Reviews for Women writers and national identity

The average rating for Women writers and national identity based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-26 00:00:00 Greg Riepl “Imagine you live in a town of twenty, or fifty, or one hundred thousand souls…with a colonnaded red-brick city hall at its center, a Main Street running its breadth, avenues ringed with modest bungalows and named for trees and exotic heroes and local luminaries, interrupted at intervals by high-steepled churches. On the outskirts of town are factories. It is June 1959 and, three shifts a day, they throw up great clouds of smoke, churning out vast pools of cement, cords of lumber, spools of rolled steel, machine parts of every size and description. Although no one who didn't have to would ever venture inside one of these factories, locals point to them with pride, because they are what make their little town prosper, and because all over the world foundries use machine parts inscribed with your town’s name. Imagine you are the proprietor of one of these concerns…” - Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of American Consensus Good day to you, sir/ma’m. Thank you for answering your door. I’ve only been knocking for ten minutes. What do I want? Why, I’m here to make a literary suggestion. Could I interest you in a book on the 1964 U.S. presidential elect – Hold on! It’s impolite to throw things at people when they’re talking. Now you’re walking away. And still throwing things! I get it. It hasn’t been that long since we finished the most bruising election cycle in recent memory, if not the most bruising in all the history of the United States. Rather than cooling passions, the election has made them boil over. Families are sundered. Friendships altered. The internet is no longer a fun place to visit. It’s understandable that you might want to take a break from the whole politics thing. But hear me out. (At which point, I will remove my foot and you can close your door). This is about a completely different time period! It’s the story of a an anti-establishment Republican presidential candidate that some people think is literally mad. He snatches the nomination away from other, far more established candidates due to a strong grass roots movement that taps into decades of political frustration. The Republican establishment furiously tries to stop him. His Democratic opponent is a lifelong politician who is marred by scandal and accused of voracious ambition. There are vicious television ads. People are marching in the streets. Family gatherings become even less enjoyable than before. Oh wait. That’s exactly like today. Okay, so maybe this isn’t so much an escape from the present as it is a counterfactual. Still, you should read Rick Perlstein’s Before the Storm. Not because you’ll learn a lot – though you will – but because this is how history should be written. It is sweeping, informed, and entertaining as heck. Before the Storm gripped me from the start. Its introduction – excerpted above – is pure Caro, and I mean that as the highest compliment I can bestow on an author/historian. Perlstein uses this clever bit of scene-setting to describe the kernel from which the modern American conservative movement sprung. This hypothetical factory owner “hated Franklin Roosevelt,” has tangled with organized labor, and feels beset by governmental regulations. He voted for Eisenhower and then felt betrayed when he expanded the Federal Government. He wondered whether his party, the Republican Party, would ever advance a true conservative. And then came Goldwater. At 516 pages of text, Before the Storm is rather hefty, and it tells a big tale. In four sections, Perlstein covers the ideological underpinnings of the new conservative movement; the rise of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, as the torchbearer of that conservatism; Goldwater’s surprise nomination; and the election of 1964, which resulted in Goldwater’s historic trouncing at the hands of President Lyndon Johnson. Perlstein tells this story in narrative fashion, with a flair for capturing personalities and a real skill at delivering riveting set-pieces. Before the Storm is generous in its broad sweep, and precise with its telling details. Once I got going, I had a hard time putting it down. Obviously, this is a book about politics. Politics is a touchy subject. (Give me a call if you want me to list other super-obvious things about life). Before you pick it up, you probably want to know where its author is coming from on the ideological spectrum. Okay, I’ll indulge your whims. Before the Storm is a book about the American Right, written by an author from the American Left. Does that mean it’s biased? Of course! The bias, though, is implicit. Take, for instance, the passage I excerpted above. Perlstein takes pains to “imagine” the worldview and logic behind a Goldwater supporter, but the very act of this imagination shows where Perlstein’s political convictions reside. Certainly, Perlstein is fair in his presentation. He may not agree with Clarence Manion (one of the godfathers of the movement) or F. Clifton White (who engineered Goldwater’s nomination) but he is certainly respectful of them and their talents. He presents William F. Buckley almost with reverence, like a prophet who has seen the latter day. LBJ, on the other hand, probably gets the roughest treatment of anyone, with the exception of arch-segregationist George Wallace. What I’m trying to say is that this is more history than politics. Perlstein is attempting to trace the arc of the conservative movement, rather than attack or critique it. If he has an axe to grind, it’s pretty subtle. Frankly, if it were otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered. I have no interest in extremes or dogmatists. Life doesn’t happen at the poles, and neither does history. LBJ won big in 1964. So did his party. The Democrats took both Houses of Congress, leading many contemporary pundits to declare (and not for the last time) the death of the Republican Party. This didn't happen. And in the ashes of defeat, there were signs of life. For instance, the number of Goldwater volunteers and micro-donors hugely outnumbered those people working for Johnson. Goldwater’s movement lived on. Within a few years, the Titanic of the Democrats would slam into the iceberg of Vietnam. The Age of Roosevelt soon gave way to the Age of Reagan. Perlstein argues in his introduction that the Goldwater campaign beget the Republican resurgence; and that his ideology, once labeled fringe, has become mainstream doctrine. Before the Storm’s narrative is so good I barely realized that Perlstein never satisfactorily concluded the argument he teases in the first few pages. Of course, Before the Storm (published in 2001) is the first book of a trilogy (Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge are the follow-ups), so perhaps that is covered in later volumes. The subtitle of Before the Storm is Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of American Consensus. That is an interesting phrase. American Consensus. Perlstein knows as well as anyone that America has never had much consensus about anything. The result of the 1860 election, after all, was the bloodiest war in U.S. history. What Perlstein means, I think, is that there was a myth of consensus. People might disagree with each other, but we could paper that over with some shared truths and common ground. That veneer has quite disappeared. Not only do we lack consensus, but consensus is no longer a virtue. Compromise is seen as surrender. Empathizing with your opponents is now a moral hazard. Talking about politics in real life, as opposed to the echo chambers we find online, can get ugly real fast. I hesitated to post this review, because the last thing I need – literally, the last; I’d prefer a kick in the nuts – is a web-based political argument. It is a long road that brought us to this place. Before the Storm is not always a pleasant story. It is definitely not a diversion. However, it is – strange as it sounds – incredibly enjoyable to read.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-11-07 00:00:00 William Crawford UPDATE: Rick Perlstein has written an outstanding article, appearing top of the front page of the New York Times: I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved me Wrong. The article reads as Rick Perlstein's mea culpa for underestimating extremism in the development of today's conservative movement, for example ignoring the popularity of groups such as the German American Bund or the Black Legion. For anyone interested in the history behind Trump's presidency this article is a must-read. *********************************************** After finishing six hundred and twenty five pages of “Before the Storm” I now know more than any non-American will ever need to know about the US Presidential Campaign of 1964. Why invest so much time reading a book about an obscure US election campaign more than half a century in the past? Because the parallels between the 1964 and 2016 Republican compaigns are just too interesting not to want to know more. And it turns out I am not the only one who finds Goldwater’s 1964 campaign interesting. Ted Cruz has been studying the back room work that won Goldwater a majority at the 1964 Republican Convention. If Trump had read this book he would not be surprised to see Lyin’ Ted stealing his delegates. Encouragingly for Cruz the book shows that Goldwater stood a much better chance of winning the Presidency than LBJ’s landslide victory implies. Goldwater wanted to fight a noble 'campaign of conservative ideas' without resorting to campaign trickery and surrounded himself with cronies from Arizona that were, broadly speaking, incompetent. If Goldwater had been more flexible around policy and more pragmatic about how his campaign was run he stood a good chance of winning. November might tell us whether or not Cruz has done his homework and learnt from Goldwater's errors. “Before the Storm” is full of places where the 1964 and 2016 presidential campaigns converge or diverge. Here are a few examples. The mainstream GOP choice was Nelson Rockefeller, a candidate who shared a lot in common with Jeb Bush: son of a famous family, rich, leisured, entitled, mediocre, dull. Understandably, the public was left cold. In 1964 Rockefeller was seen by many as an ‘East Coast Liberal’ out of touch with the concerns with the rest of the country. Nelson Rockefeller and Jeb Bush: Republican mediocrities. Rather quaintly in 1964 people used to believe that New Yorkers like Rockefeller exercised malign influence over Wall Street and by extension the rest of the country. Nowadays, of course, we know that Wall Street exercises a malign influence over the rest of the country regardless of what New Yorkers do. But this outlook was another black mark against Rockefeller. Members of more extreme right wing groups such as the ‘John Birch Society’ (the Tea Party of its day) suspected Rockefeller - and even incredibly Eisenhower - of being communists. The tradition of stupefying ignorance on the fringes of the GOP extends back to well before 2016. So just like Goldwater back in 1964, in 2016 Trump and Cruz occupied the vacancy on the GOP bench left open by the unpopularity of the mainstream candidate. And just like Trump and Cruz in 2016, Goldwater attracted some rather unconventional support: Strange bed sheets for strange GOP bed-fellows In 1964 Goldwater’s team had to distance themselves from extremists on the conservative right wing in order to maintain their credibility . In contrast these days Trump and Cruz discretely call out to extremists, blowing on their dog-whistles with as much puff as they can muster. Trump delays condemning his endorsement from David Duke; Cruz shares a platform with religious bigots who call for death to LGBT individuals. Some things never change in GOP politics. Just like today back in 1964 the GOP were happy to exploit the fears of the electorate in order to win votes. A real difference between 1964 and now was that in 1964 America was facing an imminent threat to its existence: nuclear war with the USSR. Unsurprisingly the Cold War was a major concern of the electorate and focus of the 1964 campaign: "...Lyndon Johnson understood how souls were moved by dark thoughts that crept up on sleepless nights. 'Men worry about heart attacks', he would say, clasping his chest. 'Women worry about cancer of the tit' (here he jabbed the breastplate of his nearest companion). 'But everybody worries about war and peace. Everything else is chickenshit'..." In 2016 America also faces clear and present existential threats, but ones very different from those of 1964. These threats are largely ignored by the candidates of 2016: climate change, pollution, environmental destruction. The difference, of course, is that these are not imminent threats but rather threats that accumulate imperceptibly by degrees. They can be safely ignored by a GOP that needs to exaggerate fears to raise votes and can be paid lip-service to by a Democratic party that needs to raise donor money from the fossil fuel industry or polluters. So whereas the 1964 Campaign focused on the pressing issue of nuclear holocaust and the end of the world the 2016 campaign focuses on marginal threats such as the danger from ISIS terrorists infiltrating across the Mexican border or from shariah law in Arizona. Sadly neither the Democrats of today nor LBJ in 1964 did much to put these issues in a proper perspective. It is interesting from a purely historical perspective to take a closer look at how the GOP and the Democrats dealt with the real threat of global nuclear war in the 1964 campaign. Goldwater’s weakest spot was being seen as a warmonger who might trigger a nuclear exchange. One has to wonder whether this would be a weak spot in a candidate today. His background included flying planes from the US to deploy on the front line for WW2 and he loved to talk about military equipment, which didn't do much to dispel the warmonger image. His support for allowing military commanders the authority to launch nuclear strikes didn’t help much either. Neither did his advocacy of weapons systems such as the ‘Davy Crockett’ – the atomic warhead mounted on a portable recoilless rifle which had the drastic design flaw of sometimes including within its blast zone the infantry men firing the weapon. The Davey Crockett: pulling the string launches the atomic warhead. In 1964 LBJs campaign produced ads that were pioneering in their day in exploiting the fears of the electorate. These ads didn’t mention candidates by name and favored raw fear and emotion over rationality - a tradition adopted by political ads to this day. The ads are good enough to warrant a look at even now: The “Daisy” ad, only thirty seconds long. Do you want your children counting down to a nuclear holocaust? This ad was so effective at fear-mongering it was only broadcast once. “Test Ban” an effective reminder from the Johnson campaign that Kennedy’s test ban might have saved humanity from nuclear destruction So in 1964 the Democrats were able to effectively counteract GOP fear-mongering by pointing out that the GOP itself was something justifiably to fear. This is something that most of the Democrats have conspicuously failed to do in 2016. Instead of explaining to the electorate that ISIS are many thousands of miles away and present much less of a threat to the average American household than keeping a gun in the home, they have let the fear-mongering go unchecked. In 1964 the Democrat’s attack ads were amusing and effective The legacy of the Goldwater campaign that is felt most strongly today in the moral sphere. It was in 1964 that the GOP began holding the Democratic Party accountable for most of the social ills of the day. Just like Trump in 2016, back in 1964 the GOP was waging war on political correctness - although it wasn’t called political correctness at the time. Just like today, victory over political correctness meant having the right to speak your prejudice out loud: "...Goldwater had said back in January that the reason most people were on relief was because they were stupid or lazy...when he asked those who criticized him if they thought what he said was right, they invariably responded, 'Oh, yes, you're right, but you shouldn't have said it'..." The Republican party’s first attempt to capture the moral high ground was a film called “Choice” in which LBJ is the driver of an out of control Cadillac as a metaphor for out of control moral decline. It’s worth watching just for some entertaining examples of what passed as immoral behavior in the sixties. At the time the advert was a failure. Mentions of ‘men for sale’ and shots lingering over pictures of young women in bikinis left the electorate with the impression that the Goldwater campaign had, for their own strange reasons, decided to produce a porno movie. But ever since 1964 the GOP has taken up the fight for moral righteousness and, for the time being, has won the issues vote. Cruz has valiantly picked up this fight for American moral purity with his legal attack on dildos, vibrators and other marital aids (which are illegal in Texas). This will no doubt win him as many votes in 2016 as Goldwater’s film did in 1964. So what did I learn from reading this immensely detailed book? I learnt that things are going to get ugly. If you've been thinking that - with its talk of carpet bombing, delegate theft, small hands and menstruating TV reporters - the campaign is already ugly, well - you ain’t seen nothing yet. Just wait until the 2016 Republican Convention. If it is anything like the Republican Convention of 1964 it will be a doozy. Fortunately help is at hand. An enterprising political pundit has produced a guide to candidate selection that could help keep both Republican and Democratic Conventions civilized. If this flowchart is converted into a flyer and handed out in Cleveland and Philadelphia, delegates will be able to focus on the key election issues in a way that they haven’t done to date. Using this America can elect the President it deserves in 2016.