America. The one, for example, where you get change in the service station shops. The one where you wolf down po’boys at KY’s Olde Towne Bicycle Shop in Slidell, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain, where few tourists have probably ever set foot. There, a father, aged fifty-five, and his son, thirty-five, both wearing green fatigues, meet each other at noon every Saturday, and take off their baseball caps when their order comes so they can say a prayer. (Afterward, what could they talk about? A war that one of them has fought in? One of those wars you wage in the name of a certain idea of Good and Evil?) This America moves around in busted up pickup trucks, on side roads, with a dog in the back whose tongue is hanging out as the hot wind lashes his face. An America concerned about the passing weather or the passing time.
And then we get to New Orleans. I’m happy to be back here, where I’ve been four or five times. I saw the city before Hurricane Katrina. I saw it after the devastation, still gutted. I saw a city lose its population, a city with “a black majority” turn into a “white majority.” I saw houses demolished and houses for sale. Today, the scars of the destruction have disappeared. But what about the memory of the terror? How do you manage to live with the memory of such terror, how? And how do you manage to live with the memory of those who died—nearly two thousand in just a few hours—in this place where people believe in voodoo, in this city that has a Museum of Death?
The city has somehow kept its taste for celebrations, a way to forget, or to bear it. The French Quarter is the best example—or the worst caricature—of this. Here, from early afternoon until late into the night, you see stumbling drunks who look dangerous; and young women in very short mini-skirts that are a little vulgar, who talk loudly while waving around mardi gras necklaces; mediums who cast spells; people who sway to the music and tequila in the stifling heat. At the Corner Pocket, lustful young men dance on the counter, wearing very little clothing, for gentlemen of a certain age who slip money into their white underpants or offer to buy them a drink. In the evening, the streets are full of the smell of pot, and in the early morning, a mixture of vomit and detergent.
A candidate in the upcoming mayoral primary election, bar owner Patrick Van Hoorebeek, even went so far as to adopt the following campaign slogan: “More Wine, Less Crime” (I swear I’m not making this up). Many people use another expression to sum up this state of mind: “Southern decadence.”
To make the folklore complete, jazz musicians play on the sidewalks—but in reality, they are playing only for the tourists, for the few dollars thrown into the hats they have in front of them, set down on the shiny cobblestones. And while the streets have the names of French cities—Toulouse, Orleans, Chartres—it’s been ages since anyone spoke French here. Maybe just a few older people, in the hope of keeping the myth alive.
And yet, the splendor of the place remains: wrought iron balconies with wisteria tumbling down, the beautiful white church in Jackson Square, the riverboats on the Mississippi, and even a tropical storm, whose rare ferocity makes the headlines of the local newspapers—all these things ensure that the legend will survive.
But we grow tired of everything, including the splendor, and finally, one morning, we bolt, with the goal of getting closer to the Gulf of Mexico. Leaving behind the intertwining ramps of the highway, the outlines of the buildings growing fainter and fainter, we head deeper into the country, where the roads are slower, sometimes in a bad state of repair, often surrounded by water. Cyprus trees emerge from the swamps like creatures that are half alive, half dead. Very few people can be seen. We drive alongside a bayou infested with mosquitos and catch a glimpse of an old man steering a makeshift boat, far from the organized guided tours. Then we go over a wobbly bridge. And we come to the end of dry land, Grand Isle, set on a long stretch of sand, which the Cajuns, descendants of the Acadian settlers, call home. Now, we see nothing in front of us but the ocean.
Our journey has finally come to an end. Another one will surely now begin.
ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK
By
Richard Powers
Waking up each morning to the latest episode of The Trump Show is a bit like taking part in one of those early Cold War–era unregulated experiments that induced psychic trauma in unwitting victims in order to study the lasting effects. This morning I awoke to the news that the White House is moving ahead with its plan to destroy the mandate for automotive fuel efficiency enacted by the Obama administration. Since Trump’s political thought has long consisted primarily of knee-jerk repudiation of anything accomplished by the world’s once-most-powerful black man, that proclamation, in itself, does not surprise me. But the announcement was accompanied by another one that makes a mockery of the core tenet of conservative ideology: Trump’s people have also moved to eliminate California’s freedom to set a fuel standard that improves upon the national goal.
I blink while finishing my breakfast and read the story again. Even after a year and a half of incredulity, I’m struggling with this one. But yes: I’ve understood it properly. The leader of the party of States’ Rights, the champion for getting Big Government out of regional and local affairs, the man who pardoned ranchers for committing open, armed rebellion against federal overreach is telling California—a state that at this very moment is paying the crippling price of global warming—that Washington forbids it to clean up its air and reduce its carbon footprint. California’s cars must become dirtier and less efficient once again. Letting the elected representatives of that state ask for anything better would, Trump insists, be unfair to the American people and American business.
Of course, this latest push to demolish environmental standards by unilaterally imposed executive fiat has little to do with business (which has been profiting nicely from the conversion of its fleets to more efficient models) or with the economy (certainly not the economy of a state that has long paid massive hidden costs in the health and well-being of its people). California now battles constantly for survival against the most deadly and destructive fires in history, fires bred and exacerbated by the global warming that the Trump administration prohibits the state from taking action against. Two dozen of these enormous fires are blazing through the West this very morning. Toxic air from fifteen million Californian cars and multiple runaway wildfires is killing people and shortening lives even as I struggle to absorb this bit of news. But Washington forbids the affected people to address the crisis.
The Clean Air Act was passed half a century ago, with the understanding that each state must at least meet the national mandate for motor vehicle emissions. If any state wanted to do better on its own, the federal government has long declared, then more power to it. Now Trump is reversing that half a century of carefully coordinated, bipartisan protocol. And Republicans everywhere are once more caving to the blatant federal overreach, despite its crippling costs.
This development should by now be old news to me, part of a broader pattern that, even in my daily traumatized state, I have come to understand all too well. Fighting back the weary nausea brought on by the story and hoping to get on with my own day’s work, I can’t help seeing this attack on the health of Americans as just another small assault in an enormous campaign against the future. Like so much else that our game show president has initiated—his trade wars, his Wall, his attacks on NATO allies, his rolling back of legal protections for the marginalized and disenfranchised—Trump’s war on California and his destruction of fifty years of environmental protocol have nothing to do with conservatism or the search for national prosperity. He is simply trying to revive an old idea of exceptionalism and privilege that has been moribund for decades now.
George Lakoff, the University of California, Berkeley, professor of linguistics and cognitive science, has said it best: Trump’s political platform is based entirely on the appeal of “stern paternalism,” a vision of a bygone world that puts men above women, whites above all other races and ethnicities, America above all other
