Commentary — September 14, 2012, 10:27 pm
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In the August issue of Harper’s Magazine, I detailed the travails of the rebel-held Syrian town of Taftanaz, which had suffered a two-day massacre at the hands of the Syrian army. Hundreds of homes were demolished and whole families slaughtered—yet somehow the revolutionary movement survived intact. In the months since my April visit, the story remains much the same: perseverance in the face of a bloody stalemate. Taftanaz lies only a mile or so from an important government airbase, which exposes the town to almost daily shelling. Indeed, in the early summer months, shells tore through civilian homes with brutal regularity, adding more destruction to an already devastated city. Then, in July, troops from the base stormed the town center, demolishing a mosque in the process. By August, the shelling and helicopter strafing runs had grown so intense that most of the townspeople fled, leaving behind only rebel fighters and some hardcore activists.
In this milieu, Islamist groups, entirely absent before, began to make an appearance. In late August, they ambushed the airbase, destroying as many as ten helicopters sitting on the tarmac, and last week they managed to shoot down a chopper as it flew over town. But the Islamists’ presence has sparked resentment from other rebel groups, who complain that they act unilaterally and without regard for the Syrian army’s retaliation. Perhaps partly because of this mutual mistrust, neither the Islamists nor the mainstream rebel groups have been able to capture the base. Still, the summer months saw their share of durable victories: rebel control now extends to almost all of the territory around Taftanaz, making the airbase nearly non-operational at times.
In many ways, Taftanaz’s evolution mirrors the overall course of the revolution this summer. Syrian forces are so overstretched that they simply cannot occupy the hundreds of small towns across the countryside, and so instead continue to resort to periodic raids and shelling. Islamist groups enjoy greater influence across the country, in large part because their organizational prowess far surpasses that of their secular counterparts. There are now at least a half-dozen such groups, which—while still a tiny minority—are exerting a greater role in the fighting. As in the environs of Taftanaz, the rebels have succeeded in extending their writ over larger parts of northern Syria. For instance, whereas I had to sneak into the country under a barbed-wire fence in the dead of night, today revolutionaries openly control the main northern border crossing with Turkey. But these developments are changes of degree, not kind—the stalemate I described in Taftanaz appears to be deepening elsewhere. Bashar al-Assad’s leadership circle remains largely intact, and his jets continue to pound cities like Aleppo. Yet every Friday, thousands in small towns across the country continue to stand together, carrying banners and chanting slogans, as determined and defiant as ever.
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The city was not beautiful; no one made that claim for it. At the height of summer, people in suits, shellacked by the sun, moved like harassed insects to avoid the concentrated light. There was a civil war–like fracture in America—the president had said so—but little of it showed in the capital. Everyone was polite and smooth in their exchanges. The corridor between Dupont Circle and Georgetown was like the dream of Yugoslav planners: long blocks of uniform earth-toned buildings that made the classical edifices of the Hill seem the residue of ancestors straining for pedigree. Bunting, starched and perfectly ruffled in red-white-and-blue fans, hung everywhere—from air conditioners, from gutters, from statues of dead revolutionaries. Coming from Berlin, where the manual laborers are white, I felt as though I was entering the heart of a caste civilization. Untouchables in hard hats drilled into sidewalks, carried pylons, and ate lunch from metal boxes, while waiters in restaurants complimented old respectable bobbing heads on how well they were progressing with their rib eyes and iceberg wedges.
I had come to Washington to witness either the birth of an ideology or what may turn out to be the passing of a kidney stone through the Republican Party. There was a new movement afoot: National Conservatives, they called themselves, and they were gathering here, at the Ritz-Carlton, at 22nd Street and M. Disparate tribes had posted up for the potlatch: reformacons, blood-and-soilers, curious liberal nationalists, “Austrians,” repentant neocons, evangelical Christians, corporate raiders, cattle ranchers, Silicon Valley dissidents, Buckleyites, Straussians, Orthodox Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Tories, dark-web spiders, tradcons, Lone Conservatives, Fed-Socs, Young Republicans, Reaganites in amber. Most straddled more than one category.
The second-worst thing about cancer chairs is that they are attached to televisions. Someone somewhere is always at war with silence. It’s impossible to read, so I answer email, or watch some cop drama on my computer, or, if it seems unavoidable, explore the lives of my nurses. A trip to Cozumel with old girlfriends, a costume party with political overtones, an advanced degree on the internet: they’re all the same, these lives, which is to say that the nurses tell me nothing, perhaps because amid the din and pain it’s impossible to say anything of substance, or perhaps because they know that nothing is precisely what we both expect. It’s the very currency of the place. Perhaps they are being excruciatingly candid.
There is a cancer camaraderie I’ve never felt. That I find inimical, in fact. Along with the official optimism that percolates out of pamphlets, the milestone celebrations that seem aimed at children, the lemonade people squeeze out of their tumors. My stoniness has not always served me well. Among the cancer staff, there is special affection for the jocular sufferer, the one who makes light of lousy bowel movements and extols the spiritual tonic of neuropathy. And why not? Spend your waking life in hell, and you too might cherish the soul who’d learned to praise the flames. I can’t do it. I’m not chipper by nature, and just hearing the word cancer makes me feel like I’m wearing a welder’s mask.
When Demétrio Martins was ready to preach, he pushed a joystick that angled the seat of his wheelchair forward, slowly lifting him to a standing position. Restraints held his body upright. His atrophied right arm lay on an armrest, and with his left hand, he put a microphone to his lips. “Proverbs, chapter fourteen, verse twelve,” he said. “ ‘There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is . . .’ ”
The congregation finished: “ ‘Death.’ ”
The Assembly of God True Grapevine was little more than a fluorescent-lit room wedged between a bar and an empty lot in Jacaré, a poor neighborhood on Rio de Janeiro’s north side. A few dozen people sat in the rows of plastic lawn chairs that served as pews, while shuddering wall fans circulated hot air. The congregation was largely female; of the few men in attendance, most wore collared shirts and old leather shoes. Now and then, Martins veered from Portuguese into celestial tongues. People rose from their seats, thrust their hands into the air, and shouted, “Hallelujah!”
On December 7, 2016, a drone departed from an Amazon warehouse in the United Kingdom, ascended to an altitude of four hundred feet, and flew to a nearby farm. There it glided down to the front lawn and released from its clutches a small box containing an Amazon streaming device and a bag of popcorn. This was the first successful flight of Prime Air, Amazon’s drone delivery program. If instituted as a regular service, it would slash the costs of “last-mile delivery,” the shortest and most expensive leg of a package’s journey from warehouse to doorstep. Drones don’t get into fender benders, don’t hit rush-hour traffic, and don’t need humans to accompany them, all of which, Amazon says, could enable it to offer thirty-minute delivery for up to 90 percent of domestic shipments while also reducing carbon emissions. After years of testing, Amazon wrote to the Federal Aviation Administration last summer to ask for permission to conduct limited commercial deliveries with its drones, attaching this diagram to show how the system would work. (Amazon insisted that we note that the diagram is not to scale.) Amazon is not the only company working toward such an automated future—UPS, FedEx, Uber, and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, have similar programs—but its plans offer the most detailed vision of what seems to be an impending reality, one in which parcel-toting drones are a constant presence in the sky, doing much more than just delivering popcorn.
Every year in Lusk, Wyoming, during the second week of July, locals gather to reenact a day in 1849 when members of a nearby band of Sioux are said to have skinned a white man alive. None of the actors are Native American. The white participants dress up like Indians and redden their skin with body paint made from iron ore.
The town prepares all year, and the performance, The Legend of Rawhide, has a cast and crew of hundreds, almost all local volunteers, including elementary school children. There are six generations of Rawhide actors in one family; three or four generations seems to be the average. The show is performed twice, on Friday and Saturday night.
The plot is based on an event that, as local legend has it, occurred fifteen miles south of Lusk, in Rawhide Buttes. It goes like this: Clyde Pickett is traveling with a wagon train to California. He tells the other Pioneers: “The only good Injun’s a dead Injun.” Clyde loves Kate Farley, and to impress her, he shoots the first Indian he sees, who happens to be an Indian Princess. The Indians approach the Pioneers and ask that the murderer give himself up. Clyde won’t admit he did it. The Indians attack the wagon train and, eventually, Clyde surrenders. The Indians tie Clyde to the Skinning Tree and flay him alive. Later, Kate retrieves her dead lover’s body and the wagon train continues west.
Cost of renting a giant panda from the Chinese government, per day:
A recent earthquake in Chile was found to have shifted the city of Concepción ten feet to the west, shortened Earth’s days by 1.26 microseconds, and shifted the planet’s axis by nearly three inches.
Americans evacuated from Wuhan did Zumba.
At Ivanwald, men learn to be leaders by loving their leaders. “They’re so busy loving us,” a brother once explained to me, “but who’s loving them?” We were. The brothers each paid $400 per month for room and board, but we were also the caretakers of The Cedars, cleaning its gutters, mowing its lawns, whacking weeds and blowing leaves and sanding. And we were called to serve on Tuesday mornings, when The Cedars hosted a regular prayer breakfast typically presided over by Ed Meese, the former attorney general. Each week the breakfast brought together a rotating group of ambassadors, businessmen, and American politicians. Three of Ivanwald’s brothers also attended, wearing crisp shirts starched just for the occasion; one would sit at the table while the other two poured coffee.
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