Why america is doomed

Trump is reportedly so fixated on the audits that he has even suggested — wrongly — he could be reinstated as president later this year. Perhaps more insidiously, Trump supporters who tried to overturn the election are maneuvering to serve as election officials in swing states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada. If they succeed in becoming secretaries of state, they would exercise huge influence over the conduct of future elections and certifying their results.

The offensive is coupled with a dramatic and sweeping assault on voting rights. Republican-controlled state legislatures have rammed through bills that make it harder to vote in states such as Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa and Montana.

Their all-out effort in Texas was temporarily derailed when Democrats walked out of the chamber, denying them a quorum. Where is this authoritarian ecosystem heading? For many, the nightmare scenario is that Trump will run again in and, with the benefit of voter suppression, sneak a win in the electoral college as he did in Disputed presidential elections have been thrown to the House before, Ziblatt noted. The thought of having a dispute like that when one of the parties is only questionably committed to democratic rules and norms is very frightening.

In How Democracies Die, Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky argue that democracies often come under threat not from invading armies or violent revolutions but at the ballot box: death by a thousand cuts.

But as U. I read them in the original in my high school Latin class, at a time when my major focus was on school politics and, as the immediate past student body president, I was leading a similar in my mind effort to beat back a coup attempt by the would-be conspirator who had been defeated electorally by my chosen successor.

But to read them in the original is to recognize them as deservedly so. Latin is an extremely complicated but flexible language. Its elaborate system of agreements between nouns, adjectives and verbs allows for words to be ordered in sometimes almost-random-seeming patterns requiring extensive detective skills to puzzle out the actual meaning of a sentence.

At the peak of my Latin studies, for example, I could probably translate an average sentence in the great Latin epic, The Aeneid , at the rate of about one per hour. Reading Cicero in Latin, however, is like spreading warm butter over a piping-hot piece of bread: It simply flows. Cicero could reach unequaled heights of high dudgeon with the simplest of sentences. He reached for his greatest in the opening lines of his first Catalinarian Oration to the Roman Senate.

But he nonetheless was headed to a loss in the consular election of 63 B. Upon uncovering the conspiracy, Cicero called an emergency meeting of the Senate to denounce this attempt to short-circuit the election and end republican government through violence. How long is that madness of yours still to mock us?

When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now? He lives? Indeed, he even comes into the Senate, he takes part in public debate, he notes and marks out with his eyes each one of us for slaughter! Some sympathized with his political program; others were implicated in the plot; still others were basically in the same boat as Catiline, having committed similar crimes and sexual debaucheries that limited their political futures; and still others were perfectly fine with ending the trappings of republicanism if it meant they retained their power and Senate seats.

Catiline, a demagogue but in the end not the best of politicians or insurrectionists, was killed. But it turned out to be a brief reprieve. The rot had already set in. What mattered most in the long-term was not the immediate threat of the insurrectionists, but rather the complacency, if not sympathy, of the other ostensibly-republican leaders. Another 10 months in America, another 15 years forward on the Roman sundial.

Millions of them should. He was a gifted editor, mentor, leader, and friend, who within the publishing world was renowned. His untimely death of cancer yesterday, at age 67, is a terrible loss especially for his family and colleagues, but also to a vast community of writers and to the reading public.

Minute by minute, and page by page, writers gripe about editors. Year by year, and book by book, we become aware of how profoundly we rely on them. For now, I want to say how much Dan Frank meant to public discourse in our times, and how much he will be missed. Dan started working in publishing in his 20s, after college and graduate school.

While in his 30s he became editorial director at Viking Books. Among the celebrated books he edited and published there was Chaos: Making a New Science , by James Gleick, which was a runaway bestseller and a critical success. It also represented the sort of literary nonfiction and fiction that Dan would aspire to: well-informed, elegantly written, presenting complex subjects accessibly, helping readers enter and understand realms they had not known about before.

As it happened, Gleick worked with Dan on all of his subsequent books, including his biographies of Richard Feynman and Isaac Newton , as well as Faster and The Information. During his tenure, Dan established Pantheon as an industry-leading publisher of narrative science, world literature, contemporary fiction, and graphic novels. For decades, Dan has been the public face of Pantheon, setting the tone for the house and overseeing the list. He had an insatiable curiosity about life and, indeed, that curiosity informed many of his acquisitions.

As important as the books he published and the authors he edited, Dan served as a mentor to younger colleagues, endlessly generous with his time and expertise. There are surprisingly few photos of Dan available online. I take that as an indication of his modesty; of the contrast between his high profile within the publishing world and his intentionally low profile outside it; and of his focus on the quiet, interior work of sitting down with manuscripts or talking with authors.

Dan is seated at the right, with his trademark round glasses. The clip will give an idea of his demeanor, his gentle but probing curiosity, his intelligence and encouragement, his readiness to smile and give a supportive laugh. Watching him talk with Mallon reminds me of his bearing when we would talk in his office at Pantheon or at a nearby restaurant.

Everything that is frenzied and distracted in modern culture, Dan Frank was the opposite of. The surest way to get him to raise a skeptical eyebrow, when hearing a proposal for a new book, was to suggest some subject that was momentarily white-hot on the talk shows and breaking-news alerts. I know this firsthand. The book ideas he steered me away from, and kept me from wasting time on, represented guidance as crucial as what he offered on the four books I wrote for him, and the most recent one where he worked with me and my wife, Deb.

Dan knew that books have a long gestation time—research and reporting, thinking, writing, editing, unveiling them to the world. They required hard work from a lot of people, starting with the author and editor but extending to a much larger team. Therefore it seemed only fair to him that anything demanding this much effort should be written as if it had a chance to last.

Very few books endure; hardly any get proper notice; but Dan wanted books that deserved to be read a year after they came out, or a decade, or longer, if people were to come across them. What, exactly, does an editor like this do to win such gratitude? Or like that of a parent or teacher, helping a young person avoid foreseeable mistakes. It even has a photo of him! Dan worked with writers who were published by both Pantheon and Knopf.

Deb and I will always be grateful to have known Dan Frank, and to have worked with him. We send our condolences to his wife, Patty, and their sons and family. The whole reading public has benefited, much more than most people know, from his life and work. The renowned filmmaker Ken Burns has a new project called UNUM , about the sources of connection rather than separation in American life. You can see their clips here. One more of these segments covers the revolution in political communication wrought by Franklin D.

You can see a clip from that documentary here. Why me? For reference, here is the text version of what I said in the Burns video, about those FDR talks, as previously noted here :. Of course political leaders had used those words for centuries. But American presidents had been accustomed to formal rhetoric, from a rostrum, to a crowd, stentorian or shouted in the days before amplification. They were addressing the public as a group—not families, or individuals, in their kitchens or living rooms: My friends.

A few previous presidents had dared broadcast over the radio—Harding, Coolidge, Hoover. But none of them had dared imagine the intimacy of this tone—of trying to create a national family or neighborhood gathering, on a Sunday evening, to grapple with a shared problem. Discussing, explaining, describing, talking—those were his goals, not blaming or declaiming or pronouncing.

What I find most remarkable in the tone that followed was a president talking up to a whole national audience, confident that even obscure details of finance could be grasped if clearly explained, rather than talking down, to polarize and oversimplify. Some of these presentations have been more effective, some less.

But all are operating against the background, and toward the standard of connection, set by the 32nd president, Franklin Roosevelt, starting in The public-health and economic repercussions have been felt everywhere.

But they have been hardest on the smallest businesses, and the most vulnerable families and communities. This is an update, following a report last month , on plans to repair the damage now being done.

This month the ILSR released a report on steps the federal government could take to foster business and civic renewal at the local level. The report is available in PDF here , and a summary is here. The larger argument is designed to:. Nearly , small, independent businesses have already closed their doors permanently, with Black-owned businesses taking the biggest hit.

As of early November, small business revenue was down a stunning 31 percent from January. As small businesses close or hang on by their fingernails, meanwhile, a handful of big corporations are recording massive profits, increasing their already-dominant market share, and dramatically accelerating concentration of the economy…. People are losing their dreams and livelihoods. Neighborhoods are losing beloved local stores and gathering spots. The country is losing much of its local productive capacity.

The report covers large policy areas—a different approach to antitrust—and very tangible specifics, like the way credit-card processing fees are handled. It is certainly worth consideration by the Biden team. And, in the same vein, here is another worthwhile piece , by Maddie Oatman in Mother Jones , on the importance of economic prospects for rural America.

California, which has roughly one-eighth of the whole population of the United States and produces roughly one-seventh of U.

Others are a positive model for other states and the nation as a whole—notably, a non-partisan, anti-gerrymandering approach to drawing political-district lines. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was governor when this reform came in, has been taking the anti-gerrymandering cause nationwide, as Edward-Isaac Dovere reported here. California has, in effect, institutionalized this kind of non-partisan inquiry. This month, the Little Hoover Commission has released its report on how badly the pandemic-era economic implosion is hurting businesses and families in California, and what might be done about it.

The executive summary is here , and the full report is here. One of its recommendations:. This may include working with regional business councils to disseminate information about the Rebuilding Fund and explain why it is vital to support small businesses, especially those in underserved communities.

It may also include fully leveraging existing state investment networks.. In order to encourage investment, GO-Biz and IBank should also develop a strategy for publicly recognizing institutional investors and explore additional means for incentivizing participation. In parallel with this effort, two California-based business-and-economic authorities, Laura Tyson and Lenny Mendonca , have put out a paper on the urgency of a new federal stimulus program.

For the record, both of them are friends of mine. They say:. It is incumbent on the federal government to provide more generous and flexible funding for state and local governments. Governors and mayors across the country are pleading for help ahead of a challenging winter.

Because most state and local governments cannot legally spend more than they receive in revenues, they need federal funds to cover their growing fiscal gaps.

Without such support, they will have no choice but to raise taxes or cut essential services and employment in health, public safety, and education, as many are already doing. Either option will undermine the countercyclical effects of federal stimulus, thereby weakening the recovery. At the fiat of Mitch McConnell , the U. Many states and cities are improvising in useful ways, but national crises require a national response. And while I am at it, here is another locally based initiative to create more supportive ecosystems for entrepreneurs.

The negative power of judging people purely by sheepskin credentials is very familiar. I actually did an Atlantic cover story about it 35 years ago, here. For the record, I know many of the people involved in the Opportunity and Reword initiatives. They deserve attention. When I was a kid, the sin of returning books late to the public library populated a category of dread for me next to weekly confessions to the Catholic priest what can an 8-year-old really have to confess?

Collecting fines for overdue books has been going on for over a century, originally seen as a source of revenue and as an incentive for people to behave responsibly and actually return borrowed books. Then, as early as the s, research and experiments with going fine-free began to pick up steam. But as recently as four years ago, over 90 percent of libraries in the U. A Seinfeld episode from , called The Library Cop, seems at once timely and untimely. This is Seinfeld ; it will make you laugh.

The last five years have been very busy in the world of overdue fines. Are fines consistent with a fundamental mission of libraries: to serve the public with information and knowledge? And to address that mission equitably across the diverse population of rich and poor library users? A Colorado State Library system report showed that eliminating overdue fines removed barriers to access for children.

While some people only notice fines as an irritation, others feel the weight heavily enough to be driven away from the library. In , a Library Journal poll of libraries found that over 34 percent considered eliminating at least some fines.

In , a poll of Urban Libraries Council ULC member libraries found that the most common reason 54 percent, dwarfing all others responding libraries had gone fine-free was that eliminating fines increased access for low-income users and children. Paul , and Columbus, Ohio eliminated overdue fines. In January, , the city of San Francisco issued an extensively-researched and influential report called Long Overdue , on the impact of fines on the mission of libraries, and the costs of eliminating fines on libraries, users, and the city and county of San Francisco.

The report ultimately recommended eliminating overdue fines throughout the public library system. When the pandemic closed libraries and made it hard or impossible for people to return books, many libraries revisited their policies on overdue fines. In Washington D. Libraries have been experimenting with lots of different ways to address fines for overdue books. Some stopped fining all patrons; others only children or youth; still others exempted active military and veterans from fines.

Some forgive fines up to a certain dollar amount. Santa Barbara , California, follows one common practice—forgiving fines for a certain number of days 30 in this case days, then charging for the cost of the book, which can be forgiven upon its return.

Lost or damaged books are in a different category. The loss of a book is much more costly and cumbersome to a library than a late return, and libraries work out various ways to address that. When libraries offer popular amnesty periods for returning overdue books, the books often pour in like gushers. An amnesty program in Chicago brought in 20, overdue items; Los Angeles nearly 65,; San Francisco just shy of , And a bonus : After the Chicago library went fine-free, thousands of users whose fees were forgiven returned to the library for new cards, and readers checked out more books overall than before.

Other libraries found substitutes for monetary fines. In , the public libraries in Fairfax County , Virginia, began a food-for-fines program, which collected 12, pounds of food to donate to a nonprofit food pantry. One half hour of reading earns one dollar in library bucks to pay off fines. Some seemed like nibbles. In San Francisco , fines in FY represented 0.

In Schaumburg Township, Illinois, 0. In Santa Barbara , 1 percent. The St. But a late ULC poll of its roughly members reported that one in five libraries that were considering eliminating fines named the biggest deterrent as financial. Only larger was political reasons, at 34 percent. The Long Overdue report found that fines disproportionately harmed library customers in low-income areas and those with larger proportions of Black residents.

Funding sources for libraries vary considerably. Some libraries enjoy a secure line item in a city or county budget. Others patch together a more fragile existence of fundraising, philanthropy, public bonds and levies, and other sources. Other factors have changed the landscape as well. The growth of e-book lending, which can automatically time out and incur no fines, have cut into overall fine revenue numbers somewhat.

To make up for losses in revenues, libraries have come up with creative answers. The impact of fines should be measured in ways beyond cash revenues. Collecting fines and blocking accounts can be time-consuming, stressful, and unpleasant for librarians, and can cause general discomfort and even ill will in a community.

During a summer visit a few years ago to the public library in an unnamed town in the middle of the country, I was hanging around the check-out-desk when I saw a man reach the front of the line to borrow a few books.

The librarian told him that his card was blocked, and he needed to pay his fines before he could borrow the book. She repeated her message, louder each time. A line was building at the check-out. Finally, the man went to fetch his elementary-school-age daughter to translate for him. It all ended badly: He was embarrassed, the daughter was embarrassed. Others like me who witnessed the exchange were embarrassed.

The man left without borrowing the books. The librarian was stuck behind non-transparent rules, although I have seen more gracious handling of such situations. In , the Orange Beach, Alabama, public libraries swapped overdue fines with voluntary donations, which they soon dropped as well. Steven Gillis, the director of the public library, wrote that the overall goodwill the library earned in the community with their new fine-free policy had leveraged into increased municipal funding from a sympathetic and appreciative city council.

The Long Overdue report also found that eliminating fines increased general goodwill between users and staff, and also increased the numbers of users and the circulation of books. They saw no increases in late book returns. Here is the map and how it works:. View larger map Provided courtesy of the Urban Libraries Council.

Each arrow on the map represents a library that ULC has logged to tell its story of going fine-free. The gold arrows are ULC member libraries; silver are non-member libraries. The map updates with each additional entry. Curtis Rogers, from ULC, and Betsey Suchanic, a program manager there, described on a Zoom call the background and impact the map has made on telling the story and building a movement. The map helps libraries make well-informed decisions, as they use it for research and evidence to weigh the pros and cons of going fine-free.

She directly referenced the ULC map of fine-free libraries as evidence. ULC also submitted written testimony for the hearing. The Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County just went fine-free, and they used the map specifically to make their case to their board. Public libraries, which are in business to be responsive to public needs and wants, are a model for moving beyond conversations to action.

For example, public libraries open their doors to homeless people, they feed hungry children in after-school programs, they offer free Wi-Fi access for people and places especially rural where it is hard to come by, and in increasing numbers, they find ways to forego monetary fines. These actions shore up in a tangible way a major mission of public libraries: to provide equal access to information and knowledge for all citizens. As it was in , so it is again in A central axis of national-election results is the rural-urban gulf.

Larger cities—really, conurbations of any sort—mainly went for Joe Biden. In particular, there are racial dynamics, as laid out here and here and here. And as Deb Fallows and I have argued for years, the United States looks more hopelessly divided when it comes to national elections than it does from any other perspective. For instance, see these dispatches from western Kansas, back in But also obviously, national elections matter, and regional and locational polarization makes every other challenge for America more difficult.

August Benzow of The Economic Innovation Group has a related paper on the stark differences within rural America on racial diversity, economic positioning, and political outlook. Does anyone have an idea of how to blunt these differences and open more opportunities? Especially as a new administration faces all the economic, public health, law-enforcement, and other crises the new Biden team is about to take on?

Here are some recent items worth noticing:. Then, typically, the press spotlight moves someplace else. This past weekend in The Washington Post , the mayors of eight of these middle-American cities wrote about what could be done to move their areas ahead. These are places we know and have written about, many of whose mayors we also know personally.

All are in the Appalachian or Ohio River Valley regions, often stereotyped in national discourse as the land of coal mines and decrepit factories. For instance:. According to our research, taking advantage of our community assets, geographic positioning and the strengths of our regional markets can help create over , jobs across the region by investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency upgrades to buildings, energy infrastructure and transportation assets.

Renewable sources of power are proving less expensive , and fossil fuel companies are increasingly dependent on federal subsidies to survive.

Like our friends at Reimagine Appalachia —a grass-roots community and environmental organization—we believe a Marshall Plan-scale reinvestment is necessary. I agree with their pitch, and hope their prospectus gets attention. They add:. This is compounded by the decreasing access to health care that many rural communities face ….

Now, rural communities must navigate a virtual world of work with intermittent broadband access and adapt to additional shocks to manufacturing and agriculture supply chains …. And you've been the leaders in being able to do that. Biden was saying that America is doomed "if we cannot make significant progress on racial equity," and that Black people would be affected by that.

Biden went on to say he wants to find ways to unify what will be "the single most diverse democracy in American history. Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. Facebook Twitter Email. Fact check: Misleading post connects Biden comment that 'country is doomed' with African Americans.

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