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1. “America, in other words, is the country of both Obama and Trump, of the very best and the very worst, and its future is never settled but constantly remade,” Andrew Sullivan wrote in his love letter to his adopted home (“America Is Still the Future,” January 23–February 5). Victoria Neilson, the legal director at Immigrant Justice Corps, thought the essay did “a remarkable job of describing everything that is right and wrong with America as only an immigrant — a gay, HIV-positive outsider for whom citizenship in the United States was a deliberate choice — could do. The lifting of the HIV ban and the promise of equality for gay immigrant families seemed to be harbingers of greater justice in the American immigration system. Those of us who believe that every immigrant deserves a chance to live the same American Dream are very concerned that excluding the most vulnerable and building walls around our country will not only strip our immigration system of its humanity, but also eviscerate the promise America itself holds to the rest of the world.” And several readers, in fact, challenged whether the rest of the world can still share Sullivan’s faith in America as Trump reshapes foreign policy. Commenter nbb wrote, “This is an illuminating piece … but it doesn’t touch upon how the recent events feel for the rest of the world, in particular in Europe, where I live, the other half of what we used to call ‘the West.’ I am afraid that even if the U.S. itself may rebound from its Trump experience, the damage to how America is perceived by its traditional allies may be irreversible.”
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2. New York Magazine’s latest issue also included a reflection from Michael Idov on what he learned living in Putin’s Moscow (“Life After Trust,” January 23–February 5). “Want a sneak preview of what your country could be like after a few years of the new administration?” weighed in the Awl. Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev had a visceral response to the piece — especially to Idov’s descriptions of the fading of Russia’s political resistance. “I myself moved back to Russia in early 2012, inspired by the anticipation of imminent change that swept over Moscow in the weeks following the flawed parliamentary elections. The euphoria I felt at mass rallies and reignited political debates was unprecedented, but the feeling was short-lived. It’s tempting to describe what followed as a ‘state crackdown.’ But from within Russia it feels more like prolonged domestic abuse.” Still, some readers wondered, does America deserve to feel so self-righteous about its democracy in the first place? “Step past the flashy title and apply this to institutions in America that have lost public faith,” @davekartunen tweeted. “Say, the Chicago PD?”
3. As Donald Trump rounded out his administration with “a murderers’ row of financiers, mostly loyalists and donors,” Jessica Pressler gave a portrait of some of the Wall Streeters who bet heavy — and as it turned out, smartly — on Trump’s victory (“Long on Trump,” January 23–February 5), including many with Goldman Sachs on their CVs. Nomi Prins, a former managing director at Goldman and the author of All the Presidents’ Bankers, responded, “Over the past century, there has been a consistent, symbiotic relationship between presidents and bankers. Together, they have influenced domestic and foreign policy. So when Trump struck a chord at the heart of American populist discontent, the fact that he cast himself as the people’s billionaire was irrelevant to his elite entourage. The men that interjected themselves into his power orbit are not dysfunctional outliers; they are rich bipartisan opportunists. Trump is no different from the wealthy cabinet members with which he is surrounding himself. What drives these men is their backgrounds of privilege and their lust for power.” Bloomberg’s Matthew Monks pointed out that there are historical antecedents for those poised to profit off Trump: “People forget: Goldman legend Sid Weinberg made a similar killer bet on FDR in the ’30s.” But UCLA professor Peter James Hudson, author of Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean, argued that, even in comparison to their financier forefathers, the members of the new administration are exceptional: “Pressler illustrates in vivid, almost pornographic detail, the corrupt culture and the corrosive personalities of Donald Trump’s inner circle. The robber-barons and financial titans of the Gilded Age — themselves no strangers to corruption and egregious glad-handing of politicians in the lobby of the Willard Hotel — must be hanging their heads in shame at the actions of their latter-day incarnations.”