Issue August 16, 2019 - The Week Magazine (2024)

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Editor’s letterAt a time when Americans agree about little, it’s safe to say that mass shootings, and those who perpetrate them, are evil. “He’s just an evil person,” Mayor Dee Margo of El Paso said of the white nationalist who killed 22 people and wounded 26 more. “Unspeakable evil,” agreed Sen. Ted Cruz. “We are outraged and sickened by this monstrous evil,” intoned President Trump, in describing both the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings. But what, precisely, do people using this word mean? As Megan Garber points out this week in TheAtlantic.com, blaming abstract “evil” serves to suggest that America’s ongoing massacres are inexplicable and unpreventable. It absolves gun laws. It frees from blame the political leaders and cable TV hosts who have fueled white “replacement” fears and dehumanized the…2 min

American carnage in Texas and OhioWhat happened?The nation was thrust into a fraught national reckoning on guns, white nationalism, and domestic terrorism this week, after at least 31 people were killed and dozens more wounded in mass shootings in Texas and Ohio. In El Paso, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius shot and killed 22 people and wounded 26 others with a semi-automatic rifle inside a crowded Walmart before surrendering to police. Just before driving from an affluent Dallas suburb to commit the shooting, the gunman posted a racist manifesto on 8chan, a message board frequented by white supremacists, in which he said the attack was a response to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and “open borders,” and the Democrats’ attempt to “enact a political coup by importing and then legalizing millions of new voters.” This was an…5 min

Growing trade war with China puts economy at riskWhat happenedPresident Trump slapped a fresh round of tariffs on Chinese exports last week, escalating his year-long trade war and roiling global markets, after China showed little sign of softening in the latest round of talks. Trump said the U.S. would impose a 10 percent duty on another $300 billion in Chinese exports on Sept. 1, adding to 25 percent tariffs already levied on $250 billion in goods. The announcement came one day after U.S. negotiators returned from fruitless talks in Shanghai—and Trump castigated China for breaking a promise to buy American farm products he claims Chinese President Xi Jinping made in June. “That is the problem with China, they just don’t come through,” Trump tweeted. China responded by devaluing the yuan to its lowest level against the dollar since…3 min

It wasn’t all badA Polish World War II veteran and the Polish nurse who treated him at a military hospital in Italy in 1944 have been reunited in a British nursing home. Waclaw Domagala, now 94, fought with the Allies at the Battle of Monte Cassino and lost his left leg in combat. One of his most vivid memories of the time, he said, was the “angel” who nursed him back to health. So when Maria Kowalska turned up at the seniors home in southwest England, Domagala recognized her instantly, although she was 21 in 1944 and is now 96. “How could I forget her?” he said.A French inventor successfully flew across the English Channel this week on his homemade, jet-powered hoverboard. Franky Zapata completed the 22-mile journey from France to England in…1 min

Guns: Will any new laws make a difference?The epidemic of mass shootings in America is really not a “complicated problem to puzzle out,” said David Frum in TheAtlantic.com. In statements after last weekend’s back-to-back massacres by young men armed with weapons of war, President Trump and other Republicans variously blamed the phenomena on mental illness, video games, declining religiosity, “hatred,” and “evil.” But these same problems exist in other developed nations—and yet it’s only in America that citizens are shot to death en masse with numbing regularity. The Japanese, for example, spend far more per capita on video games but average fewer than 10 gun deaths a year, compared with our 40,000. What’s different about our country? Simple: This is the only developed nation where “it is not only legal, but easy and convenient, to amass a…3 min

Good week/bad weekGood week for:Openness, after, in a lavish ceremony, Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn, 67, elevated his mistress, Sineenat Wongvajirapakdi, 34, to the role of official concubine, with his wife, Queen Suthida, sitting expressionless at his side.Extraterrestrial life, with news that the private Israeli spacecraft that crashed into the moon this April was carrying a cargo of dehydrated tardigrades, or “water bears,” microscopic animals able to survive up to 10 years without water or oxygen.Right-sizing, after a New Jersey school district eliminated the $141,000-a-year position of principal, rather than lay off teachers or other administrators. “We did something like this a few years ago,” said a school board official. “It worked out.”Bad week for:Senior moments, when in the wake of the massacres in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, President Trump, 73,…1 min

Issue August 16, 2019 - The Week Magazine (2024)

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