Plus: Holocaust Analogies; Arundhati Roy; The Fed; Bread and Puppet
| Today in The New York Review of Books: Ben Rhodes weighs Robert McNamara’s sins; Peter E. Gordon argues for the importance of analogizing ICE’s crackdowns with the Holocaust; Vivian Gornick grapples with Arundhati Roy’s mother; Trevor Jackson talks central banks; a poem by James Arthur; and, from the archives, Dan Chiasson on Vermont’s singular puppet troupe. Robert McNamara’s failure to reckon with the exceptionalism that led the United States into the Vietnam War contributed to fifty years of foreign policy failures. It can help us understand the crisis facing American democracy today. Invoking the memory of Jewish persecution to denounce the assault on immigrants today is not an offense but a moral imperative. In her new memoir, Arundhati Roy tries to find the language to grapple with the shadow of her formidable, extraordinary mother. The Fed is under attack. Can it be both protected and held accountable? Free from the ArchivesOn February 19 the Review and the Brooklyn cultural organization Pioneer Works are cohosting the official launch of longtime contributor Dan Chiasson’s new book, Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People’s Politician. The event, which is open to the public, will include a conversation with Chiasson and Jamaica Kincaid, as well as a performance by members of Vermont’s storied Bread and Puppet Theater. In our September 23, 2021, issue, Chiasson wrote about Bread and Puppet, “the anticapitalist troupe founded in 1963”—the same year as the Review—that to this day produces “spectacles of shock and confrontation” with its menagerie of “smirking, wincing, portly, wizened” puppets. As Chiasson wrote, “the puppets make up a vision of humanity in its entirety: heroes, pests, capitalists, sadists, all of them helplessly locked into their assigned natures and motives.” “Bread and Puppet has produced some of the great visual representations of modern American atrocity, from Hiroshima to Vietnam to covert assassinations and environmental terror; yet as a medium for expressing moral and political anger, puppetry, with its innate connections to innocence and childhood, serves also as a powerful ironizing force. Walking through the museum, it is hard to compose and sustain a single response: jest and genocide adjoin, as they do in the national conscience.” New Subscriber Benefit!Subscribers are now able to share unlocked versions of our articles with friends, family, and social media channels. When signed in to your account, look for this gift box icon in any of our articles. “Terrorized and terrified people are still resisting the surge however they can. Seemingly overnight, churches have created warehouse-like operations to deliver food to those who have gone into hiding…. Shuttles drive people to jobs and doctors’ appointments. Volunteers travel around the city as notaries, signing Delegation of Parental Authority (DOPA) forms for separated families. Local tow-truck companies respond free of charge to calls about vehicles found on the street with their doors open, suddenly a common occurrence. Neighbors walk dogs for families in hiding. People organize to provide breastmilk to babies whose parents have been taken by ICE. ” “The McNugget showed that chicken could be sold more profitably in processed form, as patties, wings, strips, or fingers, all made tastier (and less healthy) in the processing. McNuggets have twice as much fat per ounce as hamburger. McDonald’s sold hundreds of tons of them, more fast-food chicken places sprang up, and by 1992 chicken had surpassed beef as the most-consumed meat in the US. By 2023 Americans were eating about ten times more chicken than they’d eaten in 1940. Today chicken, most of it processed, is 45 percent of all the meat that Americans eat.” You are receiving this message because you signed up
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