"></div>

The Kardashian Candidate

Jonathan Kirshner is professor of Political Science at Boston College. He is author of numerous books, including&nbsp;American Power after the Financial Crisis,&nbsp;Hollywood’s Last Golden Age: Politics, Society and the Seventies Film in America,&nbsp;An Unwritten Future: Realism and Uncertainty in World Politics,&nbsp;and the novel&nbsp;Urban Flight.

Jonathan Kirshner

“A Very Strong Effect on the World”: A Conversation with Phillip Lopate

"The older one grows, the more one likes indecency." — Virginia Woolf

Memoir &amp; Essay

A Very Acute Watcher: A Conversation with David Thomson

"There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education." — Will Rogers

Film

Firefighting

The Fire Last Time

Economics and Finance

"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." — Molly Ivins

Politics

"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history." — George Bernard Shaw

History

Norman Mailer: Collected Essays of the 1960s

Norman Mailer: Four Books of the 1960s

Confessions of a Left-Conservative: Norman Mailer in the Library of America

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

Fiction

The End of Alchemy

Systemic Breakdown

The Essential Keynes

Universal Man

Mathematician, Statesman, Philosopher: The Life of John Maynard Keynes

Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, The Great Recession, and the Uses — and Misuses — of History

Back to the Next Great Recession

Jonathan Kirshner is professor of Political Science at Boston College. He is author of numerous books, including&nbsp;American Power after the Financial Crisis,&nbsp;Hollywood’s Last Golden Age: Politics, Society and the Seventies Film in America,&nbsp;An Unwritten Future: Realism and Uncertainty in World Politics,&nbsp;and the novel&nbsp;Urban Flight.