{"id":3578,"date":"2019-08-06T01:45:41","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T01:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/64.156.26.201\/*sergneri.net\/httpdocs\/wordpress\/?p=3578"},"modified":"2019-08-06T04:40:30","modified_gmt":"2019-08-06T04:40:30","slug":"real-americans-by-joseph-oneill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/2019\/08\/06\/real-americans-by-joseph-oneill\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Americans by Joseph O\u2019Neill"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the New York Review of Books, this essay Real Americans by Joseph O\u2019Neill<\/a> is noteworthy. O’Neill reviews two books, This America: The Case for the Nation<\/em> by Jill Lepore and This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant\u2019s Manifesto<\/em> by Suketu Mehta.
\nO’Neill delivers a fine essay covering many points of the current state in America, including the point that, now, “We know who the commerce secretary is.”<\/p>\n

Later, he also tells us:<\/p>\n

\nThe concept of the deep state has gained notoriety in America in the last couple of years. It has been deployed by Republicans to attack Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s investigation. The investigation, they assert, is part of a plot, conducted by powerful, pro-Democrat national security functionaries, to undo the 2016 election. The people making this allegation most loudly\u2014they include Ted Malloch, author of The Plot to Destroy Trump: How the Deep State Fabricated the Russian Dossier to Subvert the President; the Infowars founder Alex Jones; and Roger Stone\u2014are intellectual frauds. Nonetheless, or perhaps consequently, \u201cdeep state\u201d is now a resonant catch-phrase in Republican circles.<\/p>\n

The term originates in Turkey. Like the United States, Turkey is a constitutional republic. Its democratic progress has been something of a bumpy ride. There have been three military coups since 1961, each more or less accepted by the Turkish people. They understood (if sometimes disputed) that the armed forces enjoyed an extralegal, almost spiritual authority to safeguard the legacy of Kemal Atat\u00fcrk and, if necessary, to suspend the constitutional order when that legacy was threatened by civil unrest or dangerous political developments. The military\u2014together with its allies in the state security and legal apparatus\u2014came to be described as constituting, and acting on behalf of, the \u201cdeep state.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A little further on in the essay:<\/p>\n

\u201cI claim the right to the United States, for myself and my children and my uncles and cousins, by manifest destiny.\u201d The claimant is Suketu Mehta, in This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant\u2019s Manifesto. The reference to manifest destiny isn\u2019t merely trolling. Mehta\u2019s thesis is that extensive migration from poor parts of the globe to the US is as inevitable and justified as the westward migration that built this country. He goes on:<\/p>\n

This land is your land, this land is our land, it belongs to you and me. We\u2019re here, we\u2019re not going back, we\u2019re raising our kids here. It\u2019s our country now\u2026. We\u2019re not letting the bastards take it back. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s our America now. <\/p>\n

You\u2019ll have spotted that Mehta isn\u2019t asking for a benevolent, liberal-American accommodation of the immigrant. He doesn\u2019t even mention the Declaration of Independence (though he does mention the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Rather, he is asserting a right of migration that can override the right of nation-states to keep people out. His point of view is the migrant\u2019s, not the native\u2019s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve reserved both books at my local library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the New York Review of Books, this essay Real Americans by Joseph O\u2019Neill is noteworthy. O’Neill reviews two books, This America: The Case for the Nation by Jill Lepore and This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant\u2019s Manifesto by Suketu Mehta. O’Neill delivers a fine essay covering many points of the current state in … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,8,9,13,14,17,19],"tags":[219,464,2093,2089,2092,1373,2091,2090,1650,2094],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-sergneri","4":"post-3578","6":"format-standard","7":"category-ethical-and-green-living","8":"category-faits-divers","9":"category-feminism","10":"category-finanace","11":"category-politics","12":"category-racism","13":"category-thinking-about","14":"category-trump","15":"post_tag-authoritarianism","16":"post_tag-congress","17":"post_tag-diseased-body-politic","18":"post_tag-jill-lepore","19":"post_tag-joseph-oneill","20":"post_tag-propaganda","21":"post_tag-real-americans","22":"post_tag-suketu-mehta","23":"post_tag-supreme-court","24":"post_tag-the-deep-state"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3578"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3583,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578\/revisions\/3583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sergneri.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}