Category: government

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

On By Rick McIn books, ethics, GOP USA, government, human rights, moviesLeave a comment

American Dirt is a 2020 novel by American author Jeanine Cummins, about the ordeal of a Mexican woman who had to leave behind her life and escape as an undocumented immigrant to the United States with her son.

Lydia and her eight-year-old son Luca are the only survivors of the backyard barbecue massacre of her family by a drug cartel.

Her husband had been a journalist who was reporting the crimes.

Mother and son become two of the countless undocumented immigrants from Latin America who undertake the dangerous journey to the United States.

American Dirt debuted on New York Times best sellers list as the #1 on the list for the week of February 9, 2020.

The novel has been optioned for a film adaptation.

Oprah loved the book.  I’d agree.

But many, especially Mexican writers, accused the author (American, born in Spain) of exploitation and inaccuracy in her portrayals of both Mexico and the migrant experience.  A planned book tour was cancelled.

Personally, the book was insightful for me.  It’s the closest I’ve ever come to appreciating the experience of a migrant trying to cross the Mexican border illegally.

It’s fiction.  Not reality.  I understand that.

Amazon

 

 

 

Rise and Fall of the American Empire – Wade Davis

On By Rick McIn bad news, economics, education, ethics, GOP USA, government, human rights, things getting worseLeave a comment

UPDATE – Deanna Kreisel posted a rebuttal to the Wade Davis article:

The Unraveling of “The Unraveling of America”

Wade Davis is a Colombian / Canadian professor of anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia.

One brilliant man.

A recent article of his in Rolling Stone sums up how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era.

In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. …

No empire long endures, even if few anticipate their demise …

In 1940, with Europe already ablaze, the United States had a smaller army than either Portugal or Bulgaria. Within four years, 18 million men and women would serve in uniform, with millions more working double shifts in mines and factories that made America, as President Roosevelt promised, the arsenal of democracy.

When the Japanese within six weeks of Pearl Harbor took control of 90 percent of the world’s rubber supply, the U.S. dropped the speed limit to 35 mph to protect tires, and then, in three years, invented from scratch a synthetic-rubber industry that allowed Allied armies to roll over the Nazis. At its peak, Henry Ford’s Willow Run Plant produced a B-24 Liberator every two hours, around the clock. Shipyards in Long Beach and Sausalito spat out Liberty ships at a rate of two a day for four years; the record was a ship built in four days, 15 hours and 29 minutes. A single American factory, Chrysler’s Detroit Arsenal, built more tanks than the whole of the Third Reich. 

In the wake of the war, with Europe and Japan in ashes, the United States with but 6 percent of the world’s population accounted for half of the global economy, including the production of 93 percent of all automobiles. … 

COVID-19 didn’t lay America low; it simply revealed what had long been forsaken.

As the crisis unfolded, with another American dying every minute of every day, a country that once turned out fighter planes by the hour could not manage to produce the paper masks or cotton swabs essential for tracking the disease. The nation that defeated smallpox and polio, and led the world for generations in medical innovation and discovery, was reduced to a laughing stock as a buffoon of a president advocated the use of household disinfectants as a treatment for a disease that intellectually he could not begin to understand.

… With less than four percent of the global population, the U.S. soon accounted for more than a fifth of COVID deaths. … 

Odious as he may be, Trump is less the cause of America’s decline than a product of its descent. As they stare into the mirror and perceive only the myth of their exceptionalism, Americans remain almost bizarrely incapable of seeing what has actually become of their country.  …

The Unraveling of America

 

If Trump were gone tomorrow, the USA is still screwed because of FOX News and right wing media. And the GOP.

If a vaccine were available tomorrow, half of Americans would refuse to take it.

Wade Davis:

… even should Trump be resoundingly defeated, it’s not at all clear that such a profoundly polarized nation will be able to find a way forward. For better or for worse, America has had its time. …

BAYONNE, NJ – MAY 3: A wind blown American flag at the Tear Drop 9/11 Memorial flies over the skyline of New York City as the sun sets on May 3, 2020 in Bayonne, New Jersey. (Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

On By Rick McIn books, governmentLeave a comment

Erik Larson is a non-fiction author.

I loved The Devil in the White City (2003), his book on the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Larson’s 2020 book sounded interesting too.  So I borrowed Splendid and the Vile from the library.

It’s a new look at Churchill as war Prime Minister from the point of view of his family and friends.   His 18-year-old daughter, for example, partying in London during the Blitz.

About 43,000 civilians were killed in Nazi bombings.  But they stayed the course.  Not many in London wanted to surrender.

Interesting anecdotes are included.   Rudolf Hess flying to Scotland, for example.

I was intrigued by the story of Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt‘s closest advisor on foreign policy during World War II.

One of the architects of the New Deal, Hopkins also supervised the $50 billion Lend Lease program of military aid to the Allies.

In fact, you could argue that Hopkins was essential is starting to bring the USA into the war.

After Churchill himself, I enjoyed most stories of Lord Beaverbrook, William Maxwell Aitken, Churchill’s friend and frenemy.   What a life!

The Splendid and the Vile

A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. …

For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end.

Churchill was not at all perfect. Yet he was the perfect choice for wartime Prime Minister facing impossible odds.

He would have been excellent, for example, at handling the COVID-19 pandemic.

Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.”  His many eccentricities were an advantage.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

On By Rick McIn books, ethics, government, human rightsLeave a comment

Brit Bennett can write.

She studied at Stanford, University of Michigan, and Oxford.

The Vanishing Half was #1 on the New York Times best-seller list June 2020.

But I read it as recommended for privileged white people trying to better understand the African American experience.

#BlackLivesMatter

Spanning nearly half a century, from the 1940s to the 1990s, the novel focuses on twin sisters, Desiree and Stella Vignes, who were raised in Mallard, Louisiana, a (fictional) small town conceived of by their great-great-great grandfather — after being freed by the father who once owned him — as an exclusive place for light-skinned blacks like him.

“In Mallard, nobody married dark,” Bennett writes starkly.

Over time, its prejudices deepened as its population became lighter and lighter, “like a cup of coffee steadily diluted with cream.” The twins, with their “creamy skin, hazel eyes, wavy hair,” would have delighted the town’s founder.

Yet fair skin did not save their father, whose vicious lynching by a gang of white men marks the girls irrevocably.

Nor did it save their mother from an impoverished existence cleaning for rich white people in a neighboring town, and it won’t save the twins from an equally constricted life if they stay in Mallard.

We learn in the first few pages that at 16, Desiree and Stella ran off to New Orleans, two hours away, but “after a year, the twins scattered, their lives splitting as evenly as their shared egg.

Stella became white and Desiree married the darkest man she could find.” …

‘The Vanishing Half’ Counts The Terrible Costs Of Bigotry And Secrecy

The Order by Daniel Silva

On By Rick McIn books, governmentLeave a comment

Book published July 14, 2020.

The new novel featuring legendary Israeli spy master Gabriel Allon is as good as any of the past 19 thrillers.

Silva was raised as a Catholic. Converted to Judaism, the religion of his wife.

This one takes place in the few short days between the funeral of a Pope. And the conclave to elect the next.

A shadowy Catholic society with ties to the European far right, the Order is plotting to seize control of the papacy. And it is only the beginning. …

I learned more about the history of Antisemitism in Christianity.

Seems this book hit a nerve with Trumpers. 😀 There are all kinds of negative reviews online. I suspect most have not read the book as it had only been out a few days as they posted. 

I highly recommend The Order. The Gabriel Allon books are some of my favourites.

I only wish they’d hurry up and start filming a TV series based on the character.

Stay Safe, America

On By Rick McIn economics, ethics, government, happiness, health & fitness, human rightsLeave a comment

On the 4th of July I want to send best wishes to all Americans navigating dread 2020.

So many challenges. 

American entrepreneurship is best at coming up with new business formation, survival, and growth.  Looking forward to better days.

Ken Burns on historical monuments

On By Rick McIn ethics, governmentLeave a comment

Legendary American documentary filmmaker Ken Burns said the country is “in the middle of an enormous reckoning” and endorsed the removal of statues of Confederate soldiers and the renaming of military bases.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.