Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

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This issue sponsored by NYU SCPS

This week on nybooks.com: the 2012 campaign and the Republican convention (from reading Ayn Rand to “humanizing” Mitt Romney, whose taxes are like a pig in a poke), visions of apocalypse, the lost futures of filmmaker Chris Marker, the writer in an age of globalization, the war against the Nuba in Sudan, Lance Armstrong in Aspen, and Obama’s early years.
2012 Campaign Grand Old Marxists Timothy Snyder A specter is haunting the Republican National Convention—the specter of ideology. Ayn Rand and Friedrich von Hayek are the house deities of many American libertarians, much of the Tea Party, and Paul Ryan in particular. The irony of today is that these two thinkers relied on some of the same underlying assumptions as the Marxism they were trying to defeat. The current Republican Party ticket is now taking some of the worst outdated ideology from the twentieth century and presenting it as a plan for the twenty-first.
Writing ‘Are You the Tim Parks Who…?’ Tim Parks To what community does a writer belong today? The whole world, might seem to be the obvious answer in an era of globalization. Alas, it’s not that simple.
Politics The Case for Robot Romney Jonathan Freedland Whatever the pressures to strike this or that pose, the wise politician knows that usually the best course is to do what the sports coaches call “playing your natural game.” In life we call it being yourself. But what if your natural self is not that appealing to the voters, what indeed if your natural self is not all that natural?
Sudan The War Against the Nuba Jeffrey Gettleman The war between the northern and southern Sudanese is one of the longest and most complex in Africa, driven by religious schisms, racial politics, oil, and an especially convoluted colonial legacy. Within this broader conflict, the rebellion in the Nuba Mountains may be the most intractable. It is also the one causing the most intense violence and suffering right now.
					Cycling No Joy in Aspen Jeremy Bernstein I ride my bike past Lance Armstrong’s house here in Aspen almost every day. It is much more modest than many of the houses in this neighborhood. It would not occur to me to knock on the door. He has reported that in the decade he’s been living part time here that someone he didn’t know has knocked on his door only once. He did once pass me on his bike. He gave a friendly wave.
End Times Waiting for the Apocalypse: From the Romantics to Romney Malise Ruthven Imagining the end of the world has been the stuff of popular culture from the doomsday panoramas of the English artist John Martin to the Left Behind series. In recent years, apocalyptic rhetoric has turned up in international politics among terrorists and hard-line governments such as Iran, but also their adversaries in Washington, Israel, and elsewhere—including the current Republican candidate for president.				Film The Lost Futures of Chris Marker J. Hoberman La Jetée is Chris Marker’s most generally known work, in part because it was remade in the mid 1990s by Terry Gilliam as 12 Monkeys. Marker was the opposite of a celebrity; he was famous not for his well-knownness but for a certain willful unknowability. The man born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve was permanently incognito. He allowed few interviews and carefully concealed his personal life; although he turned his camera on countless people, including several fellow filmmakers (Andrei Tarkovsky, Akira Kurosawa), he never allowed himself to be photographed.
Caveat Emptor Romney’s Taxes in a Poke Garry Wills One of the oldest bits of practical advice in the English language advises people not “to buy a pig in a poke.” It dates from days when con men sold what purported to be succulent ham or bacon in the form of a piglet wriggling in a poke, or burlap bag. A bargain price was offered on the condition that the poke not be opened. When it was opened, too late for the payment to be called back, the sucker found he had bought a stray dog or large cat, not a pig.
Biography Young Barry Wins Darryl Pinckney A white friend told me recently that he heard someone complain that he’d voted for the black guy last time around, did he have to do it again—as if Obama’s election had been a noble experiment we weren’t ready for. Only the big boys can deal with the global economy, so hand the keypad to the White House back to its rightful class of occupants, those big boys who helped to make the mess in the first place.