Harper's Magazine September 2022

Lax Americana As the Biden Administration escalates one conflict with a nuclear power in Europe, and stokes another in Asia, it’s encouraging to read Daniel Bessner’s call for a foreign policy predicated on restraint [“Empire Burlesque,” Essay, July]. Liberal internationalism was thoroughly discredited by the adventures of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies, only to be rehabilitated by the perceived success of U.S. policy in Ukraine. As a result, we seem once again oblivious to the risks of military escalation. In reality, the war in Ukraine should be a stark reminder of the limits of armed primacy. Between the global economic fallout, the West’s failure to deter or restrict Putin’s criminal actions through force, Ukraine’s gradual but dramatic loss of territory, and the mission creep that’s bringing two…

On May Day 2000, I participated in a “guerrilla gardening” action in London, digging up Parliament Square to plant crops. It was a utopian gesture—one of many made in those years by people opposed to the so-called Washington consensus—intended to reveal a glimpse of the beach beneath the street. I remember watching a man shin up a statue of Winston Churchill with a strip of turf and drape it over the old boy’s head to give him a mohawk. Shorn of political context, the image now appears on postcards. Deep ecology, localism, and opposition to genetically modified food were and still are sometimes associated with a story about natural order threatened by unnatural forces. As the son of an immigrant, working as a freelance technology journalist, I had little interest…

I am convinced that during the Stone Age I must have been wounded by the love of some man, because a certain secret fear of mine dates from that time. Be that as it may, one warm night, I was sitting and chatting politely with a civilized gentleman who was wearing a dark suit and had very correct fingernails. I was, as the writer Sérgio Porto would say, feeling perfectly at ease, and eating some guava. Then the man says: “Shall we go for a little ride?” No. I am going to tell the naked truth. What he said was: “Shall we go for a paseíto?” I didn’t have time to find out the nature of that paseíto, because I immediately heard, coming from thousands of centuries ago, the rumble…

The most important city on the globe has become a laughingstock We’re so damn boring now We’ve become a city of “noes” We’re going to change that “no” to a “yes” and let the people dance Let New Yorkers break it down without breaking the law This is a city of nightlife The 24/7 city that never sleeps You can’t stay home in your pajamas all day I’m not going to become Nanny Mayor I have to be out I’ve got the swagger I’ve got great abs I have a nice firm behind I drink Tito’s and seltzer This is a city of strong spirits I must test the product…

Inanna had desired to leave the Great Above and go down to the Great Below to see her older sister Ereshkigal, who was queen there. The Anunnaki were appalled. They were staid gods who never did more than pass from one to another of their temples, on certain days, in nine cities, all contained between the two great rivers. They knew nothing of travel. The very idea would have been abhorrent. For Inanna, war itself was a kind of travel. Every battle was one stage of a larger exploration, a drive to expand her territory. Now she had decided to descend to the one place whence no return is permitted. Inanna said she wanted to go down to the Underworld to take part in the funeral rites for the Bull…

inside stone is stone and the memory of plate tectonicsinside brick is brick and the memory or forgetting of fire flower the blooming flower has no inside just as in rain there is no insidebut inside seed are the four seasons, the desire for growth inside the fly is flesh and blood I do not knowinside the chicken are organs blood vessels flesh and bones plus a dullness of the spirit inside each human is either a mouse or a dragoninside each human is either a village or else a pool of piss and a pile of shit inside each human is darkness, obviously—there’s no starlighteverybody’s dreams gradually disappear inside them inside a group of people there are people and inside a group of people are mountains and valleysinside a…