The Atlantic/Shangri-la Wang: Who was—who is—Aung San Suu Kyi?

It’s Friday, August 9. In today’s issue: how a human-rights icon fell from grace. Also, a few recommendations for what to read and watch, and more.

Shan Wang Editor, newsletters

Today’s Top Story (Arinze Stanley) Who was—who is—Aung San Suu Kyi? The Burmese leader and Nobel Peace–prize winner captured the attention of so many in the West decades ago. She is the daughter of Aung San, the founder of the modern Burmese military and a national hero who was assassinated in 1947 at age 32. She weathered attacks on her life and a long house arrest. She now sits at the head of a government that has committed what the UN high commissioner for human rights called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Since 2017, 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh, where conditions are dire. The government has closed in on civil rights and cracked down on the press attempting to report on atrocities.

I have always been a politician. Aung San Suu Kyi to former President Barack Obama at a 2012 meeting

Barack Obama and Aung San Suu Kyi arrive at a press conference at her residence in Yangon, on November 14, 2014. (Mandell Ngan / AFP / Getty) Those who were blindsided by “what happened” have missed what Suu Kyi has always said, and what she has always been. “Suu Kyi has always been good at making people believe the things she says—at making people believe in her. And many in the West were too eager to anoint her as a savior,” writes Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national-security adviser to Barack Obama. “Looking back, I realize, she has always contained multitudes—the idealist, the activist, the politician, the cold pragmatist.” The country will undergo elections in 2020. What does Aung San Suu Kyi want—personal power, peace in her country, or some muddle of desires that include both ruthless ambition and idealism? → Read the full exploration of a fall from grace, by Ben Rhodes

I used to be the face on the poster. The image only fades. Obama in 2012, as recalled by Ben Rhodes, on seeing Suu Kyi’s supporters holding posters with her face on them

Get Caught Up 🚴🏼‍♀️🏋🏽‍♂️POLITICAL SPIN Equinox and SoulCycle are facing backlash from some customers who are unhappy that the investor Stephen Ross is hosting a Trump fundraiser. These are hardly the first companies to be tried for ties to politics: Earlier this summer, staff of the home-goods retailer Wayfair protested the company’s sale of bedroom furniture designated for a border detention facility. Consider that maybe the neutrality of corporations has always been a fallacy. 🇮🇹🇪🇺ITA-LEAVE Matteo Salvini, Italy’s Trump-y, social-media savvy interior minister and deputy prime minister, called for early elections. Salvini’s right-wing, populist League party would likely win at the ballot box, paving the way for a “euroskeptic, apparently philo-Russian” state, Rachel Donadio reports. 🇬🇧🇺🇸LONDON CALLING Britain’s trade secretary, Liz Truss, traveled to D.C. this week to help lay out goals for a free-trade deal with the U.S. An agreement won’t be easy. Its viability will largely depend on what concessions London is willing to cede, Yasmeen Serhan writes, and in this relationship, with the October Brexit deadline looming, Britain seems to be the more “desperate” party.

From Our Critics (Disney / Hollywood Pictures) Watch Free Meek, a new Amazon documentary championed by Jay-Z, is a tour of America’s flawed justice system through the life and trials of the rapper Meek Mill. Despite its impressive production, Free Meek flounders when it comes to addressing institutional reform, Hannah Giorgis writes. Twenty years later, The Sixth Sense remains fresh. The ghost story was a box-office hit and captivated audiences in ways that horror films today would do well to study. Glow: Get your boxing gloves ready for the post-plot third season of this Netflix series. “The spectacle of seeing women create something together—however goofy—is a gratifying one,” Sophie Gilbert writes. Read The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, was her first novel, and already it showcases her “indisputable command of language, a bounty of quotable sentences and paragraphs and answers to how we can live better, with intellectual rigor and self-regard,” Rebecca Carroll writes. Missing Morrison? Our Books Briefing this week has a comprehensive selection of her best work, from novels to essays to lectures (subscribe to that newsletter here to get a weekly dispatch on the best in books).

Weekend Read (Dola Sun) An American ob-gyn confronts the limits of her pro-choice beliefs in Israel, where abortion is never fully off the table. Rarely does a piece of writing explore so honestly the gray area in the abortion debate: Of all the American things I’m homesick for, it turns out the biggest one is Roe v. Wade. I miss U.S. abortion law terribly. In some part, that’s because it’s familiar. But it’s also because the structure of American law, if practiced as constitutionally legislated, works for most patients, most of the time—ethically, emotionally, and medically. The arrangement of U.S. abortion rights means that terminations center on a woman’s choice, but also that there’s a point in a pregnancy when abortion is off the table, except in the most dire of circumstances. And that means there’s a point in the pregnancy when everybody can relax, when we start to comfortably call the fetus a baby, when we can embrace the joy that accompanies a healthy, desired pregnancy. → Read the rest

The Atlantic Crossword (Araki Koman) 8-Down, nine letters: “Literally no difference” Try your hand at our daily mini crossword (available on our site here), which gets more challenging through the week. → Challenge your friends, or try to beat your own solving time.

About Us This email was written by Shan Wang, with help from Ena Alvarado-Esteller, and edited by Saahil Desai and Isabel Fattal. Questions, suggestions, typos? Let us know here, or write directly to swang@theatlantic.com anytime.

Most Popular on The Atlantic What Ails the Right Isn’t (Just) Racism A Reformed White Nationalist Says the Worst Is Yet to Come What Joe Biden’s Latest Gaffe Reveals Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Is Behaving Strangely Dismantling Tucker Carlson’s White-Supremacy Argument

The can’t-miss event for Atlantic readers See our journalism come to life at The Atlantic Festival, September 24-26 in Washington, D.C. Buy Now

THE ATLANTIC DAILY NEWSLETTER You’re receiving this newsletter because you’ve signed up to receive The Daily. See all of our newsletters. Subscribe to The Atlantic | Get The Atlantic’s iOS app

This email was sent to kofi.thompson1953@gmail.com
You've signed up to receive newsletters from The Atlantic. If you wish to unsubscribe from The Atlantic newsletters, click here.
To update your Atlantic Media email preferences, click here.
Atlantic Media · The Watergate · 600 New Hampshire Ave NW · Washington, DC 20037