
Twentieth century go to sleep, really deep. We won’t blink.
R.E.M., “Electrolite”
Welcome to the Roaring Twenties. Two decades into this horrible century, things look bleak. Australia is about to burn down completely, turned into a Mephistophelean charnel house, and the sociopathic Chance the Gardener in the White House appears to be bumbling into a new and more epically symphonic conflagration in the Middle East, for no particular reason except for simple spite and ignorance.
The twentieth century was, of course, the century of the Holocaust and napalm; of the Cambodian killing fields, Japanese internment, forced sterilization and lynchings, mass famines in the Soviet Union and China, the disappeared in Latin America, and Friends. As the late, great historian Tony Judt wrote in 2008:
The twentieth century is thus on the path to becoming a moral memory palace: a pedagogically serviceable Chamber of Historical Horrors whose way stations are labeled “Munich” or “Pearl Harbor,” “Auschwitz” or “Gulag,” “Armenia” or “Bosnia” or “Rwanda,” with “9-11” as a sort of supererogatory coda, a bloody postscript for those who would forget the lessons of the century or who never properly learned them. The problem with this lapidary representation of the last century as a uniquely horrible time from which we have now, thankfully, emerged is not the description–the twentieth century was in many ways a truly awful era, an age of brutality and mass suffering perhaps unequaled in the historical record. The problem is the message: that all of that is now behind us, that its meaning is clear, and that we may now advance–unencumbered by past errors–into a different and better era.
Tony Judt, “The World We Have Lost,” in Reappraisals (2008)
Judt was soon to succumb to the uniquely brutal and remorseless disease ALS, but he pushed on writing as he could. And in his waning years, he could see how his fellow humans were sallying forth with the unwise notion that the worst was behind them. The events of 2001-2020 should effectively dispute this supposition, and we have no idea what awaits us now.

But what Tony Judt meant in his essay was that remembering the 20th century just as a catalog of horrors flattens what actually happened — that the century was one of struggle and conflict, as people nearly everywhere fought against colonialism, systems of oppression such as Jim Crow and Apartheid rose and fell, and capitalism and Communism vied to achieve different visions of the human future. Simply totting up the numbers of dead and murdered doesn’t tell us much. As Judt insisted, we have to remember that something actually happened — something was at stake in all this mayhem, and people fought and killed and gave their lives for it. Looking at the score forgets the game. Tony Judt knew, as you and our other readers know, that history is not over — not even close, “not even past,” as they say.
Here is our first best-of-the-week reading list for 2020:
- Devin Fergus on How Car Insurance Slams the Poor (Medium)
- Mikkel Krause Frantzen on A Future with No Future: Depression, the Left, and the Politics of Mental Health (LARB)
- TruckSlutsMag Is Making Trucks Gay and Reclaiming Rural Queer Culture (Autostraddle)
- Democrats slept on Bernie Sanders. Now he’s surging as Iowa approaches (CNN)
- The untold school segregation story behind Bernie Sanders’s 1963 arrest (Chicago Reader)
- Gurus All the Way Down: Elizabeth Warren and the Magical Thinking of the Political Class (Commune)
- ‘There Is Going to Be a War Within the Party. We Are Going to Lean Into It.’ (Politico)
- There’s no such thing as a politically neutral public space (Briarpatch)
- ‘We are just destroying these kids’: The foster children growing up inside detention centers (WaPo)
- Hey Sisters, Sew Sisters (BBC)
- Why So Many Women Cheat on Their Husbands (The Cut)
- ‘Racial Impostor Syndrome’: Here Are Your Stories (NPR)
- ‘History has proven her right’: Barbara Lee’s anti-war push succeeds on Iran (Politico)
- The 1% are much more satisfied with their lives than everyone else, survey finds (WaPo)
- Overlooked No More: Margaret McFarland, Mentor to Mister Rogers (NYT)
- Elizabeth Wurtzel was right all along (WaPo)
- Mardi Gras is a State of Mind (Third Coast Festival)
- ‘Islamic State’ returnees in Kosovo guided back into society (Deutsche Welle)
- ‘Feeling Like We Belong’: U.S. Adoptees Return To South Korea To Trace Their Roots (NPR)
- Radical Academics for the Status Quo (Jacobin)
- ‘Someone’s Gotta Tell the Freakin’ Truth’: Jerry Falwell’s Aides Break Their Silence (Politico)
- The Evangelical War Over Impeachment Has Been A Long Time Coming (TPM)
- Antiques Roadshow expert drinks 180-year-old urine, rusty nails and a human hair after mistaking liquid for port (Independent UK)
- Channing Tatum is reportedly looking for love on Raya, the exclusive dating app for the rich and famous that accepts 8% of applicants. Here’s what you should know about how it works. (Business Insider)
- Charmin’s poop bot delivers toilet paper when you need it (CNET)
- People are seeing ‘Cats’ while high out of their minds. These are their stories. (WaPo)