The 2020 Elections in the United States: A Socialist View From Afar
While votes were being counted after the November 2020 U.S. elections, despots from around the world in Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, and Brazil crowed over the delay in announcing results.
[1] It is easy for rulers in countries where opposition leaders are disqualified, killed, or hounded into exile to mock the time taken to count votes meticulously. However, many of us watching with envy from afar “envy” because the persecution of minorities, crushing of dissent, domination of the media, and destruction of democratic institutions has gone much further in our countries have nothing but admiration for the way in which a would-be dictator has been peacefully overthrown.
The dozens of books that arrive at the
Seven Days offices over the course of a year span a wide range of genres, topics and moods. We get tiny poetry chapbooks bound with thread stitches, as well as critically acclaimed novels, meandering memoirs and folksy self-help guides. We acknowledge as many as space allows as long as the author lives in or very near Vermont. And since you can scarcely throw a stick in this state without hitting a writer, this is a pretty great place to be a reader.
If 2020 was a detestable year in many ways, it was not one in which writers stopped writing. What follows are seven of our reviewers picks of recent books. This is not a best-of list or a ranking just a window into some of what we read, enjoyed and wholeheartedly recommend.
The 2020 Elections in the United States: A Socialist View from Afar
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Editors’ note: We are posting two articles on the 2020 U.S. presidential election from the forthcoming Winter 2021 issue of New Politics
. Subscribe now to get first access, in print or digitally, to the rest of the issue with original analysis of American politics, the crisis and resistance in global capitalism, the Left in Latin America, Belarus, union democracy, community schools, the ecological situation in China, and much more.]
While votes were being counted after the November 2020 U.S. elections, despots from around the world in Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, and Brazil crowed over the delay in announcing results.