Archive - September 4, 2015

The two recent The New Yorker magazines (August 31st & September 7th) contain articles by George Packer (Togo 1982-84), both worth reading. In the August issue is a long, long piece entitled “The Other France” that is subtitled, Are the suburbs of Paris incubators of terrorism? The article goes onto saying that “Although the alienated, impoverished immigrant communities outside Paris are increasingly prone to anti-Semitism, the profiles of French jihadists don’t track closely with class. Many of them have come from bourgeois families.” The second piece is a short The Talk of the Town comment entitled “The Populists” that begins with a 1910 quote from Thomas E. Watson, a populist from Georgia, who had a long demagogic career in American politics. Packer writes that Watson “ended his career, as a U.S. senator, whipping up white-Protestant enmity against blacks, Catholics, and Jews.” (Does this sound like someone we know today?) Watson . . .