The Week USA - August 24, 2019

ARTS

22 Books

A history of humanity’s

greatest enemy: the tiny,

deadly mosquito

23 Author of the week

Sarah Parcak on doing

archaeology from space

24 Stage & Art

Hannah Gadsby

redefi nes stand-up

comedy, again

25 Film & Music

A world

without women

in Casey

Affl eck’s Light

of My Life

NEWS

4 Main stories

The massacres in El Paso

and Dayton; the U.S.-

China trade war

intensifi es

6 Controversy of the week

Will the latest mass

shootings result in new

gun control laws?

7 The U.S. at a glance

Deadly gun violence in

Chicago; Jeffrey Epstein’s

DNA fantasy

8 The world at a glance

The U.S. ramps up

sanctions on Venezuela;

India grabs more control

over disputed Kashmir

10 People

Hollywood’s favorite

guru, Shaman Durek; Ali

MacGraw on her diffi cult

life with Steve McQueen

11 Briefi ng

Boris Johnson’s unlikely

journey from pundit to

British prime minister

12 Best U.S. columns

Why GOP offi cials are

quitting; the realistic

solution to climate change

14 Best European

columns

Has the U.S. launched a

new nuclear arms race?

16 Talking points

Marianne Williamson’s

kooky appeal; Ronald

Reagan and racism; how

the high price of insulin

is killing Americans

LEISURE

27 Food & Drink

Three restaurants that are

reinventing the tasting menu

28 Travel

Foraging for food in the

Swedish countryside

29 Consumer

Cool gear to help you sleep

on hot summer nights

BUSINESS

32 News at a glance

A merger between two

newspaper titans; Gillette’s

hirsute-men problem

33 Making money

The struggle to erase

ageism from the workplace

34 Best columns

Big Tech goes to war for a

Pentagon contract; beware

of overvalued U.S. stocks

A vigil for the victims of the Dayton mass shooting (p.4, 6)

Ali MacGraw
(p.10)
Ge

tty
(^2
)

At a time when Americans agree about little, it’s safe to say that

mass shootings, and those who perpetrate them, are evil. “He’s

just an evil person,” Mayor Dee Margo of El Paso said of the

white nationalist who killed 22 people and wounded 26 more.

“Unspeakable evil,” agreed Sen. Ted Cruz. “We are outraged

and sickened by this monstrous evil,” intoned President Trump,

in describing both the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings. But

what, precisely, do people using this word mean? As Megan Gar-

ber points out this week in TheAtlantic.com, blaming abstract

“evil” serves to suggest that America’s ongoing massacres are in-

explicable and unpreventable. It absolves gun laws. It frees from

blame the political leaders and cable TV hosts who have fueled

white “replacement” fears and dehumanized the very “invaders”

the El Paso gunman used his assault rifle to exterminate. “Evil,

used as a talking point, both throws up its hands and washes

them,” Garber says.

The best definition of evil I’ve heard comes from Columbia Uni-

versity professor Andrew Delbanco, who has devoted much of

his life to its study. Evil, he has concluded, springs from “the

absence of imaginative sympathy for other human beings”—

a choice not to care about their suffering. The potential for evil

in all of us can be activated, Delbanco says, when people come

to believe that inflicting pain and death on others serves a higher

purpose, such as establishing ISIS’ caliphate or preserving the

white race’s dominance. In El Paso, witnesses said, the gunman

stalked his prey with cold fury, shooting two children, many

grandparents, a couple who shielded their baby with their bod-

ies, and several weeping people who pled with him, “Por favor.

No.” In his manifesto, the gunman said that only mass kill-

ings can repel “the Hispanic invasion of Texas” and “remove

the threat of the Hispanic voting bloc.” His acts

were evil, but not inexplicable.

Editor’s letter

Contents^3

William Falk

Editor-in-chief

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