What Happened Today: October 26, 2022
Fetterman’s debate gamble; China’s overseas police stations under investigation; Anarchy in the U.S.A.
The Big Story
Democratic officials have raised the alarm, at least privately, that Tuesday night’s Senate race debate between Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz (R) could have been a costly misstep for the Democrat’s campaign and the party generally. Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in May, stumbled over words and struggled at times to speak in complete sentences. “Why the hell did Fetterman agree to this?” a Democratic official told Axios. “This will obviously raise more questions than answers about John’s health.” The Fetterman campaign has declined to release his full medical records, instead offering only a note from his doctor.
Fetterman’s campaign said that some of his difficulty at the podium stemmed from the error-filled closed-caption technology that he used to better understand statements from his opponent and the moderator, as he’s struggled to recover his auditory processing capacity. Nexstar Media, the company that provided the debate captioning, said the technology “functioned as expected during rehearsal and again during tonight’s debate.”
The race could very well determine who controls the Senate, and both parties have poured millions of dollars into what has become one of the most expensive campaigns across the country. But much of what came before Tuesday night’s debate has been nullified by the reactions to the debate itself, with supporters and detractors mostly falling along party lines on the issue of whether or not it is ableist to view Fetterman’s shaky oration as a liability. Debates do not often propel anyone to victory, though they frequently lead to a candidate’s downfall. With the most recent polls putting the contest at a toss-up, Politico’s Playbook concluded that “Fetterman failed to meet even the low expectations his own campaign set for him” in his debate performance. But the Fetterman campaign has rolled the dice that undecided voters will be inspired by his decision to continue campaigning despite the obvious challenges.
Read More: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/26/fetterman-oz-debate-democrats-pennsylvania-senate
In the Back Pages: Anarchy in the U.S.A.
The Rest
→ Dutch officials said they’re investigating at least two police stations that Chinese law enforcement opened in the Netherlands ostensibly as administrative offices for Chinese nationals but that are actually being used to surveil and threaten dissidents, local media says. Describing the activities at the center as illegal, the Dutch foreign ministry said in a statement that it is “investigating exactly what they are doing here and will then take appropriate action.” According to Spanish civil rights group Safeguard Defenders, the two overseas Chinese police stations are part of a sprawling network of at least 54 similar outposts across 25 cities in 21 nations, mostly confined to Europe. “They asked me to go back to China to sort out my problems,” said Wang Jingyu, a Chinese dissident who was contacted by the Rotterdam outpost soon after he was granted asylum to live in the Netherlands. Following the initial contact, he said, he received menacing text messages, including one that said “I’m going to kill you,” along with a photo of a gun.
→ Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, said his military was preparing for a “mass nuclear strike with strategic attack forces in response to a nuclear attack by our adversary” after Russia carried out its first nuclear drill since its invasion of Ukraine. The nuclear test comes shortly after President Vladimir Putin alleged without evidence that Kyiv would soon deploy a so-called dirty bomb containing radioactive material against Moscow. Ukraine and its allies say Putin’s comments amount to a false flag effort, planting the idea that Kyiv intends to use a nuclear bomb as a false pretext to justify Russia’s own threats of a nuclear strike, as Moscow continues to struggle in its ground war. Russia had previously tested its nuclear capabilities in February, days before it launched its Ukrainian invasion. At the time, Putin said anyone who tried to stop him would face “consequences you have never encountered in your history.”
→ Add Forbes’ showcase of the world’s billionaires to the growing list of institutions dropping Kanye West. Following Adidas’ announcement that it would be severing ties with Ye, whose Yeezy shoes accounted to 4% to 8% of the company’s annual profits—some $250 million in revenue—Ye’s net worth dropped by more than half, crash-landing to a measly nine figures. Ye had thought that the success of his Adidas deal would shield him from any backlash from the company. “I can say antisemitic shit and Adidas cannot drop me,” he boasted in early October, staring down his interviewer. “Now what?” he demanded.
→ Number of the Day: 65%
The percentage of American warehouse workers “very optimistic” or “extremely optimistic” about their financial futures, according to a recent survey, with almost three-quarters of the roughly 20,000 respondents reporting satisfaction with their jobs. Warehouse workers are currently seeing upwards of 400,000 jobs posted per week, and respondents to the survey, which was conducted by staffing companies EmployBridge and Staffing Leadership Group, happily noted the luxury of choosing among so many options, which gives them more choice in their wages, work hours, and time-off policies. Workers also described warehouse work as offering “opportunities for advancement,” another key contributor to their job satisfaction. Nationally, the median wage for warehouse labor is roughly $17.80 an hour.
→ The Congressional Progressive Caucus is calling for a mulligan after 30 of its members signed off on a letter sent to President Biden on Monday urging him “to pair the military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire.” That letter was lambasted by establishment Democrats who worried that the timing of the missive, in the run-up to the midterms, hewed too closely to criticisms about Ukrainian support from across the aisle. On Tuesday, the chair of the Progressive Caucus, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, formally withdrew the letter, saying it “created the unfortunate appearance that Democrats, who have strongly and unanimously supported and voted for every package of military, strategic, and economic assistance to the Ukrainian people, are somehow aligned with Republicans.” After the caucus, members said they signed the letter during the summer and that they don’t know why it was released; they agreed they would never sign such a thing now.
→ Graph of the Day:
With the number of syphilis cases in the United States at a 70-year high and up more than 25% in the past year to 171,000, physicians in San Francisco are taking the unprecedented precaution of advising high-risk patients to take antibiotics after unprotected sex. San Francisco is the first place to adopt such guidelines after a pair of studies published this past summer showed that a single dose of doxycycline after unprotected sex reduced the risk of contracting syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea by more than 60%. Many health experts have applauded the move, though it has also raised some concerns. “Having more options to prevent bacterial STIs among high-risk groups is certainly needed and the study data for preventing syphilis and chlamydia is quite convincing,” said Professor Cindy Liu, a chief medical officer at George Washington University. “But we need to address the concern that this could trigger a rise in doxycycline-resistant MRSA and undermine the antibiotic’s usefulness.”
→ So much for those slogans about how recycling helps to save the planet. Of the 51 million tons of plastic waste Americans produce each year—that’s 309 pounds per person—95% of it ends up in the trash, according to a new study by Greenpeace, which attributed much of the problem to plastic makers not following manufacturing standards. “Corporations like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, and Unilever have worked with industry front groups to promote plastic recycling as the solution to plastic waste for decades,” said Lisa Ramsden, Greenpeace USA senior plastics campaigner. “But the data is clear: Practically speaking, most plastic is just not recyclable.” Today, most of the United States’ plastics are getting dumped in foreign landfills, ever since China, once responsible for taking much of our undesirable plastics, stopped accepting U.S. waste products.
→ Known more for their toothless puppets than swamp-land predators, the Redwing Blackbird Theater in New York’s upstate Rosendale sparked concern among locals after several called the police to report a live alligator in the theater’s Main Street window. Though the alligator is not a legal pet, police for now are letting the reptile continue practicing his lines, as they assured residents in a statement that their investigation determined “the alligator is real” and also under the supervision of a licensed animal handler. Ominously, they did add that his days on the stage were numbered, as they expected him to be out of the theater by week’s end.
→ London’s Heathrow Airport—Europe’s busiest before the COVID-19 pandemic—will be hiring more than 12,000 workers as it seeks to address staffing shortages that have crippled the airport’s ability to send off planes and passengers on time. This past summer, harrowing scenes and horrifying stories of endless check-in lines surfaced on social media, with some passengers who queued up for departing flights disappearing in those lines altogether, never to be heard from again. Heathrow suffered, as did many other airports, from the aftershocks of the pandemic, which saw a surge of travelers eager to fly for the first time arriving to airports that had lost—and been unable to rehire—tens of thousands of employees, an imbalance that led Heathrow to create a recruitment task force.
Additional reporting and writing provided by The Scroll’s associate editor, David Sugarman
TODAY IN TABLET:
The New Gatekeepers by Michael Lind
How the major institutions of American society all came to sing in the woke chorus, and what can be done about it
COVID-19 and the Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet
The transition from democracy to totalitarian technocracy is not an elite conspiracy, but the process of a whole society succumbing to a new dominant ideology
SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.
Anarchy in the U.S.A.
Emma Goldman’s speech to an affluent club recalls a moment in American history when liberals fought for the First Amendment
In an era when dissent and unpopular opinions are as likely to be suppressed by moralizing “liberals” (sic) as they are by censorious “conservatives,” it’s instructive to recall a period in American history when things were quite different.
It was the winter of 1916. Emma Goldman, the Red Queen of the Anarchist movement, had been invited to speak to the Civitas Club of Brooklyn, one of the best-known women’s clubs in the nation, whose blue-blooded, affluent members were not known for radicalism.
And yet, there it was in the local newspapers of Jan. 10: Two days hence, Goldman would come to the group’s home on tony Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights to deliver a lecture titled “My Personal Interpretation of Anarchism,” with Mrs. Palmer Jadwin and Mrs. James P. Warbasse acting as club hostesses.
The sponsorship of Agnes Warbasse was significant, belying the rigid precepts of Brooklyn “society.” Her husband, Dr. Warbasse, was both a prominent surgeon and a socialist activist. Agnes shared his passions, and together they had six children and had recently co-founded the National Cooperative League to promote the development of consumer cooperation in the marketplace. While the class and ethnic divides between the Civitas Club and the city of millions of new immigrants were real, so too was the commitment of the Warbasse family in seeking the betterment of all.
But of course, socialism—let alone anarchism—had many opponents, including other Civitas Club members, and it’s likely they who made their displeasure known to the press.
To be sure, Goldman’s radical reputation was fully earned. Born Jewish in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1869, when it was still part of the Russian Empire, Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885, settling first in Rochester, New York. As she’d often explain, it was the Haymarket Square affair of May 4, 1886—a strike rally in Chicago that, after a small bomb exploded, turned into a deadly riot—and its subsequent trials, including the hanging of four likely innocent anarchists, that wholly radicalized her.
Goldman arrived in New York at a time, as Paul Berman has chronicled in Tablet, when anarchism was the city’s predominant ideology of political radicalism, especially among its immigrant Jews. Goldman became a disciple of German anarchist Johann Most and a lifelong intimate of Lithuanian-born Alexander Berkman, whose attempted assassination of Carnegie Steel Chairman Henry Clay Frick in July 1892 would earn him 14 years in prison. In 1893, Goldman herself began a year in Blackwell’s Island prison for inciting a riot in Union Square. Upon her release, Goldman supported herself with lectures, midwifery, and occasional other ventures, such as an ice cream shop in the then—circa 1895 or 1896—explosively growing Jewish ghetto of Brownsville, Brooklyn.
Goldman’s notoriety reached a peak after September 1901, when the anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinated U.S. President William McKinley at the World’s Fair in Buffalo. Though Czolgosz had seen Goldman lecture in Cleveland and briefly spoke with her, there was no evidence that Goldman knew anything about his plans. Still, with the federal Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 signaling a period of government oppression, Goldman withdrew from public life until 1906, when she founded a magazine, Mother Earth. Among the publication’s favored causes were the rights of labor—working women, men, and children alike—free speech, free love, birth control and, in the 1910s, opposition to the capitalist war in Europe.
Despite Goldman’s anathema-to-some résumé, Civitas Club President Mrs. Edwin Quinn was quick to defend the group’s invitation. “Friends of mine have known Miss Goldman for 10 years,” she told a reporter, “and they tell me that she is a most interesting woman, well worth listening to. Robert Henri, the artist, told me that Miss Goldman is a fine, noble character, who has been greatly maligned by the newspapers. We are not setting up for anarchy—we are curious to know.”
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