The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017 Read online

  The world’s governments should have acted decades ago. When the Exxon scientist James Black wrote in 1978 that “the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical” in “five to ten years,” he was right. That was humanity’s best chance to start making the transition to a clean energy economy before so much CO2 was released into the atmosphere that a great deal of warming became unavoidable. In our opinion, the reason the world has failed to act for so long is in no small part because the climate denial campaign that Exxon helped devise and lead was so successful.

  Just as the tobacco industry gained decades of huge profits by obfuscating the dangers of smoking, the oil industry secured decades of profits—in Exxon’s case, some of the largest profits of any corporation in history—by helping to create a fake controversy over climate science that deceived and victimized many policymakers, as well as much of the public. The bogus science it paid for through front groups, which was then repeated and validated by industry-funded, right-wing think tanks and a too-easily cowed press, worked just as well for ExxonMobil as it had for R. J. Reynolds. A 2004 study by Naomi Oreskes in Science examined 928 peer-reviewed papers on climate science and found that not a single one disputed global warming’s existence or its human cause. But according to a recent Yale University study, only 11 percent of Americans understand that there is a scientific consensus on these points.

  The climate deniers succeeded in politicizing a formerly nonpartisan issue and a threat to all humanity. In consequence, for decades now, meaningful congressional action to address climate change has been impossible. Without the agreement and leadership of the United States, the world’s largest cumulative emitter of CO2, it has been impossible to achieve a meaningful global accord on climate change. The recently completed Paris agreement on climate, for which the Obama administration fought, will be effective—but only if the world’s nations live up to the commitments they made in it. Although, as a result in part of the actions of ExxonMobil, we have already missed our best chance to prevent a reordering of the world’s ecological balance due to climate change, we can still avoid its worst effects. There is an enormous difference between the new, local disasters that the changing climate is already causing around the world and the global catastrophe that will become unavoidable within a few decades unless humanity takes decisive action soon.

  WILLIAM PANNAPACKER

  ■

  Selected Tweets from @WernerTwertzog

  FROM Twitter.com

  A Twitter feed emulating the voice of German film director Werner Herzog, whose bleak if deadpan narration of his own documentaries includes Teutonic pronouncements such as this zinger from Grizzly Man: ” I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder.”

  Jan 1, 2016: This day is meaningless, like all measures on the human scale, to those of us who have gazed into the abyss of time. #HappyNewYear

  Jan 3, 2016: #Coffee should not include whipped cream or sweet syrups. It should be a black, bitter foretaste of what we must face before the day is over.

  Jan 11, 2016: It is Monday, my coffee is cold, the streets are filled with dirty slush, and, like my soul, #DavidBowie is dead.

  Jan 13, 2016: I am told that the cheese I enjoy kills the cancer caused by the cured meats I enjoy, so I am, as the Americans say, “Even Steven.”

  Jan 17, 2016: “It gets better.” No. It does not. It gets worse. And your body falls apart until you beg for death. #FakeGrownUpFacts

  Jan 17, 2016: “Everything happens for a reason.” Yes, and that reason is our stupidity. #FakeGrownUpFacts

  Jan 18, 2016: One is not born German. One becomes German through ecstatic visions, years of self-recrimination, vigorous hiking, and beer.

  Jan 18, 2016: Charlotte’s Web is about the life of the artist: if you write for pigs and simpletons, you die alone in an abandoned fairground.

  Jan 23, 2016: I do not own a “selfie stick” because the “self” does not exist.

  Jan 24, 2016: We celebrate the Puritans, who came to these shores, in great adversity, because they were not powerful enough to oppress anyone at home.

  Jan 27, 2016: Blessed are the nihilists, for one way or the other, they do not care.

  Jan 29, 2016: I do not want to watch a “movie.” I want an experience that will destroy everything I once believed about human nature. For $9.00.

  Jan 30, 2016: No, “Beastie Boys,” you should fight for something of greater substance, such as “the right of the People peaceably to assemble.”

  Jan 31, 2016: Men do not climb mountains because “they are there.” They do so because life is meaningless.

  Feb 20, 2016: Those who choose the road less travelled typically are murdered by paramilitary gangs.

  Feb 20, 2016: I must agree, Elvis Presley, we cannot go on together with suspicious minds, but the alternative is a comprehensive surveillance state.

  Feb 22, 2016: The “Truth” shall not make you free, because it is socially constructed, contingent, and contextual. Whoever claims to possess it is lying.

  Mar 3, 2016: As we all know, school exists because children are an inherently criminal demographic that needs to be institutionalized. #Algebra

  Mar 6, 2016: Man is born free, but everywhere he is checking work-related email.

  Mar 6, 2016: Americans: You do not need standing desks. You need desks that teeter on the edges of open graves for the moment you stop working.

  Mar 6, 2016: #Twitter needs something stronger than “block.” Something involving hostages.

  Mar 7, 2016: The universe will expand into a cold, thin haze of elementary particles. Nothing you did will matter. #mondaymotivation

  Mar 8, 2016: And so I asked, “Why is there only one set of footprints?” And He answered, “Because that is when I hurled you 300 cubits for ingratitude.”

  Mar 16, 2016: Planetariums are important for introducing the next generation to Pink Floyd.

  Mar 19, 2016: Alone, naked, afraid, in a Ford Econoline van, near the George Washington Bridge, #ChrisChristie ponders, briefly, how it all came to this.

  Mar 19, 2016: It is too late in the winter to die, and too early in the spring to be happy.

  Mar 24, 2016: Farewell, #GarryShandling. You often made me think about what it might be like to laugh.

  Mar 28, 2016: I do not wear a sports jersey because I am not a proletarian seeking vicarious honor from people who despise me.

  Apr 2, 2016: And then they came for the nihilists, and I said nothing, because, you know, nothing really matters. Everyone dies at some point.

  Apr 9, 2016: It is important to ask subordinates to “speak freely” to identify the traitors.

  Apr 11, 2016: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. And I took them. It did not matter. Both lead to death.

  Apr 21, 2016: Farewell, #Prince: shaman, libertine, androgyne—you bestrode Reagan’s ’80s like a colossal satyr in Edwardian drag.

  Apr 29, 2016: Rereading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road for pointers about surviving the next decade.

  May 7, 2016: No, Steven Spielberg, we do not need “a bigger boat.” We need, instead, a more comprehensive eschatology.

  May 15, 2016: At times like this, I ask, “What would Thoreau do?” He answers: “Build cabin on rich friend’s land. Take home laundry. Write dull book.”

  May 27, 2016: Coca Cola tasted better when it came in easily shattered glass bottles. And there was a Cold War that could kill all of us in 30 minutes.

  May 27, 2016: As a child, I never won a “spelling bee” because I understood that correct spelling is historically contextual and rooted in imperialism.

  Jun 3, 2016: The red jelly inside some donuts reminds us that civilization is built upon murder. #NationalDonutDay

  Jun 21, 2016: No, “Frank” Sinatra, it was not possible to have done it “your way,” since the self is a construct and free will is an illusion.

  Jun 25, 2016: When a tree falls in the forest, it does, of course, make a sound
, because, you need to realize, it is not all about you.

  Jun 29, 2016: Jerry Seinfeld meets death. Asks, “What’s up with the scythe? Is the scythe really necessary? Are we wheat?” He dies. The rest is silence.

  Aug 1, 2016: My knees hurt. And David Bowie is dead.

  Aug 4, 2016: “To irritate your conservative Christian parents” is not a good reason to convert to Islam. Just major in Art History.

  Aug 4, 2016: It’s important to tell the young they can be “anything they can dream,” so that, one day, they’ll blame themselves instead of the system.

  Aug 5, 2016: Abraham Lincoln wrestled with depression, but that did not stop him from becoming the top steampunk cosplayer in Illinois.

  Aug 28, 2016: Camping is important for remembering that nature is disgusting and wants to kill us.

  Sep 5, 2016: Roses are red, violets are blue. They reflect different wavelengths of light. Neither have objective value.

  Oct 3, 2016: College is important for making you a slave to the choices of your 18-year-old self.

  Oct 13, 2016: It is important for fitted sheets to be too small to stay on the mattress to make us despair of ever finding true rest in this life.

  Oct 28, 2016: Teach a man to fish, and you have condemned him to labor in a declining industry.

  Nov 8, 2016: Dear Americans, remembering Fort Sumter, Crash of ’29, Pearl Harbor, deaths of JFK and MLK, and 9/11. Yet you persisted. I am sorry. Werner.

  Nov 12, 2016: Leonard Cohen: Take me with you.

  Nov 12, 2016: I’d like to buy the world a Coke so that billions of humans will simultaneously know the emptiness of sugary drinks and Western ideology.

  Nov 15, 2016: Jerry Seinfeld meets Hitler: “So, what’s with the tiny mustache?” He is shot.

  Nov 23, 2016: When interviewing the white working class, it is important to get lots of b-roll: junkyards, vacant stores, lonely churches, RAM Trucks.

  Nov 25, 2016: Florence Henderson is dead. The Brady Bunch are orphans. As are we all.

  Nov 29, 2016: Dear America: Your average liberal-arts college librarian now has more tattoos than the Hell’s Angels chain-murderers at Altamont. What’s up?

  Dec 10, 2016: Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is the leading cause of murder.

  Dec 20, 2016: It is important, if you teach English at a university, to dress as though you were an ironworker from the 1870s.

  Dec 22, 2016: Coffee should not be a confection of syrups and cream. As a foghorn in the morning of Icelandic fjords sounds, so should your coffee taste.

  Dec 31, 2016: Calendars and clocks are meaningless. But one thing is true: We are closer than ever to death. #HAPPYNEWYEAR

  Lin-Manuel Miranda

  ■

  You’ll Be Back

  FROM Hamilton Songbook

  On the following page you will find sheet music from the Broadway musical Hamilton. We have chosen this number sung by King George III because, unlike the play’s hip-hop hits, this one could be more easily performed by the takers of piano lessons. Also, given that this book represents the election year of 2016—not necessarily American representative democracy’s finest hour—an ode from the king who was the butt of the joke in the Declaration of Independence seemed funnier while at the same time sad.

  JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR

  ■

  Excerpt from Utah, Petitioner v. Edward Joseph Strieff Jr.

  FROM The Supreme Court of the United States

  We have abridged Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent and edited out her legal citations to make it legible for the general reader. And it is a compelling, if disturbing, read. Her unabridged opinion can be found at supremecourt.gov. Also, to those citizens who insist on crossing streets: stick to crosswalks.

  ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF UTAH [June 20, 2016]

  JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG joins as to Parts I, II, and III, dissenting.

  The Court today holds that the discovery of a warrant for an unpaid parking ticket will forgive a police officer’s violation of your Fourth Amendment rights. Do not be soothed by the opinion’s technical language: This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants—even if you are doing nothing wrong. If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine you forgot to pay, courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will admit into evidence anything he happens to find by searching you after arresting you on the warrant. Because the Fourth Amendment should prohibit, not permit, such misconduct, I dissent.

  I.

  Minutes after Edward Strieff walked out of a South Salt Lake City home, an officer stopped him, questioned him, and took his identification to run it through a police database. The officer did not suspect that Strieff had done anything wrong. Strieff just happened to be the first person to leave a house that the officer thought might contain “drug activity.”

  As the State of Utah concedes, this stop was illegal. The Fourth Amendment protects people from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” An officer breaches that protection when he detains a pedestrian to check his license without any evidence that the person is engaged in a crime. The officer deepens the breach when he prolongs the detention just to fish further for evidence of wrongdoing. In his search for lawbreaking, the officer in this case himself broke the law.

  The officer learned that Strieff had a “small traffic warrant.” Pursuant to that warrant, he arrested Strieff and, conducting a search incident to the arrest, discovered methamphetamine in Strieff’s pockets.

  Utah charged Strieff with illegal drug possession. Before trial, Strieff argued that admitting the drugs into evidence would condone the officer’s misbehavior. The methamphetamine, he reasoned, was the product of the officer’s illegal stop. Admitting it would tell officers that unlawfully discovering even a “small traffic warrant” would give them license to search for evidence of unrelated offenses. The Utah Supreme Court unanimously agreed with Strieff. A majority of this Court now reverses . . .

  IV.

  Writing only for myself, and drawing on my professional experiences, I would add that unlawful “stops” have severe consequences much greater than the inconvenience suggested by the name. This Court has given officers an array of instruments to probe and examine you. When we condone officers’ use of these devices without adequate cause, we give them reason to target pedestrians in an arbitrary manner. We also risk treating members of our communities as second-class citizens.

  Although many Americans have been stopped for speeding or jaywalking, few may realize how degrading a stop can be when the officer is looking for more. This Court has allowed an officer to stop you for whatever reason he wants—so long as he can point to a pretextual justification after the fact. That justification must provide specific reasons why the officer suspected you were breaking the law, at twenty-one, but it may factor in your ethnicity, where you live, what you were wearing, and how you behaved. The officer does not even need to know which law you might have broken so long as he can later point to any possible infraction—even one that is minor, unrelated, or ambiguous.

  The indignity of the stop is not limited to an officer telling you that you look like a criminal. The officer may next ask for your “consent” to inspect your bag or purse without telling you that you can decline. Regardless of your answer, he may order you to stand “helpless, perhaps facing a wall with [your] hands raised.” If the officer thinks you might be dangerous, he may then “frisk” you for weapons. This involves more than just a pat down. As onlookers pass by, the officer may “‘feel with sensitive fingers every portion of [your] body. A thorough search [may] be made of [your] arms and armpits, waistline and back, the groin and area about the testicles, and entire surface of the legs down to the feet.’”

  The officer’s control over you does not end with the stop. If the officer chooses, he may handcuff you and take you to jail for doing nothing more than speeding, jaywalking, or “driving [your] pickup truck . . . w
ith [your] 3-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter . . . without [your] seatbelt fastened.” At the jail, he can fingerprint you, swab DNA from the inside of your mouth, and force you to “shower with a delousing agent” while you “lift [your] tongue, hold out [your] arms, turn around, and lift [your] genitals.” Even if you are innocent, you will now join the 65 million Americans with an arrest record and experience the “civil death” of discrimination by employers, landlords, and whoever else conducts a background check. And, of course, if you fail to pay bail or appear for court, a judge will issue a warrant to render you “arrestable on sight” in the future.

  This case involves a suspicionless stop, one in which the officer initiated this chain of events without justification. As the Justice Department notes, supra, at 8, many innocent people are subjected to the humiliations of these unconstitutional searches. The white defendant in this case shows that anyone’s dignity can be violated in this manner. But it is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny. For generations, black and brown parents have given their children “the talk”—instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger—all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them.