China Soft-Power Watch, Chapter 29,167

The Cheapest Generation

Derek Thompson and Jordan Weissmann

Why Millennials aren’t buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy

In 2009, Ford brought its new supermini, the Fiesta, over from Europe in a brave attempt to attract the attention of young Americans. It passed out 100 of the cars to influential bloggers for a free six-month test-drive, with just one condition: document your experience online, whether you love the Fiesta or hate it.

Young bloggers loved the car. Young drivers? Not so much. After a brief burst of excitement, in which Ford sold more than 90,000 units over 18 months, Fiesta sales plummeted. As of April 2012, they were down 30 percent from 2011.

Don’t blame Ford. The company is trying to solve a puzzle that’s bewildering every automaker in America: How do you sell cars to Millennials (a k a Generation Y)? The fact is, today’s young people simply don’t drive like their predecessors did. In 2010, adults between the ages of 21 and 34 bought just 27 percent of all new vehicles sold in America, down from the peak of 38 percent in 1985. Miles driven are down, too. Even the proportion of teenagers with a license fell, by 28 percent, between 1998 and 2008.

Witness to a Saturday Night Massacre

Richard Ben-Veniste

A Watergate prosecutor on the uncanny parallels between the scandal he investigated and the controversy over the White House’s alleged links to Russia

Watching the national controversy over the White House and Russia unfold, I’m reminded of Karl Marx’s oft-quoted observation: “History repeats itself: first as tragedy, second as farce.” I was a close witness to the national tragedy that was Richard Nixon’s self-inflicted downfall as president, and I’ve recently contemplated whether a repeat of his “Saturday Night Massacre” may already be in the offing. Given how that incident doomed one president, Trump would do well to resist repeating his predecessor’s mistakes—and avoid his presidency’s descent into a quasi-Watergate parody.

The massacre began when Nixon gave the order to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, a desperate effort to prevent him from hearing tape-recorded evidence that proved the White House’s involvement in a conspiracy to obstruct the investigation of a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters. Nixon’s misuse of executive power backfired, immediately costing him two highly respected members of his administration: Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus, who both resigned rather than follow Nixon’s directive. Third in command at the Justice Department was Solicitor General Robert Bork, who agreed to do the dirty deed and fired Cox.

The Lasting Damage of Trump's 'Tapes' Bluff

David Frum

The president’s attempt to intimidate James Comey didn’t merely backfire—it may also embolden hostile regimes to conclude his other threats are equally empty.

This is a first for the Trump presidency: the first formal presidential retraction of a presidential untruth.

President Trump tweeted a warning to James Comey: The fired FBI director had better hope that no “tapes” existed that could contradict his account of what happened between the two men. Trump has now confessed that he had no basis for this warning. There were no such tapes, and the president knew it all along.

The tweet was intended to intimidate. It failed, spectacularly: Instead of silencing Comey, it set in motion the special counsel investigation that now haunts Donald Trump’s waking imagination.

But the failed intimidation does have important real world consequences.

First, it confirms America’s adversaries in their intensifying suspicion that the president’s tough words are hollow talk. The rulers of North Korea will remember the menacing April 4 statement from the Department of State that the United States had spoken enough about missile tests, implying that decisive actions lay ahead—and the lack of actions and deluge of further statements that actually followed.

Power Causes Brain Damage

Jerry Useem

Over time, leaders lose mental capacities—most notably for reading other people—that were essential to their rise.

If power were a prescription drug, it would come with a long list of known side effects. It can intoxicate. It can corrupt. It can even make Henry Kissinger believe that he’s sexually magnetic. But can it cause brain damage?

When various lawmakers lit into John Stumpf at a congressional hearing last fall, each seemed to find a fresh way to flay the now-former CEO of Wells Fargo for failing to stop some 5,000 employees from setting up phony accounts for customers. But it was Stumpf’s performance that stood out. Here was a man who had risen to the top of the world’s most valuable bank, yet he seemed utterly unable to read a room. Although he apologized, he didn’t appear chastened or remorseful. Nor did he seem defiant or smug or even insincere. He looked disoriented, like a jet-lagged space traveler just arrived from Planet Stumpf, where deference to him is a natural law and 5,000 a commendably small number. Even the most direct barbs—“You have got to be kidding me” (Sean Duffy of Wisconsin); “I can’t believe some of what I’m hearing here” (Gregory Meeks of New York)—failed to shake him awake.

Wisconsin Republicans Consider Cracking Down on Campus Protests

Conor Friedersdorf

The Badger State is debating a law that would suspend or expel students who shut down speakers or interfere with their free expression. Does it go too far?

The national controversy surrounding attempts to shut down controversial speakers on college campuses entered a new phase this week, with the Senate Judiciary Committee holding a hearing, “Free Speech 101: The Assault on the First Amendment on College Campuses.” But even as they held that hearing, Republican legislators in the Wisconsin State Assembly advanced legislation that would severely punish such protests—and pose its own threat to free speech in the process.

Under the bill, University of Wisconsin students “could face a disciplinary hearing if they receive two or more complaints about disruptive conduct during a speech or presentation,” The Washington Post reports. “If a student is found responsible for ‘interfering with the expressive rights of others,’ the bill would require that the student be suspended for a minimum of one semester. A third violation would result in expulsion. Anyone who feels their expressive rights are violated can file a complaint.”

Participants hold German national flags during a demonstration called by anti-immigration group Pegida, a German abbreviation for "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West", in Dresden on December 15, 2014. — Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters

A New, New Right Rises in Germany

Sumi Somaskanda

At a farm in the east of the country, one couple tries to forge a nationalism for the intellectual set.

SCHNELLRODA, Germany—In the waning weeks of 2014, an astonishing right-wing fervor swept Germany. Tens of thousands of demonstrators, stirred by anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment, staged protests under the banner of the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, or Pegida. People streamed through the streets, waving German flags and chanting: “We are the people!” and “Resistance.”

That Pegida erupted in former East Germany, where a stubborn far-right scene persists to this day, was little surprise. But the make-up of these seething masses was far broader than the region had ever seen. Beyond the hardened core of right-wing extremists, there were thousands of “concerned citizens” and disillusioned Germans, fueled by frustration with the government’s immigration and economic policies.

How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration

Peter Beinart

In the past decade, liberals have avoided inconvenient truths about the issue.

The myth, which liberals like myself find tempting, is that only the right has changed. In June 2015, we tell ourselves, Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator and pretty soon nativism, long a feature of conservative politics, had engulfed it. But that’s not the full story. If the right has grown more nationalistic, the left has grown less so. A decade ago, liberals publicly questioned immigration in ways that would shock many progressives today.

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In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, “Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.” In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that “immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants” and that “the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.” His conclusion: “We’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.” That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, “When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”

All photos courtesy of Alex Tizon and his family

My Family’s Slave

Alex Tizon

She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.

The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.

The Perilous Path Ahead for the Senate Health-Care Bill

Russell Berman

The long-awaited proposal begins with few friends and many critics—on the right, the center, and the left. But the chilly reception doesn’t mean the legislation is doomed.

In the hours after Senate Republicans released their long-awaited plan to roll back the Affordable Care Act, it was nearly impossible to find an enthusiastic supporter of the proposal—even among the lawmakers it was most aimed to please.

There was no grand unveiling of a bill that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his lieutenants supposedly spent weeks perfecting behind closed doors. No triumphant declarations of a promise kept, nor even confident predictions of passage. Shortly before 11 a.m. ET, while Republicans were still being briefed on a bill they had yet to see, the Senate Budget Committee sent out a link to the plain, 142-page text of the “Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017.” McConnell went to the Senate floor to talk up the plan as best he could, but even he could only muster modest praise.

How to Deal With North Korea

Mark Bowden

There are no good options. But some are worse than others.

点击这里阅读中文版本 | Read this article in Chinese.

Thirty minutes. That’s about how long it would take a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launched from North Korea to reach Los Angeles. With the powers in Pyongyang working doggedly toward making this possible—building an ICBM and shrinking a nuke to fit on it—analysts now predict that Kim Jong Un will have the capability before Donald Trump completes one four-year term.

About which the president has tweeted, simply, “It won’t happen!”

Though given to reckless oaths, Trump is not in this case saying anything that departs significantly from the past half century of futile American policy toward North Korea. Preventing the Kim dynasty from having a nuclear device was an American priority long before Pyongyang exploded its first nuke, in 2006, during the administration of George W. Bush. The Kim regime detonated four more while Barack Obama was in the White House. In the more than four decades since Richard Nixon held office, the U.S. has tried to control North Korea by issuing threats, conducting military exercises, ratcheting up diplomatic sanctions, leaning on China, and most recently, it seems likely, committing cybersabotage.

Little White Lie

Nadine Ajaka

Lacey Schwartz grew up in an upper-middle-class Jewish household, and never once questioned her whiteness—despite not looking like anyone in her family.

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