How Americans Lost Faith In The Presidency
The Atlantic|October 2017

The Vietnam War opened the credibility gap. What we’ve learned since has only widened it.

Ken Burns And Lynn Novick
How Americans Lost Faith In The Presidency

ON APRIL 30, 1975, when the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, the Vietnam War, the most consequential event in American history since World War II, ended in failure. More than 58,000 Americans and as many as 3 million Vietnamese had died in the conflict. America’s illusions of invincibility had been shattered, its moral confidence shaken. The war undermined the country’s faith in its most respected institutions, particularly the military and the presidency. The military eventually recovered. The presidency never has.

It did not happen all at once, this radical diminution of trust. Over more than a decade, the accumulated weight of critical reporting about the war, the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, and the declassification of military and intelligence reports tarnished the office. Nor did the process stop when that last chopper took o›. New evidence of hypocrisy has continued to appear, an acidic drip, drip, drip on the image of the presidency. The three men who are most responsible for the war, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon, each made the fateful decision to record their deliberations about it. The tapes they left behind—some of them still newly public, others long obscured by the sheer volume of the material—are extraordinary. They expose the presidents’ secret motives and fears, at once humanizing the men and deepening the disillusionment with the office they held.

Bu hikaye The Atlantic dergisinin October 2017 sayısından alınmıştır.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

Bu hikaye The Atlantic dergisinin October 2017 sayısından alınmıştır.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

THE ATLANTIC DERGISINDEN DAHA FAZLA HIKAYETümünü görüntüle
What Abortion Bans Do to Doctors - In Idaho and other states, draconian laws are forcing physicians to ignore their training and put patients' lives at risk.
The Atlantic

What Abortion Bans Do to Doctors - In Idaho and other states, draconian laws are forcing physicians to ignore their training and put patients' lives at risk.

Kylie Cooper has seen all the ways a pregnancy can go terrifyingly, perilously wrong. She is an obstetrician who manages high-risk patients, also known as a maternal-fetal-medicine specialist, or MFM. The awkward hyphenation highlights the duality of the role. Cooper must care for two patients at once: mother and fetus, mom and baby. On good days, she helps women with complicated pregnancies bring home healthy babies. On bad days, she has to tell families that this will not be possible. Sometimes, they ask her to end the pregnancy; prior to the summer of 2022, she was able to do so

time-read
10+ dak  |
October 2024
Mapping Mississippi's Violent Past - I wanted to understand the forces that shaped my state's dark history. I ended up in Spain, holding an object I'd never known existed.
The Atlantic

Mapping Mississippi's Violent Past - I wanted to understand the forces that shaped my state's dark history. I ended up in Spain, holding an object I'd never known existed.

I'd come researching my new book, The Barn, a history of the 36 square miles of dirt around the place where Emmett Till was tortured and killed in 1955. The barn, which I first wrote about for this magazine, sits in the southwestern quarter of Section 2, Township 22 North, Range 4 West, measured from the Choctaw Meridian. The township has been home to the civil-rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer; to the family of the Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest; to farmland owned by James R. Binford, an original legal architect of Jim Crow.

time-read
8 dak  |
October 2024
A Brief History of Yuval Noah Harari - How the scholar became Silicon Valley's favorite guru
The Atlantic

A Brief History of Yuval Noah Harari - How the scholar became Silicon Valley's favorite guru

"About 14 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space came into being." So begins Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, and so began one of the 21st century's most astonishing academic careers. Sapiens has sold more than 25 million copies in various languages. Since then, Harari has published several other books, which have also sold millions. He now employs some 15 people to organize his affairs and promote his ideas.

time-read
10+ dak  |
October 2024
Boat Fish Don't Count
The Atlantic

Boat Fish Don't Count

The wild, obsessive, dangerous pursuit of Montauk's biggest striped bass

time-read
10+ dak  |
October 2024
The Anti-Rock Star
The Atlantic

The Anti-Rock Star

Leonard Cohen's battle against shameless male egoism

time-read
10+ dak  |
October 2024
Rachel Kushner's Surprising Swerve
The Atlantic

Rachel Kushner's Surprising Swerve

She and her narrators have always relied on swagger-but not this time.

time-read
9 dak  |
October 2024
Men on Trips Eating Food
The Atlantic

Men on Trips Eating Food

Why TV is full of late-career Hollywood guys at restaurants

time-read
5 dak  |
October 2024
You Think You're So Heterodox
The Atlantic

You Think You're So Heterodox

Joe Rogan has turned Austin into a haven for manosphere influencers, just-asking-questions tech bros, and other \"free thinkers\" who happen to all think alike.

time-read
10+ dak  |
October 2024
THE LOYALIST KASH PATEL WILL DO EXACTLY WHAT TRUMP WANTS.
The Atlantic

THE LOYALIST KASH PATEL WILL DO EXACTLY WHAT TRUMP WANTS.

A 40-year-old lawyer with little government experience, he joined the administration in 2019 and rose rapidly. Each new title set off new alarms.

time-read
10+ dak  |
October 2024
THE RADICAL CONVERSION OF MIKE LEE
The Atlantic

THE RADICAL CONVERSION OF MIKE LEE

IN 2016, HE TRIED TO STOP TRUMP FROM BECOMING PRESIDENT. BY 2020, HE WAS TRYING TO HELP TRUMP OVERTURN THE ELECTION. NOW HE COULD BECOME TRUMP'S ATTORNEY GENERAL.

time-read
10+ dak  |
October 2024