Last gasp: The Sunday night reader for 4/18/21

Helen McCrory, 'The soul of the nation,' and the 'indoctrinated rich'

Apr 19, 2021

Restoring the ‘Soul of the nation’ means taking in refugees

Adam Serwer, who is always insightful and readable, writes: “[Biden’s claim that he will be] restoring ‘the soul of the nation’ cannot mean simply unseating Trump. It also has to mean reversing the policies his administration put in place in an attempt to codify into law his racial and sectarian conception of American citizenship. If Biden cannot do that, then he has restored little more than Democratic control of the presidency. And should he fail to rescind these policies simply because he fears criticism of those who enabled Trump’s cruelty to begin with, it will be nothing short of cowardice.” Read more.

Biden on the phone — Photo from the White House Photo Office

An appreciation: Helen McCrory

This one’s by me: Helen McCrory playing Polly Gray was some of the best television of the last decade. “[H]er performance was particularly impressive in that role. Polly Gray could have been a matron, old early and burdened with the boys. She could’ve been Miss Havisham, wrecked on her losses, or a buzzing hophead gnawing at her grievances. Instead, she was an equal partner in the bloody business of the family business. Unrelenting, calculating, desired and desiring.” Read more.

The Georgia voting law and the end of the New South

Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker: “Conservatives had either misjudged their relationship with corporate Atlanta or no longer cared to maintain it.” Read more.

The Indoctrinated Rich

Elizabeth Spiers on the private school dad who pulled his kid out of a $54,000 per year private school while ranting about critical race theory. It captures the rationalizations of decrying indoctrination in schools while demanding that kids never be exposed to anything a parent might disagree with. If you’re in a hurry, jump to the back third of the article for a nice bit of uplift about the hope she takes from visiting a segregation academy she attended in Alabama as a kid. Read more.