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thanks--for--listening · 5 years ago

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lost song

HAPPY HOLIDAYS here’s my tiva cairo fic, cant wait to spend the rest of 2019 emotional about tony and ziva! let me know what u think i love your opinions! (also on ao3)

Ziva wasn’t entirely sure how she’d gotten here.

Much of the past few months had been a blur, moments scattered across a timeline that no longer felt linear. Past, present, future, they were all warped into one, dreams and memories making themselves nearly indistinguishable from one another. Reality was no longer as strong as it once was.

She had clarity, enough to know exactly where she currently sat. The opera house had been beautiful. When she closed her eyes, she saw it the way it once was, the way it was supposed to be: walls covered in intricate paintings, red velvet seats, performers on stage whose voices echoed throughout the room as if they were their own entities, traveling to a destination far, far away. Even now, she looked at the wreckage, at the destruction and desolation that surrounded her, and she still saw the beauty that could only come from memory. The wind blew through the cracks in the ceiling, and she swore the breeze sung the lost songs of the theater’s past inhabitants.

She’d been back here once before, nearly three years ago, when she was running toward and from herself. Tali — her sister, not her daughter, a distinction she kept realizing she had to make — had loved coming here. She’d dragged Ziva and Ari with her, and even when their brother bailed and dismissed the theatrics of the opera, Ziva still came. It was not the performance she cared about, but the look on her sister’s face as she stared up at a stage she longed to be on, a show her heart was aching to be a part of. That alone was worth more to Ziva than any note that came from the singers‘ mouths.

Why she was here now, though, she couldn’t be sure. She’d been moving, always moving, for months, desperate to not become a sitting duck to a threat she did not understand. She’d found herself in Cairo on accident, yet she felt as if she was being drawn to the theater, as if a string was tugging at her chest until she walked through the doors. She couldn’t tell you how long she’d spent sitting in the audience, staring at the stage that no longer existed. All she knew was that she was waiting. Waiting for what, she wasn’t sure — her mind and heart were no longer communicating, leaving her with feelings she couldn’t explain and desires she didn’t understand.

She heard the creek of the door an instant before it opened. She jumped out of her seat and had her gun drawn by the time she was upright. When she saw who entered, she nearly collapsed. She almost couldn’t trust her eyes; the scene was too similar to her wildest dreams for her not to suspect that her mind was playing tricks on her. It wasn’t until he smiled, giving her the smirk that even her subconscious had never recreated quite right, that she believed he was here.

“I knew it,” they both whispered in unison, and before either of them could say anything else she was running, and he was running, and they collided in the middle, an embrace that she’d longed for more than anything. They kissed, frantic, desperate, both of them breathing each other in like their survival depended on it. He was fire, he was air, he was life itself. She was drowning and he was her salvation. He put his arms around her, and everything fell into place. Time found its linearity, became a series of “Befores” and “Afters” all stringed together, and she wasn’t sure which one this moment was yet, but she knew it mattered, possibly more than anything that had come before it.

As they broke away, she noticed the stroller resting just behind him. She bent down, reached for the girl who looked up at her with deep brown eyes, so much like her namesake. Tali smiled at her, and Ziva could see the way sleep tugged at her, yet she still reached back, sent her little arms forward, not putting them down until Ziva had her in her arms.

When Tali leaned into her shoulder and placed Ziva’s necklace in her little hands, she almost lost it. When she looked down and noticed the Star of David dangling around her daughter’s neck, she almost lost it. But when she heard the word “Ima,” coming from her daughter’s mouth as she relaxed in her arms, Ziva burst into tears. She pulled her closer, one hand holding her up while the other held the back of her head, and she cried for the months she’d spent without her, for the weeks, months, years she knew she’d have to spend alone after today. Tony leaned forward, putting his arms around both of them, and as they stood there, surrounded by the ghosts of a beauty long gone, she swore she heard music playing, the echoes of a song he once gave her. She remembered the way the recording filled every inch of the bullpen all those years ago, and how the sound had taken her here, to the first place she’d heard it; now, when she closed her eyes, she was back in D.C., the music embracing her as tightly as he held her now.

She longed to hold on forever, but as she felt Tali drift off, she knew she had to let go. If she didn’t, if she kept her in her arms for another minute, she knew she might never put her back down. Placing her in the stroller next to Tony, something caught her eye. There, just below her knee, was a giant bandaid, cut into the shape of a heart. The edges were wobbly, the shape only vaguely defined, but it was unmistakable in its intent. She looked up at him, at the way he stared at her, and all she saw, all she felt, was love.

She had a thousand things to say to him, a thousand questions she longed to ask; in the end, she settled for the important ones: “How did you find me?”

“I know you, Ziva.”

“Why would you even look for me? After I — after all I’ve done?”

He shrugged, and for a minute she saw him as she did years ago, tied to a chair across from her, so many emotions in his eyes that she couldn’t identify a single one. “Couldn’t live without you. You know that.”

“I’m sorry,” the words spilled out of her like a tidal wave crashing onto shore, chaotic and unstoppable and inevitable. “I’m sorry Tony, I’m so sorry, I’m so, so, sorry. I should have told you, I should have come to you, I never should have—“

“Ziva.” With one word, he stopped her. His voice echoed across the hall, the sound sweeter than any song, any symphony, anything that had ever been played in this room before. She heard the future in his voice, and she craved it more than anything.

“Tony.” His name on her lips was like an exhale, a release of the breath she had spent years holding. “I owe you so much. Much more than I can ever give.”

“You could start with an explanation.”

She sighed, tried to get rid of the tension in her shoulders and the fear in her heart. “What do you want to know first?”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why now? Why me? Why didn’t you tell me that— that you were—“

“I—“ she started, and she knew, she knew, these questions would come, had known the minute she’d taken a test in Israel and forced herself to stay that she’d be forced to answer them one day. She knew, and she still wasn’t prepared. “I wish I had a good excuse,” she finally told him. “I wish I had a reason, something that made sense, something that did not make me a coward.”

“You are not a coward.”

She shook her head. “I am, in so many ways I am. I’m a coward for sending you away. I’m a coward for running in the first place. And I’m a coward for not coming home when I should have.”

“But—“

“I will never, never, be able to apologize enough to make up for what I took from you, Tony. But I can try. And I can apologize for what I need to do now.”

“Now? Ziva, what are you—“

“There’s a reason the world must believe I am dead, Tony. And for the same reason, I need you to disappear. With her.”

“No, Ziva, just tell me — we can go to Gibbs, we can—“

“We can’t.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she willed the tears in her eyes to stay where they were. “I can’t — I won’t risk her life. I won’t risk yours.”

“You don’t get to decide what I’m willing to risk, Ziva.”

“She needs you, Tony. More than I do right now.”

“But we—“

“No!” She hated herself for yelling, but with every sentence he spoke she could feel her resolve crumbling, her heart yearning with every beat: go home, go home, go home. “Nobody knows,” she whispered, her voice too soft to echo, even here. “Nobody knows she exists. That she’s mine. I need you to keep it that way.”

“Ziva, if you just tell me what’s going on, I can help you. I can protect you. We can handle it together. As partners.”

“We can’t,” she cried. “You have to be her partner now. You have to protect Tali. That’s how you protect me.”

He shook his head. “No, I can’t accept that, Ziva. I can’t leave you to fight whatever this is on your own.”

“You must.”

“But—“

“If you don’t, she’ll be alone.” She watched as he looked down at her child — their child — who slept soundly next to them. “She can’t lose us both, Tony.”

“Let me help you, and she won’t lose anyone.”

“Do you think I want this?” She didn’t mean to sound angry, but the words came out without her permission, months of suppression finally given a voice. “Do you think I would choose this? This life? Do you know the cost of giving up everything you have? Everything you want? Everything you love? It’s a burden I would not wish on anybody. And yet, it is a burden I must carry, because if I don’t...if I run off with you, come back to you...if the people after me knew the extent of my love for you—“

“Please, Ziva.” His eyes were watering, and she could feel the tears streaming down her own cheeks. “There has to be another way.”

“There isn’t.” She took a breath, willed her voice to reflect more strength than she felt, before she continued. “I never should have left, never should have hid her from you, but if that means that now this—this person who’s after me doesn’t know what you mean to me? If that means that you and her — that my family — will be safe?”

“We aren’t a family without you. If you aren’t safe, neither are we.”

“Tony—“

“No, Ziva! You don’t get to do this again!” She knew he’d be angry, knew he was entitled to feel much more than anger, but she still felt something shatter inside her as he raised his voice. “You don’t get to leave me. You don’t get to decide that your life is worth less than the people who love you. How many times have we faced impossible situations and gotten out of it? You think I’m afraid of whoever this new threat is? Whatever it is, we can face them together.”

“It’s too dangerous.“

“Nothing is too dangerous. Not for you.”

“This isn’t Somalia, Tony! You can’t go on a suicide mission to save me! You shouldn’t even be here right now!”

“And why not? Why do you get to decide what I’m willing to do to keep you safe?”

“Because you have someone else you need to live for now!” They both looked down at the same time. How Tali still slept, she didn’t know, but Ziva was grateful that she wouldn’t witness this moment, even if she would likely come to forget it. “Everything you do, everything I do, it has to be for her. It has to. That’s why you can’t stay, why I can’t go.”

For a moment they both stood there, staring at their daughter. Ziva thought about the insanity of the path that led them here. How a year before Tali was born, they were nothing more than partners. Friends. She’d known for a while how deeply she cared for him, and after Somalia, she suspected that he might feel the same, but so much kept happening, and she’d wasted years thinking it was easier to let things stay the same. Thinking back, she cursed her own hesitation, her own reluctance. Where might she be now if she’d had the bravery to act on the feelings she’d felt for years? Where might they be if he hadn’t waited until she was losing herself, on a path she wouldn’t recognize as self destruction until it was too late, to admit his own feelings?

“It isn’t fair,” he said softly, and she knew he’d racked his brain for the magical solution that didn’t exist.

“I know.”

“After everything we—“ he got choked up on the words, and she prayed he didn’t start crying, because if he did, she wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to let him walk away. “It isn’t fair.”

“I wish, more than anything, that it could be different. That we could…” she searched for the words that never came. It was a feeling she desired, more than anything else. She wanted the feeling of holding her daughter in her arms, wanted to feel Tony’s hand in hers, wanted to know that wherever she went, they were always close behind. She wanted to go home, and it wasn’t until this moment that she understood what that meant, that it wasn’t a place she needed to find but a person.

“I won’t give up on you, Ziva.” He took her hands, a sense of urgency behind his actions. “I need you to not give up on me—on us.”

“Tony, I don’t know how long it’ll take until—“

“I don’t care. I would wait a lifetime for you. I just need you to fight for this. Fight as hard as you can.”

If she were braver, she would tell him to move on, to not spend years waiting for her when the odds were high that she’d meet her end before she eliminated the threat against her. Instead, she nodded, squeezed his hands and felt him squeeze back. They stood there for a moment, and she’d have closed her eyes if she wasn’t too busy memorizing every detail of his face.

“You shouldn’t stay here,” she whispered eventually. “It’s not safe.”

“Ziva—“

“Please, Tony. I’m not...if you stay much longer, I won’t be strong enough to send you away. You have to leave.”

“Sing to me,” he said, looking up at the theater around them. There was a hint of desperation in his voice but she ignored it. “Please. Before I go. Sing to me.”

A million protests died on her lips when she saw the way he looked at her. Like she hung the stars in the sky. Like nothing else in the world existed. Like she might disappear if he looked away.

She stared at the crumbling architecture around her. There was a beauty in its destruction. Its frame was exposed, open for everybody to see exactly how it stayed standing. The vulnerability of it all soothed her, even though it shouldn’t. Anyone who walked in could see exactly how the structure was supported, could figure out just how easy it would be to send it crumbling to the ground. Just standing inside felt dangerous. Their solitude made her realize, however, the secret to the building’s persistence; if nobody ever came inside to look, they would never find out how close it was to falling apart.

She closed her eyes and began to sing. Her voice was shaky, out of practice, and nothing compared to the songs that should be sung in a venue such as this one. But her voice still echoed, floated around them, danced through the seats and beams and filled the space as if it was effortless, as if the sound alone could heal the decade of wounds and mistakes and history that sat between them. She sang, and she sang, and she sang, and it wasn’t enough, but it was something.

When she finished, the last note lingering as it dissolved into the air around them, she kept her eyes closed. She just needed a minute, sixty more seconds where she could imagine that her life was different than it was. Opening her eyes meant saying goodbye, and even though she was the one who was pushing him away, she knew she would never be ready to see him go. To see them go.

She felt his hand on her face. She felt him wipe away a tear from her cheek. She didn’t know when she’d started crying again. Maybe she’d never stopped.

“Ziva,” He said, his voice soft and lovely and full of more than just her name. “Ziva,” He said, but she heard don’t go and she heard take me with you and she heard I love you and she heard more than she could handle so she opened her eyes and kissed him. And maybe it would be the last time, and the thought of that was so horrible and wrong and sent her to the edge of the panic she’d become familiar with the past few months, so she made it everything. She put everything she could into this one kiss, every moment she’d spent over the past decade wanting to do what she did now, and tried to tell him without words more that she could in any other language. She prayed with everything she had that he heard her.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I’ve always loved you.”

“I love you more than I could ever tell you,” she responded, and she longed to kiss him again, but her resolve was weak, and she didn’t trust herself to break away a second time.

“Call me.” His voice was frantic again, as if he could sense the thoughts running through her head, could feel the time they had left quickly slipping away. “When it’s safe, or if we have to go deep underground, or any time you possibly can. Use a secure network, hell, use a carrier pigeon for all I care. Just don’t shut us out completely. Please. And when it’s all over: call me. Come home.”

“Tony—“

“Come find us, Ziva. We’ll be waiting.”

She let another chance to tell him to move on pass her by as she nodded. She leaned down, kissed Tali on the forehead, and she could feel her entire body shaking but she ignored it as she looked back up at Tony. “If — in case this is— if I don’t make it back—“

“No.” He shook his head, didn’t let the words come out of her mouth. “That’s not going to happen.”

“You and I both know that—“

“Don’t even say it.” He reached for her again, and she thought that nothing in the world felt as good as her hand in his. “Think about what we’re going to do when this is all over.”

She sighed. “Tony, I—“

“We’re going to go to Paris. The three of us. We’ll stay as long as you want to. Maybe we’ll never leave.”

“Tony.”

“And we’ll spend Christmas and Hanukkah in D.C. We’ll see Gibbs and McGee and Palmer. My father will be there, spoiling Tali rotten. Ducky will put her to sleep with stories we’ve heard a thousand times. Abby will dress her up in something ridiculous, and we’ll pretend to like it until we get back in the car and laugh about it the entire drive home.”

“Tony.”

“Just — promise me right now that when this is all over, we’ll be together again. Promise me we’ll go to Paris.”

“I don’t want to make a promise I can’t keep.”

“Then don’t. Finish this, and come home.”

“I—“ she made the mistake of meeting his gaze. Looking into his eyes, she could see the image he painted for her clearly, the life that waited for her at the end of this journey, and even though she knew it was a bad idea, she kept her eyes on his and whispered, “I promise.”

He sighed in relief, the gesture only making it harder for her to think about the reality of her situation. He reached for her again, kissed the top of her forehead before pulling her into his arms. “Paris,” he whispered. “Every time you feel like you’re alone, remember we’re here. Your family. Waiting for you. Remember Paris.”

She almost couldn’t watch him walk away. Her heart begged him not to leave, pounding loud and fast in her chest. She could barely breathe as he made it to the door, turned back for one last look at her. She could see his lips moving, but she couldn’t make out his parting words.

In an instant, he was gone, they were gone, and whatever strength had kept her standing left with them. She crumbled to the floor, let out the sobs she’d buried in her chest, listened as her cries echoed around her. She felt as if someone had cut a hole in her, ripped the air out of her lungs and the heart from her chest, left her a shell of the person she once was.

She cried until she had nothing left in her. She cried until her voice went out, until the only thing she heard was the sound of her breathing, heavy and loud and desperate. Sitting on the floor of the empty theater, she thought about what he said. She closed her eyes, let herself imagine the life she promised they’d have. She felt as if she could feel the breeze as they drove down the city streets, could taste the pastries and desserts they’d eat from the bakeries that covered every corner. She could hear Tali babbling at her, could hear Tony’s mangled attempts at speaking French. With her eyes closed, she could hear the songs people would sing, could hear the one she’d sung earlier, echoing not in an empty theater but in a place of their own.

Even in her own mind, she felt guilty for dreaming about it, for letting herself believe that she might actually have a chance at the life Tony drew out for her. She thought about his face when he first saw her, his face when she made her promise, his face right before he left. He had so much hope. She had none, not in herself or in the universe that had shown again and again how little it cared for her. She had no trust, no faith, not in anything but him. She wondered if that could be enough.

She opened her eyes. She hated the doubt she heard in her own voice, in her own thoughts. She hated being alone. She hated that this was her life, that she’d spent so much time suffering and had lost so many people. She hated that she’d had to let Tony walk away again, that she’d had to give Tali up again, that she had to fight if she wanted to finally go home. But for the first time, she used that hate, transformed it into motivation. She pulled herself up from the ground. She wouldn’t wallow, wouldn’t spend her time crying when she could be ending this. If what he said was true, if he would truly wait for her, she had to try. The thought of disappointing him, of truly never seeing him or Tali again, was more terrifying than anything she’d ever faced, more terrifying than whoever wanted her dead. They were nothing compared to that fear, and she’d be damned if she let anyone take her away from her family.

When she reached the door, she turned back. Staring at the empty theater, she swore she could see her sister, could see the look of anticipation she always gave Ziva right before the show started. Her sister reached out her hand, and Ziva knew it would be so easy to take it, to give in, to go away. This room, her life, was full of ghosts, all of them waiting for her. She shook her head. She refused to join them. Not yet. She walked out of the theater, leaving it’s song for somebody else, each footstep echoing the word that would get her through this, the word that would take her home: Paris. Paris. Paris.

#PLEASE let me know what you think #i was working on the ending until literally the minute i posted so im not sure how great it is but oh well #tiva #ncis #ziva david #Tony DiNozzo #TFLAO3 #ncis fanfic #tiva fanfic #fanfic #ao3

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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What Happens If The Republicans Win

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-happens-if-the-republicans-win/

What Happens If The Republicans Win

The Plausible Solution: Just Win More

What Happens If Republicans Hold The Senate?

Whether the public sees Democratic demands for these structural changes as overdue or overreaching, the key point is that they are currently exercises in futility. The only plausible road to winning their major policy goals is to win by winning. This means politics, not re-engineering. They need to find ways to take down their opponents, and then be smarter about using that power while they have it.

They certainly have issues to campaign on. In the few weeks, we have learned that some of Americas wealthiest people have paid only minimal or no federal income tax at all. Even as the Wall Street Journal editorial writers were responding to a Code Red emergency , the jaw-dropping nature of the reportfollowed by a New York Times piece about the impotence of the IRS to deal with the tax evasions of private equity royaltyconfirmed the folk wisdom of countless bars, diners, and union halls: the wealthy get away with murder.

Of course this is a whole lot easier said than done. A political climate where inflation, crime and immigration are dominant issues has the potential to override good economic news. And 2020 already showed what can happen when a relative handful of voices calling for defunding the police can drown out the broader usage of economic fairness.

Filed Under:

Republicans Will Almost Certainly Win Back The House In 2022

A byproduct of the surprisingly strong showing of downballot Republicans in 2020 is that even the smallest midterm wave will give them control of the House. An analysis from Larry Sabatos Crystal Ball projects that even without taking redistricting into account, Republicans are expected to flip nine seats in 2022 and enjoy roughly the same narrow but very real majority Democrats have now. And thanks to a dramatic underperformance by Democrats in 2020 state legislative races, redistricting of congressional districts will add to the high odds of a GOP House. The Cook Political Reports David Wasserman suggests Republicans might pick up the five seats they need for control of the House via redistricting decisions in just four states .

As my colleague Eric Levitz has pointed out, since World War II the presidents party has lost an average of 27 House seats in midterm elections. Last time Democrats controlled the White House, they lost 63 House seats in the first midterm. It wont be that bad in 2022, but suffice it to say that any remotely controversial legislation Biden hopes to enact in his first term better be on his desk by the end of 2022.

If Republicans do win the House in 2022, could they promptly lose it again in 2024? Of course they could, but the last time the House changed hands in a presidential election year was 1952.

More Tax Cuts For The Wealthy And Further Spending Cuts For Middle

Most legislation needs 60 votes in order to break a filibuster in the Senate, but a congressional budget resolution can establish parameters for subsequent legislation to be enacted through the reconciliation process, which only requires 51 votes to pass a measure. The budget resolution itself cannot be filibustered and also only requires 51 votes to pass the Senate. As a result, it is easier for the majority to pass a budget resolution and a reconciliation bill than most other legislation.

The current conservative economic and fiscal roadmap is the fiscal year 2015 budget put forward by former vice presidential nominee and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan . The Ryan budget would provide those with incomes of at least $1 million another $200,000 per year in tax cuts while cutting nondefense spending by $4.8 trillion. Roughly $3.3 trillion of those cuts, or nearly 70 percent, target programs that help low-income and middle-class families, such as Medicaidwhich provides health coverage for low- and moderate-income familiesand Pell Grants, which help students pay for college.

When given the opportunity, Senate Republicans voted for the various Ryan budgets in 2011, 2012, and again in 2013. Previous Senate Republican actions make it clear that the budget that would result from a Republican majority would most likely feature many of the same components as Rep. Ryans past budgets.

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Eight Ways Things Would Be Different If Republicans Win The Senate

If Democrats lose the Senate in November, what happens?

Well, its just less than two weeks before Election Day, and the papers are all abuzz with news of Democratic defeat. This mornings Review-Journal features the results of a new AP-GfK poll, which says 55 percent of people believe a Republican takeover is the likely outcome of the November election. And number-crunching website FiveThirtyEight.com predicts that Republicans are 66 percent favorites to take the Senate.

Personally, Im not convinced, although Democrats have had some setbacks in recent weeks. But it did get me thinking about a few of the ways things would be different if the Republicans took over from majority Democrats.

1. Senate shifts from filibustering the presidents Democratic agenda to filibustering new majority leaders Republican agenda. Lets be honest, the Senate isnt exactly known for its smooth, efficient operations. George Washington was said to have opined that the Senate existed to cool legislation from the House, the way a saucer cooled a hot cup of tea. But more recently, the Senate has operated more like a cryogenic chamber, keeping legislation from both houses in a permanent deep-freeze. A change in leadership is most likely to shift whose legislation is getting blocked.

Weakening Of The Investigations Against Trump

If Democrats dont control the House or the Senate, they cant initiate investigations of Trump or some of his more controversial cabinet members, such as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.

More importantly, after the 2018 elections, the electoral process will recede as a constraint on the president and GOP in terms of the Russia investigation at least for a while.

We dont really know why Trump, despite his constant criticisms of the investigation, has not fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, or why he has not directly tried to stop the probe by special counsel Robert Mueller. Maybe Trump, despite his rhetoric, has some real respect for the rule of law. I think its more likely that Trump understands that firing Rosenstein or making a drastic move to stop the Mueller probe would increase both the chances of Democrats winning the House and/or Senate this year, and the odds that the resulting Democratic-led chamber would feel compelled to push to impeach Trump. But if the GOP emerges from 2017 and 2018 without losing control of the House or the Senate, I suspect that, with the next election two years away, the president will feel freer to take controversial steps to end the Russia probe. And I doubt Republicans on Capitol Hill would try to stop him.

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A Division Of Power In Government Is Common In The Us With The Republicans And The Democrats Often Splitting Control Of The White House And Congress

Joe Biden may have been announced as President Elect but there are still some crucial decisions to be made on how America will be governed for the next four years. The presidential election appears to have been a pretty resounding win for the Democrats but the picture is less clear in the Senate, when both parties retain hope of having a majority when the Upper House reconvenes next year.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer released a statement after Bidens victory was called, saying: “A Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate would be the biggest difference maker to help President-elect Biden deliver for working families across the country.

Sen. Chuck Schumer: “There has been no evidence of any significant or widespread voter fraud. Joe Biden won this election fair and square. The margins of his victory are growing by the day.”

The Hill

All elections in Georgia, not just those for the Senate, require the winning candidate to pick up over 50% of the votes cast. This year neither of the states two Senate races had a majority winning so a run-off will be held on 5 January, with both the Democrats and the Republicans holding out hope of securing the vital seats needed to give them a majority in the Senate.

Why is control of the Senate so important?

Although President Elect Biden will be the head of the government, he would rather govern by concensus than executive order. Therefore most large-scale bills will need to pass Congress before they can be signed into law.

A Warning About Argentina

Oliver warned that if Democrats take the presidency and the Senate and retain control of the House of Representatives, it would cause a concentration in power that the Constitution was designed to prevent. He expects the presidency and Senate to go together in the election.

In the event of a concentration of power toward the left, he said the U.S. government will look more like Argentina than Switzerland. He also questioned why America’s fate would be any different than what happened to Argentina since it “embraced Peronist populism.”

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Democrats To Keep Control Of House; Battle For Senate Majority Ongoing

But assuming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., does maintain control of the Senate, a lot of progressive dreams go out the window. Democrats will be hard-pressed to shore up the voting system, for example. They won’t be able to pass HR 1, which would establish nationwide automatic voter registration, restrict partisan gerrymandering, grant former prisoners the right to vote and prohibit many voter suppression tactics. Nor will they be able to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore key parts of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013, which required states with histories of voter suppression to clear any voting changes with the federal government.

Without a Senate majority, Democrats also won’t be able to rebalance the judiciary. McConnell has stuffed the federal bench with Republican jurists who support the GOP’s narrow, self-serving definition of voting rights. This culminated in the week before the election with the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, creating a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court that can be expected to uphold gerrymandering and protect Republican tactics of disenfranchisement. Biden had hoped to create a bipartisan commission to come up with strategies to rebalance the court but any such strategy is likely doomed by Republican opposition.

Without a Senate majority, Democrats also wont be able to rebalance the judiciary.

A Political Scientist Explains Why The Gop Is A Threat To American Democracy

What if Civil War broke out between Republicans and Democrats?

It sounds hyperbolic to say that American democracy is broken, but an honest glance at the country at our institutions and the broader political culture makes it hard to conclude otherwise.

As things stand, one of our two major political parties is committed to suppressing as many votes as possible, and the leader of that party, the president of the United States, has said outright that he wont accept the legitimacy of the election process if he doesnt win.

If, under those conditions, Trump either wins the election or loses and throws the country into a bitter, protracted fight over the results, it doesnt seem all that alarmist to suggest the US will have descended into what political scientists sometimes call a weak democracy or even competitive .

But I really dont want to be overly alarmist, so I reached out to Pippa Norris, a political scientist at Harvard University and one of the leading authorities on global democracy. I wanted to know her honest assessment of the state of American democracy, why she thinks the upcoming election is a true turning point for the country, and what the US will have to do moving forward to undo the damage done in the past several years.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing

If American democracy was a patient, how would you describe its condition?

Pippa Norris

Id say the patient has not been well for a long time. The patient is obese and doesnt exercise.

Sean Illing

Pippa Norris

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Gold If Democrats Win The Election

If Democrats win the election and especially take both the presidency and Senate, Oliver expects the gold price to soar. He said if the pendulum swings all the way to the left, it means even more money printing than what has already been going on with a mixed government.

He noted that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are promising a $7 trillion spending problem. That doesn’t include the trillions in additional stimulus to deal with the pandemic, which he believes “will include bailouts of urban centers turned into war zones by Democrat mayors and governors) or reparations.”

Oliver also noted that Democrats want to fund their “mad spending” with taxes partially. Biden wants to increase income taxes, corporate taxes and taxes on capital. However, he said federal, state and local taxes are already so high that he believes higher taxes may not boost tax revenue much.

“In short, the economy must suffer , and the deficit will explode further,” he wrote. “The Federal Reserve will be forced either to monetize the spendings or watch as soaring interest rates cause the financial system to implode along with the state’s ability to finance itself. The credit bubble that has been growing since 1971 , will crash onto the rocks of progressive politics.”

What If The Republicans Win Everything Again

Total victory for the G.O.P. would mean Trump unleashed.

By David Leonhardt

Opinion Columnist

The end of Robert Muellers investigation. The loss of health insurance for several million people. New laws that make it harder to vote. More tax cuts for the rich. More damage to the environment. A Republican Party molded even more in the image of President Trump.

These are among the plausible consequences if the Republicans sweep the midterm elections and keep control of both the House and Senate. And dont fool yourself. That outcome, although not the most likely one, remains possible. The last couple of weeks of polling have shown how it could happen.

Voters who lean Republican including whites across the South could set aside their disappointment with Trump and vote for Republican congressional candidates. Voters who lean left including Latinos and younger adults could turn out in low numbers, as they usually do in midterm elections. The Republicans continuing efforts to suppress turnout could also swing a few close elections.

No matter what, Democrats will probably win the popular vote in the House elections, for the first time since 2012. Trump, after all, remains unpopular. But the combination of gerrymandering and the concentration of Democratic voters in major cities means that a popular-vote win wont automatically translate into a House majority.

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Use Of The Congressional Review Act To Weaken Environmental Rules Jeopardizing Public Health

Under the Congressional Review Act, once the administration submits a major rule to Congress, Congress can pass a joint resolution disapproving of the administrations rule. If a joint resolution disapproving the rule is enacted, the rule would not go into effect and the administration would be prohibited from issuing a substantially similar rule in the future. The Congressional Review Act allows the Senate to expedite consideration of a joint resolution disapproving of a final administrative rule within 60 days, and this consideration is not subject to the filibuster.

What Is Happening To The Republicans

In becoming the party of Trump, the G.O.P. confronts the kind of existential crisis that has destroyed American parties in;the past.

Save this story for later.

Content

But, for all the anxiety among Republican leaders, Goldwater prevailed, securing the nomination at the Partys convention, in San Francisco. In his speech to the delegates, he made no pretense of his ideological intent. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, he said. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. Goldwaters crusade failed in November of 1964, when the incumbent, Lyndon Johnson, who had become President a year earlier, after Kennedys assassination, won in a landslide: four hundred and eighty-six to fifty-two votes in the Electoral College. Nevertheless, Goldwaters ascent was a harbinger of the future shape of the Republican Party. He represented an emerging nexus between white conservatives in the West and in the South, where five states voted for him over Johnson.

Shopping

agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.

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If California Governor Is Replaced With Republican Senate Could Swing To Gop

Human Rights and Global Wrongs

Theres a good chance that California a solidly blue state will get a right-wing Republican governor as a result of the September 14 recall election. If Gov. Gavin Newsom is recalled, the health, civil rights and future of Californians and people across the country will be profoundly threatened. It is also possible that Newsoms defeat could change the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, since the next California governor may be in a position to appoint a senator.

In defending his governorship, Newsom emphasizes that a GOP leader would likely roll back progressive reforms.

The recall is an attempt by national Republican and Trump supporters to force an election and grab power in California, Newsoms ballot statement in the Official Voter Information Guide says. The leaders of the Republican recall seek to repeal Californias clean air protections, roll back gun safety laws and take away health care from those who need it.

Newsom cited his efforts to fight racism and police violence in an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune:

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gaylemccoy972-blog · 7 years ago

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Unlearning the myth of American innocence

The long read: When she was 30, Suzy Hansen left the US for Istanbul and began to realise that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does

My mother recently found piles of my notebooks from when I was a small child that were filled with plans for my future. I was very ambitious. I wrote out what I would do at every age: when I would get married and when I would have kids and when I would open a dance studio.

When I left my small hometown for college, this sort of planning stopped. The experience of going to a radically new place, as college was to me, upended my sense of the world and its possibilities. The same thing happened when I moved to New York after college, and a few years later when I moved to Istanbul. All change is dramatic for provincial people. But the last move was the hardest. In Turkey, the upheaval was far more unsettling: after a while, I began to feel that the entire foundation of my consciousness was a lie.

For all their patriotism, Americans rarely think about how their national identities relate to their personal ones. This indifference is particular to the psychology of white Americans and has a history unique to the US. In recent years, however, this national identity has become more difficult to ignore. Americans can no longer travel in foreign countries without noticing the strange weight we carry with us. In these years after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the many wars that followed, it has become more difficult to gallivant across the world absorbing its wisdom and resources for ones own personal use. Americans abroad now do not have the same swagger, the easy, enormous smiles. You no longer want to speak so loud. There is always the vague risk of breaking something.

Some years after I moved to Istanbul, I bought a notebook, and unlike that confident child, I wrote down not plans but a question: who do we become if we dont become Americans? If we discover that our identity as we understood it had been a myth? I asked it because my years as an American abroad in the 21st century were not a joyous romp of self-discovery and romance. Mine were more of a shattering and a shame, and even now, I still dont know myself.

I grew up in Wall, a town located by the Jersey Shore, two hours drive from New York. Much of it was a landscape of concrete and parking lots, plastic signs and Dunkin Donuts. There was no centre, no Main Street, as there was in most of the pleasant beach towns nearby, no tiny old movie theatre or architecture suggesting some sort of history or memory.

Most of my friends parents were teachers, nurses, cops or electricians, except for the rare father who worked in the City, and a handful of Italian families who did less legal things. My parents were descendants of working-class Danish, Italian and Irish immigrants who had little memory of their European origins, and my extended family ran an inexpensive public golf course, where I worked as a hot-dog girl in the summers. The politics I heard about as a kid had to do with taxes and immigrants, and not much else. Bill Clinton was not popular in my house. (In 2016, most of Wall voted Trump.)

We were all patriotic, but I cant even conceive of what else we could have been, because our entire experience was domestic, interior, American. We went to church on Sundays, until church time was usurped by soccer games. I dont remember a strong sense of civic engagement. Instead I had the feeling that people could take things from you if you didnt stay vigilant. Our goals remained local: homecoming queen, state champs, a scholarship to Trenton State, barbecues in the backyard. The lone Asian kid in our class studied hard and went to Berkeley; the Indian went to Yale. Black people never came to Wall. The world was white, Christian; the world was us.

We did not study world maps, because international geography, as a subject, had been phased out of many state curriculums long before. There was no sense of the US being one country on a planet of many countries. Even the Soviet Union seemed something more like the Death Star flying overhead, ready to laser us to smithereens than a country with people in it.

Boardwalk empire a variety shop in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Photo: Michael S Williamson/The Washington Post

I have TV memories of world events. Even in my mind, they appear on a screen: Oliver North testifying in the Iran-Contra hearings; the scarred, evil-seeming face of Panamas dictator Manuel Noriega; the movie-like footage, all flashes of light, of the bombing of Baghdad during the first Gulf war. Mostly what I remember of that war in Iraq was singing God Bless the USA on the school bus I was 13 wearing little yellow ribbons and becoming teary-eyed as I remembered the video of the song I had seen on MTV.

And Im proud to be an American

Where at least I know Im free

That at least is funny. We were free at the very least we were that. Everyone else was a chump, because they didnt even have that obvious thing. Whatever it meant, it was the thing that we had, and no one else did. It was our God-given gift, our superpower.

By the time I got to high school, I knew that communism had gone away, but never learned what communism had actually been (bad was enough). Religion, politics, race they washed over me like troubled things that obviously meant something to someone somewhere, but that had no relationship to me, to Wall, to America. I certainly had no idea that most people in the world felt those connections deeply. History Americas history, the worlds history would slip in and out of my consciousness with no resonance whatsoever.

Racism, antisemitism and prejudice, however those things, on some unconscious level, I must have known. They were expressed in the fear of Asbury Park, which was black; in the resentment of the towns of Marlboro and Deal, which were known as Jewish; in the way Hispanics seemed exotic. Much of the Jersey Shore was segregated as if it were still the 1950s, and so prejudice was expressed through fear of anything outside Wall, anything outside the tiny white world in which we lived. If there was something that saved us from being outwardly racist, it was that in small towns such as Wall, especially for girls, it was important to be nice, or good this pressure tempered tendencies toward overt cruelty when we were young.

I was lucky that I had a mother who nourished my early-onset book addiction, an older brother with mysteriously acquired progressive politics, and a father who spent his evenings studying obscure golf antiques, lost in the pleasures of the past. In these days of the 1%, I am nostalgic for Walls middle-class modesty and its sea-salt Jersey Shore air. But as a teenager, I knew that the only thing that could rescue me from the Wall of fear was a good college.

I ended up at the University of Pennsylvania. The lack of interest in the wider world that I had known in Wall found another expression there, although at Penn the children were wealthy, highly educated and apolitical. During orientation, the business school students were told that they were the smartest people in the country, or so I had heard. (Donald Trump Jr was there then, too.) In the late 1990s, everyone at Penn wanted to be an investment banker, and many would go on to help bring down the world economy a decade later. But they were more educated than I was; in American literature class, they had even heard of William Faulkner.

TV memories Lt Col Oliver North is sworn in before Congress for the Iran-Contra hearings, July 1987. Photograph: Lana Harris/AP

When my best friend from Wall revealed one night that she hadnt heard of John McEnroe or Jerry Garcia, some boys on the dormitory hall called us ignorant, and white trash, and chastised us for not reading magazines. We were hurt, and surprised; white trash was something we said about other people at the Jersey Shore. My boyfriend from Wall accused me of going to Penn solely to find a boyfriend who drove a Ferrari, and the boys at Penn made fun of the Camaros we drove in high school. Class in America was not something we understood in any structural or intellectual way; class was a constellation of a million little materialistic cultural signifiers, and the insult, loss or acquisition of any of them could transform ones future entirely.

In the end, I chose to pursue the new life Penn offered me. The kids I met had parents who were doctors or academics; many of them had already even been to Europe! Penn, for all its superficiality, felt one step closer to a larger world.

Still, I cannot remember any of us being conscious of foreign events during my four years of college. There were wars in Eritrea, Nepal, Afghanistan, Kosovo, East Timor, Kashmir. US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were bombed. Panama, Nicaragua (I couldnt keep Latin American countries straight), Osama bin Laden, Clinton bombing Iraq nope.

I knew Saddam Hussein, which had the same evil resonance as communism. I remember the movie Wag the Dog, a satire in which American politicians start a fake war with foreign terrorists to distract the electorate during a domestic scandal which at the time was what many accused Clinton of doing when he ordered a missile strike on Afghanistan during the Monica Lewinsky affair. I never thought about Afghanistan. What country was in Wag the Dog? Albania. There was a typical American callousness in our reaction to the country they chose for the movie, an indifference that said, Some bumblefuck country, it doesnt matter which one they choose.

I was a child of the 90s, the decade when, according to Americas foremost intellectuals, history had ended, the US was triumphant, the cold war won by a landslide. The historian David Schmitz has written that, by that time, the idea that America won because of its values and steadfast adherence to the promotion of liberalism and democracy was dominating op-ed pages, popular magazines and the bestseller lists. These ideas were the ambient noise, the elevator music of my most formative years.

But for me there was also an intervention a chance experience in the basement of Penns library. I came across a line in a book in which a historian argued that, long ago, during the slavery era, black people and white people had defined their identities in opposition to each other. The revelation to me was not that black people had conceived of their identities in response to ours, but that our white identities had been composed in conscious objection to theirs. Id had no idea that we had ever had to define our identities at all, because to me, white Americans were born fully formed, completely detached from any sort of complicated past. Even now, I can remember that shiver of recognition that only comes when you learn something that expands, just a tiny bit, your sense of reality. What made me angry was that this revelation was something about who I was. How much more did I not know about myself?

It was because of this text that I picked up the books of James Baldwin, who gave me the sense of meeting someone who knew me better, and with a far more sophisticated critical arsenal than I had myself. There was this line:

But I have always been struck, in America, by an emotional poverty so bottomless, and a terror of human life, of human touch, so deep, that virtually no American appears able to achieve any viable, organic connection between his public stance and his private life.

And this one:

All of the western nations have been caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism; this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the west has no moral authority.

And this one:

White Americans are probably the sickest and certainly the most dangerous people, of any colour, to be found in the world today.

I know why this came as a shock to me then, at the age of 22, and it wasnt necessarily because he said I was sick, though that was part of it. It was because he kept calling me that thing: white American. In my reaction I justified his accusation. I knew I was white, and I knew I was American, but it was not what I understood to be my identity. For me, self-definition was about gender, personality, religion, education, dreams. I only thought about finding myself, becoming myself, discovering myself and this, I hadnt known, was the most white American thing of all.

I still did not think about my place in the larger world, or that perhaps an entire history the history of white Americans had something to do with who I was. My lack of consciousness allowed me to believe I was innocent, or that white American was not an identity like Muslim or Turk.

White Americans are probably the most dangerous people in the world today author James Baldwin in New York, 1963. Photograph: Dave Pickoff/AP

Of this indifference, Baldwin wrote: White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded.

Young white Americans of course go through pain, insecurity and heartache. But it is very, very rare that young white Americans come across someone who tells them in harsh, unforgiving terms that they might be merely the easy winners of an ugly game, and indeed that because of their ignorance and misused power, they might be the losers within a greater moral universe.

In 2007, after I had worked for six years as a journalist in New York, I won a writing fellowship that would send me to Turkey for two years. I had applied for it on a whim. No part of me expected to win the thing. Even as my friends wished me congratulations, I detected a look of concern on their faces, as if I was crazy to leave all this, as if 29 was a little too late to be finding myself. I had never even been to Turkey before.

In the weeks before my departure, I spent hours explaining Turkeys international relevance to my bored loved ones, no doubt deploying the cliche that Istanbul was the bridge between east and west. I told everyone that I chose Turkey because I wanted to learn about the Islamic world. The secret reason I wanted to go was that Baldwin had lived in Istanbul in the 1960s, on and off, for almost a decade. I had seen a documentary about Baldwin that said he felt more comfortable as a black, gay man in Istanbul than in Paris or New York.

When I heard that, it made so little sense to me, sitting in my Brooklyn apartment, that a space opened in the universe. I couldnt believe that New York could be more illiberal than a place such as Turkey, because I couldnt conceive of how prejudiced New York and Paris had been in that era; and because I thought that as you went east, life degraded into the past, the opposite of progress. The idea of Baldwin in Turkey somehow placed Americas race problem, and America itself, in a mysterious and tantalising international context. I took a chance that Istanbul might be the place where the secret workings of history would be revealed.

In Turkey and elsewhere, in fact, I would feel an almost physical sensation of intellectual and emotional discomfort, while trying to grasp a reality of which I had no historical or cultural understanding. I would go, as a journalist, to write a story about Turkey or Greece or Egypt or Afghanistan, and inevitably someone would tell me some part of our shared history theirs with America of which I knew nothing. If I didnt know this history, then what kind of story did I plan to tell?

City watch US army troops stand guard at a checkpoint in Baghdad, Iraq, in August 2007. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

My learning process abroad was threefold: I was learning about foreign countries; I was learning about Americas role in the world; and I was also slowly understanding my own psychology, temperament and prejudices. No matter how well I knew the predatory aspects of capitalism, I still perceived Turkeys and Greeces economic advances as progress, a kind of maturation. No matter how deeply I understood the USs manipulation of Egypt for its own foreign-policy aims, I had never considered and could not grasp how American policies really affected the lives of individual Egyptians, beyond engendering resentment and anti-Americanism. No matter how much I believed that no American was well-equipped for nation-building, I thought I could see good intentions on the part of the Americans in Afghanistan. I would never have admitted it, or thought to say it, but looking back, I know that deep in my consciousness I thought that America was at the end of some evolutionary spectrum of civilisation, and everyone else was trying to catch up.

American exceptionalism did not only define the US as a special nation among lesser nations; it also demanded that all Americans believe they, too, were somehow superior to others. How could I, as an American, understand a foreign people, when unconsciously I did not extend the most basic faith to other people that I extended to myself? This was a limitation that was beyond racism, beyond prejudice and beyond ignorance. This was a kind of nationalism so insidious that I had not known to call it nationalism; this was a self-delusion so complete that I could not see where it began and ended, could not root it out, could not destroy it.

In my first few months in Istanbul, I lived a formless kind of existence, days dissolving into the nights. I had no office to go to, no job to keep, and I was 30 years old, an age at which people either choose to grow up or remain stuck in the exploratory, idle phase of late-late youth. Starting all over again in a foreign country making friends, learning a new language, trying to find your way through a city meant almost certainly choosing the latter. I spent many nights out until the wee hours such as the evening I drank beer with a young Turkish man named Emre, who had attended college with a friend of mine from the US.

A friend had told me that Emre was one of the most brilliant people he had ever met. As the evening passed, I was gaining a lot from his analysis of Turkish politics, especially when I asked him whether he voted for Erdoans Justice and Development party (AKP), and he spat back, outraged, Did you vote for George W Bush? Until that point I had not realised the two might be equivalent.

Then, three beers in, Emre mentioned that the US had planned the September 11 attacks. I had heard this before. Conspiracy theories were common in Turkey; for example, when the military claimed that the PKK, the Kurdish militant group, had attacked a police station, some Turks believed the military itself had done it; they believed it even in cases where Turkish civilians had died. In other words, the idea was that rightwing forces, such as the military, bombed neutral targets, or even rightwing targets, so they could then blame it on the leftwing groups, such as the PKK. To Turks, bombing ones own country seemed like a real possibility.

Come on, you dont believe that, I said.

Why not? he snapped. I do.

But its a conspiracy theory.

He laughed. Americans always dismiss these things as conspiracy theories. Its the rest of the world who have had to deal with your conspiracies.

I ignored him. I guess I have faith in American journalism, I said. Someone else would have figured this out if it were true.

He smiled. Im sorry, theres no way they didnt have something to do with it. And now this war? he said, referring to the war in Iraq. Its impossible that the United States couldnt stop such a thing, and impossible that the Muslims could pull it off.

Some weeks later, a bomb went off in the Istanbul neighborhood of Gngren. A second bomb exploded out of a garbage bin nearby after 10pm, killing 17 people and injuring 150. No one knew who did it. All that week, Turks debated: was it al-Qaida? The PKK? The DHKP/C, a radical leftist group? Or maybe: the deep state?

The deep state a system of mafia-like paramilitary organisations operating outside of the law, sometimes at the behest of the official military was a whole other story. Turks explained that the deep state had been formed during the cold war as a way of countering communism, and then mutated into a force for destroying all threats to the Turkish state. The power that some Turks attributed to this entity sometimes strained credulity. But the point was that Turks had been living for years with the idea that some secret force controlled the fate of their nation.

In fact, elements of the deep state were rumoured to have had ties to the CIA during the cold war, and though that too smacked of a conspiracy theory, this was the reality that Turkish people lived in. The sheer number of international interventions the US launched in those decades is astonishing, especially those during years when American power was considered comparatively innocent. There were the successful assassinations: Patrice Lumumba, prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1961; General Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, also in 1961; Ngo Dinh Diem, president of South Vietnam, in 1963. There were the unsuccessful assassinations: Castro, Castro, and Castro. There were the much hoped-for assassinations: Nasser, Nasser, Nasser. And, of course, US-sponsored, -supported or -staged regime changes: Iran, Guatemala, Iraq, Congo, Syria, Dominican Republic, South Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay and Argentina. The Americans trained or supported secret police forces everywhere from Cambodia to Colombia, the Philippines to Peru, Iran to Vietnam. Many Turks believed that the US at least encouraged the 1971 and 1980 military coups in Turkey, though I could find little about these events in any conventional histories anywhere.

But what I could see was that the effects of such meddling were comparable to those of September 11 just as huge, life-changing and disruptive to the country and to peoples lives. Perhaps Emre did not believe that September 11 was a straightforward affair of evidence and proof because his experience his reality taught him that very rarely were any of these surreally monumental events easily explainable. I did not think Emres theory about the attacks was plausible. But I began to wonder whether there was much difference between a foreigners paranoia that the Americans planned September 11 and the Americans paranoia that the whole world should pay for September 11 with an endless global war on terror.

The next time a Turktold me she believed the US had bombed itself on September 11 (I heard this with some regularity; this time it was from a young student at Istanbuls Boazii University), I repeated my claim about believing in the integrity of American journalism. She replied, a bit sheepishly, Well, right, we cant trust our journalism. We cant take that for granted.

The words take that for granted gave me pause. Having lived in Turkey for more than a year, witnessing how nationalistic propaganda had inspired peoples views of the world and of themselves, I wondered from where the belief in our objectivity and rigour in journalism came. Why would Americans be objective and everyone else subjective?

I thought that because Turkey had poorly functioning institutions they didnt have a reliable justice system, as compared to an American system I believed to be functional it often felt as if there was no truth. Turks were always sceptical of official histories, and blithely dismissive of the governments line. But was it rather that the Turks, with their beautiful scepticism, were actually just less nationalistic than me?

American exceptionalism had declared my country unique in the world, the one truly free and modern country, and instead of ever considering that that exceptionalism was no different from any other countrys nationalistic propaganda, I had internalised this belief. Wasnt that indeed what successful propaganda was supposed to do? I had not questioned the institution of American journalism outside of the standards it set for itself which, after all, was the only way I would discern its flaws and prejudices; instead, I accepted those standards as the best standards any country could possibly have.

Red state Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoan attends a rally following a failed coup attempt last year. Photograph: Osman Orsal/Reuters

By the end of my first year abroad, I read US newspapers differently. I could see how alienating they were to foreigners, the way articles spoke always from a position of American power, treating foreign countries as if they were Americas misbehaving children. I listened to my compatriots with critical ears: the way our discussion of foreign policy had become infused since September 11 with these officious, official words, bureaucratic corporate military language: collateral damage, imminent threat, freedom, freedom, freedom.

Even so, I was conscious that if I had long ago succumbed to the pathology of American nationalism, I wouldnt know it even if I understood the history of injustice in America, even if I was furious about the invasion of Iraq. I was a white American. I still had this fundamental faith in my country in a way that suddenly, in comparison to the Turks, made me feel immature and naive.

I came to notice that a community of activists and intellectuals in Turkey the liberal ones were indeed questioning what Turkishness meant in new ways. Many of them had been brainwashed in their schools about their own history; about Atatrk, Turkeys first president; about the supposed evil of the Armenians and the Kurds and the Arabs; about the fragility of their borders and the rapaciousness of all outsiders; and about the historic and eternal goodness of the Turkish republic.

It is different in the United States, I once said, not entirely realising what I was saying until the words came out. I had never been called upon to explain this. We are told it is the greatest country on earth. The thing is, we will never reconsider that narrative the way you are doing just now, because to us, that isnt propaganda, that is truth. And to us, that isnt nationalism, its patriotism. And the thing is, we will never question any of it because at the same time, all we are being told is how free-thinking we are, that we are free. So we dont know there is anything wrong in believing our country is the greatest on earth. The whole thing sort of convinces you that a collective consciousness in the world came to that very conclusion.

Wow, a friend once replied. How strange. That is a very quiet kind of fascism, isnt it?

It was a quiet kind of fascism that would mean I would always see Turkey as beneath the country I came from, and also that would mean I believed my uniquely benevolent country to have uniquely benevolent intentions towards the peoples of the world.

During that night of conspiracy theories, Emre had alleged, as foreigners often did, that I was a spy. The information that I was collecting as a journalist, Emre said, was really being used for something else. As an American emissary in the wider world, writing about foreigners, governments, economies partaking in some larger system and scheme of things, I was an agent somehow. Emre lived in the American world as a foreigner, as someone less powerful, as someone for whom one newspaper article could mean war, or one misplaced opinion could mean an intervention by the International Monetary Fund. My attitude, my prejudice, my lack of generosity could be entirely false, inaccurate or damaging, but would be taken for truth by the newspapers and magazines I wrote for, thus shaping perceptions of Turkey for ever.

Years later, an American journalist told me he loved working for a major newspaper because the White House read it, because he could influence policy. Emre had told me how likely it was I would screw this up. He was saying to me: first, spy, do no harm.

Main photograph: Burak Kara/Getty Images for the Guardian

Adapted from Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World by Suzy Hansen, which will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 15 August

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/08/unlearning-the-myth-of-american-innocence

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pedrowells24-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Unlearning the myth of American innocence

The long read: When she was 30, Suzy Hansen left the US for Istanbul and began to realise that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does

Boardwalk empire a variety shop in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Photo: Michael S Williamson/The Washington Post

And Im proud to be an American

Where at least I know Im free

TV memories Lt Col Oliver North is sworn in before Congress for the Iran-Contra hearings, July 1987. Photograph: Lana Harris/AP

And this one:

All of the western nations have been caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism; this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the west has no moral authority.

And this one:

White Americans are probably the sickest and certainly the most dangerous people, of any colour, to be found in the world today.

White Americans are probably the most dangerous people in the world today author James Baldwin in New York, 1963. Photograph: Dave Pickoff/AP

Of this indifference, Baldwin wrote: White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded.

City watch US army troops stand guard at a checkpoint in Baghdad, Iraq, in August 2007. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Come on, you dont believe that, I said.

Why not? he snapped. I do.

But its a conspiracy theory.

He laughed. Americans always dismiss these things as conspiracy theories. Its the rest of the world who have had to deal with your conspiracies.

I ignored him. I guess I have faith in American journalism, I said. Someone else would have figured this out if it were true.

Red state Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoan attends a rally following a failed coup attempt last year. Photograph: Osman Orsal/Reuters

Wow, a friend once replied. How strange. That is a very quiet kind of fascism, isnt it?

Main photograph: Burak Kara/Getty Images for the Guardian

Adapted from Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World by Suzy Hansen, which will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 15 August

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/08/unlearning-the-myth-of-american-innocence

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bradporter65-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Unlearning the myth of American innocence

The long read: When she was 30, Suzy Hansen left the US for Istanbul and began to realise that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does

Boardwalk empire a variety shop in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Photo: Michael S Williamson/The Washington Post

And Im proud to be an American

Where at least I know Im free

TV memories Lt Col Oliver North is sworn in before Congress for the Iran-Contra hearings, July 1987. Photograph: Lana Harris/AP

And this one:

All of the western nations have been caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism; this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the west has no moral authority.

And this one:

White Americans are probably the sickest and certainly the most dangerous people, of any colour, to be found in the world today.

White Americans are probably the most dangerous people in the world today author James Baldwin in New York, 1963. Photograph: Dave Pickoff/AP

Of this indifference, Baldwin wrote: White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded.

City watch US army troops stand guard at a checkpoint in Baghdad, Iraq, in August 2007. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Come on, you dont believe that, I said.

Why not? he snapped. I do.

But its a conspiracy theory.

He laughed. Americans always dismiss these things as conspiracy theories. Its the rest of the world who have had to deal with your conspiracies.

I ignored him. I guess I have faith in American journalism, I said. Someone else would have figured this out if it were true.

Red state Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoan attends a rally following a failed coup attempt last year. Photograph: Osman Orsal/Reuters

Wow, a friend once replied. How strange. That is a very quiet kind of fascism, isnt it?

Main photograph: Burak Kara/Getty Images for the Guardian

Adapted from Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World by Suzy Hansen, which will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 15 August

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/08/unlearning-the-myth-of-american-innocence

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