Prophet Song imagines an Ireland under fascist control, breaking through the it-couldn’t-happen-here complacency of western societies

‘Soul-shattering’ Prophet Song by Paul Lynch wins 2023 Booker prize

Lynch imagines an Ireland that has fallen under fascist control. Eilish Stack is a Dublin scientist and mother of four, busy with work, family and her elderly father, averting her eyes from the increasingly worrying news reports. Then grim reality comes knocking at her door: the newly created secret police arrive to interrogate her husband, Larry, about his work as a trade unionist. Along with many others, he is disappeared into the maw of the state. Their teenage children want to take to the streets – to wear the colours of protest, to march, to fight back – but all Eilish wants is to keep them hidden and safe. As civil war breaks out, and the streets of Dublin are filled with roadblocks and snipers, she remains frozen in a state of denial. Her sister, who lives in Canada, begs her over the phone to try to escape. “History is a silent record of people who did not know when to leave.”

If Prophet Song is a dystopia, then, like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s one whose events are already happening around the world. Families like Eilish’s are suffering in Ukraine, Syria, Palestine and elsewhere, refugees fleeing political violence, women’s rights violated across the globe, and the far right on the rise in Europe. The recent rioting in Dublin, and the shock and disbelief that greeted it, give the novel an uncomfortable extra timeliness.

There’s an incantatory power to Lynch’s prose that’s reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, but harnessed to a vision that is shockingly everyday, even as it summons the end times. This is a novel written to jolt the reader awake to truths we mostly cannot bear to admit: “All your life you’ve been asleep, all of us sleeping and now the great waking begins.”

After being a loyal reader for the better part of 60 years, I have officially run out of respect for The New York Times.

I have come to the grudging realization that this newspaper is actively playing a part in undermining our Democracy by convening a political horse race, and backing a burnt-orange, reprehensible, racist traitor, and his dirty trainers, who mean our country harm.

I believe they are doing this because they have lost their way and their morals, and have carefully dug out a tributary that flows from the obscene river of cash that is currently poisoning our politics, and runs directly into the bottomless pockets of the broken decision-makers whose fat asses are comfortably stuffed in the chairs of their front offices.

Unrest and instability might be bad for our Democracy, but they are damn good for business at The New York Times.

I take no pride in writing what I believe is this necessary piece.

I have been a steady reader of the “Gray Lady” for most of my life. Growing up in New Jersey, I actually aspired to work at the place as a starry-eyed kid, who pedaled his bike around delivering newspapers after school each day.

That never happened, and mostly by design. It turns out I got far more of a thrill working for smaller, underdog newspapers that stood up for their readers, called power to account, and strived to make a real difference in their communities.

Still, I never lost my respect for The Times — until now.

Every day — hell, every HOUR — Republicans are doing something to undermine our Democratic Republic here in America, whether it be squashing voting rights, refusing to certify elections, threatening DOJ officials, flat lying about the results of these elections, supporting dictators around the world, banning books detailing our nation’s choppy history, all of the above, and more.

It never ends. There is no bigger overarching story in America right now than Republicans’ surge toward fascism.

WHY isn’t this being given the editorial weight it deserves?

I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again right here: If the Republicans are successful in taking down our Democracy and installing an authoritarian regime in Washington, one of the very first things to go will be our freedom of the press, and THEN where will The Times be?

Jane Mayer has earned a reputation as one of the country’s top investigative reporters. As chief Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, Mayer has been relentless in exposing the hidden forces shaping American politics. Her bestselling book, “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” documents the vast influence of the Koch brothers and was named one of the 10 best books of 2016 by the New York Times.

In the past year, Mayer has exposed the right-wing funders behind former President Donald Trump’s Big Lie of a stolen election. She reported how Ginni Thomas secretly supported the Jan. 6 insurrection as her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, considered cases that involved her. And this month she exposed the shadowy conservative organization that smeared Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in a failed attempt to derail her Supreme Court confirmation.

Mayer often provokes the ire of those she exposes. The Koch Brothers hired investigators to smear her, and the subject of her most recent exposé tweeted her personal contact information in an attempt to intimidate her.

I think it’s a pretty dark time. It feels like a dangerous hiatus right now. The Trump years felt quite dangerous and being called an enemy of the people was awful. The things that were happening were frightening. The attempted coup at the end of his time is still shocking to me. Some of the things that I’ve covered in other parts of the world, I do see echoes of here. It’s made me realize that we’re not protected from human nature and the kind of awful history that’s taken place elsewhere. It hasn’t always been perfect in America, either. But the susceptibility to authoritarian strongman government — and just the hate and the idea that factionalism that you see in places like the Middle East, when I was in Beirut where it’s almost barbaric what people do to each other — I hate to see any of it stirring here. It’s certainly very different from Vermont. This idea of spying on your neighbors couldn’t be more different from the idea of just live and let live, which is one of the many lovely, wonderful things about Vermont.

David Goodman

You mentioned at the beginning how you got into journalism partly inspired by the work of Woodward and Bernstein holding an earlier generation of corrupt politicians accountable. Do you think that journalism and the work that you do still has the power to be that watchdog of democracy?

Jane Mayer

I think it has much less power now than before the internet. There are still fantastic reporters and there was amazing reporting done during the Trump years. And there’s amazing reporting being done at the local level in a lot of places, including by VTDigger. But the thing is that the internet is filled with junk. So we’re competing now with outlets that just are not quality, and I think it’s hard for readers to separate out which is real and which is not real. That’s been a real problem.

David Goodman

You have exposed so much darkness. Where do you see the light?

Jane Mayer

I’m actually quite optimistic always. Because I have seen change and I’ve seen change for good. I think a lot of people have common sense. If they can get the information, people of different political persuasions can meet on common ground. Some of the things I’ve covered I felt like I really did see progress. I did a lot of coverage during the Bush years of the torture program that that was secretly being employed by the Bush administration on detainees in the war on terror. I watched as reporters and public spirited people in government and lawyers pushed back hard and they fixed a lot of it. It’s disappointing to me that Guantanamo is still open. But it’s really been amazing to see things like waterboarding exposed and ended. So I have seen change take place, and there’s been a lot of forces for good as well as these dark things. Shining the light on them is the way to go.

Unprecedented Monthly Highs Since May

Professor Qingxiang Li’s team analyzed the CMST 2.0 dataset and discovered that 2023 has already experienced the third hottest first half-year since records began, narrowly trailing behind the warmest year in 2016 and the second warmest in 2020. The global mean sea surface temperatures (SSTs) surged to an all-time high in April, while global mean land surface air temperatures followed suit by reaching their second-highest monthly level in June. This combination resulted in May being crowned the hottest month ever recorded for global mean surface temperatures.

An international study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, analyzed millions of tweets by members of Congress over the last decade. Its findings showed both Republican and Democratic politicians were increasingly sharing their beliefs and opinions as well as evidence-based information. But among Republicans, their expression of honestly-held beliefs and opinions was strongly linked to less trustworthy information sources.

Lead author Jana Lasser, a postdoctoral research fellow in computational social science at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), said, "We wanted to find out what reasons and social changes contribute to people sharing untrustworthy information."

Republicans: Clear correlation of belief-speaking and poorly rated sources

Using statistical models, the findings demonstrated a clear correlation between the language pattern of belief-speaking and the linking of poorly rated sources, such as low-quality news sites reporting poorly researched 'facts,' for Republican members of Congress.

"In spreading their opinions and beliefs on Twitter, the Republicans are moving more and more in the direction of right-wing populists," added Lasser. "A few years ago, the quality of the linked websites was comparable to those shared by CDU MPs in Germany. Meanwhile, the level has sunk to that of the AfD."

A now-played-out rom-com cliche is when one woman tells another, "Girlfriend, it's your boyfriend." The banjaxed campaign to make Ron DeSantis into the President of the United States has a similar problem.

Campaign, it's your candidate.

That is the obvious, insoluble problem with the whole enterprise. Ron DeSantis is a wooden, inflexible meathead who tromps on his own dick like he's trying to make dick wine out of it. He's tried to go around Trump to the right and he's fallen repeatedly on his face. It has dawned on the Republican donor class that they have bought a dead parrot. Vivek Ramaswamy is creeping up in the polls. And the former president* is leading all the contenders despite the fact that he's cracking up on social media between federal indictments. In the middle of this political morass, DeSantis is sinking like a stone. And what is strategic reboot from whoever it is that's left at the top of the campaign? You won't believe it. From Politico:

Among the changes being made were to “expose” voters to DeSantis more, said Nick Iarossi, a Florida-based lobbyist and fundraiser who was at the event. “Let Ron be Ron,” added Iarossi. “That’s what got him here. That’s what made him the leader that he is in Florida. We’re going back to our basics on all of this.”

Let Ron Be Ron.

You have to be kidding. For all his fatal flaws, Ron DeSantis has been as utterly without artifice. First of all, he can't carry it off. He's neither smart nor flexible enough. He has been what he's always been—a jumped-up lucky boy who did two terms in the House that he spent as one of the former president*'s troupe of performing poodles. He barely fell across the finish line to beat Andrew Gillum in his first gubernatorial run. Through it all, he has been the wooden, bizarrely anomic human facsimile that he's been on the campaign trail this year. You might as well let Ron be Ron because he doesn't have the talent to be anyone else.

His latest foray into the happy land of WTF? came this week when he said that he'd consider making Robert Kennedy, Jr. the head of FDA or the CDC. You could almost hear the wallets snap shut up and down the Hamptons—where, it seems, his campaign had to cut the minimum donation in half during the fundraising trip, Ron being Ron and all. Nobody else wants to be.

Yesterday a team of international researchers confirmed that human-caused climate change is driving the life-threatening heat waves in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. has broken more than 2,000 high temperature records in the past month, and it looks like July will be the hottest month on Earth since scientists have kept records.

Another study published yesterday warns that the Atlantic currents that transport warm water from the tropics north are in danger of collapsing as early as 2025 and as late as 2095, with a central estimate of 2050. As Arctic ice melts, the cold water that sinks and pulls the current northward is warming, slowing the mechanism that moves the currents. The collapse of that system would disrupt rain patterns in India, South America, and West Africa, endangering the food supplies for billions of people. It would also raise sea levels on the North American east coast and create storms and colder temperatures in Europe.

On Sunday and Monday, the ocean water off the tip of Florida reached temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius), the same temperature as an average hot tub. According to the Coral Restoration Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Florida’s Key Largo that works to protect coral reefs, the hot water has created “a severe and urgent crisis,” with mortality up to 100%. The Mediterranean Sea also hit a record high this week, reaching 83.1 degrees Fahrenheit (28.4 Celsius).

An op-ed by David Wallace-Wells in the New York Times today noted that more land burned in Quebec in June than in the previous 20 years combined; across Canada, more than 25 million acres burned. And most of Canada’s fire season is still ahead.

A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Columbia University says that court cases related to climate change have more than doubled in five years. Thirty-four of the 2,180 lawsuits have been brought forward on behalf of children, teens, and young adults.

And therein lies a huge problem for today’s Republican Party. A recent poll of young voters shows they care deeply about gun violence, economic inequality, LGBTQ+ rights, and climate change. All of those issues are only becoming more prominent.

And speaking of young people and the problems Republicans are having with that generation, I have only one other observation tonight, as I am spending this week reading the audiobook for the new book and am truly exhausted. It appears that the administration is pushing back on the attempts of states like Florida to whitewash our history by providing historical recaps in its press releases.

Today is the 75th anniversary of the desegregation of the armed forces by President Harry S. Truman in 1948, and the White House statement celebrating that anniversary did more than acknowledge it and praise today’s multicultural military. It recounted the history of Black service members from the American Revolution to the present.

It covered the Black regiments that fought in the Civil War to preserve the United States and defend their own freedom; the highly decorated Harlem Hellfighters of World War I who fought in France as part of the French army because American commanders would not have them alongside white units; the Tuskegee Airmen who flew 15,000 missions in World War II but returned home to discrimination and oppression.

Garry Trudeau is the creator of Doonesbury, where he has been commenting on wounded warrior issues for more than three decades.

All around the conference room in Atlanta last fall, jaws were dropping. Michael Roy, a physician from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, had just revealed to the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies the preliminary results of a study comparing two treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder: Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy, long regarded as the “gold standard,” and a novel approach called Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories or RTM.

In such a study, effectiveness is indicated by a complete remission of symptoms, a loss of diagnosis. Roy’s trial was ongoing and still double-blinded, so he could report only the outcomes of the two treatments combined. But the success rate was a stunning 60 percent. Every expert present knew that PE’s known remission rate hovers at 30 to 40 percent, so the 60 percent combined figure could only mean only one thing: The new RTM treatment was tracking dramatically higher.

From the back of the room, PE researchers glowered at Roy: Way too good to be true, dude.

Except it wasn’t. Afterward, the praise from colleagues was effusive, with one top researcher telling RTM’s creator, Frank Bourke, that the presentation was a “home run.” At the same time, a PTSD researcher from the Department of Veterans Affairs approached one of Bourke’s teammates and said coldly, “I don’t think it’s useful to pick fights” — as though RTM’s success had been a provocation.

To fight for diversity on campus, we students have to talk about admissions.

Behind every movement lies discourse. Only by the free exchange of ideas can we diagnose issues as worthy of action, identify solutions, and convince others to join us.

That’s why the thing that unsettles me most about today’s decision is that admissions remains a dirty word on Harvard’s campus. There exists a politics of politeness that proscribes honest discussion about Harvard College’s admissions practices. This reluctance has long held back reform; now, it could restrain the student response to the fall of affirmative action too.

This hush does not result from a shortage of worthy topics. Harvard College gives significant admissions advantages to legacies, recruited athletes, the children of faculty, and the children of donors, a group that is collectively much whiter and wealthier than the rest of the student body. It holds open a backdoor for the kids of the rich and powerful in the form of the “Z-list.” And it slams the front door in the face of low-income students, with just 4.5 percent of undergraduates coming from the bottom quintile of the income distribution.

In short, admissions at Harvard is perhaps more nakedly unfair than anywhere else in the nation. But, in my experience at least, you’ll hardly hear a word about admissions outside of affirmative action.

Mostly, you’ll just find silence.