Good Reads: From Chicago as the future, to a pessimistic US, to Blackwater's origins
Thomas Frank is something of an old-school, lunch-pails-and-union-halls liberal 鈥� at least as intellectuals go. So Chicago in the 1980s was his kind of town. In an essay in , Mr. Frank recalls a city struggling with the end of a great industrial era: 鈥淭he ruins that surrounded you on the South Side were the relics of a civilization that had built great things, that had made the world go.鈥�
Now elite Chicago鈥檚 embrace of its working-class roots is strictly ironic. Frank sits at a trendy restaurant over 鈥渁 winking parody of the Chicago-style hot dog: an assembly of sliced-up steak, 鈥榟ot dog bun puree,鈥� 鈥榟ousemade pickles,鈥� a mustard-flavored wafer, and so on.鈥� His lament: 鈥淚n Chicago鈥檚 strangely tidy streets, the rest of the nation can get a glimpse of the future: a city that works 鈥� for a few.鈥�
Cheer up, America, you still rule
The voice of is almost a throwback to an era when it felt like the grown-ups were in charge. (Of course, The Economist would observe that we鈥檙e only remembering it that way.) In the lead-off piece of a special report on American foreign policy, the magazine in effect tells America to quit moping and pull its socks up.
There are plenty of concerns, failures, and new rivals on many fronts, yes. The Economist is especially critical of the venture in Iraq led by George W. Bush. But it argues that Americans are too busy contemplating their own decline to stand up and notice that they still rule the world, and the world still needs that leadership. So stop with the whining jeremiads. 鈥淚t is time to cheer up. The world America faces today may seem cussed and intractable, but the world America looked forward to shaping after the fall of the Soviet Union was never as pliant and welcoming as it imagined. And America鈥檚 strengths are as impressive as ever. On every measure of power it remains dominant.鈥�
Chaotic on the surface, stable beneath
Ah, but it shall ever be thus, explains David Runciman in . 鈥淭he history of modern democracy is a tale of steady success accompanied by the constant drumbeat of anticipated failure,鈥� he writes. A political scientist at the University of Cambridge, Professor Runciman cites the history of democracies lurching 鈥渇rom complacency to fury and back again,鈥� swinging from 鈥渦nwarranted optimism鈥� to 鈥渦nwarranted pessimism鈥� with little room for voices in between.
The first to notice this was 鈥� who else? 鈥� Alexis de Tocqueville, who in 1831 was 鈥渋mmediately struck by the frenetic and mindless quality of democratic politics.鈥� But beneath the constant grumbling, rancor, and occasional panics of American democracy, Tocqueville noticed something else: 鈥渢hat underneath the chaotic surface, it was quite stable.鈥�
Native survival in the Amazon
Prospects are fairly dim for the Aw谩 people of the Brazilian Amazon. Alex Shoumatoff, writing in , describes his 10 days visiting what he describes as the most endangered tribe on the planet. Only some 350 members remain. Not enough, Mr. Shoumatoff points out, 鈥渢o take on the madeireiros, the loggers who are killing their trees and their animals and are now within a few miles of here, and the thousands of other invasores who have illegally settled on their land and converted a third of their forest to pasture.鈥�
He is greeted by an impassioned speech by an Aw谩 father. 鈥� 鈥榃e are Aw谩,鈥� he says. 鈥榃e don鈥檛 succeed in living with chickens and cows. We don鈥檛 want to live in cities. We want to live here.... We don鈥檛 want anything from the whites but to live as we live and be who we are. We just want to be Aw谩.鈥� 鈥�
Shoumatoff writes: 鈥淚 think of all the speeches like this given by brave natives in the Americas over the last 500 years, who were trying to save their people and way of life and world but were unable to stop the inevitable, brutal advance of the conqueror and his 鈥榩rogress,鈥� and how this is probably what is going to happen here, to this remnant tribe in its endgame.鈥�
A private-sector military
The rise and fall of Blackwater, the private security firm that rode the Iraq war to fame and fortune and then back down again, is chronicled by Drake Bennett in 鈥� mainly from the vantage point of Blackwater founder Erik Prince.
A former Navy SEAL, Mr. Prince founded a training facility in North Carolina. When the Iraq war broke out, he tapped a network of fellow special forces veterans to quickly put together security teams for the US government. He credited his company鈥檚 explosive growth to the nimble agility that is the advantage of the private sector over the rigid bureaucracies of the official military.
The flip side of that virtue is that some critics blame Blackwater鈥檚 mistakes on poor training and preparation. Prince blames, above all, the self-protective State Department. 鈥淚f I could send a message back to my younger self, it would be: Do not work for the State Department at all.鈥�
