“We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped.”

Americans have no appetite for civil war

The biggest movie of the moment is Alex Garland’s Civil War, says Ross Douthat in The New York Times, in which contemporary America is divided by secessionist forces battling a dictatorial president. While the film itself is surprisingly “light on politics”, a lot of liberals think it’s too close to home – that America really could be headed for a second civil war. “They’re wrong.” First, there are the practical reasons. Americans are getting older and richer with every passing year, which is a strong disincentive for violently tearing up the system. And the country’s ideological divisions don’t match the kind of geographical lines that “lend themselves to secessionist movements”.

Above all, though, a civil war needs people “eager for the fight”. And those people are very hard to find. Yes, there was January 6 and the waves of civil disobedience in the summer of 2020. But they were exceptional circumstances – a “once-in-a-century global plague” converging with a particularly fraught election – and things quickly returned to normal. If anything, the American condition is currently characterised by a spirit of pessimism and apathy, not anger and violence. “We are more melancholic than choleric; more disillusioned than fanatical.” A case in point was the start of Donald Trump’s trial this week, on what appear to be “the most nakedly political” of the many charges he is facing. Did the “MAGA faithful” gather at the courthouse in their thousands, ready to “storm into the halls of justice”? No, it was just a few dozen Trump fans, “waving signs and outnumbered by the gawking press”.

🍿 To read what the critics say about Civil War, click here.

Cancer or not, “I mean to keep dancing”

My favourite piece of understatement, says Simon Boas in the Jersey Evening Post, is Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s declaration, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage”. In the same vein, “my cancer situation has also developed not necessarily to my advantage”. While chemotherapy and radiation did a terrific job on the tumours in my throat and neck, my lungs are now “riddled with the bloody things”. The prognosis isn’t quite “Don’t buy any green bananas”, but it’s not far off “Don’t start any long books”.

Yet I’m finding it hard to be too gloomy. I’ve enjoyed a “really good – almost charmed – life”. For my job as executive director of Jersey Overseas Aid, I’ve dined with some of the richest people on Earth, and some of the poorest. I’ve been let off an attempted murder charge in Vietnam – it was trumped up, to extract a bribe – by singing karaoke in a brothel. “I’ve rolled a car, been shot in the leg and pulled one of my own teeth out.” The Times has printed no fewer than seven of my letters, “and I’m currently vanity-publishing an exceptionally rude poem about cyclists”. Most of all, I’ve been exceptionally lucky. At 46, I’ve already lived much longer than “most of the humans in the 300,000-year history of our species”. Complaining that my life will be shorter than it could have been would be like winning the £92m Euromillions jackpot, then moaning when you discover that there’s another winning ticket so you’ll have to split the prize money. Life, ultimately, is “inordinately precious, unlikely and beautiful”. We should be dazzled by how fortunate we are just to experience it, “dancing on the tables every day”. In the little time I have left, “I mean to keep dancing”.

Read Simon Boas’s full letter, “A Beginner’s Guide to Dying”, here.

A secret nuclear bunker for the US Congress

The Greenbrier, “a palatial hotel surrounded by gardens and golf courses” in West Virginia, was a playground for elites for decades, says Emily Matchar in Smithsonian Magazine. So when the resort broke ground on a new wing in 1958, no one was surprised. “But observant locals soon noticed something odd.” The hole dug for the foundation was enormous. Vast amounts of concrete arrived every day on trucks, “along with puzzling items: 110 urinals, huge steel doors”. There were guards stationed outside. It wasn’t until 1992 that the truth was revealed: the Greenbrier’s West Virginia Wing “sat atop a nuclear bunker buried 720 feet underground”.

This subterranean hideaway was designed to accommodate not just a few high-ranking officials, but every single member of the US Congress. It had more than 1,000 bunk beds, a 400-seat cafeteria, individual auditoriums for both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and a rubbish incinerator that could also serve as a crematorium. This was all accessed via a blast door in the resort “hidden in plain sight behind floral wallpaper”. The bunker was an open secret among locals, but they didn’t let on – partly due to a general Cold War fear of knowing too much, and partly because the Greenbrier was “by far the biggest employer in the area”. Three years after the truth finally emerged, thanks to an anonymous tip-off to journalists, the bunker became a tourist attraction. The first visitors were Greenbrier employees, “as a quiet thank you for their discretion”.