16 NEWS Best of the American columnists
THE WEEK 10 August 2019“Oh my God,you can smelldead animals”James S. RobbinsUSA TodayA“disgusting rodent-infested mess” where “no human” would want to live. That’s how Donald
Trump recently describedablack-majority district of Baltimore, says James S. Robbins. The Left
denounced the remarks as irredeemably racist, but the president was just telling the truth. Who,
honestly, would want to live in West Baltimore? Its portrayal in the hit HBO seriesThe Wireas
a“gritty, open-air drug mart” was all too realistic. The city has some of the highest homicide and
crime rates in the US, is riddled with “endemic corruption”, and was listed byapest control firm
last year as one of the country’s top ten “rattiest cities”. Baltimore’s former mayor, Catherine Pugh,
complained about the smell of rats while walking through one of its dilapidated streets last year for
alocal news feature. “Oh my God, you can smell the dead animals,” she exclaimed. “We should just
take all this shit down.” In 2015, the Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders toured the
district criticised by Trump and commented, “You would think that you were inaThird World
country”. Rather than now bleating about Trump’s racism, liberals should be asking themselves why
acity that has been under continuous Democrat control for the past 25 years is in suchadire state.“Smart cities”aren’t such asmart ideaShoshanna SaxeThe New York TimesArace is on around the world to develop “smart” cities, says Shoshanna Saxe. The ingenious use
of sensors, data and algorithms is apparently going to transform our living spaces for the better.
In Toronto, for instance, Sidewalk Labs, owned by Google’s parent company, releasedaplan to
remake two neighbourhoods with features like snow-melting roads and an underground pneumatic
refuse system. It all sounds very exciting; but as an infrastructure engineer, I’m dubious about this
hi-tech vision. The thing about cutting-edge technology, as we all know from our personal lives, is
that it is expensive, ages rapidly and tends to go wrong at the worst moment. That’s not something
you want when it involves municipal services. For that, we may find “dumb”, durable solutions
work better than “smart” ones. Sure, houses can be covered in clever devices to regulate their
temperature, but it’s simpler just to build them with operable windows and high-quality insulation.
The things we love best about cities–parks, public spaces, neighbourhood communities–are made
by people, not technology. “Tech hasaplace in cities, but that place is not everywhere.”“Anyone who has witnessed the steady rise of Trump, with the thumbs-up, thumbs-down swagger
of an omnipotent Roman emperor,” knew this day was coming, said Will Bunch. Attorney General
William Barr has just announced the end of the Justice Department’s unofficial, 16-year-long
moratorium on executing federal prisoners. The department plans to put five inmates to death in
December and January. Barr selected the first candidates carefully, to blunt the complaints of critics:
three of the five inmates are white, and “each committed one of the most heinous crimes one could
imagine, the murder of children”. But that doesn’t change the fact that capital punishment has been
proved to be racially discriminatory and can lead to the innocent being executed. In recent decades,
166 death row inmates have been exonerated by DNA testing or other evidence. Most developed
nations abandoned this barbaric practice long ago, and even the US states that carry out the bulk of
executions in America have “sharply reduced” their use of the death penalty in recent years. So why
bring back federal executions now? As is so often the case with our Caligula-like president, “the
cruelty is the point”. It thrills his base.The returnof federalexecutionsWill BunchThe Philadelphia Inquirer“Donald Trump is mercurial even
in his racism,” said Jeet Heer inThe
Nation.Heshows contempt for people
of colour even as he’s expressing
solidarity with black celebrities. Look
at his recent crusade on behalf of the
African-American rapper A$AP
Rocky, who was arrested and jailed
last month in Sweden after he and his
entourage got involved inastreet fight
witha19-year-old Afghan immigrant.
Rocky–real name Rakim Mayers –
and his crew have been charged with
assault, but insist they acted in
self-defence. The president intervened,
phoning the Swedish PM Stefan Löfven
to ask him to intercede. “I watched the tapes of A$AP Rocky
and he was being followed and harassed by troublemakers,”
Trump tweeted. “Treat Americans fairly!” To Trump’s fury,
Löfven said he had no choice but to let the law run its course.
Rocky has since been released and has returned to the US
awaiting the verdict in his trial, which is expected on 14 August.Not content with raging on Twitter, Trump also took the
unusual step of sending America’s top hostage negotiator to
Stockholm, said Jen Kirby onVox,despite there being no
evidence that Rocky had received anything less than due process.
Trump has displayed “galling hypocrisy”, saidThe WashingtonPost.How can he rant in this way
about Swedish justice given “the pass
–even nod of approval–hegives to
the strong-arm justice meted out in
countries such as Saudi Arabia, China
and the Philippines”? He wasn’t this
angry about the brutal, Riyadh-
directed murder of our contributing
columnist Jamal Khashoggi.Trump’s feigned concern for Rocky
“fits neatly into his established pattern
of weaponising crime in Europe for
domestic political gain”, said
Christian Christensen onNBCnews.
com.Just as he likes accusing London
Mayor Sadiq Khan of presiding overaterrifyingly lawless city
(never mind that New York in 2018 had the same number of
stabbings, and ten times as many gun homicides), so he loves
insisting that Sweden is overrun by Muslim immigrants. The
reality, said Doran Larson inThe Washington Post,ist hat the
US could learnalot from Sweden’s justice system, which is
geared towards rehabilitating criminals. Incarceration rates are
less thanatenth of those of the US. The social status and wealth
of suspects counts for nothing in Sweden–all are equal before
the law. There’s no bail, no plea bargaining. The system isn’t
perfect by any means, but it offersabetter example of fairness
than the flawed system Trump presides over here in the US.A$AP Rocky: Donald Trump’s cause célèbreThe president, the rapper and the assault on Swedish justice