nytCorpus.txt

a grinch steals a bank and fires an angel by nicholas kristof feb 1 2020  to understand how some companies have lost their souls consider what happened after us bank stiffed a customer before christmas
marc eugenio had deposited a 1080 paycheck into his account at us bank
the bank put a hold on most of the sum and he spent many hours in a branch office over two days trying to get access to the money so he could buy presents for his 9yearold daughter and 13yearold son
on christmas eve eugenio found himself parked at a gas station in clackamas ore a portland suburb both his fuel gauge and his bank balance on empty
a bank employee had told him that money would soon show up in his account — perhaps a ruse to get him out of the branch office
for hours eugenio then tried his debit card at the gas pump so he could buy a few gallons and get home to his wife and children
i was stranded he told me
i could have walked home but it would have been five miles in the cold
that's when eugenio found an angel
he telephoned the bank's tollfree number and spoke with emily james a senior officer at a call center in portland
she spent an hour on the phone with eugenio trying to get some money released so he could at least get home
she soon realized that he had been misled and that money wouldn't reach his account any time soon
feeling badly for a customer stuck on christmas eve james offered to drive over from her call center and personally hand him 20
no no no eugenio told her
he couldn't impose
but she suggested she could use her break and she received permission from a supervisor to drive 20 minutes to eugenio
she later recalled that when she arrived she wished him merry christmas and handed him 20 of her own money
twenty dollars wouldn't break me she explained to me and it would enable him to get home to his family
when us bank found out that it had such a generous employee what did it do
it fired her
she broke the rules putting herself and the bank at unnecessary risk us bank said in a statement
the company bars call center workers from meeting customers so it dismissed both her and the manager who had approved her trip
the manager abigail gilbert told me that james's account was essentially correct
james had worked at the bank since 2017 and had received numerous commendations and awards that i examined but the bank paid her no severance
she is single and used her last paycheck to buy sacks of food for her two dogs domino and harley quinn
she is now reduced to selling blood plasma at 25 a visit
i won't let myself be homeless she told me
eugenio is horrified at what happened
i was lied to and treated like dirt by the bank eugenio said and he can't understand why the bank axed the one employee who was helpful
i felt really bad he told me
how could she get fired
us bank's vision statement boasts our employees are empowered to do the right thing
so i tried to ask the company's ceo andrew cecere why the bank fired an employee who with permission rescued a frustrated customer on christmas eve
cecere wouldn't return my calls
david palombi a bank spokesman told me that an internal investigation had concluded that james misled her manager to get permission that james could have found other ways to get money to eugenio that the 20 came from the manager which gilbert confirmed to me and that james previously had disciplinary issues
i found the bank's investigation a whitewash and its explanations to be incoherent meanspirited and contradicted by a series of internal bank messages that i reviewed
the bottom line is this cecere who was paid 141 million in 2018 presides over a company that has smeared a muchdecorated employee who helped a customer and as a result survives by selling blood plasma
i suggest cecere apologize reinstate james and promote her he might also show contrition by selling his own blood plasma and donating the proceeds to a charity of james's choosing
when young americans say in polls that they react more positively to socialism than to capitalism it's because of the hypocrisy of institutions like us bank
i've often noted that companies have enormous capacity to help their communities
but too often they act like american tobacco companies which killed more people than stalin did or pharma companies peddling opioids or mckinsey  company advising a business to get more patients on higher doses of opioids or boeing mocking regulators
that's one reason to seek stronger privatesector labor unions at least unions and corporations can then provide some check on each other
one bit of reassurance some chief executives do seem more enlightened than cecere
after the oregonian wrote two excellent articles about james other companies reached out to her saying that she's the kind of caring person they want to attract
no job offers yet she told me but there are a couple of possibilities i'm really excited by
brexit is here
sort of by the editorial board jan 31 2020  finally after 1317 days of confusion rancor and endless votes in parliament it was time for brexit
on wednesday teary members of the european parliament joined hands and sang auld lang syne a clock projected onto 10 downing street counted down the minutes union jacks lined the mall before buckingham palace
a new dawn for europe leaders of the european union wrote in a joint article
this is the moment when the dawn breaks came prime minister boris johnson's echo from across the newly raised dividing line
it was left to the dispassionate bbc to cut short the bathos brexit is far from 'done' the beeb coldly said before listing the many travails still to come most notably the negotiations that now begin with the eu
on the details of britain's future relationship with the continent
mr johnson has promised not to seek an extension of the dec 31 deadline which he could though a less complex trade deal between the eu
and canada took seven years to finish
to discourage other members from exiting the eu
is not likely to cut britain much slack on eu
standards and rules in their trade
britain will now also reach across the atlantic to what president trump has held out as a very big trade deal bigger than we've ever had with the uk which mr johnson has touted as a benefit of quitting the eu
that too could prove a disappointment
a former british ambassador to washington kim darroch — who resigned in july after his derogatory comments about mr trump leaked out — was among those who noted in interviews that mr trump is not given to generous trade concessions least of all in an election year
in the same european parliament session at which ursula von der leyen the president of the eu
commission promised departing british delegates we will always love you and we will never be far aileen mcleod of the scottish national party spoke of scotland's anger over being dragged out of the union and asked that the members leave a light on for scotland where brexit has fueled demands for a new referendum on independence
still the fact was that after 47 years in the eu britain was officially out and there was no going back at least not in the foreseeable future
for many britons the long and bitter debate had been less about economics and politics than about identity
those who fought to leave the eu
fought for what they saw as lost sovereignty often tinged with a sense of lost empire those who fought to stay saw the union as postimperial britain's place in the future joined with the rest of europe in values standards and security
in the end after nearly three years of uncertainty and bitterness voters elected mr johnson out of exhaustion to get it over with not because they had reached agreement
headlines reflected the divide
probrexit tabloids joined in gleeful celebration our time has come proclaimed the sun offering a free giant brexit poster yes we did it
cheered the daily express in what it described as a historic edition free and independent once more after 47 years declared the daily mail over a photograph of the white cliffs of dover
those same cliffs featured on the cover of the guardian a strong advocate of staying in the eu over a crumbling sand castle surmounted by a tiny british flag
the headline small island
trying to reconcile these divergent worldviews will be the main task of coming years as mr johnson appeared to recognize when he declared in a speech to the nation friday evening our job as the government my job is to bring this country together now and take us forward
… this is not an end but a beginning
for the moment what forward meant remained unclear
for at least the coming years not much would change in economic trade and practical terms but many potential battles loomed over the shape of the future relationship with europe america and the rest of the world
perhaps in paraphrasing winston churchill on whether the moment was an end or a beginning mr johnson would have done better to use his predecessor's entire quote that one about a military campaign 78 years ago now this is not the end
it is not even the beginning of the end
but it is perhaps the end of the beginning
china didn't want us to know
now its own files are doing the talking
by adrian zenz nov 24 2019  no more denying no more dodging
the chinese communist party can no longer hide its relentless campaign of mass internment against the ethnic minorities in the northwestern region of xinjiang or claim that the effort is an innocuous educational program
what was already widely known vastly reported and confirmed by firsthand accounts has now been proved beyond doubt by the government's own records — gigabytes of files reams of reports thousands of spreadsheets — some of them classified and highly confidential
last weekend the new york times disclosed and analyzed the contents of a trove of leaked internal chinese government documents that outline specific policies for how to repress xinjiang's predominantly muslim minorities — and reveal that president xi jinping himself set out the foundation for them
this sunday the contents of two more sets of documents — all of which i have reviewed — are being disclosed
among the first batch also leaked is a confidential telegram signed by zhu hailun xinjiang's deputy party secretary which details how local authorities should manage and operate the vocational skills training centers — a euphemism for the internment camps
all translations here are mine
the second set of documents a large cache of files and spreadsheets from local governments reveals the internment campaign's devastating economic and social impact on the families and communities it targets
the telegram — dated nov 5 2017 and addressed to local political and legal affairs bureaus — is marked extremely urgent and bears the secondhighest level of secrecy within china's classifieddocument scheme
it reveals the extent of the security and surveillance measures taken around the camps partly to shield the camps from external scrutiny
the message a directive notes that the work conducted there is strictly confidential and highly sensitive in nature
even staff at the camps are forbidden from aggregating detainee figures
the authorities' attempt to enforce absolute secrecy is confirmed by another document dated november 2018 this one from a local government file in hotan county
it chides officials for not protecting secrets related to the internment campaign well enough
it stipulates that no person is under any circumstances permitted to disseminate information about detention or reeducation via telephone smartphone or the internet and that officials are strictly forbidden from receiving related media interviews or make unauthorized disclosure about the internment campaign
that the chinese authorities so deliberately sought to shield from external scrutiny information about operations at the xinjiang camps suggests that they are only too aware of how incriminating their policies and practices are
i was also able to obtain a massive cache of local government files from within xinjiang
among the most revealing documents are thousands of detailed spreadsheets with the names identification numbers and addresses of tens of thousands of people mostly uighurs and many of them in detention prison or reeducation camps
in yarkand a county of about 800000 people in southwestern xinjiang 96 percent of the population is uighur
six official spreadsheets about six villages dated 2018 show that on average nearly 16 percent of the rural adult population was either interned or in prison
in two villages in kosherik township — which the documents describe as heavily polluted by extremist ideology — nearly 60 percent of all households had one person or more interned
in addition to the extraordinary scale of the internment campaign the files reveal its devastating impact well beyond the camps — deep into the communities and families of xinjiang
the spreadsheets show that the government has primarily targeted middleage men most often the heads of the households and main wageearners
beijing's occasional tours of its socalled model camps often feature attractive young women
in reality people between 30 and 59 were especially likely to be interned according to the spreadsheets
the policy's socioeconomic fallout is dire — and local governments are keeping a meticulous record of it
one spreadsheet from 2017 for one town in yarkand county which listed households with low incomes that might qualify for welfare included a young family with five children between the ages of three and 14
the father had been imprisoned the mother placed in a reeducation camp and the children in effect orphaned
in another hardly unusual case a household's two workingage parents were detained leaving elderly grandparents — including a grandmother described as seriously ill — to care for two toddlers
in a column with the header reason for poverty the relevant spreadsheet offers this explanation lacks labor force and finances
the toddlers' father isn't scheduled to be released until 2030
another spreadsheet from september 2018 shows lists of loan defaulters in pilal township akto county
in 80 percent of the cases where the reason for default was listed as internment most of the borrowed funds were shown to still be in the bank
a particularly depressing example comes from a village in yarkand county
a uighur farmer and head of a family of five was interned in 2017
in october 2016 he had received a loan of 40000 renminbi nearly 5700 to purchase agricultural machinery
the equipment went unused during his detention — no other family member knew how to operate it — and the loan could not be repaid as scheduled
the government directed the family to rent out the equipment and send its oldest child a son to work
the family was then officially marked as having been povertyalleviated by benefiting from policies
in june 2018 after his release the farmer applied for financial assistance so he could repay the loan and related interest
in january 2019 he started to work in the yarkand county textile industrial park earning just 800 rmb about 113 a month
by then the son age 20 had somehow become disabled and was listed on government forms as unable to work
thanks to these new document disclosures we now have hard evidence — and the government's own evidence — that in addition to implementing a vast internment program in xinjiang the chinese communist party is deliberately breaking up families and forcing them into poverty and a form of indentured labor
for all its efforts at secrecy the chinese government can no longer hide the extent and the reach of its campaign of repression in xinjiang
some important elements are still unknown
the total internment figure remains a wellguarded secret
based on the new evidence i have revised my own estimate i think that between 900000 and 18 million people have been detained in xinjiang since the spring of 2017
also missing from the official documents that have surfaced so far are precise records of how the detainees are treated and how exactly the process of reeducation works
about those things however we have witness accounts
the confidential telegram and local files do not mention the use of physical violence — but for one notable exception
the telegram states that people who resist brainwashing must be singled out for assaultstyle reeducation
yet another sinister understatement and it suggests that force and torture may in fact be widely used
in a way though we already know all that we really need to know
the documents that have been disclosed these past few weeks reveal the staggering scale of the repression in xinjiang and its ruinous effects on the region's ethnic communities well beyond the camps themselves
consider this official statistics show that the combined net population growth rates of hotan and kashgar two of the largest uighur regions dropped by about 84 percent between 2015 and 2018
the chinese communist party set out it claimed to transform through education ethnic minorities in xinjiang
in fact it is ripping apart entire communities and subjugating them on a colossal scale
and this at the direction of president xi himself
china's new civil religion by ian johnson dec 21 2019  beijing — in the northern suburbs of this city is a small temple to a chinese folk deity lord guan a famous warrior deified more than a millennium ago
renovated five years ago at the government's expense the temple is used by a group of retirees who run pilgrimages to a holy mountain schoolchildren who come to learn traditional culture and a taoist priest who preaches to wealthy urbanites about the traditional values of ancient china
perched atop a hillock overlooking the sprawling capital the temple is a microcosm of a new civil religion taking shape in china — an effort by the chinese communist party to satisfy chinese people's search for moral guidelines by supplementing the largely irrelevant ideology of communism with a curated version of the past
this new stateguided religiosity is the flip side of the government's harsh policies toward islam and christianity
officials believe these two global faiths are hard to control because of their foreign ties and they have used negotiation or force — diplomacy with the vatican arrests of prominent protestants internment camps for muslims — to try to bring these religions to heel
yet beijing's recent turn to tradition may be even more significant
even though islam and christianity are world religions in china they remain minor with the number of their combined adherents amounting to less than 10 percent of the population
most chinese believe in an amalgam of buddhism taoism confucianism and other traditional values and ideas that still resonate deeply
for this silent majority of hundreds of millions of people the government's newfound support for things like the temple to lord guan is welcome — a feeling that the chinese communist party hopes will bolster its legitimacy especially given the irrelevance today of its founding ideas
the benefits of its move to embrace the past may seem obvious but the shift marks a radical departure not just for a party officially committed to atheism but also from how reformers over the past century have imagined a modern prosperous china
from the 19th century onward china's elites argued that the country's traditions and faiths were a major reason for its decline
reformers in 1898 called for temples to be converted into schools
while the nationalist party under chiang kaishek approved of four religions — buddhism taoism sometimes called daoism christianity and islam — it largely considered traditional chinese beliefs to be superstitions and advocated the destruction of temples
scholars estimate that by the middle of the 20th century half of the temples that existed in china at the end of the 19th century had been destroyed
an 1851 survey of the old city of beijing listed 866 temples today i count just 18
at the end of the 19th century most villages had at least one temple and many had half a dozen vast sections of the chinese countryside now have no temples at all
when the communists took power in 1949 they like the nationalists officially recognized four religions — but then promptly began persecuting them
traditional faiths came under especially harsh treatment with the government banning bedrock traditional practices from worshiping ancestors and local deities to following the advice of geomancy masters and spirit mediums
the three decades of reform that started in the late 1970s loosened controls over society allowing the revival of all religions and many traditions that had been proscribed
despite periodic crackdowns churches and mosques but also temples were rebuilt and clergy trained
although all faiths were supposed to remain under party control religious feeling boomed with the number of believers in china topping 500 million by 2010
xi jinping's rise to power in late 2012 marks a new era the third in the history of the chinese communist party's religious policies
instead of the destruction of the mao years and the relatively laissezfaire approach of the reform period the state has embarked on a form of highly curated revivalism
one part of its approach rests on a deep suspicion of christianity and islam
the party's policy toward islam has been the most draconian
some believers especially uighurs in the northwestern province of xinjiang have been subjected to a policy of forced secularization
this has included sending hundreds of thousands of muslims to reeducation camps compelling restaurants to serve pork and alcohol and forbidding fasting during ramadan
the policy toward christianity is more nuanced
last year beijing struck a deal with the vatican to jointly appoint catholic bishops
the vatican seemed to hope to reverse the decline in the number of catholics in china
but for beijing the measure was a way to tighten control over the catholic clergy — and by extension the church itself
protestantism poses an especially vexing problem for the party
it is arguably china's fastestgrowing religion with an estimated 60 million or more adherents today compared with one million in 1949 including some 20 to 30 million who are thought to worship in unregistered or underground protestant churches
but the faith lacks a unifying structure that would allow for negotiations
and so the government has fired a few shots across the bow closing several of the country's bestknown underground churches
in many ways however the xi administration's embrace of traditional faiths is more radical
since taking office the president has met with buddhist leaders and his government has allowed taoism to flourish
the state recently issued a landmark plan to improve social mores the first such program since 2001
the plan stems from a widespread feeling that china's relentless drive to get ahead economically has created a spiritual vacuum and sometimes justifies breaking rules and trampling civility
many people do not trust one another
the government's blueprint for handling this moral crisis calls for endorsing certain traditional beliefs
the epic paper — it runs to 10000 chinese characters and would be significantly longer translated into english — doesn't mention communist china's founding father mao zedong or his successors and their ideologies focusing instead on mr xi and his efforts to fix social problems like money worship and hedonism
it does invoke communist slogans such as core socialist values but in contrast to the previous such document from 2001 — which made only passing reference to chinese traditions — it calls the past a rich source of morality
the plan orders party officials to promote ancient and worthy sages as well as to deeply expound traditional concepts such as ren'ai benevolence zhengyi righteousness and jianyi zhengwei standing up bravely for the truth
this effort is not an attempt to replace communism with confucianism
yet it is fair to say that for the first time since china's imperial order collapsed in 1911 a central government is embracing the ideas that made up the politicalreligious order that ran china for much of the past 2500 years
why
not only to address china's moral vacuum but also as a populist measure
the country is entering a more uncertain era of slower growth and rising inequality and beijing is draping itself in the mantle of tradition to broaden its appeal
in doing so the government seems to be assuming that traditional chinese values and beliefs are easier to control than foreign religions and that supporting them will outweigh the costs of suppressing islam and christianity
but i have my doubts
during a visit this fall to the lord guan temple i saw a dozen or so people mostly in their 30s and 40s reading works by wang yangming a philosopher born in the late 15th century
on the face of it this was in line with government policy the party has embraced wang for exemplifying an incorruptible spirit and matching words with deeds
but after reading a passage of wang's work the men and women sat around a big wooden table wielding brushes to write out over and over again his most famous phrase zhi xing he yi knowledge and action are one
this knowledge according to wang comes from an inner light a conscience — one that no government no matter how powerful can control
china where state pomp comes with real feeling by ian johnson oct 3 2019  beijing — attending china's national day celebrations over the years has been a bit like listening to different takes of a song with the composer honing the themes and jettisoning the raw bits until the piece sounds just right
that's how i felt at tuesday's celebrations on tiananmen square held to observe the 70th anniversary of the founding of the people's republic of china
i've attended two other ceremonies like this before — for the 35th anniversary in 1984 and the 50th in 1999 — and i knew the basic drill there would be a big military parade followed by floats celebrating the government's accomplishments
but this show felt bigger and brassier than either of those as if the composer had decided to use every instrument in the orchestra and cast subtlety aside
it was slick and sleek but also overpowering and at times bombastic
when i received my invitation government officials told me that i was lucky to attend because it was such a great honor
i nodded politely but only really understood what they meant when i arrived at tiananmen square on tuesday at 6 am we media types were just a few hundred in a sea of loyal members of the chinese communist party ccp
 and for many of them it must have felt like one of the biggest events of their lives
it would be easy to write these people off as extras
and 20 years ago the last time i was at such an event the people in attendance were mainly highly trained performers who held aloft placards that spelled out different messages north korea–style
but tuesday's crowd was different
it was made up of university professors scientists administrators bureaucrats and people who had made some sort of contribution to the state
they weren't props but excited participants who expected to remember this day
i noticed that right away when i walked past a raised platform covered with artificial grass that surrounded a big television screen
people were crouching down next to the platform and neatly arranging their letter of invitation paradepicture id and program almost all in the same fashion like sacraments on a church altar
then they would snap a picture aiming their cameras so that china's national symbol the gate of heavenly peace appeared in the background
these were photos designed to be boasted about on social media guess where i was today
yes at tiananmen square
yes at the ceremony
and here is proof
if these were their sacraments and this ceremony was their ritual what then was their belief
that would probably be the message broadcast on the giant screens that surrounded us
before the parade began those screens showed archival footage of the past 70 years presenting a story about how china had been poor and beaten down by outside powers until the communist party saved the country
the mao era wasn't portrayed as foreign journalists and academics often depict it — a series of violent campaigns against imagined enemies of the state and the worst famine in recorded history — but as a period of pioneering glory when china secured its borders for the first time in a century built a heavy industrial base and set the stage for its economic takeoff
raised on this ideology the attendees seemed visibly moved when soldiers carrying the national flag goosestepped from the monument to the people's heroes at the center of the square down to the enormous flagpole
i was unnerved by the background barrage of artillery and the amplified sound of the boots striking the pavement — it felt like an invasion of giants — but many people around me stood solemnly
this wasn't stagemanaged some looked bored others gazed around kids played
but many more looked earnest just like americans do when they stand up hand on heart for the national anthem at a sports event
and i don't think it was just for show that people jumped out of their seats at one of the early high points of the ceremony when president xi jinping appeared standing in an opentop limousine driving out of the gate of heavenly peace
the moment was pure theater with mr xi in a dark traditional suit appearing framed by the vermilion walls of the imperial forbidden city as he set off to inspect the troops
people also oohed and aahed at another signature moment that owed much to peking opera
when mr xi passed the soldiers their heads swiveled as if on sockets their eyes bulging as they followed the nation's most important person
it was a show of the armed forces' unswerving allegiance to the ccp's leader and the audience needed no encouragement to cheer
realizing that some of these emotions are genuine is important because we can't understand china if we think the party only rules through the authoritarian methods that reporters understandably focus on
on my social media feed which includes disgruntled intellectuals but also workingclass practitioners of folk religion it's clear that many buy into the national story created by the ccp
inventing traditions is nothing new nor unique to china
but here these constructs can sometimes feel uneasy because many of them are imported — from soldiers' dress uniforms that seem decades out of date gold braids enormous epaulets rows of medals to soundtracklike music worthy of john williams fanfares kettle drums plenty of brass
i might be nostalgic but the mood 35 years ago felt a bit different
i was a student then and a group of us was bussed down to tiananmen square for the ceremony
we then milled around for most of the day
there was also an orchestrated event but security was minimal and you could still stand right next to the performers as they marched or danced past
some students even jumped into the parade and held up a banner greeting the paramount leader deng xiaoping
china today is more serious about being a superpower
when the spontaneous enthusiasm flagged on tuesday cheerleaders made sure the flags kept waving
and security was so tight that it bordered on paranoia neighborhood parks around town implemented airportstyle security to even enter
but that too was part of the spectacle the message and the vision — of a focused and disciplined state led by the chinese communist party that can put on a spectacle few countries can match
coronavirus and the panic epidemic by ian johnson jan 30 2020  beijing — the absurdity of the situation hit me on wednesday when i was coming home from a local bar at 8 pm
i had ridden my bike a few hours earlier to a park for a walk and then to meet a friend — my first human contact in five days excluding the cashier at the grocery store
but the side gate i'd used to leave the enormous communistera compound was now chained shut
what
a notice in chinese said it was locked to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus
so i headed toward the north entrance
that one is for pedestrians and has two barriers set slightly apart just wide enough to get through on foot
that's ok i thought i can squeeze by with my bike and be home in a few minutes
i rode around the block but when i got to the gate i had to slam on the brakes
someone had taken a dozen rideshare bikes lashed them together with wire and piled them in between the barriers
then for good measure they'd fastened the heap to the posts with more wire making it into some sort of postmodern commentary on our hypermobile society
laughing i rode on to the main entrance
it has a car entrance with a big gate and on either side walkways for pedestrians
one of those was also piled high with rideshare bikes sacrificed for the national good the other was protected by two security guards i'd never seen before
they blocked my way
what do you want
one of them asked
to go home
i live here
have you been to wuhan recently
i just rode back
i'm exhausted
the humor was beyond their pay grade
is anyone in your home from wuhan or has been there recently
i needed to stop fooling around
no i haven't been there in four years
i live alone
no fever
i feel fine
they silently let me through
this felt like the height of foolishness why would the gates be open during the day but locked down at night
do viruses operate like vampires
that's when i realized the guards' effort was just part of a borglike lockdown that the state had put into place with the alacrity of officials in full cya
mode
the next day i was cleaning my apartment no one could enter beijing anymore so my one luxury an houraweek house cleaner was stuck in her village even though the main phase of the lunar new year holiday was over
there was a knock on my door
it was the good people from the apartment management office mrs luo and her assistant
oh mr zhang nice to see you mrs luo the hennahaired manager of lease renewals said addressing me by my chinese name
is there anyone from wuhan in your apartment
no
still not
ok
take a look at this please
she handed me a sheet from the local communist party district committee listing dos and don'ts to follow during the outbreak
do seek help
do listen to the local government
do keep warm
do stay at home
do avoid contact
do wash your hands
don't spit
don't exert yourself too much
don't associate with people who've recently arrived from the infected area around the megacity of wuhan
on the back was a list of all the communist party street committees and their phone numbers
finally after five years of living in this neighborhood and countless failed efforts to register my complaints about illegal construction at night i had some phone numbers
i filed the sheet for future use
the german language has as usual a hyperspecific word for this phenomenon aktionismus literally actionism or action for action's sake
what i was witnessing was aktionismus in the face of a problem that required a sensitive response involving public trust
but since the chinese government cannot elicit either of those things i was seeing the compensatory flailingaround of a state with no other options
instead of having an adult conversation with the population about the virus and putting in place reasonable policies that have been used effectively elsewhere the chinese state has gone into full lockdown mode
this demonstrates one of those truisms from political science authoritarian governments are like people who don't have any fingers but do possess two thumbs
they can take forceful actions but can't finetune the levers of government
actually i'm not being fair
when the chinese communist party has time it can come up with and use sophisticated policies — witness its coopting of traditional faiths to fill a spiritual vacuum in society
but when faced with a crisis the party can't seem to avoid grand gestures building hospitals from scratch in two weeks locking down tens of millions of people banning millions more from traveling to big cities and so on
in some ways a moment like this one is a technocrat's dream when western health care experts say that this sort of lockdown won't work they basically mean it's never been tried on this scale with this kind of uberefficient government
now that it's being tried not just in beijing but also across the country the effects are kind of thrilling to watch
apartment compounds like mine are being fumigated
with what
who cares
people are walking around with loudspeakers blaring out warnings against the virus
villages are closing their gates as if bandits were on the prowl
and going to a restaurant or a bar is almost an act of treason or at best foolish selfishness
the most interesting question is why the party feels the need to carry on like this
i think it knows the people don't trust it in these cases and assume there has been a coverup
hence one of the most popular figures in the crisis zhong nanshan the hero of the 20023 sars outbreak now 83 who is back in action treating patients and warning citizens about the need for hygiene
he has been adopted as the incorruptible official — a familiar trope in chinese history the confucian official who stands tall despite pressures to bend
and so we read endless profiles of dr zhong in chinese social media discussing his family background upbringing successes and apolitical pursuit of sciencebased truth
the clear implication is that he is that rare official capable of such principled conduct
behind all this lies the feeling that most other people in the party can't quite be trusted
this has been reinforced over the past few days by reports that at least eight people who were detained in wuhan in early january on charges of spreading rumors are in fact medical doctors not fearmongering ne'erdowells
this startling fact is now leaking out in online reports that are sometimes but not always being blocked
at some point the government will have to admit to a partial coverup
considering the underlying distrust it's hard for the government to say what many epidemiologists are saying this outbreak is serious but not catastrophic
because if the state leveled with the people it would also have to admit that there is no need for this degree of social control
some 259 people were reported to have died as of saturday evening in a country of nearly 14 billion and there is no indication that we are at the start of a hollywood disasterstyle movie
the government's inability to formulate a measured response will turn this outbreak into a direct successor of the sars epidemic
that hardly was a huge public health disaster — fewer than 800 deaths — yet it has taken on a legendary reputation as a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions one that should never be allowed to recur
but of course a new outbreak has occurred
does this mean that the state will suffer
i don't think so
for despite their mistrust of the system people over all are going along with the lockdown
in private conversations and on chat rooms they say it's impossible not to take drastic action in a country as big as china
in this sense the population has absorbed the government's narrative of chinese exceptionalism running china requires a strong hand and these measures as absurd as they seem are proof that the government is doing a good job — and portend that the party will come out of this as always triumphant
coronavirus spreads and the world pays for china's dictatorship by nicholas kristof jan 29 2020  china's leaders sometimes seem 10 feet tall presiding over a political and economic juggernaut that has founded universities at a rate of one a week and that recently used more cement in three years than the united states did in the entire 20th century
president trump has hailed china's president xi jinping as a brilliant leader and michael bloomberg says xi is not a dictator
but we're now seeing the dangers of xi's authoritarian model for china and the world
the first known coronavirus infection in the city of wuhan presented symptoms beginning on dec 1 and by late december there was alarm in wuhan's medical circles
that would have been the moment for the authorities to act decisively
and act decisively they did — not against the virus but against whistleblowers who were trying to call attention to the public health threat
a doctor who told a wechat group about the virus was disciplined by the communist party and forced to admit wrongdoing
the police reported giving education and criticism to eight frontline doctors for rumormongering about the epidemic instead of punishing these doctors xi should have listened to them
china informed the world health organization of the virus on dec 31 but kept its own citizens in the dark as other countries reported infections even as china pretended that it had confined the outbreak to wuhan chinese joked grimly about a patriotic virus that only struck foreigners
wuhan's mayor said he wasn't authorized to discuss the virus until late this month
in that time people traveled to and from wuhan and didn't take precautions
the government finally ordered a lockdown on jan 23 that effectively quarantined people in wuhan
but by then according to the mayor five million people had already fled the city
partly because the government covered up the epidemic in the early stages hospitals were not able to gather supplies and there are now major shortages of testing kits masks and protective gear
some doctors were reduced to making goggles out of plastic folders
one reason for the early coverup is that xi's china has systematically gutted institutions like journalism social media nongovernmental organizations the legal profession and others that might provide accountability
these institutions were never very robust in china but on and off they were tolerated until xi came along
i conducted a series of experiments on chinese blogs over the years beginning in 2003 and was sometimes surprised by what i could get away with — but no longer
xi has dragged china backward in terms of civil society crushing almost every wisp of freedom and oversight
for the same reason that xi's increasingly authoritarian china bungled the coronavirus outbreak it also mishandled a swine fever virus that since 2018 has devastated china's hog industry and killed almost onequarter of the world's pigs
dictators often make poor decisions because they don't get accurate information when you squelch independent voices you end up getting just flattery and optimism from those around you
senior chinese officials have told me that they are routinely lied to on trips to meet local officials and must dispatch their drivers and secretaries to assess the truth and gauge the real mood
for this or other reasons xi has made a series of mistakes
he mishandled and inflamed the political crisis in hong kong he inadvertently assured the reelection of his nemesis as president of taiwan and he has presided over worsening relations with the united states and many other countries
the coronavirus has already reached the xinjiang region in the far west of china and one risk is that it will spread in the internment camps where china is confining about one million muslims with poor sanitation and limited health care
viruses are challenges for any country and it's only fair to note that china does a better job protecting its people from measles than the us does
it's a credit to china's system that a baby born in beijing today has a longer life expectancy than a baby born in washington dc more broadly the united states which has several impoverished counties with lower life expectancy than cambodia or bangladesh is in no position to lecture anyone about health
but with a dose of humility let's get over any misplaced admiration some americans have for xi's authoritarian model
the chinese social contract has been that citizens will not get ballots but will live steadily better lives yet china's economy is now as weak as it has been in three decades — and the coronavirus will sap growth further
xi is not living up to his end of the bargain and this is seen in the anger emerging on chinese social media despite the best efforts of censors
i don't know if xi is in political trouble for his misrule but he should be
he's a preening dictator and with this outbreak some citizens are paying a price
cuomo's bad medicine on medicaid by the editorial board jan 31 2020  for years new york state has operated one of the most generous medicaid programs in the country a point of pride in a state with a long tradition of investing in the social safety net
the program provides health care and other services to more than six million people largely lowincome new yorkers and the costs are shared between the state and federal government
but profligate spending has sent costs spiraling in recent years
the medicaid program has become a driving force behind a 61 billion hole in new york's budget next year and a brewing political battle over what to do about it
though medicaid costs are rising across the united states in new york — among the country's largest programs and long one of its most expensive — spending has surged
from 2015 to 2019 annual spending grew by an average of 6 percent according to a report last year by the empire center for public policy a conservative nonprofit research organization
that's roughly double the rate of growth in the previous several years even as enrollment remained flat
health care and budget experts have said a variety of factors are behind the trend including an increase in demand for personal care programs that provide nonmedical services to disabled new yorkers a minimumwage increase and financial assistance that the state has provided to struggling hospitals
new york's share of its 75 billion annual medicaid bill is now about 30 billion and growing imposing an increasingly untenable burden on state and local budgets
the federal government pays the rest
the good news is that gov
andrew cuomo who is in charge of administering the federal program has moved to rein in costs
the bad news is that he has said localities will have to pay for increases in local medicaid spending above 3 percent
that's unfair and unrealistic
local governments in new york already pay more mandated medicaid costs than local governments in any other state a dynamic that's been in place since the program began in the 1960s
that's not unusual in new york where albany relies on new york city's tax base to fund the bulk of state services from education to commuter rails
in 2018 local governments in new york sent 76 billion to albany for the program according to a 2018 report from the citizens budget commission
in fulton county in upstate new york for instance the local medicaid bill for 2016 amounted to more than 15 percent of the county budget
in new york city the annual medicaid tab is roughly 5 billion or nearly 5 percent of the city's budget
if the spending increases continue and the state forces local governments to pay for them the de blasio administration estimates the city would owe an additional 11 billion next year
the state says the figure would be much lower
mr cuomo has called on local governments to reduce costs
that's fine new york city and counties across the state which oversee enrollment should work to root out any fraud or abuse and ensure that those who sign up for the program are eligible and truly in need
they are the ontheground administrator
we respond to them mr cuomo said in a phone call wednesday
really though local governments have limited say over how the program is run
most of that responsibility rests with the state
when it comes to reducing medicaid costs that's where the focus should remain
the most promising effort so far is mr cuomo's medicaid redesign team a working group assigned to find 25 billion in savings this year preserving benefits while slashing waste
the governor used a similar task force to successfully carry out costsaving medicaid reforms nearly a decade ago aided by the affordable care act
the new group will be led by the same two men michael dowling the president and ceo
of northwell health and by dennis rivera the former head of 1199 seiu the powerhouse health care union
they are set to make their recommendations ahead of the april 1 budget deadline
it will be up to mr cuomo to ensure the public good is top of mind
the redesign group should issue a thorough report presenting its findings to the public and the legislature
right now it's not clear they plan to do so and that's a problem
while not perfect the approach is far better than simply forking over more and more taxpayer dollars and sticking local governments with an evergrowing tab as the state has been doing
to get new york's medicaid program back on track the group will need to take a hard look at spending on nonmedical services like cooking and bathing for homebound new yorkers
according to the empire center new york's medicaid spending on such personal services was the highest in the country
that may be because of a program that has expanded in recent years in which medicaid pays nonmedical providers like family members to care for clients
in 2016 personal spending in new york accounted for 40 percent of national medicaid spending for the category overall up from 23 percent in 2011 the empire center said
complicating matters is a political dynamic friendly to the health care industry
in 2018 for example the greater new york hospital association gave more than 1 million in political contributions to the state's democratic party
not long afterward the state increased medicaid reimbursement rates for the first time since 2008 costing the state an estimated 140 million per year
mr cuomo has denied that donations influence his policy decisions and cuomo administration officials said at the time that the increase was necessary and simply long overdue
health care experts disagree and say hospital revenue had already been on the rise
new york's medicaid bill is out of control
the first order of business is to understand more about why and to be honest with the public about what needs to be done about it
democrats' baffling 2020 mess by frank bruni dec 7 2019  kamala harris folded her tent and on that patch of ground many flimsy theories bloomed
disappointed democrats groused that you obviously had to be rich to compete in the 2020 race — because she was gone while two billionaires remained — and pointed to the potentially allwhite undiverse lineup at the party's next debate as proof that the qualifying criteria put too much of a premium on fundraising
but harris had made the cut for that debate
and she entered the presidential sweepstakes with a higher net worth 6 million according to forbes than bernie sanders 25 million amy klobuchar 2 million or pete buttigieg 100000 who are still in the hunt and are among the six contenders slated to be sparring onstage on dec 19
what's more sanders and another of the six elizabeth warren have raised buckets of money without courting plutocrats
many democrats blamed the media for harris's demise
they have a point inasmuch as some news organizations never had the kind of romance with her that they did with buttigieg and beto o'rourke two white men
i noted as much in a column last may pointing to o'rourke's placement on the cover of vanity fair and buttigieg's on the cover of time
but the media fell quickly out of love with o'rourke and is picking buttigieg apart for his lack of support among africanamericans and his past employment as a mckinsey consultant
and harris was hardly ignored her initial campaign rally in oakland calif in january was covered live in its entirety on msnbc and cnn
that same month rachel maddow of msnbc told her in a facetoface interview i think there is a good chance that you are going to win the nomination
and after the democratic debate in june when harris stirringly confronted joe biden about his past opposition to federally mandated busing to integrate schools she received a bonanza of media attention and rapturous reviews
i get that this democratic primary isn't playing out as anyone predicted or in remote accordance with the party's image of itself and with its priorities
none of the top four candidates — biden warren buttigieg and sanders — is a person of color three of them are 70 or older and the billionaires tom steyer and mike bloomberg are dipping into their personal fortunes in their efforts to gain ground
for a party that celebrates diversity pitches itself to underdogs and prides itself on being futureminded and youthoriented that's a freaky baffling turn of events
but some of the conclusions being drawn and complaints being raised don't fully hold water
take the fears about the nomination being purchased
without question running for office is too expensive
that dynamic can definitely favor candidates with lucrative connections
and candidates are forced — unless they're steyer or bloomberg — to devote ludicrous and possibly corrupting sums of time to political panhandling
but at least at present neither steyer nor bloomberg is exactly barreling toward victory
and while cory booker drew a connection between harris's departure and a process warped by wealth the link is tenuous
booker whose campaign presses on despite his failure to qualify for the december debate said of harris's withdrawal voters did not determine her destiny
actually they kind of did
they're the ones who are or aren't excited enough about a candidacy to donate money and keep it alive
they're the ones responding to pollsters and by flagging their preferences determining which candidates take on the air of plausibility that often generates the next round of donations
i keep seeing on twitter and facebook laments about harris's fate from democrats who chose to support candidates other than her
well she couldn't succeed on generalized ambient good will
i also keep seeing and hearing statements along the lines that the party should be ashamed of the way things are turning out that the party failed
while an official party entity the democratic national committee indeed set criteria for the debates — which had to have some criteria — there's otherwise no committee of elders or secret cabal that decrees which candidates prosper and which don't
besides which as eric levitz observed in new york magazine harris boasted the enthusiastic support of hillary's donor network and supporters warm relations with obamaworld and the sympathies of a broad range of democratic lawmakers in the nation's largest state and beyond
levitz added that when harris ended her campaign on tuesday she trailed only biden in the website fivethirtyeight's tally of important endorsements that booker has more such endorsements than sanders who is far ahead of him and that klobuchar has more than buttigieg whom she distantly trails
so if the party is fellow democratic politicians of note it's hardly driving the direction of this contest
we in the media aren't driving it either though there's constant carping along those lines
we've always been fundamentally responsive bestowing coverage based on established interest and we're more responsive than ever in this digitized age of sophisticated realtime measures of precisely what our audience does and doesn't turn to
we give you a tide of warren in part because you thrilled to the earlier trickle
we serve you oodles of buttigieg because we've noticed your appetite for it
another questionable assessment of this primary is that electability is crowding out candidates who don't fit some safe profile
yes many democratic voters tell pollsters that choosing the candidate most likely to beat trump is their top concern
yes there's evidence that such an impulse is leading some voters away from candidates of color
but if electability emphatically ruled the day wouldn't at least one of the three current or former governors already gone from the race — john hickenlooper of colorado steve bullock of montana and jay inslee of washington — have fared better
governors are frequently touted as the best candidates and they account for four of the past seven presidents
if electability ruled the day would biden's stiffest competition be coming from a 78yearold democratic socialist who recently had a heart attack and just placed first in a california poll a 70yearold former ivy league law professor whom trump delights in calling pocahontas and the 37yearold gay mayor of a small indiana city
there's a lot to this primary that's more complicated than meets the eye a lot that explodes assumptions
according to the polling so far voters aren't drawn to candidates whose demographic profiles overlap with theirs
biden's support from black democrats in a national quinnipiac poll late last month was more than eight times what harris's or booker's was
he and sanders do exponentially better among latinos than juli�n castro does
sanders not buttigieg has the advantage among democrats under the age of 35
and many gay democrats have rejected buttigieg as inadequately progressive and even insufficiently gay
so if identity group electability media bias and personal wealth aren't the secrets to success what are
i think we're learning yet again that there's no tidy trusty formula
but broad name recognition among engaged voters — which biden sanders and to a lesser extent warren all had at the outset — is an enormous asset
so are a sales pitch and brand like buttigieg's that are distinct from any other contender's
finally there's political acumen
there's raw talent
the last democratic president barack obama had plenty of it
the next democratic president will too
devin nunes is danielle steel by frank bruni nov 15 2019  i came to your house with a gun
at least imagine i did
i tied you to a chair took a step back and repeatedly fired
but my arm twitched every bullet missed
meanwhile you slipped your knots and fled
by the reasoning of representative jim jordan i did absolutely nothing wrong
you're alive
not a drop of blood on you
an unconsummated crime is no crime at all or so jordan one of the republican party's more rococo philosophers argued on wednesday in defense of president trump
ukraine got its military aid trump did not get his investigation of the bidens
to jordan that's proof of innocence
to a normal person that's proof of incompetence which doesn't exonerate the president but should definitely reassure us
trump's an autocrat all right but the silver lining is that he's an inept one
all strongmen should be this weak
and all of us should have the mental limberness and ethical elasticity that jordan and his troupe possess
they're the cirque du soleil of c'est la vie
i've never seen anything like the republican effort to defend trump which charts the frontiers of creativity explores the outer limits of audacity mutates like the monsters in the alien movies and restores my faith in american ingenuity
my faith in washington too
i long feared that politics had stopped attracting the country's top talent but some of our finest storytellers are working in the united states capitol
john grisham has nothing on jordan
danielle steel can't hold a candle to devin nunes
nunes was among the first republicans to pipe up on day 1 of the impeachment inquiry's public hearings held by the house intelligence committee and it wasn't just his narrative ambition that mesmerized me
it was his bold descent into his thesaurus a sort of semantic spelunking
the hearings he said marked the pitiful finale and spectacular implosion of the russia hoax
they amounted to a scorchedearth war against president trump that was horrifically onesided and preposterous
this lowrent ukrainian sequel had already involved a closeddoor audition process in a cultlike atmosphere in the basement of the capitol
cultlike no less
that's a more fitting description of republicans' obeisance to the president and laundering of his wrongdoing but then one hallmark of trump and his sycophants is the projection of their own flaws onto their adversaries
nunes's best bit on wednesday and then again on friday was his portrayal of trump's democratic detractors as amateur pornographers intent on finding nude pictures of the president
i'm fairly confident that no one is intent on finding nude photographs of the president
but at this point it wouldn't surprise me if trump himself tweeted one out
would that be any crazier than what he did on friday as marie yovanovitch the former ambassador to ukraine testified
there she was a pained stoic state department amalgam of erin brockovich and norma rae and trump used his twitter account to call her an international wrecking ball singlehandedly responsible for the mess that is mogadishu
one of her posts before ukraine was somalia
this accomplished nothing in the way of silencing her but raised the prospect of witness intimidation being added to any articles of impeachment
clearly the republican response to this impeachment inquiry isn't some elegant strategy
it's an epic snit
its leitmotif is hypocrisy
nunes opened friday's hearing by lamenting all the important government business that was on hold because democrats preferred to torture trump
i somehow missed his pleas that lawmakers keep their eyes on the ball and devote themselves to practical problemsolving when the president stirred up one culture war after another just to change the topic of a given news cycle or hear a rally audience's roar
but along comes the impeachment inquiry and suddenly house republicans are stymied stewards of levelheaded government
they're dismissing wednesday's and friday's hearings held in public as pure theater
but they complained about the closeddoor testimony beforehand
they're shrugging off the accounts of william taylor george kent and others as hearsay
but the white house has decreed that such firsthand witnesses as mick mulvaney not cooperate
one moment mulvaney publicly acknowledges the shakedown of ukraine's president insists that it's how foreign policy is done and tells the media to get over it
the next he tells the media that they're reprehensible fabulists for reporting exactly what he said
one moment republicans completely ignore trump's infamous july 25 phone call and claim that there's no direct evidence of his bullying and — yes nancy pelosi is right — his bribery
the next they acknowledge the call sigh over trump's behavior but say that it's hardly impeachable
in fairness that's only slightly more confusing to me than the democrats' perspective on the call a definitive piece of evidence that they may be inadvertently downgrading
usually a process like the one that they've been engaged in over the last seven weeks is about finding a smoking gun
this process began with the smoking gun and the farther the democrats travel from it — eight witnesses this coming week
— the more they risk implying that it wasn't enough
but for curious behavior republicans have them easily beat and their conduct during the impeachment inquiry is the culmination and apotheosis of their conduct since trump wrapped up the republican presidential nomination an utter sellout of principle and a pure embrace of fiction to pacify an emotional infant and keep him from spitting up on them
during wednesday's hearing republicans again suggested — while maintaining straight faces — that trump's foremost concern was corruption in ukraine
steve castor the republicans' chief counsel also gave one of the president's most convenient and thus favorite conspiracy theories a fresh whirl positing that perhaps american intelligence officials had it all wrong and ukraine not russia hacked democratic emails in 2016 and otherwise interfered in the election
how would this make trump's demand that ukrainians smear joe biden in return for millions of dollars of alreadyauthorized aid ok
it wouldn't — but what a juicy distraction
and what a perfect gateway for castor's attempt to get taylor to testify that trump legitimately believed that ukrainians were in castor's words out to get him
try to follow along
not only does incompetence equal innocence but also paranoia is exculpatory
same goes for the relative dastardliness of a deed which becomes innocuous if it's not maximally obnoxious
that's my takeaway from when castor referring to rudy giuliani's shenanigans asked taylor this irregular channel of diplomacy it's not as outlandish as it could be — is that correct
clarence darrow move over
another genius of jurisprudence demands space in the history books
all that wednesday's hearing lacked was lindsey graham
yes i know he serves in the senate and the hearing took place in the house
but he's the standardbearer for trumpcoddling contortionism the reigning king of the kinds of contradictions that were on display
presaging jordan's approach at the hearing graham a week and a half ago shrugged off the impeachment inquiry by calling trump's policy toward ukraine so incoherent that the president and his minions seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo
he said at one point that he'd be open to any evidence that backed up such a quid pro quo but then more recently he announced that he wouldn't and couldn't be bothered to follow the testimony because he'd already made up his mind
as billy binion of reason magazine noted graham has bemoaned the democrats' lack of transparency only to shield his eyes once the curtain was lifted
maybe graham will storm the hearing room yet an effigy of hunter biden in tow
that would match the dignity of what we've seen from republicans so far
did i just get yanged
by bari weiss jan 30 2020  it was new year's eve and i had decided to spend it with andrew yang
a selfdescribed asian man who's good at math mr yang had raised an impressive 165 million in the fourth quarter of 2019 for his presidential campaign
despite being newly flush the campaign didn't hold its shindig in a napa valley wine cave or at gramercy tavern but in a florescentlit room above a bar in nashua nh
the party looked like nothing so much as a high school dance if you had banned the bullies
there was a modest buffet of meatballs spanakopita ritz crackers and cheddar cheese
the dj a boomer with trousers that badly need hemming could have been your chemistry teacher bouncing to cardi b
now a few days away from the iowa caucus mr yang has outlasted more than a dozen candidates including three senators and two governors
he came in first among democrats in the iowa youth straw poll on tuesday
next week he'll be back on the debate stage
he remains a very long shot national polls have him consistently in the second tier right next to amy klobuchar
still conventional wisdom would say that andrew yang should be nowhere this close to the american presidency
i went to new hampshire because i wanted to understand how a political rookie with what seemed like little going for him beyond a signature proposal of free money and relentlessly cheerful online fans had gotten this far
what does the url candidate's campaign look like irl
that night the yang gang as the candidate's fans proudly call themselves was a happy crowd of gamers asians former goth girls burning man enthusiasts scifi geeks students coders and stoners
when mr yang dropped a lord of the rings joke — it's like the eye of sauron is closing in
he said of his momentum in the race — they erupted in laughter
hardcore yang voters are not cool
and that is exactly their and his appeal
among the partygoers on new year's eve were jackie and dave farrell former bernie sanders supporters who own a deli in caldwell nj mr farrell wore a handmade knitted beanie stitched with the words yang math vote and 2020 ms farrell had a pink yang gang baseball hat over her blue hair and a copy of the candidate's best seller the war on normal people in her purse
they fell in love inside an online role playing game called hobowars
it's hard to imagine anyone at a joe biden event with that kind of meetcute
he actually sold me a guild ms farrell told me
it's sort of like a gang
like a yang gang
talk to anyone in the yang gang for a few minutes and they'll inevitably tell you how they got yanged
the story almost always begins with a younger person telling an older person to google andrew yang
which is exactly what happened with the farrells
in august a 23yearold employee in the deli approached ms farrell to ask whom she was supporting
i was like 'bernie i guess
i supported him in 2016' she recalled
and he goes 'why haven't you googled andrew yang yet
so she did
i literally stayed up till 4 am that night watching videos
have you ever been the target of a twitter mob
it's about as pleasant as a brazilian wax in slow motion
the one thing that brings a small measure of comfort when you are in the digital cross hairs is the following assertion the internet is not real life
it is true at least for the time being that a horde of pixels cannot transform itself into a horde of people
but the lie that there is a bright line between the online world and the real one has been well and truly debunked
just ask any middleschool girl shamed for an instagram post or any adult fired because of a bad tweet or any democrat hoping to oust donald trump and become the 46th president of the united states
bernie sanders may be fueled by his zealous fans on social media but of all the democrats running for president the web means the most to andrew yang
without it his candidacy simply wouldn't exist
it's a classic underdog story a political unknown ignored by the mainstream media sidestepping the pundits who had considered him a punchline
in the early days there weren't many people in cable news clamoring to have me on their shows he told me over bubble tea on a recent afternoon in his manhattan campaign headquarters
and so you seek out people who can reach lots of americans
those people were the ones with podcasts
what launched us was sam harris said mr yang of his june 2018 appearance on mr harris's show making sense
it put him on the map i was invited to speak at the wing ding in iowa — a major democratic fundraising event — because one of the people there was a sam harris fan
mr harris introduced him to joe rogan a mixed martial arts color commentator who hosts one of the most popular podcasts in the country
disclosure i've also appeared on his show
joe rogan was the game changer mr yang said
we raised tens of thousands of dollars a day for awhile there and a million bucks in a week
but it isn't simply that mr yang cleverly used new platforms to his advantage
sure the podcasts gave him a big boost but lots of politicians have used new media to expand their reach franklin roosevelt commandeered the radio team obama mastered the email blast president trump tears up twitter
mr yang's outsize success shows that the people who insist that rachel maddow has more influence over the american electorate than mr rogan are lying to themselves about where cultural power in america is actually located
what mr yang understands is that the old rules no longer apply — and that flouting those rules is an energizing strategy
but while donald trump burned the whole house down andrew yang is dunking on the system with a big smile
that's how he gets onstage at a democratic debate points out the ridiculousness of the artifice — we're up here with makeup on our faces and our rehearsed attack lines playing roles in this reality tv show — and walks away with one of the most talkedabout moments of the night despite having had the least talking time
his appeal is a powerful reminder that the animating political conflict of our era may not be left versus right but establishment versus insurgency
the yang campaign prides itself on the heterodoxy of its supporters
i poll 18 percent among college republicans mr yang told me
i've got a higher appeal among independents libertarians and even some disaffected trump voters than joe biden by the numbers than bernie sanders by the numbers
one of his campaign slogans is not left
not right
forward
the writer wesley yang has suggested that the inbetween nature of asianamericans — the way they are often regarded neither as white nor as people of color — allows them to say and do things that white liberals are now afraid to say and do which is to stand up for certain fundamental values
when you consider mr yang's positions on some of the touchiest aspects of the culture war and imagine his views coming out of the mouth of a michael bennet or a pete buttigieg you can easily see the truth of this insight
for instance he's glad that america has become less of a monoculture
when he was a kid he says his own efforts to be american included things like joining the wrestling team he was terrible at the sport
but he added i think there's a middle ground where you can't just say america is nothing and everybody run off and do your own thing
it's important he said to have a common cultural context and even — and this will be very controversial — a common language of expression
i spoke to some of his many asianamerican supporters and this resonated with them
michael chen a 19yearold drexel student at one of the new hampshire town hall events said he appreciated that mr yang whose immigrant father grew up in a house with a dirt floor on a peanut farm is not running on his identity you can be asianamerican you can be black american you can be latinoamerican but the common denominator is american
that's who he is
mr chen was there with his dad jack
the elder mr chen calls himself a yang junkie but insists being asian has little to do with it
what animates him is the practicality of mr yang's solutions
mr yang believes in talking to people he disagrees with
in april he appeared on the ben shapiro show a nogo zone for those who buy into the new politics of contamination — that to sit next to a conservative like mr shapiro is to tacitly endorse his ideas
thinking that i'm going to catch ideas from someone seems ludicrous to me he said
soon after the comedian shane gillis was hired by saturday night live it was revealed that he had used racial slurs on podcasts including describing mr yang with an antisemitic and racist epithet
mr yang tweeted that he didn't think mr gillis should be fired writing we would benefit from being more forgiving rather than punitive
the show didn't follow mr yang's advice
i asked mr yang who ran one of the top test prep programs in the country before it was bought by kaplan about his views on affirmative action
is harvard doing to asians in the 21st century what it did to jews in the 20th
harvard's gonna harvard he said
he told me that he himself was rejected from the school — he wound up at brown — though he was amply qualified
but if you have any kind of perspective he said you realize that my life and my humanity depends on more than whether some institution decides to stamp my hand
arguing for higher representation of an already overrepresented group — at least according to population standards — would not be my first bone to pick he said
instead he asked why harvard a university with a 40 billion endowment is opening locations in shanghai but not ohio or michigan
the real question he said is are you trying to advance our society or are you trying to advance global moneyed interests
on new year's eve it occurred to me that despite living in new york which prides itself on being the most cosmopolitan city in the world i had not been in a room with such a politically diverse group of people since donald trump was elected president
if there is a typical yang voter it is a former bernie sanders supporter who feels that mr yang understands the challenges of the 21st century better than a 78yearold socialist without a single app on his phone
mr yang supported mr sanders in 2016 before voting for hillary clinton in the general election i'm procivilization he said
he understands why young voters are drawn to mr sanders
if you're a young person you look up and say 'what have i experienced from this capitalist system' corporate abuse crashes bailouts greed record levels of college debt
but he insists the best actor to improve people's lives is not our government it's us
bernie's saying 'let's stick it to the billionaires and all will be well' he said
i'm saying 'we need to rewrite the code we need to rewrite the software'  at a campaign stop in manchester nh i spoke with sunny payne a 23yearold yang supporter who'd come in from bangor me and uses the pronoun they
while i think bernie sanders is an amazing person they said he's has had the exact same policy stances for literally decades
amberly mccabe and martin raucher both 29 are also former sanders supporters
they drove 25 hours from st petersburg fla
they made sure not to cut anyone off on the highway ms mccabe said because there's a yang bumper sticker on their car and we have to represent
mr raucher is a disabled veteran and ms mccabe is an artist they met through their passion spinning fire
it wasn't possible to twirl lit torches inside the party room so ms mccabe had fashioned the next best thing a handmade lightup yang sign
with yang i'm all about the ideas the policies she said above all his proposal for a universal basic income of 1000 a month
i need an oil change said mr raucher when i asked how they'd spend it
and my roof is leaking
just across the dance floor were elasa and russell peterson two former trump voters who changed their registration — and moved states — to support mr yang's candidacy
everyone i know is the brokefolk vote said mr peterson
they are among them
until recently they worked at a north carolina olive garden
i got to where i hated breadsticks said ms
peterson
donald trump stands up there and says 'hey we got to build the wall because the immigrants are coming over here and they're stealing our jobs' and you know what
because we're all broke we're all like 'it's immigrants
yeah
let's build the wall' mr peterson said
but then you hear andrew yang talk and he's like 'you know what
it's not immigrants
it's automation' you go into walmart you don't see immigrants
you see selfserve checkouts
it's like a light bulb goes off
like 'wow this makes sense'  it made so much sense that they moved in with ms peterson's sister in vermont 10 minutes from the new hampshire border so they could volunteer fulltime for the campaign and promote him on their youtube channel
everybody in our family has been yanged
and they were all trumpers mr peterson said
at a town hall event attended by some 300 people on new year's day the first question — so onbrand i almost assumed it was a plant — was about the metric system so mr make americans think harder can we count on president yang to support the blessings of the metric system
the crowd laughed
amazingly mr yang came back with a thoughtful answer about how the metric system is safer not least because it is more accurate for microdosing baby medicine
to hear andrew yang talk is to understand why it is possible for people like the petersons to support him unlike the president he never demonizes other americans
the differences between us are pretty trivial compared to the things we share in common
and that's a fundamental message of the campaign ablebodied special needs white black old young rural urban we're all going to get run over by this automation freight train he said
we need to human up and stop focusing on relatively trivial distinctions
the villain is not donald trump but a market rigged for big tech and against normal americans
in mr yang's framing of the 2016 election mrs clinton lost not because of the electoral college or russian bots but because she fundamentally misunderstood the crisis facing america
donald trump said he was going to make america great again
and what did hillary clinton say in response
america is already great mr yang said
that message did not work because the pain in our country is real
in other words donald trump is the wrong answer to the right question
mr yang believes he is the right one
at each one of the four campaign stops i went to he asked the crowd why president trump won
the audience called out answers the media
russia
racism
hillary
facebook
twitter
james comey
no said mr yang
it's because we blasted away four million manufacturing jobs through automation in states like ohio michigan pennsylvania missouri and iowa
what happened to manufacturing is coming to retail restaurants and even accounting and the law mr yang insists
while mr sanders suggests a federal government job guarantee and joe biden suggests turning coal miners into coders mr yang says that work as we have known it is over
if we don't change anything i asked him where will be 50 years from now
bestcase scenario
we will see inequality at a staggering scale that right now most americans would find unthinkable
and in the worst case
the collapse of the government in its current form political break up and societal dysfunction that results in mass riots and violence
it's impressive that for the most part his good humor softens the bleak message he is conveying
it's a vision of the future — one disputed as hysterical by many observers — that makes president trump's american carnage address look almost rosy by comparison
i caught up with sunny payne this week
hearing mr yang in person lit the fire under me they said as they drove around anderson sc after a day spent doorknocking for him
they'd just spent a week in iowa before realizing that i wanted to spread the message to black voters and communities of color and i realized the best place for me to do that was in south carolina
they said they kept hearing the same story from voters i can't care about climate change because i need to put food on the table
i have three jobs
i barely sleep
to these people sunny payne said 1000 a month would be lifechanging
that's the reason that the comedian dave chappelle has endorsed mr yang
the wealth disparity between me and my neighbors is immense it's heartbreaking said mr chappelle who lives in ohio but appeared alongside mr yang on the campaign trail this week
if you know a third of the people up the street can't buy groceries then you start to feel an imperative concern he said
this is without irony or a punch line i'm just telling you — this guy's got some great ideas you should check it out
so have i been yanged
i don't know if a universal basic income is the best solution to the problem of inequality
i'm not particularly passionate about lowering the voting age to 16 or requiring police officers to get purple belts in jujitsu
i worry about whether someone with zero foreign policy experience can be the commander in chief
but as bernie sanders sells class rage joe biden promises normalcy and elizabeth warren pushes a social progressivism so perfectly doctrinaire it seems tailored for five kids at oberlin andrew yang's iconoclasm and optimism are refreshing
if getting yanged means that i believe that this curious campaign is a cause for that rarest thing in current american politics — hope — and that mr yang is modeling how to harness the populist energy that otherwise threatens to tear us apart then count me yanggang
america's public restrooms are kind of great now by farhad manjoo dec 11 2019  in the past few years something amazing has been quietly happening across the land
public restrooms in america — long a flash point of exclusion by race gender class and ability — have gotten much much better
thanks to an increasingly effective campaign by a range of activists america's public bathrooms are now cleaner more plentiful more private and more accessible and inclusive than ever
in many places they're even great
this is a story about identity politics advocacy design and architecture
it is also a story still in motion with progress yet to unfold and many people still shut out
there is still much controversy surrounding our bathrooms who gets to use them and how
but it's important to recognize progress as it's happening
and if you travel across america now it's undeniable that how we go keeps getting better
how do i know
at the risk of tmi i happen to be an expert on bathrooms
twenty years ago when i was a senior in college i was diagnosed with a condition called achalasia a rare sometimes genetic swallowing disorder that i was actually quite familiar with because when i was a kid my mother had it too
it began as a blinding burning bolt of pain in the middle of my chest after eating
imagine heartburn after you've eaten something spicy but amped up to 11 as if the thing you'd eaten was a chain saw doused in ghost peppers
the pain would abate after a few minutes but it would come back again and again usually after i'd eaten a big meal
then it began to hurt during big meals then during every meal and soon anytime i'd try to swallow anything
for many people the condition is curable through surgery but for me that longago flash of pain turned out to be only the beginning of an allconsuming chronic and often embarrassing disability
over the last two decades though i've undergone dozens of invasive procedures and tests taken a panoply of pills and had various parts of my digestive system removed or surgically rebuilt my symptoms have only gotten more intense and more — how to put this delicately
— expansive
swallowing food is now an arduous enough task that i have to get much of my nutrition through liquid as kanye once rapped i drink a boost for breakfast an ensure for dessert
but it's no longer just eating that's a pain it's what happens after too
from the nave to the chops my swallowing problem has spawned a grossout comedy's worth of gi
complications
the ugly upshot is this at least once every day and sometimes many times i have to run to the restroom on a moment's notice and what happens to me there is best experienced alone in blissful unembarrassed solitude
i tell you all this in order to establish my bona fides i know public bathrooms
in my travels over the years i have assembled in my head a veritable michelin guide of private peaceful places to go
so trust me when i tell you that in the last few years better public bathrooms have started to pop up everywhere
again and again in big cities and small in red states and blue in airports hotels shopping malls theaters stadiums offices and a range of other public venues i've been saved by a bounty of better loos
more restrooms are now explicitly inclusive and accessible designed for people who are physically disabled are gender nonconforming are traveling with children or are otherwise in need of special accommodation
for instance paruresis and parcopresis phobias that inhibit people from urinating or defecating in public restrooms are real debilitating conditions that affect tens of millions of people
one innovation that has been of particular use to me is the lockable singleoccupancy allgender restroom
a decade ago in most public places it was nigh impossible to find a private place to do your business
today these oneperson stalls are a rising trend across the country especially at airports and other large public facilities
in some places they're labeled all gender restrooms in others they're called family bathrooms in yet others signs welcome everyone with broad language like all persons may use this restroom
whatever you call them they're a haven in a world marked by chaos and disorder
over the last few years when nature called suddenly and panic set in i've had the fortune of finding a clean private place at among other locations the guggenheim in new york the getty center in los angeles the mall of america a dozen airports at least and so so many starbucks
of course things still aren't perfect
i am a member of a racial minority but i'm a cisgender person of means and social privilege
it's likely that a lot of people still find it hard to find clean private restrooms in much of the land
still the restroom situation in america is much better than it used to be and i've noticed so much better than in many other parts of the world
on a trip to britain and france with my kids last year i was surprised at how difficult it was to find a clean private bathroom when there was one you often had to pay to use it
i've seen some very nice bathrooms in dubai but only in places that cater to the wealthy
in south africa and india
forget about it
america has less and less to be proud of these days our life expectancies are falling our infrastructure is crumbling and our politics are in the toilet
but look at our toilets
while there's no official metric on this sort of thing in my estimation american toilets are now likely among the top in the world
japan's loos are said to be very nice if we can't be no
1 it's possible we're at least you know no
2
if it's true that our toilets are getting better it's worth asking why
in a word activists
in the last few years a range of advocates fighting on behalf of transgender people the disabled homeless people and others have mounted a variety of legal and public advocacy campaigns aimed at making bathrooms more accessible
these have sometimes sparked backlash and controversy like the 2016 law in north carolina that rolled back genderinclusive restrooms
at the supreme court this fall justices considering a case about gay and transgender rights couldn't stop themselves from considering everything through the lens of the loo
despite the political controversy on the ground in facilities all over the country the moral arc of the bathroom is bending toward inclusion
at starbucks after a viral incident last year in which two black men who had asked to use the restroom were arrested at a philadelphia location the restrooms are now open to everyone even people who haven't purchased anything
cities are now spending money to create more public restrooms
and earlier this year stalled an organization of designers and activists who push for restroomrelated social justice mounted a successful campaign to get the international plumbing code — which sets standards for bathrooms — to adopt new language supporting allgender restrooms
inclusive design has been a hot new term among architects and product designers the idea broadly is that when you create products and spaces that are accommodating of a broad range of human capacity they end up being much more useful to everyone in unexpected ways
advocates of inclusive design point to some canonical examples sidewalk ramps were put in place for people with wheelchairs but they turned out to be handy for parents with strollers too
some of the technology in the smartphone's touchscreen was invented as a way to help people with disabilities like carpal tunnel syndrome
typewriters and keyboards were first created to help the blind
restrooms are following a similar path
it's not just obviously disabled and gendernonconforming people who need a private more accessible restroom
everyone now and again can do with a nicer place to go to the bathroom
in america at long last we're getting that
thank you social justice warriors
elizabeth warren throws down the gauntlet by elisabeth rosenthal nov 4 2019  laying the table for the next democratic debate elizabeth warren has issued a plan that explains how she would fund what she calls medicare for all
she had studiously avoided saying whether it would raise taxes for the middle class and in her proposal she says repeatedly it will not
it will instead be financed by a mix of wealth taxes employer transfers of money they currently spend on health care and reductions of the many inefficiencies in our current byzantine system — among other initiatives
but now all the candidates need to tell us more of those details about their health care strategies
it's time for the candidates to stop talking slogans and start talking sense — or dollars and cents — so that voters can know what they mean and choose among them
medicare for all medicare for all who want it a public option improving the affordable care act — those are 30000foot concepts that depending on the details could work or not and be popular or not
the candidates including ms warren also need to say more about what they'll do right now in one poll 40 percent of americans said they had skipped a recommended test or treatment and 32 percent said they had skipped a medicine because of cost
supporters of medicare for all want to tie their future to the popularity of the medicare program
but ms warren and bernie sanders are offering up americans a supercharged version of the current government insurance for those over 65
it promises to eliminate copayments for prescription drugs
under current medicare many patients contribute thousands of dollars annually
it includes dental and longterm care — a huge expense that is conspicuously missing from current medicare
that ambition would make a health care plan vastly more expensive
the national health systems of britain and canada both single payer systems like the medicare for all proposal do not offer comprehensive longterm care coverage
canada's doesn't include coverage for prescription drugs out of the hospital
is the financing ms warren proposes going to be adequate to support the expanded goals
economists disagree
but in releasing her proposal she has thrown down the gauntlet before the other candidates — who support medicare for all who want it or some other type of public option — to be a whole lot clearer about what they mean
joe biden kamala harris pete buttigieg et al
 does your public option — a government insurance policy that anyone may buy — resemble mr sanders's enhanced medicare or current medicare or medicaid which is far more bare bones
voters need to know
there's another obvious reason the candidates have been so close lipped on specifics to calculate how to pay for any of the plans the candidates have to say how they intend to bring down prices — for hospital stays drugs procedures devices doctors' visits surgeries
americans often pay two to 10 times what patients pay for these items in other developed countries
those prices will have to come down to make any plan viable without breaking the bank
to really assess any plan we'll need that kind of information
ms warren has courageously stepped into that fraught territory with numbers that have very likely sent shock waves through the health care industry
for example to make her financing proposal work she suggests paying most hospitals on average 110 percent of current medicare rates
she suggests americans should pay no more for drugs than 110 percent of the average international market price
that may be eminently reasonable but is it achievable
when montana negotiated rates directly with hospitals for its state employees it settled on a deal in which the state agreed to pay an average of 234 percent of medicare rates
and it still saved money
setting lower prices is going to bring out strong opposition
remember patient or taxpayer savings mean loss of income for one of america's most profitable industries whose lobbyists spent more than half a billion dollars last year and which is flush with dark money to distribute in congress
to get the aca
passed president barack obama gave up on a number of pricelowering ideas to get buyin from the health care industry and its friends in congress
these included jettisoning the idea of a public option and allowing medicare to negotiate drug prices
the republicans — whose plans have been largely proclamations of better cheaper health care without any strategy — will be quick to label any of the democratic plans as a government takeover of health care or socialism
remember patient or taxpayer savings mean loss of income for the united states' most robust sector in the postrecession economy
in many postmanufacturing cities like pittsburgh and cleveland a single hospital system is the biggest employer
in boston hospitals and hospital corporations make up the top six employers
minnesota and massachusetts have done well with drug and device manufacturing
and let's not start on insurers whose lucrative health business would largely disappear
any plan to rein in the united states' bloated 35 trillion health care system will be slow going requiring not just a footnoted blueprint but also the taming of many opposing forces
it took years for canada to move from a marketbased system to government run health
it endured lengthy debates and doctors' strikes
ms warren calls her proposal a longterm plan
but voters want to know how we get from here to anywhere else
in polls their top health care issue is affordability — emphasis on now
they need concrete proposals as well as longterm vision
in the next debate how about talking about hr
3 a bill in congress to curb prescription drug prices
that plan would allow the health and human services secretary to negotiate a maximum price that could be charged to medicare for insulin and some of the most expensive medicines in the united states based on the prices paid for those drugs in other countries
days before the last democratic debate the congressional budget office said it would save 345 billion over a sixyear period 202329
if the bill were to move to the senate how would the frontrunners vote
what do they have to say about that
four key things you should know about health care by ezekiel j emanuel and victor r fuchs sept 12 2019  health care so far perhaps the biggest issue in the democratic primary is also the most complicated issue facing government and the public
unfortunately the debate is filled with persistent misconceptions from the role insurance company profits play in health care costs to who is actually paying for workers' health coverage
clarifying four fundamental health care fallacies could make it easier for voters to square some of the democratic proposals — and their critiques — with reality  fallacy no
1 employers pay for employees' health insurance
employers write checks that cover most health insurance premiums for employees and their dependents
but as the princeton health economist uwe reinhardt once explained employersponsored insurance is like a pickpocket taking money out of your wallet at a bar and buying you a drink
you appreciate the cocktail until you realize you paid for it yourself
with health coverage employers write the check to the insurer but employees bear the cost of the premium — the entire premium not just the portion listed as their contribution on their pay stub
the premium money that goes to the insurance company is cash that employers would otherwise deposit in employees' accounts like the rest of their salary
the fallacy is in thinking an employer's contribution comes out of profits
in fact higher health insurance premiums mean lower wages for workers
since 1999 health insurance premiums have increased 147 percent and employer profits have increased 148 percent
but in that time average wages have hardly moved increasing just 7 percent
clearly workers' wages not corporate profits have been paying for higher health insurance premiums
health care costs are one — though not the only — reason wages have stagnated over the last few decades
with health insurance costs rising faster than growth in the economy more labor costs go to benefits like health insurance and less to takehome pay
yet the belief that employees don't pay for their own health insurance is widespread
one reason is that individuals cannot be sure what causes their wages to change or remain stagnant for decades
another reason is that employers want americans to believe that they pay for their workers' health insurance
still another reason is that there are those who profit from the employmentbased system drug companies device manufacturers specialty physicians and highincome individuals
they all want you to believe companies are being magnanimous in giving you insurance
who else benefits from the belief in this fallacy
opponents of national health insurance
fallacy no
2 medicare for all is unaffordable
the key to evaluating the cost of medicare for all is to distinguish between increasing spending on health care and shifting expenditures from private insurance to the federal government
true medicare for all would increase federal health care spending
but that is not the same as increasing total health care spending which was over 35 trillion last year
instead medicare for all would move money from one column private health insurance spending to another federal health spending it does not automatically increase total costs
a recent study by the mercatus center at george mason university — a freemarket center generally hostile to government programs — estimates that for the 10 years between 2022 and 2031 the total national health costs for senator bernie sanders's medicare for all plan would actually be 501 trillion
that would be 2 trillion less than if we let the system operate as it currently does
however mercatus researchers doubt that the sanders's plan would ultimately save trillions because they believe congress would have to increase medicare rates paid to hospitals and physicians to get the legislation enacted
they may be right — or wrong
but that is a different argument — a prediction about the politics of enacting laws — than that medicare for all would inherently increase total health care spending
we have our doubts about medicare for all
but unaffordability is not a reason to oppose it
whether it's our current arrangement or a future medicare for all the per capita cost of our health care system already far exceeds that of any other industrialized country — including those with singlepayer systems
when you hear a health care price tag in the trillions know that the existing system has already brought us there
fallacy no
3 insurance companies' profits drive health care costs
in the second democratic presidential debate senator bernie sanders declared that the health care industry makes 100 billion in profits
he once railed against the insurance company anthem for denying a claim while noting that it reported fourthquarter profits for 2017 had increased by 234 percent to 12 billion
many americans believe that profits have no place in health care
they see forprofit health insurance like buying and selling kidneys and livers for transplantation as what the nobel prize winner alvin roth termed a repugnant industry — something that should not be exchanged in the market
that is an important moral stand but it makes no difference to the claim that eliminating forprofit insurers will reduce high health care costs
the fact is we could eliminate those profits and it would hardly matter to the cost of health care
you would not notice it in your premiums
for the eight largest forprofit health insurance companies in 2016 their cumulative revenue amounted to nearly 4522 billion and profits were 221 billion for a profit margin of about 5 percent
by contrast technology companies banks and major drug companies generally make more than 20 percent profit
true 221 billion is a lot of money — but it is 06 percent of health spending
and last year alone health care costs increased over 130 billion — six times insurance company profits
health care spending would not be significantly cheaper if all insurance companies' profits were zero
there are far more savings to be had in other efforts — by cutting unnecessary patient services for example or by making physicians and hospitals more efficient — to deliver the same care at a lower cost
fallacy no
4 price transparency can bring down health care costs
hospitals will be required to publish prices that reflect what people pay for services said president trump when he signed his executive order on health care price transparency
prices will come down by numbers that you wouldn't believe
the cost of health care will go way way down
there is no doubt that prices for medical procedures can range widely even within the same city or state
for instance mris of the spine can vary threefold in massachusetts and mammograms fivefold in san francisco
conservatives argue that informing patients of prices for tests and treatments will induce them to shop for lowercost services saving them insurers and the country money
in theory the beauty of price transparency is that neither the government nor insurers impose cost controls the invisible hand of the market does it all
yet demonstrations of price transparency have been tried many times in many places and in reality it has not reduced the cost of care
one recent study by harvard medical school researchers involved hundreds of thousands of employees and used a website telling them what they would pay outofpocket if they chose particular physicians and hospitals
the result no savings
a followup study using another set of employers and another price transparency tool found the same result no savings
since 2007 new hampshire has had a state website nh health cost that allows patients to select a medical procedure insurer and zip code and then get a list of prices for the procedure from various providers
the most promising study of nh health cost suggests a few million dollars in savings per year
that works out to be about 5 per new hampshire resident
the fact is price transparency will not make health care costs go way way down
health insurance insulates the patient from price
over 80 percent of the cost of medical care is paid by private and public insurance
patients have little incentive to seek out the cheapest provider
when pricing websites exist few patients use them
even in the most favorable studies when offered a price transparency tool only 12 percent of patients took advantage of it usually it's less than 4 percent of patients
furthermore price considerations are useful for choosing only about 40 percent of procedures — routine services like colonoscopies mri
scans and laboratory tests
most of the expensive services — think heart catheterizations cancer chemotherapy and organ transplants — are not the kind of thing you decide based on price
finally in health care americans usually put relationships ahead of money
once patients find a physician they trust and a hospital they like they tend to stick with them even if there is a lowercost alternative nearby
  american health care is complex and any simplistic solution is likely to be based on a fallacy
but that doesn't mean there is nothing we can do
there are solutions — they just don't make for bumper sticker phrases like medicare for all or eliminate forprofit insurers or price transparency
george soros mark zuckerberg should not be in control of facebook by george soros jan 31 2020  at a dinner last week in davos switzerland i was asked if i thought facebook was behaving more responsibly today than it did during the 2016 presidential election
not at all i answered
facebook helped trump to get elected and i am afraid that it will do the same in 2020
i explained that there is a longstanding law — section 230 of the communications decency act — that protects social media platforms from legal liability for defamation and similar claims
facebook can post deliberately misleading or false statements by candidates for public office and others and take no responsibility for them
i went on to say that there appears to be an informal mutual assistance operation or agreement developing between trump and facebook in which facebook will help president trump to get reelected and mr trump will in turn defend facebook against attacks from regulators and the media
this is just plain wrong a facebook spokesman told business insider
i disagree
i believe that mr trump and facebook's chief executive mark zuckerberg realize that their interests are aligned — the president's in winning elections mr zuckerberg's in making money
let's look at the evidence in 2016 facebook provided the trump campaign with embedded staff who helped to optimize its advertising program
hillary clinton's campaign was also approached but it declined to embed a facebook team in her campaign's operations
brad parscale the digital director of mr trump's 2016 campaign and now his campaign manager for 2020 said that facebook helped mr trump and gave him the edge
this seems to have marked the beginning of a special relationship
more recently direct contact between the two men has raised serious questions
mr zuckerberg met with mr trump in the oval office on sept 19 2019
we don't know what was said
but from an interview on the sidelines at the world economic forum on jan 22 we do know what mr trump said about the meeting mr zuckerberg told me that i'm no
1 in the world in facebook
mr trump apparently had no problem with facebook's decision not to factcheck political ads
i'd rather have him just do whatever he is going to do mr trump said of mr zuckerberg
he's done a hell of a job when you think of it
the president's 2016 campaign mounted a robust datacentric communications effort and has continued to build on that program over the past few years using facebook as a key part of their strategy
facebook's decision not to require factchecking for political candidates' advertising in 2020 has flung open the door for false manipulated extreme and incendiary statements
such content is rewarded with prime placement and promotion if it meets facebookdesigned algorithmic standards for popularity and engagement
what's more facebook's design tends to obscure the sources of inflammatory and false content and fails to adequately punish those who spread false information
nor does the company effectively warn those who are exposed to lies
i expressed my fear that with facebook's help mr trump will win the 2020 election
the recent hiring of a rightwing figure to help manage its news tab has reinforced those fears
in my comments in davos i also pointed out that facebook has been used to cause worse damage in other countries than the united states
in myanmar for example military personnel used facebook to help incite the public against the rohingya who were targeted in a military assault of incredible cruelty including murder rape and the burning of entire villages around 700000 rohingya fled to bangladesh
the international court of justice in the hague is currently deliberating whether these atrocities qualify as genocide
but within the last year facebook has introduced new features on its mobile app that actually intensify the fire of incendiary political attacks — making them easier and quicker to propagate
the system is costfree to the poster and revenuegenerating for facebook
good for facebook bad for democracy
the responsible approach is selfevident
facebook is a publisher not just a neutral moderator or platform
it should be held accountable for the content that appears on its site
speaking at a cocktail party in davos on jan 22 facebook's chief operating officer sheryl sandberg repeated the worn silicon valley clich� that facebook is trying to make the world a better place
but facebook should be judged by what it does not what it says
i repeat and reaffirm my accusation against facebook under the leadership of mr zuckerberg and ms sandberg
they follow only one guiding principle maximize profits irrespective of the consequences
one way or another they should not be left in control of facebook
give joe biden his due by frank bruni dec 20 2019  pete buttigieg and elizabeth warren are the shiny objects
joe biden just may be the keepsake that endures
the other two went at it on thursday night quarreling over the meaning and morality of a wine cave in an exchange that distilled the democratic primary's broader tension between pragmatism and purity compromise and idealism
biden was careful not to be drawn too far into it and during other stretches of the debate stood back
why wouldn't he
for all the worry because he sometimes stutters for all the concern because he occasionally sputters for all his corny locutions malarkey and reflexive conversation fillers here's the deal the former vice president has almost consistently maintained a lead over his democratic rivals in national polls since he announced his candidacy last april
he has recently gained ground in iowa the state that votes first meaning that he may avoid what had been looking like a candidacyimperiling embarrassment there
he has survived salvos from critics and messes of his own that were supposed to halt or at least hobble him the attention to his crossingtheline physicality with women the flipflop about public funding of abortions the backandforth with kamala harris about busing the moment at the fifth democratic primary debate when he seemed to forget either that she was in the senate or that she was black
all of that supposedly made him look weak
but none of that appreciably weakened him
and at the latest debate he performed better than before — which may not be saying a lot but is saying something
he still can't speak in a straight line instead zigging and zagging if he were a car his tires would constantly scrape the curb and his hubcaps would probably pop off
but they stayed on this time around
biden 77 seemed more relaxed and confident and he radiated his trademark warmth
it's difficult not to like him
and it's time to give him his due
so many of us haven't and i'm as guilty as anyone
in past columns i urged him not to run — citing his unsuccessful previous presidential bids his age his eccentricities and his outright flaws — and doubted his ability to go the distance
i joined other pundits and political analysts in treating biden's frontrunner status as fictive or inevitably fleeting and as the bequest of simple name recognition
we decreed that other contenders — harris for an instant warren and buttigieg for longer even bernie sanders of late — had momentum
biden had vestigial good will which we regarded as a less flashy and flimsier commodity
when we examined biden we saw warning signs
look at that light schedule
check out those anemic fundraising numbers
sure many democratic voters deemed him the most electable alternative at a juncture when snatching back the white house mattered infinitely more to them than any romance with a figure fresher and more inspiring than he is
but would they stick
and could he last
so far so good — or rather so biden which in thursday night's debate meant a quizzical reference to winston churchill some endearingly loose banter with sanders and an overarching aura of sheer goodnaturedness
when one of the moderators tim alberta of politico brought up the subject of age biden said look i'm running because i've been around
all my experience
with experience hopefully comes judgment and a little bit of wisdom
alberta noted that if biden won the presidency he'd be 82 at the end of his first term
are you willing to commit tonight to running for a second term
no i'm not willing to commit one way or another biden said without pause to supportive laughter from the audience
here's the deal
i'm not even elected one term yet and let's see where we are
but it's a nice thought
it was a nice answer
moderators gave him ample opportunity to stumble challenging him for example on the obama administration's failure to close guant�namo bay and its exaggeration of progress in the war in afghanistan
he had answers at the ready and exhibited zero discomfort
while he was evasive about a few topics he was emphatic about his disagreement with sanders and warren on medicare for all
and he leapt into the fray to explain that he finds that plan exorbitant and farfetched
i'm the only guy that's not interrupted he said
all right i'm going to interrupt now
this from a man who at a previous debate cut himself off even before moderators did
i maintain serious reservations about him
thirtysix years in the senate and eight in the vice presidency add up not just to enormous experience but also to a sprawling record that's a gold mine for detractors
he undeniably lacks the vigor he once possessed
and president trump's cynical airing of questions about his past dealings with ukraine — and about the lucrative position that his son hunter had on the board of the natural gas company burisma — remains a potential liability for biden who still hasn't found and delivered the perfect rebuttal
but journalists may not have the right antenna for how this is playing out
when biden admonished a man in iowa who credulously parroted trump's line of attack many political analysts pronounced him imprudently thinskinned and unattractively defensive
but many voters surely saw him as authentic relatable — a loving father and decent person disgusted with the nastiness coming his way
there's an upside to trading a safe conventional political script for something rawer
trump demonstrated that in 2016
and on thursday night biden reasserted the fundamental generosity of spirit that separates him from trump and is like a tall cold glass of water to americans thirsty for decency
i refuse to accept the notion as some on this stage do that we can never never get to a place where we have cooperation again he said making a pitch for bipartisanship
if that's the case we are dead as a country
we need to be able to reach a consensus
and if anyone has reason to be angry with the republicans and not want to cooperate it's me — the way they've attacked me my son and my family
he got fresh reason during the debate when sarah huckabee sanders the former white house press secretary sent out a tweet that ridiculed his stutter
she deleted it — and apologized — after he asked her where her empathy had gone a question i assumed was rhetorical
it died on the altar of trump where too many other republicans sacrificed their principles too
biden glows in comparison
he almost looks shiny
gone with the windsors by maureen dowd jan 11 2020  i never had much use for the queen
maybe it's the irish in me
as winston churchill said we've always found the irish a bit odd
they refuse to be english
or maybe it's the american in me
we did go to an awful lot of trouble to break away from that corgiandginloving racket 244 years ago
at some visceral level though america must regret being torn away from the royal family
how else to explain our enduring fascination with dynasties
having spent my career covering four dysfunctional political dynasties i rebel more than ever at the idea that biology entitles you to authority
the ghost of diana gone rogue animates the fractured fairy tale of meghan and harry and their intemperate attempt to upend centuries of starchy rules and break away from the firm
princess di's dangerous tango with the tabloids left harry with no taste to play that game again especially with streaks of racism against markle added to the mix
he recently confessed that every click or flash of a camera brought memories of his mother's death racing back into his mind
i covered diana's first trip as the princess of wales to america in 1985
she seemed happy then in that year before charles resumed his relationship with camilla parker bowles
she and the prince shared amused eye contact winks and teasing remarks
nancy reagan planned an evening of candlelit dancing at the white house worthy of a 24yearold cinderella in a midnight blue velvet gown
mrs reagan arranged for the marine band to play night fever as john travolta spun a euphoric diana around the floor
she's a great little mover he said afterward
i wondered how prince charles would deal with a young wife with so much star power absorbing so much attention
we were all mesmerized when she tucked her chin down in that shy pose and cast that modest yet saucy look up at us
the answer was he did not deal with it well
twelve years later when the unimaginable tragedy hit the royal ice cubes were furious at the expectation that they should emote for the woman who had publicly ripped the monarchy as a bloodless soulless gang and christened herself the prisoner of wales
the firm was out of its depth then and it is again now
how can the queen and prince philip and prince charles possibly understand the desire of meghan and harry to rebrand as a goopish lifestyle enterprise
the news that they have applied to trademark hundreds of items from socks to hoodies under the sussex royal logo makes wallis simpson's exile in the bahamas spent matching the color on the walls to her face powder seem positively monastic
can you really call yourself financially independent when all you're doing is cashing in on the royal name
given the state of the world and the implosion of the british empire — with scots once more contemplating an off ramp irish unity in play australia on fire and boris johnson tricking the queen into suspending parliament in a brexit ploy — it is hard to feel sorry for the duchess of sussex complaining that her diamonds are heavy
the pathos for markle trapped in a designer cage goes only so far
it's easy for royals to come to north america where they are lavishly embraced as celebrities without all those pesky restrictions about class and role
see the crown episode about a wild imbibing princess margaret charming lbj
still i think meghan markle should have wielded her wokeness where it is most needed — in buckingham palace
she could have channeled the obamas who did a magnificent job of rising above racist taunts and working within the institution to imprint a new image of racial possibility in america
markle had already successfully brought a refreshing dose of semiradical chic to the royal family
her visits to a mosque that housed londoners displaced by the grenfell tower fire led to her putting out a 2018 cookbook the proceeds of which went to the victims
at its best the monarchy has been able to lift up people as it did during the blitz in world war ii
i saw that ability to alchemize emotions and opinions when i covered the queen on her visit to ireland in 2011 the first by a british monarch in a century
it was impossible not to be impressed watching her speak gaelic and offering regret about how britain had made ireland suffer bowing her head at the scene of bloody sunday and the garden of remembrance the sacred ground for slain irish patriots
the irish started out skeptical but by the end of her visit many were calling her betty on twitter
the queen of england holds out the idea that she and her family should have some sort of vestigial moral authority
but with the prince andrew imbroglio in the seraglio of jeffrey epstein and with harry's run for the hollywood hills it is clear that many in her family are not interested in moral authority
the collapse of the authority of the british monarchy mirrors the collapse of authorities generally scarred by years of scandals about clergymen abusing children athletes beating up girlfriends and university officials accepting bribes
and yet even if the royals' role in the culture is now akin to the kardashians it wasn't cool for meghan and harry to pants the 93yearold queen defy her instructions dump their megxit plan on instagram and intensify the sad split between the brothers
if ever there was a time for some dry gin
…  what's the rush to give up real influence to be an instagram influencer
besides who unfollows their own grandmother
good for meghan and harry by the editorial board jan 9 2020  and they lived happily ever after affirm the stories we tell our children about a beautiful commoner marrying prince charming
just make sure your kids don't see thursday's headlines in the london dailies
civil war as harry  meg quit the royals screamed the sun
queen's fury as harry and meghan say we quit blared the daily mail in a royal bombshell special issue
they didn't even tell the queen lamented the daily mirror
any other news from the drums of war in iran to passage at last of a brexit bill in parliament was swept away for megxit as the tabloids promptly called the decision by prince harry and his wife meghan to step back from the ribboncutting kindergartenvisiting and foreigntraveling duties they've been assigned as their royal highnesses the duke and duchess of sussex
they will try they said in a statement posted on instagram wednesday to become financially independent and to balance their lives between britain and north america
how that will work is hard to predict
no one has ever resigned from the firm as the british call the royal clan though some have been exiled or fired — most notably edward viii who had to renounce the throne and leave britain to marry an american divorc�e and most recently prince andrew queen elizabeth ii's second son over his connections to the sex offender jeffrey epstein
true to the intense attention the duke and duchess of sussex have attracted since their marriage in may 2018 the press was quickly filled with stories about their finances and prospects and about how the queen the prince's grandmother would handle the defection
a few articles actually showed sympathy for a couple trapped in a gilded cage that exposed them to constant scrutiny — and in the duchess's case virulent racism
sarcasm and exaggeration come easily when writing about royals and the story of prince harry the rambunctious second son of prince charles and diana princess of wales reaching across the atlantic to marry an american actress was custommade for the tabloids — and yes for serious papers like this one
their wedding at windsor castle and the birth of an adorable son archie a year later was grand copy a morality tale of a changing world a fairy tale updated with diverse millennials
but as the children's stories fail to warn unsuspecting youngsters being royal isn't all about living happily and certainly not ever after
almost from the outset a parallel line of nasty stories spread in the tabloids about meghan's difficulties with her american family and purported rifts among the royal family
instead of adopting the british tradition of a stiff upper lip in the face of adversity as queen elizabeth has so admirably done throughout her long and crisisriddled reign prince harry and meghan proclaimed that they did not intend to play by the old rules
the prince who lost his mother to a horrific car chase through paris spoke openly about his emotional struggles the duchess made no secret of the difficulties of her new role
not many people have asked if i'm ok she told one interviewer
in october the couple struck back filing a lawsuit against the mail on sunday over the publication of a private letter from meghan to her father
in a statement explaining the suit prince harry assailed the tabloids and the suffering they caused his wife
for these select media this is a game and one that we have been unwilling to play from the start he wrote
i have been a silent witness to her private suffering for too long
to stand back and do nothing would be contrary to everything we believe in
given this background the couple's decision to withdraw from the firm should not come as a surprise though it appeared to be just that to the queen and the heir apparent prince charles
reared in the tradition of monarchy as the symbol and mainstay of the nation they have stoically carried on in their duties even as their world and their family has been battered by the winds of change discontent and scandal as dramatized in the netflix series the crown
evidently they expected the duke and duchess of sussex to do just that and to rear children who would as well
but the real value of the royal family has never been in cutting ribbons and proving endless fodder for the tabloids it has been in the continuing saga of fairy tale kings and queens coming to terms with the world
in this story prince harry and meghan should not be lamented as defectors from the old order but celebrated as the heroes of the next installment as modern royals renouncing some level of privilege to seek their fortune in the real world
may they live happily ever after
how much of harvard's 40 billion endowment is invested in fossil fuels
by devi lockwood jan 29 2020  in my senior year at harvard i was invited to a dinner in honor of the writer margaret atwood the recipient of the 2014 harvard arts medal
on my way out the door i lingered shrugged on my coat took a deep breath and walked up to the university's president at the time drew gilpin faust
we had met twice once during her office hours and at an ice cream social
please divest from fossil fuels i said hoping to catch her off guard
the president at first seemingly happy to see me rearranged her face
her shoulders crept up toward her ears
you students don't understand investments she said
then she walked out of the room
i have benefited immeasurably from harvard's investments in me
but recognizing where some of harvard's 40 billion endowment is invested was a cause of growing unease for me and some of my classmates
students at other campuses were similarly concerned about the endowments of their schools
figuring out exactly how much of harvard's endowment is invested in oil gas and coal companies is a nearimpossible task
harvard is required to disclose only direct investments in which the university owns shares of a specific company
harvard says its direct investments amounted to 394 million as of may 2019 or roughly 1 percent of the endowment total
divest harvard a student group determined that of that approximate amount 56 million was invested in companies that produce or own reserves of oil natural gas and coal and large electric utilities powered by natural gas and coal
harvard doesn't comment on its individual investments
but in 2015 the south pole group a carbon finance consultant in zurich analyzed 989 million of harvard's then 364 billion endowment at the request of divest harvard and 350org
based on those investments the group estimated that the overall endowment was responsible for annual emissions of 11 million tons of carbon dioxide roughly equivalent to the annual emissions from delaware
it's easy to get bogged down in the numbers but the exact amount of harvard's fossil fuel investments or the emissions it is responsible for isn't all that important
as the world faces a climate crisis any amount of investment in companies that extract or burn fossil fuels is too much especially by one of the world's leading universities
lawrence bacow the university's current president explained in the harvard gazette last fall that rather than divest the university believes that engaging with industry to confront the challenge of climate change is ultimately a sounder and more effective approach for our university
but many students have not been content with that approach
as part of a divestment campaign in may 2014 an undergraduate brett roche was arrested by harvard university police for blocking an entrance to massachusetts hall where president faust and members of the administration had their offices
in april 2015 during harvard heat week students faculty alumni and community members blockaded president faust's office once more
last november at the harvardyale football game climate change protesters stormed the field at half time delaying the game for roughly an hour
to date 532 faculty members have signed a petition in favor of divestment from fossil fuels
the result
nothing has happened
other campuses have had more luck
after pressure from student groups stanford announced in 2014 that it would not make direct investments in publicly traded companies whose principal business is coal mining
the university of maine followed suit in 2015 divesting all direct holdings from coal companies
in 2017 columbia university announced divestment from producers of coal burned to generate electricity
other schools have taken additional steps divesting not only from coal producers but also from oil and gas companies
these include sterling college in 2013 the university of hawaii university of dayton syracuse university and the rhode island school of design in 2015 and the university of oregon in 2016
the university of california system announced last september that it would divest 13 billion of its 83 billion endowment and 70 billion of pensions from fossil fuel producers
recognizing that student activism hasn't worked on its own two harvard college alumni from the class of 2018 danielle strasburger and nath�n goldberg started thinking about the harvard board of overseers election
last year they founded harvard forward an alumnirun organization that aims to elect five recently graduated candidates to the board
the board of overseers mostly advises the university on strategic decisions though it does have the power to consent to the election of members to the harvard corporation
the average age of the five candidates is 28 — the same number of years that on average have passed since the current overseers were harvard students
their platform includes complete and swift divestment of all university assets from fossil fuels
the board is composed of 30 harvard alumni who sit for sixyear terms
each year in april five new members are voted in by alumni
a nomination committee of the harvard alumni association generally chooses eight candidates who will be added to the slate
there's another way in though — though a petition process
to qualify each candidate needs 2936 signed nomination forms equivalent to 1 percent of eligible voters living harvard alumni with the exception of current professors administrators and staff
the first test will come on feb 1 the deadline to qualify for the ballot
when we spoke last week ms strasburger estimated that between 2300 and 2400 nomination forms had already been signed in favor of each candidate
they are nearly there
this is not just about harvard
and it's also not just about whether you think divestment is a strategy that is worth pursuing or whether it has an impact
rather harvard forward is a model for building power by young people — of breaking the logjam within large institutions and making change happen
this approach is not new
from 1985 to 1991 harvard and radcliffe alumniae against apartheid campaigned for harvard to divest its stock in companies operating in south africa
the organization used the same nominatebypetition system to elect four members to the board including archbishop desmond tutu who stated that he would return his honorary degree unless harvard divested entirely from south africa
by the 1980s harvard did
younger alumni realized then that they needed a seat at the decision making table to create change
that is exactly what harvard forward is seeking
on jan 15 harvard global networking night over 100 volunteers for harvard forward — many of them alumni from the 1960s '70s and '80s — attended 50 alumni events in 20 states and 20 countries with petitions in hand
that night alone they gathered over 1000 signatures
alumni can submit petitions to nominate the younger slate of candidates until the deadline on saturday at 5 pm harvard forward has volunteers in 35 cities to collect forms at signature parties this week
a lot of people want to know how they can make an impact when it comes to climate ms strasburger told me
if you have a chance to influence a 40 billion endowment that's a pretty big deal
how to avoid the coronavirus
wash your hands by elisabeth rosenthal jan 28 2020  americans are watching with alarm as a new coronavirus spreads in china and cases pop up in the united states
they are barraged with information about what kinds of masks are best to prevent viral spread
students are handing out masks in seattle
masks have run out in brazos county tex
hang on
i've worked as an emergency room physician
and as a new york times correspondent in china i covered the sars outbreak in 2002 and 2003 during which a novel coronavirus first detected in guangdong sickened more than 8000 people and killed more than 800
my two children attended elementary school in beijing throughout the outbreak
here are my main takeaways from that experience for ordinary people on the ground  1
wash your hands frequently
2
don't go to the office when you are sick
don't send your kids to school or day care when they are ill either
notice i didn't say anything about masks
having a mask with you as a precaution makes sense if you are in the midst of an outbreak as i was when out reporting in the field during those months
but wearing it constantly is another matter
i donned a mask when visiting hospitals where sars patients had been housed
i wore it in the markets where wild animals that were the suspected source of the outbreak were being butchered blood droplets flying
i wore it in crowded enclosed spaces that i couldn't avoid like airplanes and trains as i traveled to cities involved in the outbreak like guangzhou and hong kong
you never know if the guy coughing and sneezing two rows ahead of you is ill or just has an allergy
but outdoors infections don't spread well through the air
those photos of people walking down streets in china wearing masks are dramatic but uninformed
and remember if a mask has perchance intercepted viruses that would have otherwise ended up in your body then the mask is contaminated
so in theory to be protected maybe you should use a new one for each outing
the simple masks are better than nothing but not all that effective since they don't seal well
for anyone tempted to go out and buy the gold standard n95 respirators note that they are uncomfortable
breathing is more work
it's hard to talk to people
on one long flight at the height of the outbreak on which my few fellow passengers were mostly epidemiologists trying to solve the sars puzzle many of us including me wore our masks for the first couple of hours on the flight
then the food and beverage carts came
though viruses spread through droplets in the air a bigger worry to me was always transmission via what doctors call fomites infected items
a virus gets on a surface — a shoe or a doorknob or a tissue for example
you touch the surface and then next touch your face or rub your nose
it's a great way to acquire illness
so after walking in the animal markets i removed my shoes carefully and did not take them into the hotel room
and of course i washed my hands immediately
remember by all indications sars which killed about 10 percent of those infected was a deadlier virus than the new coronavirus circulating now
so keep things in perspective
faced with sars many foreigners chose to leave beijing or at least to send their children back to the united states
our family stayed kids included
we wanted them with us and didn't want them to miss school especially during what would be their final year in china
but equally important in making the decision was that the risk of getting sars on an airplane or in the airport seemed greater than being smart and careful while staying put in beijing
and we were i stopped taking my kids to indoor playgrounds or crowded malls or delicious but densely packed neighborhood beijing restaurants
out of an abundance of caution we canceled a family vacation to cambodia — though my fear was less about catching sars on the flight than that one of the kids would have a fever from an ear infection upon our return at a border screening and would be stuck in a prolonged quarantine in china
we instead took a vacation within china where we carried masks with us but didn't use them except on a short domestic flight
in time during the sars outbreak the government shut down theaters and schools in beijing as it is doing now in many chinese cities because these viruses are more easily transmitted in such crowded places
but there was also a lot of irrational behavior entering a village on the way to a hike near the great wall our car was stopped by locals who had set up a roadblock to check the temperature of all passengers
they used an oral thermometer that was only minimally cleaned after each use
what a great way to spread a virus
the international school of beijing where my children were students was one of the few in the capital — perhaps the only one — that stayed open throughout the sars outbreak though the classes were emptier since so many kids had departed to their home countries
it was a studied but brave move since a parent at the school had gotten sars at the very beginning of the outbreak on a flight back from hong kong
she recovered fine but it was close to home and families were scared
the school instituted a bunch of simple precautionary policies a stern note to parents reminding them not to send a child to school who was sick and warning them that students would be screened for fevers with ear thermometers at the school door
there was no sharing of food at lunch
the teacher led the kids in frequent hand washing throughout the day at classroom sinks while singing a prolonged hand washing song to ensure they did more than a cursory pass under the faucet with water only
if a family left beijing and came back the child would have to stay at home for an extended period before returning to class to make sure they hadn't caught sars elsewhere
with those precautions in place i observed something of a public health miracle not only did no child get sars but it seemed no student was sick with anything at all for months on end
no stomach bugs
no common colds
attendance was more or less perfect
the world health organization declared the sars outbreak contained in july 2003
but oh that those habits persisted
the best firstline defenses against sars or the new coronavirus or most any virus at all are the ones that grandma and common sense taught us after all
inconvenient murders by bari weiss  two years ago a 27yearold man named kobili traor� walked into the paris apartment of a 65yearold kindergarten teacher named sarah halimi
mr traor� beat ms halimi and stabbed her
according to witnesses he called her a demon and a dirty jew
he shouted allahu akbar then threw ms halimi's battered body out of her thirdstory apartment window
this is what mr traor� told prosecutors i felt persecuted
when i saw the torah and a chandelier in her home i felt oppressed
i saw her face transforming
one would think that this would be an openandshut hate crime
it was the coldblooded murder of a woman in her own home for the sin of being a jew
but french prosecutors decided to drop murder charges against mr traor� because he … had smoked cannabis
if france's betrayal of sarah halimi is shocking to you perhaps you haven't been paying much attention to what by now can be described as a moral calamity sweeping the west of which her story is only the clearest example
a crisis i hasten to add that's perhaps less known because it has been largely overlooked by the mainstream press
the most generous read of this enormous blind spot is that the story is not always straightforward there have been some laudable steps to fight back
on tuesday for example the french parliament formally adopted the international holocaust remembrance alliance's definition of antisemitism when it passed a motion declaring antizionism a form of jewhatred
yet on the same day more than 100 jewish gravestones were found spraypainted with swastikas in a cemetery near strasbourg — a potent reminder that governments are only as good as the culture and the people upholding them
so allow me to put it plainly we are suffering from a widespread social health epidemic and it is rooted in the cheapening of jewish blood
if hatred of jews can be justified as a misunderstanding or ignored as a mistake or played down as a slip of the tongue or waved away as just antizionism you can all but guarantee it will be
yet beneath the fingerpointing and the victimblaming and the accusations of panic lobbed against a people that know a little something about persecution there is the same old bigotry — the hatred of jews that has presaged the death of so many seemingly civilized societies
a hatred that still after centuries exerts its powerful allure during periods of political and economic unrest when the angry the confused the shortchanged and the scared look for simple explanations and a scapegoat
and even those who seek to uplift the marginalized can't seem to find their voice when it comes to jews facing antisemitism
take a look at some of the events around the thanksgiving holiday incidents that have kept jews all over the world glued to their phones and which have driven some to update their and their children's passports
start with britain
last friday night a rabbi who had just left a synagogue was beaten on the street by teenagers screaming kill the jews
these nowregular occurrences come as there's a decent chance that the labour leader jeremy corbyn will become the next prime minister — giving antisemites the imprimatur of a major western government
mr corbyn's long history of slurs against jews and israel his warm words about his friends in hezbollah and his worldview which finds far more to admire in countries like russia and venezuela than england itself are well documented
to choose just the latest headline the bbc he said on iranian state television is biased toward saying that israel has a right to exist
my favorite remains his remark that british zionists who having lived in this country for a very long time probably all their lives don't understand english irony
the fish rots from the head and so it has with labour
according to britain's chief rabbi ephraim mirvis there are 130 cases of outstanding complaints of antisemitism against labour party members
ninetythree percent of british jews say they won't vote for labour
fortyseven percent say they will seriously consider emigrating if labour wins
and yet the latest polling shows labour rallying
other issues jews are told are more important than their own safety
sometimes their fears are dismissed as hysteria
the socialist filmmaker ken loach has called it a witch hunt
the powerful union leader len mccluskey has accused the jewish community of intransigent hostility
when rabbi mirvis took the extraordinary step of weighing in on the election insisting that the very soul of our nation is at stake he was accused variously of bad faith of taking focus away from the real threat of rightwing bigotry and of actually stoking antisemitism himself
jewish voice for labour the party's pet jewish front group has codified all of these gaslighting tactics in a document that helpfully lays out the strategy for how other political groups and movements with a will to power can shut down jewish concerns about organized systemic antisemitism
over in italy the town of schio decided against establishing a holocaust memorial — the subtle brass stumbling stones called stolpersteine that dot the streets of european cities where survivors of hitler's genocide still stroll — on the grounds that 14 stones in a city of 40000 would prove too divisive
let the victims rest in peace said alberto bertoldo a local politician
the memorial he said would risk generating new hatred and division
while in schio the holocaust proves a divisive moral issue in montreal it was a planned trip to israel
jordyn wright is a jewish sophomore who sits on the board of the students' society of mcgill university
over winter break she is planning like hundreds of other north american jewish college students to go to israel with hillel
as a result of that trip the student government voted to call for her resignation
never mind that the trip included time with palestinians in the west bank
never mind that another student government leader is also going apparently because that student is not a jew no resignation was required
i toggled over the weekend between ms wright's chilling account of the history of antijewish discrimination at her school and the washington post which had published a frothy profile of valerie plame the former cia
officer who is now running for congress as a democrat in new mexico
there we learn that ms plame looks astoundingly good at 56 as if the highaltitude desert air has preserved her skin since the day she arrived here 12 years ago
yet nowhere in the long article does the reader learn that two years ago ms plame tweeted an essay called american jews are driving america's wars by a man famous for his antijewish conspiracy thinking on a website that flirts with holocaust denial
she also shared an article that linked israel to the sept 11 attacks
it somehow didn't merit mention
elsewhere in the democratic party linda sarsour the activist who was removed from her leadership position in the women's march thanks to her history of antisemitic scandals and who now serves as a surrogate for the presidential candidate bernie sanders gave a talk on friday to a group called american muslims for palestine
the part of her talk that circulated online focused on the apparent hypocrisy of progressive zionists how ms sarsour asked about people who are the no
1 target of white supremacists can they claim to oppose white supremacy when they support a state like israel that is built on supremacy that is built on the idea that jews are supreme to everybody else
lest you think this is just antizionism consider that the sanders surrogate was speaking at a conference that printed the following sentence in its program zionism has come in like a disease to destroy the purity of al quds
al quds is the arabic name for jerusalem
should i tell you about a christian fundamentalist show on trunews hosted by a man named rick wiles
trunews was granted an interview by donald trump jr and its representative was called on by president trump at a news conference
last week on his show mr wiles claimed that jews are behind the impeachment proceedings against the president
a jew coup he called it that would replace mr trump with a jewish cabal
should i tell you about the swastikas found at sixth  i a synagogue and a hub of jewish cultural and intellectual life in washington
or the ones painted in red on a statue of the great yiddish writer sholem aleichem in ukraine
or that on monday morning in crown heights brooklyn a jewish subway rider reported that another woman yelled slurs and threatened to throw her onto the tracks
and that the following day also in crown heights three teenagers hurled rocks at a jewish elementary school bus breaking a window
there is a theme here
the theme is that jewhatred is surging and yet jewish victimhood does not command attention or inspire popular outrage
that unless jews are murdered by neonazis the one group everyone of conscience recognizes as evil jews' inconvenient murders their beatings their discrimination the singling out of their state for demonization will be explained away
when you look at each of these incidents perhaps it is possible still to pretend that these are random bursts of bigotry perpetrated by hooligans lacking any real organization or power behind them
but mr corbyn's electoral prospects in britain tell a different far more distressing story — that a person with some of the same impulses as those hooligans can stand within spitting distance of the office of prime minister
this is what happens when a culture decides that jewish lives are stumbling stones
instead of a generational culture war let's fight the rich by farhad manjoo nov 6 2019  generations are pretty bogus
the labels we use to casually slice up society — boomer millennial gen x gen z — are a nearly useless way of thinking about politics culture or business in america
the very idea that tens of millions of people across different classes and races and geographies might hold similar views on a range of subjects just because they happened to be born during the same 20year span of american history — the whole thing sounds a bit too much like astrology doesn't it
in fact demographers whose profession came up with these labels constantly stress the limitations and complications of generational analysis
generations can be useful for observing broadscale changes in attitudes over long periods of time but they break down into clich�s and stereotypes when they are used to make specific observations about the world
marketers and much of the media tend to be quite careless in how we wield generational labels
we invest these categories with too much meaning often ascribing to generational ideology what is more likely a product of age wealth and a variety of other factors
consider for instance the absurd parade of stories about how millennials are killing various industries from golf to wedding rings
they collectively paint young people as being somehow philosophically deficient as consumers rather than simply not very wealthy
of course i would dismiss generations i'm a gen xer and our whole thing is rejecting labels
on the other hand i might be a boomer because lately i've been nursing a crazy conspiracy theory about generational analysis i think it's a plot by the man to keep us from changing the world
focusing on generational differences distracts the masses from going after more salient differences in society — especially the power held by the wealthy whatever their age
all of this explains why i'm not really ok
with ok boomer the latest rallying cry in the permanent war between the young and the old
as taylor lorenz reported in the times last week ok boomer is a meme started by teenagers to shred older people who express a broad range of antiquated ideas about the world
the grammar snoot in me — and my copy editor — would prefer the meme rendered as ok boomer with periods and a comma but of course that's not how teenagers write
at first glance the phrase — which since lorenz's report has been coopted and repeated into cringing ubiquity by just about every other generation — is the perfect response to your racist grandpa on facebook and your liberal uncle on wall street who is very worried about medicare for all
it's knowing cutting dismissive and almost impossible to gracefully recover from ok boomer and you're done
at the risk of sounding like a patronizing old i'll concede that ok boomer means well and i don't begrudge teenagers their anger
they are certainly right that over several generations and across political ideologies the holders of political and economic power in america totally screwed things up for the future
boomer leaders and their forebears underinvested in longterm infrastructure and safety nets and economic and environmental rules
they overindulged in wars and tax cuts and systemic deregulation
they long overlooked racial and gender bias sexual harassment and just about every other form of systemic discrimination
they brought the country and the world to the sorry place we're in now
yet it's a mistake to blame all boomers for the sins of the most powerful among them
as a taunt ok boomer overlooks the vast differences within the postwar generation — there are rich boomers and poor boomers farleft boomers and farright ones boomers who are fighting for right and those who are hopelessly stuck in yesteryear
ok boomer also lets other generations off the hook neglecting the facts that millennials keep gaining greater economic and political power and that some of them are starting to act and sound like archetypal boomers
teenagers themselves seem to recognize this — boomer is state of mind lorenz writes of how the young think of the term
on the phone she pointed to further evidence of the flexibility of boomer as a taunt
on twitter she notes pete buttigieg the youngest of the 2020 democratic candidates is frequently dismissed as radiating big boomer energy
even though he's a millennial there's something about his rhetorical style that feels antiquated
and buttigieg's boomerishness only underlines the hollowness of the whole idea of generational stereotyping
it suggests a more profitable political path for young people instead of canceling an entire generation why not set your sights on a smaller more specific group one that bears more direct complicity in america's widening dystopia
not to go full chapo trap house on you but yes i'm talking about the wealthy
instead of ok boomer how about ok billionaire
i've been preoccupied with billionaires for much of the year
in february i argued that we should abolish billionaires and wannabe billionaires because they exert outsize control over america's resources
insofar as they highlight the unforgivable ways that wealthy people have rigged the political system billionaires are both a convenient and an appropriate political target of the moment
on just about any important issue of the day from climate change to mass incarceration to defeating donald trump meaningful political change will come about only through crossgenerational coordination — it will require concerned people of all ages to band together to alter the status quo
one reason this is difficult in america is we've been conditioned to think that people who are much older or younger than we are might be completely alien beings every millennial is an avocadoeating virtue signaler who won't listen to opposing views all boomers are white affluent selfish racists who can't recognize their privilege and the two sides will never see eye to eye on anything
but that is plainly false
last month representative alexandria ocasiocortez who's 30 endorsed 78yearold bernie sanders for president — not despite his age but because sanders's decades of work on progressive causes was a sign of his fidelity to the movement
in the summer ocasiocortez met greta thunberg the teenage climate activist who has scolded older people for ignoring the issue
among other things the pair discussed how age was simply a mindset
you can be much older and still part of a youth movement if you refuse to do things just because that's the way they've always been done ocasiocortez told thunberg
this is the sort of coalition we need to build a better future — not gen z fighting boomers but a coalition of 16yearolds and 30yearolds and 78yearolds joining together to demolish the rich who run the world today
the stakes are too great we can't afford to have any generation sit this one out
are there limits to the rights revolution
by thomas b edsall dec 18 2019  if you're a democratic strategist what do you do to reconcile the moral power of your party's arguments about the inherent dignity and civil rights of every american with the reality of an electorate that has not caught up with where the party has gone and is slightly — or more than slightly — averse to it
how do you decide whether what is right is also what is wise
as recently as 2004 proposed state constitutional amendments banning samesex marriage particularly one in ohio may have cost the democrats the presidency so how do you handle president trump's calculated assault on transgender rights
you can't tell people oh just wait for your rights they'll be coming soon — that has never worked for anyone — so i decided to ask philosophers ethicists transgender activists and others how the party should respond to trump's provocations
the issues of political strategy raised by the transgender rights movement have split liberals into two camps one urging caution against moving too far in front of public opinion the other calling for all out support of transgender men and women
on one side are democrats for whom the first priority is a strategy to defeat donald trump in november and who see some policies sought by transgender rights activists as potentially alienating the moderate voters they believe are necessary to a democratic victory
on the other side are those who are equally hungry to see the president defeated but who hold a deep allegiance to the ethical and moral principles of freedom and equality including for the lesbian gay bisexual transgender community
without these principles they believe the democratic party will not only lose votes but also its core reason for being
president trump ever the opportunist has been aggressively moving since his inauguration to attack the rights of transgender men and women — seeing a hot button or third rail issue he thinks he can deploy to his advantage as he attempts to carve up the democratic opposition
i asked scholars who specialize in the study of moral dilemmas about the ethical and strategic choices trump's current offensive against transgender rights forces on the liberal coalition
there is evidence that the democratic response to trump's onslaught is split
peter singer a professor of bioethics at the centre for human values at princeton has been described as arguably the most famous and influential modern philosopher
he is unequivocally committed to a liberal worldview
the failure of people in the rich nations to make any significant sacrifices in order to assist people who are dying from povertyrelated causes is ethically indefensible he wrote in achieving the best outcome a 2002 essay it is not simply the absence of charity let alone of moral saintliness it is wrong and one cannot claim to be a morally decent person unless one is doing far more than the typical comfortablyoff person does
singer is specifically sympathetic to the difficulties facing transgender men and women writing in 2012 people who cross gender boundaries suffer clear discrimination
weighing the tactical options facing democrats singer was nonetheless forceful in his response to my emailed inquiry as a consequentialist i don't believe that the party is obligated to support discriminated against groups regardless of the consequences
after all the reelection of trump and republican control of congress would be a greater disaster than the rejection of the legitimate claims of transgender people to express themselves as they wish
most importantly singer continued the reelection of trump would mean another four years in which the us does little or nothing to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions which makes it difficult for other leaders to take the strong stand that is needed and that could bring about changes that are catastrophic for hundreds of millions or even billions of people
the harm that a second trump term would produce singer argued puts the transgender issues you mention in perspective
we may believe that people should be able to use whichever bathroom they choose but standing up for that isn't sufficient reason to risk the future of our planet not to mention the many other ways that a trumprepublican victory would be bad
taking a different position amie l thomasson professor of intellectual and moral philosophy at dartmouth wrote by email i think that however much democrats may want to win we must not lose sight of our moral compass — especially in times like this
the commitment to protecting the rights equality and wellbeing of everyone — not just those with power wealth or privilege — is absolutely central
this commitment is not subject to compromise the democratic party thomasson argued would lose its soul to lose those commitments
what we need most in this country is an honest moral conversation — and that means not replacing moral considerations with strategic calculations or burying them to meet shortterm goals
moral commitments thomasson continued are not things that should be sacrificed in hopes of avoiding rightwing attacks or hoping to maximize a calculation of expected votes
it does of course leave democrats with a job to do of making clear that it is moral rights human rights that are at stake here of making clear why recognizing transgender rights is not a threat and of working through the details of policy proposals regarding the impact on health care etc
in fact mara keisling the executive director of the national center for transgender equality does not expect democratic presidential candidates to support every priority set by her organization
in a phone interview keisling said that her organization's first priority is that the candidates show they are compassionate people who care about marginalized people
she said that if a democrat wins the presidency we will have a policy agenda of maybe 200 items but her group would not expect full support on every one of them
the center has been interviewing democratic candidates and so far all of them have shown that they think about trans people in a compassionate way
that's a lot she said and a sharp contrast to trump
i asked grace lavery a professor of english at berkeley — who describes her work in transfeminist studies as focused on the belief that transition works that it is truly possible to change sex — a series of questions including how do you think democrats should deal with some of the more complex issues raised by the transgender rights movement
she replied the same way that anyone else should by discussing them openly and ensuring that trans people's accounts of our own experiences are being heard
trans people lavery continued need access to health care we need equitable treatment by a criminal justice system and we need equal protection under existing civil rightstitle ix legislation
given which we don't tend to care what cis people think about what transness means
the basic issue lavery argued is about safeguarding the civil rights of a minority of people at a moment in history when we are being singled out for prejudicial treatment
there are no real policy issues to address other than prejudice and squeamishness
robin dembroff a professor of philosophy at yale who uses the pronouns theythem wrote me that democratic candidates should treat the trump campaign's focus on transgender issues as a divisive tool for stoking fear distracting from economic health care and climate issues and dismantling already tenuous women's rights
dembroff argued that recent threats to reproductive rights lgbtq workplace protections and transgender health care and facility access within the us are part of this global movement to maintain the gendered status quo
trump has clearly calculated that opposition to transgender rights will win him more votes than it will lose him and he has translated that decision into action throughout the executive branch rescinding a wide range of protransgender regulations while issuing harsh new ones
while some of his decisions have been temporarily blocked by the courts his intentions are clear
trump has barred transgender individuals from serving in the military
he has withdrawn an obama administration regulation granting transgender students the right to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity
he has expanded a conscience rule that protects doctors and other health care workers who on religious grounds decline to provide care and who refuse to refer patients to personnel who will provide it
the administration has also proposed the elimination of obamaera rules banning discrimination against transgender medical patients by eliminating provisions that define discrimination on the basis of sex to include gender identity
for over five decades starting with the passage of the civil rights act of 1964 the democratic party has assumed the broad role of political home to the rights revolution for africanamericans latinos women gays and now transgender men and women
the general election will test whether the democratic nominee is willing — in the face of trump's inflammatory forays against transgender rights — to bear the potential costs of fighting for private health care coverage of gender transition surgery including for those in the armed services in prison or on medicaid participation in women's athletic competition for transgender women and nondiscriminatory access to public facilities including bathrooms in schools libraries and public spaces
for david leege a professor emeritus of political science at notre dame the issue of transgender rights now poses a possibly insoluble dilemma for democrats — something trump fully intends to exploit
leege wrote me i think it is an area whose discourse is so new that a politically feasible solution has not yet presented itself
if we can't yet deal with toilets where the answers are simple — unisex toilet compartments with locks on doors — how can we deal with large public financial outlays for sexchange surgery
leege said he can foresee politicians' appeals to relative deprivation
'we're going to spend taxpayers' dollars for their sexchange surgeries when there is not enough to pay for my cancer drugs'
as an example of the complexities of transgender rights leege cited the questions raised by the issue of whether transgender women should be able to enter women's sports competitions should she be forced to compete with men in running events or basketball rather than against women
what is fair to other women
to the transgender woman
are rights in conflict
is kindness violated
we don't walk around with labels specifying levels of male and female hormones
and we have thought of gender in binary terms for so long that it is hard to think that hormones could resemble bellshaped curves
there are clear philosophical differences over democrats' obligations to the transgender community
these differences translate in turn to sharply dissimilar strategies for how democrats should address transgender issues
bruce cain a political scientist at stanford worries that democrats risk not only mobilizing trump supporters but also losing votes from their own constituents
transgender rights cain writes could indeed become a powerful wedge issue for president trump especially if the democrats across the board take the strongest protransgender rights stances
cain noted that stands in favor of using public money to pay for sexual transition or allowing transgender access to public facilities will certainly fire up the conservative republican base but he continued i would worry especially about the reaction in the black and latino communities and among older moderate whites
the key to the 2020 election in cain's view is winning back states behind the blue wall and the swing states keeping the focus on trump and away from bolder issues that might lose votes in the swing areas
in contrast to cain seana shiffrin a professor of philosophy law and social justice at ucla argued that the democrats should take a matter of fact approach about these issues with the tone that they are pretty straightforward
they shouldn't handwring or talk about it as a difficult matter  in shiffrin's view showing strength and conviction here is also a strategic approach
she provided more specific examples of how democrats could frame transgender issues democrats are in favor of health care for all and so they are in favor of what transgender people require to function and flourish just as they are in favor of the health care that any other member of society needs to function and flourish
we all have different health needs
some of the health needs of transgender people have been neglected and the costs they have suffered as a result are rather shocking
in the case of bathrooms shiffrin argued that the issue should be placed in the larger context of protecting people from violence the people in true danger of violence in restrooms are transgender people who do not conform to gender expectations
forcing transgender women to use men's rooms will subject them to potential violence
ergo we should allow people to choose the restroom that best fits their identity and comfort levels
nancy bauer a professor of philosophy and a dean of academic affairs for arts and sciences at tufts argues in favor of orienting strategy toward younger voters my view is that the only way that democrats can win is if they embrace progressivism not just because it's on the side of justice equality fairness compassion and decency but also because it's the only political strategy that will bring younger voters to the polls in significant numbers
i think that trump is monstrous and deeply fear his reelection
but the best way to get rid of him is to build coalitions of decent people and get out the vote
judith butler a professor of comparative literature at berkeley whose books include gender trouble feminism and the subversion of identity made a straightforward case for full support of transgender policy priorities we are seeking to win the election in order to restore faith in democracy which includes a commitment to equality and freedom
we do not seek to win for the sake of winning but in order to preserve principles such as equality embodied in civil rights protections
the right to health care and to social recognition and protection from discrimination should be regarded as the fundamental rights of trans people in society
if we deny those rights including the right to have access to medical care we deny those rights and treat trans people differently from other minorities under the law
william galston a senior fellow at brookings and former deputy assistant to president bill clinton for domestic policy makes a different argument in favor of more incremental change the task of decent politicians in a democracy is to move their country as far toward justice and fairness as the current state of public opinion will permit while doing what they can to improve the chances that public opinion will continue to shift in the right direction
this task requires judgment based on a solid understanding of public opinion and of the facts on the ground
this is not an easy task especially for a political party that supports challenges to the traditional hierarchy
galston went on as an elected official or aspirant for elective office there is nothing dishonorable about defining one's policy aspirations at any given point in response to what the public is prepared to endorse or at least permit at that time
the higher the stakes in the election the more defensible this practice becomes
if as many people believe the 2020 election implicates not only policy disputes but also the future of liberal constitutional democracy in the united states then it would be justified to subordinate any policy issue to the overriding goal of protecting our constitutional order
transgender rights pose a classic pushpull problem for the contemporary democratic party in supporting the expansion of rights to previously discriminatedagainst constituencies how far ahead of public opinion should the party go
the difficulty is only made more challenging by the fact that the pressure in primaries is to move to the left while the pressure in the general election is to move to the center
by a number of measures the country has become markedly more liberal over the past half century especially on social and cultural issues — even as the process has been slow often painstakingly slow the pace more evolutionary than abrupt — as the public becomes acclimated to change
would democrats be wise to recognize this pace of change as they head into a defining election
or should they attempt to enlarge their base by embracing an elemental argument about what the party stands for
this is an election in which turnout will be crucial
can democrats spur the legions who are focused on the environment climate change immigration and women's rights as well as transgender rights
can they expand the arenas of concern
the stakes could not be higher
is pete buttigieg just too young to be president
by frank bruni dec 14 2019  finland just elected the world's youngest prime minister sanna marin who's 34
time magazine named greta thunberg 16 its youngestever person of the year
even before i could mention their names to pete buttigieg who's vying to become the youngest american president he brought them up
he also brought up jacinda ardern the prime minister of new zealand who was 37 when she took office and emmanuel macron who became the president of france at 39
that's how old buttigieg now 37 would be at his inauguration
you're seeing a generation of leaders around the world emerging and it feels like the kind of thing that the us would be on the forefront of just because we're a country that values a look to the future he told me in an interview on thursday morning
i think it's our style
this country was founded by 20somethings he added referring to the fact that aaron burr alexander hamilton and james madison for example were in their 20s on july 4 1776
thomas jefferson was 33
john hancock was 39
donald trump is 73 meaning that he has more than a halfcentury of life lessons on some of them
how does that show
well an hour before i connected with buttigieg the president saw fit to tweet that time's choice of thunberg a swedish climatechange activist was so ridiculous and that she should work on her anger management problem
facing imminent impeachment he started a twitter spat with a teenage girl
trump is the most extreme example of the fact that while wisdom and age may be related they're very much not the same thing buttigieg said
still
age isn't irrelevant
america is much much bigger than finland and much much more complicated than it was during the revolutionary war
in a country so powerful at such a perilous time is buttigieg simply too young and too green to lead the way
it's the question that hovers over a presidential campaign whose success has stunned the political world
it predates concerns about his  work as a consultant with mckinsey or his trouble building support among africanamericans
it suggests an intensity of ambition and a presumptuousness that make his detractors bristle
and even now after firstplace finishes in some recent polls of democrats in iowa and new hampshire he's pressed about whether someone with his short r�sum� capped by two terms as the mayor of a city of just 100000 people could possibly be up to the presidency and pass muster with enough americans to get elected
he told me that voters and journalists ask him about his age more often than they do about his sexual orientation
if elected he'd be the first openly gay president
so we spent most of a nearly hourlong car ride between campaign stops in the new york city area talking about it
he conceded that the longer you're alive the more you learn and that there are lessons and life passages still in the offing for him
he'd like to be a parent but if he succeeds on his current quest he'd become the leader of the free world first
a lot of things in my life have been out of sequence he said
i was a mayor before i got married
i was a war veteran before i had dated
he was referring to his seven months in afghanistan and recognizing that while he has been precociously ahead of the game in many regards he was behind in others
it was only four years ago at 33 that he finally had a serious romantic relationship — with the man chasten who is now his husband
age has played out in surprising ways in the democratic primary
while buttigieg is unusually young the other three candidates grouped with him at the head of the pack — joe biden 77 elizabeth warren 70 and bernie sanders 78 — are unusually old
sanders had a heart attack in october and biden's energy has visibly dimmed to a point where some of his aides and supporters have sought to reassure voters by whispering about the possibility that he'd want to serve just one term
the oldest candidate sanders is by far the most popular among the youngest democratic voters getting the support of 52 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34 in a national quinnipiac poll released on tuesday
buttigieg got just 2 percent of that group in contrast with 12 percent of democratic voters between 35 and 49 12 percent of those between 50 and 64 and 11 percent of those 65 and older
he attributed that to younger voters' attraction to sanders's less pragmatic more ideologically pure vision
it's certainly not because buttigieg hasn't courted them
in this ok
boomer moment of younger americans' disgust with the income inequality social injustices and climate change that older americans have bequeathed them he has claimed a generational perspective that separates him from his rivals for the democratic nomination
he notes that he was still in high school when the columbine massacre happened that he had just started college when the 911 terrorist attacks occurred and that he'll be living with america's failures longer than his older rivals will
he also makes the case that people of biden's warren's and sanders's age have had their chance to fix things
shouldn't someone with an arguably fresher outlook — someone from outside washington — take a turn
with that reasoning he frames political vulnerabilities as political virtues
you know the stat about three of the last four presidents emerging from the summer of 1946
he asked referring to trump's birth in june 1946 george w bush's in july of that year and bill clinton's in august
it means that one generation has been in charge for a very long time
but his youth is in some ways a bind that puts me in mind of the even greater predicament for female candidates
they're expected to show that they're as tough as men but then that toughness is described as bossiness shrillness
buttigieg has to muster extra poise extra confidence lest any deficit be interpreted as immaturity
but then that poise and confidence in the context of his age are interpreted as arrogance
his detractors constantly tell me that he's cocky — or robotic
one of the things i get is 'why aren't you more passionate' he said
i'm very passionate
but i'm also very disciplined
if i weren't it would be harder to be taken seriously
is he maybe too disciplined
too contained
wondering if he'd yet confronted the responsibility of helping to care for a sick parent i asked about his own parents and learned only then that his father died last january
while i'd kept reasonably close tabs on buttigieg's candidacy this was something that he hadn't mentioned enough that i'd heard it
and he said relatively little about it during our chat
the constitution decrees that a house member must be at least 25 a senator at least 30 a president at least 35
no american president has been under 40 and only two took office before the age of 45 teddy roosevelt who was 42 and john f kennedy who was 43
shouldn't and doesn't that give buttigieg pause
of course you have those moments he acknowledged
we're talking about a role of unbelievable importance and complexity and challenge
and yet every person who's done it has been a mortal a human being — and of course so much depends not just on the individual but on how you build a team
the audacity of proposing to do it at a young age is nowhere near the audacity of proposing to do it at all he said
so age becomes like a detail
he repeated something that he has said scores if not hundreds of times on the campaign trail as mayor of south bend ind for the past eight years he has had a kind of executive experience that someone who has served in congress for that long or longer hasn't
besides he said experience isn't the only font of wisdom
education matters
intuition too
he comes armed with historical examples beyond the founders of people who made remarkable contributions early on
i'm not going to compare myself to martin luther king he said but he's certainly an example of somebody who had a huge impact mainly in his 30s
king died at 39
buttigieg noted that stephen biko one of the most prominent antiapartheid activists in south africa in the 1970s died at 30
trump has mockingly referred to buttigieg as alfred e neuman the gaptoothed bigeared boyish mascot for mad magazine
he did so at a rally in pennsylvania on tuesday asking his audience can you believe he's doing well
i dream about him trump added
it's true
buttigieg's response
i don't want to be anywhere near that guy's dreams he told me
it's a good answer
maybe he'd match up well against trump
i'm not sure and how i wish i were because the likeliest trump slayer is the democratic nominee i want and america needs
both substantively and in terms of electability buttigieg would be better off if he were older with higher positions under his belt but then all of the leading democrats have worrying shortcomings
his youth is a concern
it shouldn't be a dealbreaker
jared kushner fails up again by frank bruni nov 26 2019  jared kushner just got a promotion
another one
at least i think we can call it that and it's a deliciously perfect assignment
the pallid princeling is now responsible for speeding construction of the border wall
in other words a makebelieve fixer will oversee a fairytale fix
josh dawsey and nick miroff of the washington post broke the news and when i read it i realized that i hadn't heard much about jared — or for that matter ivanka — in a good long while
they're front and center when the administration is announcing some ostensibly sensible initiative or claiming a pittance of progress
but when its corruption is being exposed and the drizzle of subpoenas becomes a downpour they vanish cuddling for warmth under the gilded umbrella of their hallucinatory virtue
we can pretty much chart the weather of the administration by the relative visibility of donald jr so loud and hirsute and jared so smoothcheeked and mute
donald jr thrives when it's nastiest stomping gleefully through the muck
jared comes out only if his suit won't get dirty or his hair wet
during the impeachment inquiry we've seen a lot of donald jr that's partly because he has been hawking his new book copies of which the republican national committee spent nearly 100000 on
but it's also because he's such a ready eager conduit for his father's wrath with a talent for exaggeration and misdirection that's clearly chromosomal
jared kushner just got a promotion
another one
at least i think we can call it that and it's a deliciously perfect assignment
the pallid princeling is now responsible for speeding construction of the border wall
in other words a makebelieve fixer will oversee a fairytale fix
josh dawsey and nick miroff of the washington post broke the news and when i read it i realized that i hadn't heard much about jared — or for that matter ivanka — in a good long while
they're front and center when the administration is announcing some ostensibly sensible initiative or claiming a pittance of progress
but when its corruption is being exposed and the drizzle of subpoenas becomes a downpour they vanish cuddling for warmth under the gilded umbrella of their hallucinatory virtue
we can pretty much chart the weather of the administration by the relative visibility of donald jr so loud and hirsute and jared so smoothcheeked and mute
donald jr thrives when it's nastiest stomping gleefully through the muck
jared comes out only if his suit won't get dirty or his hair wet
during the impeachment inquiry we've seen a lot of donald jr that's partly because he has been hawking his new book copies of which the republican national committee spent nearly 100000 on
but it's also because he's such a ready eager conduit for his father's wrath with a talent for exaggeration and misdirection that's clearly chromosomal
jared and ivanka have been strategically scarce though ivanka did flutter into view in a fashion when president trump boasted two weeks ago that she had created 14 million jobs since the inauguration
fourteen million and going up
he clarified lest anyone get the misimpression that she thought her work was done
never
on behalf of the american people ivanka is tireless
there's no rest for the weary and there's even less of it for those who live at the crossroads of selfinfatuation and delusion
in an interview last month on fox business ivanka said that she and dad were fighting every day for the american worker and that she was determined to drive hard every single day to make an impact
your time and service — our time here — is finite she mused and while i'd love to believe that she was prophesying her and her father's imminent eviction from the white house i think she was referring in her deeply spiritual way to the span of a human life
it's sand through an hourglass
as ivanka serves us she never forgets the sand
democrats believe that the trump administration's void of ethics will sour american voters on the president
but those voters are likelier to abandon him for the administration's vacuum of competence — for his nonsensical managerial style captured in his magical thinking about jared
he tasked jared with reinventing the federal government
unless constant rash firings unfilled jobs and shakedowns of foreign governments constitute reinvention this remains on jared's infinite todo list
the president put jared in charge of brokering a durable peace between israelis and palestinians
insert punch line here
he followed jared's counsel that faith be placed in saudi arabia and its crown prince mohammed bin salman
we know how that worked out
the president somehow looked at that track record and decided that the dynamo he should entrust with his central campaign promise — a secure barrier between the united states and mexico — was … jared
and so we have the trillionth gorgeous example of his investment in fiction
nearly three years into trump's presidency the border wall barely exists
subtract the upgrading of fencing and such that was already there and trump has by some recent estimates constructed fewer than 25 miles of actually new barrier
the southwestern border is nearly 2000 miles long
but jared is on the case
according to the post he convenes biweekly meetings in the west wing where he questions an array of government officials about progress and explains the president's wishes
huh
those wishes are hardly cryptic and how complicated can this questioning be
already the post reported there's grumbling that jared is just an annoyance
that belittles his symbolic significance
many journalists including me have tried to settle on the perfect mascot for the trump administration
there are choices galore
the greedy vainglorious scott pruitt who did his best to decimate the environmental protection agency fit the bill but he's long gone
mike pompeo embodies the faustian arc of so many of the president's aides and allies from principledriven dismissal of trump during the 2016 campaign to reputationtorching submission when he dangled a ticket to the big time
but for naked opportunism and situational scruples jared's my guy
remember how he and ivanka were going to contain the president's ego blunt his cruelty whisper sweet moderation in his ear
that was then
now he's devoting himself to an exorbitant unnecessary monument to trump's nativism and xenophobia
there's an upside though
with jared in the saddle this horse won't go far
jeff bezos' phone hack should terrify everyone by charlie warzel jan 24 2020  if the saudi crown prince mohammed bin salman wants to chat on whatsapp politely decline
that's the lesson from a series of reports this week based off a forensic examination of jeff bezos' communications with the crown prince
the investigation — conducted at mr bezos' request by fti consulting — found that his phone had most likely been attacked in 2018 after he received a whatsapp message from the prince's personal account
while my colleagues in the times newsroom have pieced together details of the investigation there's still a great deal unknown
and cybersecurity experts have serious questions about fti's report which according to cyberscoop “has not impressed the information security community
still the story seems to have everything from lighthearted embarrassingly earnest texts “divorced guy memes and world leaders who awkwardly sign their text messages with their full names to the deeply problematic issue of revenge porn and stealing of private nude photos
though it's a gilded example of digital theft there's something troubling and relatable about it all
billionaires they're just like us
or maybe not
looked at one way the attack on mr bezos' phone could be seen as yet more proof of what my colleague kara swisher called “the death of privacy
if the richest man in the world — the man who sells listening devices used in millions of homes and whose servers create the internet's infrastructure — can be hacked what hope is there for us mere mortals
turns out there's some
yes your personal privacy and security are constantly under threat
and yes you should be trying to safeguard against malware phishing and bulk data collection
but the bezos attack is an example of extremely targeted surveillance the potentially expensive and risky kind that is aimed at highvalue targets like executives government officials celebrities and billionaires
and as it turns out many of those with the most to lose are woefully inept at safeguarding their privacy
not long after the bezos news broke this week i spoke to christopher pierson who founded blackcloak a cybersecurity company for highnetworth and highprofile individuals — executives celebrities and billionaires
according to mr pierson few people take their digital lives as seriously as they should
“the majority of clients we onboard come on in some kind of hacked state he told me
“their computers are compromised or their login credentials are available on dark web
their home camera systems are accessible to people on internet or their entire home and appliances are vulnerable and viewable by persons remotely
mr pierson suggests that's in part because highvalue targets choose to focus on physical security over digital and invest in private bodyguards camera systems and protections like kidnapping insurance
how bad is it
“we see passwords in little black books on desks by the machines and in files on the computers
we see passwords that are the same everywhere
we absolutely do not see good use of dual factor authentication on email health care and financial accounts
i'd say we see less than 1 percent of highnetworth individuals using dual factor
mr pierson said blackcloak has found more than 82 percent of its clients' current passwords on the dark web when it ran an initial search
“in the case of highnetworth individuals the same compromised password is frequently used by 20 to 40 different accounts — some of those are personal some are in the office
what mr pierson describes is lowhanging fruit — the kind of security flaws that can quickly be fixed with a little knowledge and attention to detail
even then he said it takes time for the true nature of clients' vulnerability to sink in
“they're shocked when we give them their password and tell them where we found it but it doesn't hit as hard as when we tell them their entire home automation system has been potentially online and viewable for three or five or eight years he said
when it comes to a bezosstyle breach — potentially at the hands of a nationstate's intelligence service — highprofile targets would most likely be even less prepared
as mr bezos' lengthy investigation into the 2018 attack shows it's difficult to get straight answers even when you have the money and resources to run full forensics
of course it's not just wealth that turns somebody into a person of interest for hackers
journalists government employees workers at energy companies and utilities could all be targets for someone
those who work for financial companies airlines hospitals universities hollywood studios and tech businesses are all potentially at risk
you can take steps to secure yourself from corporate data collection by using privacy settings on your phone
and to protect yourself from cyberattacks there are helpful guides you can use that have been vetted by security professionals
for most of us the attack against mr bezos isn't the death of privacy but a reminder of the risks of living a connected life
it should be a moment to think as critically about what you do online as you might in the real world
invest in a password manager
turn on dual factor authentication
be skeptical of any communication that looks out of place
for the ultrarich and influential the bezos hack should be a terrifying revelation
as the former state department employee and whistleblower john napier tye told me last autumn “for someone who's truly a highvalue target there is no way to safely use a digital device
the stakes are astronomically high
not just personally as mr bezos found but professionally
company secrets matters of national security access to critical infrastructure and the safety of employees could all be compromised by lax security at the top
the internet has long been thought of as a truly democratic tool flattening and democratizing the ability to publish and communicate
it's also the great privacy equalizer
money can buy a lot of things
but on a dangerous internet full of exploits flawed code shady actors and absentminded humans total foolproof security is not one of them
joe biden is stronger than you think by david brooks jan 23 2020  it was yet another epic failure of political punditry
go back to the early months of joe biden's presidential campaign and read what the consultants and commentators were saying about him his support is just name recognition he'll fade
he's too old
he's running a zombie campaign
the party has moved left and he's out of touch
he voted for the crime bill
almost everybody was bearish on joe
but now look where we are weeks from actual voting
if the polls are to be believed biden will win iowa he'll come in second in new hampshire he will easily win nevada he will dominate in south carolina
he's now tied for the lead in california and he's way ahead in texas
i don't know if he'll win the nomination both he and bernie sanders look strong but this is not where a lot of people six months ago thought we'd be
it's the 947th consecutive sign that we in the coastal chattering classes have not cured our insularity problem
it's the 947th case in which we see that every second you spend on twitter detracts from your knowledge of american politics and that the only cure to this insularity disease is constant travel and interviewing close attention to state and local data and raw abject humility about the fact that the attitudes and academic degrees that you think make you clever are actually the attitudes and academic degrees that separate you from the real texture of american life
biden didn't just luck into this
he and his team grasped six truths  understand the year you are running in
sanders and elizabeth warren are running the same basic campaign they would have run in 2012 or 2016
biden's campaign is completely focused on the central problem of 2020 that donald trump is a steaming hot mess in the middle of national life
biden has fixated his campaign on the trump problem and fighting for the soul of america
nearly twice as many democrats say it's more important to beat trump than to have a candidate with whom they agree on all issues
understand your party's core challenge
all around the world parties on the left are losing because they have lost touch with the working class
these parties think they can reconnect with that class by swinging even further left
but jeremy corbyn in britain and bernie sanders here are a doctoral student's idea of a workingclass candidate not an actual working person's idea of one
biden has criticized his own party for losing touch with this class
he emerged from it is focusing his attention on it and is winning support from it
moderates are still powerful
the democratic party is moving left but about half of democrats still say they are moderate or conservative
no candidate has ever won a nomination without strong support from these voters while collegetown candidates — howard dean gary hart — tend to falter
in every presidential general election that democrats have won since 1988 they carried moderates by more than 12 percentage points
in every race they have lost they failed to do that
biden kept his moderate credentials when many other candidates saw aoc
on twitter and decided to move left
many democrats resent their own elites
there is a quiet tension between democrats who wield cultural power and those who don't
the former are active on social media and clobber the latter — people who say or write the wrong thing
the nonelites tend to feel judged and looked down on by the selfappointed savior class
politically correct has become the phrase people use to define those who use cultural power to enforce ideological conformity
seventy percent of democrats who are not on social media say political correctness is a big problem
these are people silently but vehemently reacting against this social reign of terror
biden communicates affection not judgment acceptance not expulsion
have a better theory of social change
sanders and warren imagine they can rally movements of progressive supermajorities to transform american politics
the reality is that if they are elected we'll be stuck with the same 42 percentto42 percent stagnant political war we have now
biden starts with the understanding that we are a closely divided nation
he understands the elemental fact that if you want to pass laws you have to go through congress
as damon linker pointed out recently in the week biden's argument is that a centerleft congressional coalition is the best we can do under present circumstances
that's a more realistic theory of change
a beloved legislator like biden is more likely to transform the political landscape than a downtheline progressive
connection
connection
connection
many candidates pound the podium and lecture at their rallies
it's the big leader onstage and the passionate mass of followers down below
nobody makes an individual connection as well as biden
in a time when people feel exhausted isolated and alienated a candidate who seems normal and emotionally relatable is going to have a lot of appeal
the ironic fact is that the candidate who can be vulnerable has a surprising power
john bolton gets the last laugh by frank bruni jan 28 2020  president trump's reaction to the leak of incriminating details in john bolton's forthcoming book shocked me
not the part where the president said that bolton was making up a ukraine quid pro quo in the service of the bestseller list — that he was lying for lucre
trump sees that transaction everywhere he looks because he sees it first and foremost in the mirror
no i was surprised that the president didn't dispute knowing bolton or at least didn't say that he was so slightly acquainted with his own former national security adviser that he couldn't pick him — chinchillabushy mustache and all — out of a lineup
that's trump's favorite ploy
ask michael cohen anthony scaramucci prince andrew stormy daniels gordon sondland lev parnas
fall into disrepute cross trump or claim to have the goods on him and you're wiped clean from his memory no matter the existence of contradictory forensics
ivanka beware
you're one bad manicure away from paternal amnesia
bolton is the impeachment star of the week whether he winds up testifying or not and i can't shake the feeling that he plotted all of this out keeping his head down during the hearings in the house letting it be known only afterward that he'd be willing to testify in the senate the revelation this week — simultaneous with assertions by trump's defense team that there were no firsthand witnesses to the president's wrongdoing — that his book indeed addresses ukraine and fully backs up the charges in the articles of impeachment
bolton has always been vain brilliant and ruthless and this is the timeline that a vain brilliant and ruthless operator would cinch
i'm not personally acquainted with the sound of his laughter but i'm certain i hear it
when trump came down that escalator in june 2015 the laws of political gravity were suspended and bolton's emergence as a darling of democrats is the latest example
he was so far to the right and such a ferocious hawk that president george w bush bypassed the senate to sneak him in as ambassador to the united nations
he later feathered a nest at fox news also known as the trump administration applicant pool
and at a time when most selfrespecting foreignpolicy mavens had concluded that trump was toxic bolton opened his lips wide to the poison signing on to become the president's third national security adviser
of course the president is now on his fourth
trump can't dismiss bolton's account of events as partisan
bolton's conservative credentials prove otherwise
trump can't bellow deep state not when he handpicked bolton at a stage of his presidency when he'd already become sensitive to that supposedly pernicious force
all trump can do is command his republican minions in the senate to fall in line
sadly most of them will
don't be impressed by the possibility that now — and i stress only now — some senate republicans may press for witnesses including bolton in the trial
this isn't a stirring of conscience
it's a cloaking of humiliation
if they ignore bolton their stillunshaken commitment to acquitting trump becomes even more naked
besides hearing from witnesses wouldn't erase republican senators' awful behavior to this point in the trial all the ugly gloating from the likes of lindsey graham that adam schiff's undeniable eloquence was for naught marsha blackburn's pathologically exuberant attacks on the integrity of lt col alexander vindman martha mcsally's disgraceful sniping at a perfectly polite television reporter liberal hack she spewed and then her cynical use of that trumpian outburst to raise money for her reelection campaign
this is sycophancy at its most shameful
scratch that superlative i was forgetting mike pompeo
according to the times's scoop about bolton's book he writes that pompeo too was aware of the ukraine pressure campaign — the same pompeo who did nothing to stop the vilification of marie yovanovitch the same pompeo who promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that ukraine interfered in the 2016 election the same pompeo who once warned that trump would be an authoritarian president who ignored our constitution and then when trump gave him a really neat job decided that a little authoritarianism never hurt anyone
of late he seems to be having a meltdown
i attribute it to his realization that his reputation and belief in his own rectitude won't survive trump
he's assessing the bargain he made and understanding how completely his ambition eclipsed his integrity
it's hell when you're revealed to yourself
bolton meanwhile is probably feeling pretty content
he knows how badly the trump presidency will be judged and has positioned himself on the right side of history — this time around
maybe bitterness brought him here maybe ego maybe this quaint old thing called patriotism
he survived trump
i'd read that book
let us all now weep for donald trump by frank bruni jan 21 2020  donald trump obviously relishes the role of bully
but his greatest talent by far lies in playing the victim
he's a victim of adam schiff
a victim of nancy pelosi
a victim of all democrats really and of his own seedy henchmen michael cohen lev parnas and of the deep state and of the fake news media and of the entire establishment whatever that is
he's a victim of so many forces so many times over that even martyr doesn't do justice to his lot which is what you get when you multiply job in the old testament by mel gibson in braveheart and add the protagonist of unbroken
no president has ever been treated so badly
i'm not being sarcastic
i'm taking dictation he has made this exact claim — repeatedly
his victimhood is front and center in his defense against the articles of impeachment and in the legal papers filed by his lawyers on monday as his trial in the senate moved forward
the lawyers write of a process rigged against trump
they portray his democratic accusers as unhinged tormentors too consumed with his destruction to see how unimpeachably he has really behaved
the 171page document is so soggy with trumpian selfpity it weeps
it's so bloated with trumpian hyperbole it waddles
on just one of those pages his lawyers recount how democrats exercised shameful hypocrisy as they concocted an unheardof procedure and held those infamous secret hearings in a basement bunker while journalists happily fed the public a false narrative and the poor president was denied any rights whatsoever
this is the bodice ripper of political sob stories
it's a harlequin harangue
it expands on — and continues in the precise spirit of — a preliminary legal brief that his lawyers filed last weekend
the scream of a wounded animal was how two legal experts who contribute to the atlantic assessed that argument
they could as easily have been describing the rest of trump's presidency the whole of his political career and much of his life
he's always right and yet always wronged
he demands that we marvel at his invincibility even as we tremble at his degradation
he can vanquish any enemy — and his enemies are legion
— but look at how he's pushed around
trump takes a textbook oxymoron and gives it presidential form
behold at the resolute desk a jumbo shrimp
this goes all the way back to his childhood michael d'antonio the author of the truth about trump told me
d'antonio said that at the militarythemed boarding school that trump attended he was known for complaining to superiors about unfair treatment
it's a strategy for him
he believes and has said that whining is a way to get what you want
timothy o'brien who wrote the trump biography trumpnation recalled that in the 1980s when trump failed to get the support that he wanted from mayor ed koch for an enormous development in manhattan he threw himself a pity party railing that the system and local government were conspiring against him
trump similarly fashioned himself as a beleaguered hero battling dark forces when he bought into the fledgling united states football league and sought to make it competitive with the national football league
goaded by trump the usfl
filed an antitrust suit against the nfl
the suit was a bust the nfl
was ordered to pay 3 in damages
but that didn't throw him off his game which he upsized for his presidential campaign
as the conservative columnist rich lowry noted in august 2015 by trump's own account he's the baddest smartest thing going except if you ask him a challenging question in which case he kicks and screams and demands to know how anyone could treat him so unfairly
lowry crowned trump the most fabulous whiner in all of american politics
the cnn anchor chris cuomo subsequently asked trump about lowry's words
i am the most fabulous whiner trump conceded
i keep whining and whining until i win
he whined operatically as november 2016 approached and it seemed that he'd lose to hillary clinton
the election is going to be rigged he pouted ever the victim
then he beat clinton — and still whined insisting without proof that she'd done better in the popular vote because of millions of illegal ballots
woe is he the object of a witch hunt regarding russian assistance to his campaign the butt of a hoax about improper pressure on ukraine the commander in chief of armed forces that the whole world takes advantage of
in a key passage of the new book a very stable genius by the washington post reporters carol leonnig and philip rucker trump rants at top military brass about what he perceives as america's exploitation by south korea and by nato allies barking you're a bunch of dopes and babies
it's disgusting
it's also part of his political genius
he has turned himself into a symbol of americans' victimization telling frustrated voters who crave easy answers that they're being pushed around by foreigners and duped by the condescending custodians of a dysfunctional system
he's their proxy suffering on their behalf and in that way he collapses the distance between a billionaire with multiple golf resorts and displaced factory workers struggling to hold on to their one and only homes
but while it's a fact that they've been dealt a bad hand it's a farce that he has
his fortune began with money from dad
he has stiffed creditors evaded taxes attached his name to a bogus diploma mill skimmed money from a fraudulent philanthropy run afoul of campaign finance laws signaled receptiveness to russian interference in the 2016 election and tried to obstruct the investigation of that — all without any commensurate punishment
thanks to republicans in the senate he's poised to evade punishment again
we should all be such victims
mayor pete's gay reckoning by frank bruni feb 1 2020  ankeny iowa — you can listen to long stretches of pete buttigieg's remarks and hear little or no reference to the trailblazing nature of his campaign
you can almost forget
but as he wrapped up a rally here on thursday night with the clock ticking down fast to the iowa caucuses he made soaring stirring mention of it
you remembered
iowa has a remarkable knack for making history he told hundreds of supporters noting that he'd initially visited the state to support barack obama during the democratic primary in 2008 when obama's iowa victory set him on his way
you changed america's — and the world's — expectations for what was possible
then he alluded to iowa's legalization of gay marriage in 2009 six years before that happened nationally and how it gave him hope that he might someday be a happily married man
the crowd roared
i had one foot out the door — it had been a long long day — and i stopped in my tracks
as a gay man and an american i felt a surge of pride
it's doordie time for buttigieg whose polls numbers recently have been moving in the wrong direction
he probably needs to finish first or a very strong second on monday to preserve any shot to be his party's 2020 nominee
he needs neither to claim an enormous accomplishment
win or lose buttigieg is the first openly gay american to become a serious presidential candidate one who landed on the covers of prominent magazines was fawned over on the mostwatched television talk shows raised exponentially more money than any of the governors in the race outpaced beto o'rourke outpolled kamala harris caught president trump's attention qualified for all of the democratic debates and more than held his own in each of them
win or lose he's an example an education and a hell of a story
that narrative is about youth — he just turned 38 — and the power of hyperarticulateness in an era of presidential crudeness
but it's also about sexual orientation which has and hasn't factored into his pitch in surprising ways
he has grappled on the national political stage with questions that all lgbtq
people ask so that his candidacy is a metaphor for our lives to what extent am i defined by my sexual orientation or gender identity
what does and doesn't it tell you about me
buttigieg's answers have disappointed some lgbtq
people — and were bound to given the expectations placed on any politician who is blessed and cursed to become a symbol
female candidates have had experiences similar to his candidates of color too
these pioneers are exhorted to open doors closed to the groups they represent but to represent those groups first and foremost and that's tough
check with obama
or hillary clinton
or now buttigieg
he has weathered complaints even derision from lgbtq
progressives many of whom say he's not gay enough his manner and mannerisms too straitlaced his policy preoccupations too moderate his success infuriatingly reflective of how readily and well he assimilates into heterosexual america
gays seem to be mayor pete's worst critics was the headline of a column in the washington blade an lgbtq
publication
that saddens me
as i've written before part of what so many gay people have fought so hard for is the recognition that we don't fit into tidy boxes otherwise known as stereotypes — not sartorially not ideologically
absolutely disagree with buttigieg's opposition to medicare for all if you have a different view but don't suggest that he should support it because he's gay
yawn at all those perfectly pressed white dress shirts that he wears but don't cast them as a betrayal
and don't say that by discussing his own christianity he's consorting with the enemy
yes religion has been used cruelly against lgbtq
people
but one of the most profound dimensions of buttigieg's candidacy is how he has turned that around for instance asserting that his marriage to his husband chasten has brought him closer to god
that's the thing that i wish the mike pences of the world would understand he said in a speech last year referring to the vice president's antigay record
that if you have a problem with who i am your problem is not with me
your quarrel sir is with my creator
buttigieg has campaigned frequently with his husband embracing him onstage and has mentioned his marriage in debates
and he doesn't shy away from questions about his sexual orientation which he didn't publicly acknowledge until the age of 33 shortly before his election to a second term as mayor of south bend ind
but he doesn't volunteer lengthy ruminations about its impact on how he sees the world or showcase it in any other way
it's there if you look and listen for it
but sometimes you have to look and listen hard
none of the voters at his rallies in iowa brought it up when i asked them what drew them to buttigieg
they mostly raved about his intelligence
were there any particular obstacles he might face in a general election
his youth said louann cooling 62 of le grand iowa
it was the same answer — his youth or his inexperience — that others gave
no one mentioned his being openly gay
being gay and an emblem of progress hasn't given buttigieg any special traction with younger democrats who respond much less favorably to him than older democrats do
it hasn't established any solidarity with other minorities though he reached for such a connection when stating a commitment to racial justice during the democrats' november debate
while i do not have the experience of ever having been discriminated against because of the color of my skin i do have the experience of sometimes feeling like a stranger in my own country turning on the news and seeing my own rights come up for debate he said
wearing this wedding ring in a way that couldn't have happened two elections ago lets me know just how deep my obligation is to help those whose rights are on the line every day even if they are nothing like me in their experience
those remarks didn't have the effect he intended
some africanamericans accused him of equating very different kinds of discrimination and polls show that his support from black democrats remains abysmal
when they appraise buttigieg they notice a whole lot beyond his sexual orientation including worrisome friction between him and some black residents of south bend and a path of extraordinary privilege harvard a rhodes scholarship a job with mckinsey that brought him to this point
what does buttigieg's being gay tell you
that he has trepidation and caution in him — he stayed in the closet all those years — but that he has courage too enough to pursue the presidency despite the inevitable spotlight on him as a novelty
what doesn't his being gay tell you
his musical tastes for one
the last time i had a long talk with him was in middecember and he had just met the performer lizzo who was a fellow guest on cbs this morning
she's an icon for outsiders brimming with delicious attitude and i assumed he'd be thrilled
but i'm not sure he really does thrilled and he confessed to being more a dave matthews band fan
in any case he said i usually have a kind of celebrity blindness
a gay man who doesn't twinkle at the stars around him
yep our creator makes us in all shapes and stripes
thank you mayor pete for taking that message out on the trail
no team trump the coronavirus isn't good for america by paul krugman jan 30 2020  how frightened should you be about the coronavirus
i'm no epidemiologist but what i've seen looks pretty scary
it doesn't help that the trump administration as part of its general war against science and expertise has seriously reduced america's capacity to respond if we do face a dangerous pandemic
it also looks quite possible that the virus will inflict a lot of economic damage — even if it doesn't kill you it might kill your job
and one special source of concern is that top officials in the trump administration are talking nonsense about the economic threat
so about that economic threat many people are drawing parallels between the coronavirus and the 20023 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome or sars which also originated in china
like the current outbreak sars led to the imposition of economically disruptive quarantines which appear to have had a significant if temporary adverse effect on china's economy and a modest negative impact on the world economy as a whole
we still don't know whether the coronavirus is more or less dangerous than sars
what we do know is that the global economic implications of a pandemic in china are likely to be much more severe now than they were then for the simple reason that china is a vastly bigger player than it used to be
in 2002 china was still in the early stages of its great economic surge it accounted for only around 8 percent of global manufacturing value added far less than the shares of the us japan and europe
today however china is the workshop of the world accounting for more than a quarter of global manufacturing
now you might think that this implies an upside to china's troubles that disrupting china's vast manufacturing sector would offer opportunities to producers in other countries including the united states
that is you might think this if you knew nothing about 21stcentury economics
sure enough wilbur ross the commerce secretary appeared on fox business on thursday morning to declare that he didn't want to talk about a victory lap but that the coronavirus will help to accelerate the return of jobs to north america
by saying this he demonstrated a couple of things 1 why gail collins's readers voted him trump's worst cabinet member and 2 why trump's trade war has been such a failure
what ross and his colleagues apparently still don't understand — although some of them may be getting an inkling — is that modern manufacturing isn't like manufacturing a couple of generations ago when different countries' industrial sectors were engaged in fairly straightforward headtohead competition
these days we live in a world of global value chains in which much of what any given nation imports consists not of consumer goods but of intermediate goods that it uses as part of its own production process
in such a world anything that disrupts imports — whether it's tariffs or a virus — raises production costs and as a result if anything hurts manufacturing
indeed a recent study by the federal reserve found that trump's tariffs which were concentrated on intermediate goods have reduced not increased manufacturing output and employment
sure enough while overall economic growth in 2019 was decent not great manufacturing is in a recession
and the uncertainty created by the trade war may explain why business investment is down despite a huge cut in corporate taxes
as i said some of trump's people seem to have gotten an inkling here
last week the white house basically admitted that tariffs on steel and aluminum have done more harm than good hurting industries that use these materials
but the administration's answer isn't a reconsideration of its policies — it is to impose more tariffs on a wider range of products
which brings me back to the coronavirus
let's leave aside the public health issues — although the trump administration has clearly left us much less prepared than we had been to deal with these issues if they become serious — and focus on the economics
what we can say is that if the virus seriously disrupts chinese production its impact on the us economy will be like an extreme version of trump's trade war except without any compensation in the form of tariff revenue
and the two things we know about the trade war are that it has been an economic bust and that trump's officials still appear clueless about why it has been a bust
bear in mind that so far trump has been remarkably lucky
aside from hurricane maria — which he mishandled and in which thousands of americans died — he has faced essentially no crises domestic or foreign that weren't of his own making
and he has surrounded himself with the gang that couldn't think straight which raises severe doubts about how well he would handle a crisis that he didn't create himself
if wilbur ross's boneheaded remarks on thursday are any indication — and i fear they are — the trump administration is even less prepared to deal with the economic fallout from a possible pandemic than it is to deal with the public health crisis
be afraid
notorious djt
on trial by maureen dowd jan 25 2020  republicans know very well who they are
that's why it was such a juicy moment when hakeem jeffries the congressman from brooklyn and democratic impeachment manager quoted a lyric by fellow btown native son biggie smalls to rebut jay sekulow when the president's lawyer disingenuously wondered “why are we here
referring to the democrats' crystalclear case that donald trump abused his power and corrupted the highest office in the land jeffries proclaimed “and if you don't know now you know
i went to the press gallery one afternoon to check out the tableau vivant
the visitors' gallery was only half full and there was none of the passion and titillation that infused the clinton impeachment which also oddly enough revolved around a power disparity between two people
one democratic senate staffer mourned the apathy
“our phones aren't ringing he told me
“nobody cares
it's the saddest thing ever
one side of the room seemed to be smirking
mitch mcconnell is resorting to his merrick garland playbook
he'll let the democrats make all their noble points but it's kabuki
republicans have perfected the dark art of “there's nothing to see here just keep moving
mcconnell long ago choreographed the end with democrats losing the argument and the acquitted scoundrel triumphantly sweeping into the capitol to make his state of the union address
at night tipsy republican staffers treated senate office buildings as a pub crawl roaming the halls with celebratory bottles of wine
some republicans were paying attention at the trial — or wanted to be seen paying attention
susan collins was glued to the proceedings as was the senator to her left in a magmacolored shawl lisa murkowski
republicans like collins who are vulnerable in 2020 have to be alert and figure out how to find their way out of the hearings without doing more political harm
a trump confidant told cbs news that republican senators were warned “vote against the president and your head will be on a pike
seated at the back of the class mitt romney looked dutiful and the thought must have crossed his mind that's he's in a position to inflict payback on trump for calling him “a pompous ass and tricking him into an interview for secretary of state only to humiliate him
revenge is a dish best served with milk
but more senators on the republican side were telegraphing boredom
lindsey graham yawned and rearranged his yellow pencil and went on walkabouts later telling reporters “about the fourth time you tell me the same thing is twice too much
he cleaved to his lapdog role saying preposterously of trump “what he wants to do is get to the truth
tom cotton played with the fidget spinner richard burr had handed out to all the republicans
marsha blackburn and others left to trash the proceedings on fox news
the senators in the democratic presidential race could not have been happy to be stuck there either
bernie sanders accustomed to making like leonard bernstein at big rallies and upset he's not in iowa to relish his surge had a hard time keeping his hands still moving them restlessly silently clapping and finally holding them together on his chest over his blue sweater
but heads on both sides did snap to attention whenever that unholy jangly selfimpeaching peal so inescapable in the last three years rang out in the hallowed chamber
trump's voice was impossible to ignore when the house impeachment managers played incriminating video clips of the human fidget spinner himself sometimes howling over the blades of his chopper on the south lawn
so many people in this very room had tried and failed or are now trying to vanquish the guy
romney cruz rubio graham klobuchar sanders bennet booker gillibrand warren harris
trump had savaged all his fellow republicans and yet here they were listening to an unending recitation of his crimes and coming out to be his praetorian guard
adam schiff tried to warn the former nemeses turned defenders of trump that if the president is not removed he could turn on them the way he had turned on marie yovanovitch and joe biden using the power of the presidency to cheat lie and smear
now rudy's buddy lev parnas says he has forked over to congressional democrats a 2018 recording of trump personally ordering yovanovitch to be fired
“the next time it just may be you schiff told the republican senators
“do you think he wouldn't ask you to be investigated
do you think for a moment that he wouldn't
schiff also reminded republicans that trump had inverted their dogma embracing the evil empire and authoritarianism and trusting crazy rudy's conspiracy theories over his own intelligence services
“you don't realize how important character is in the highest office in the land until you don't have it schiff said
but the more impressive the democrats' case is the more depressing the reality becomes
they want to convince themselves that character matters
but many americans knew they were voting for a thug
they wanted a thug who would bust up washington and they got one
the democrats are relying on facts but the republicans are relying on fox
and if you don't know now you know
of all trump's defenses this is the lamest by frank bruni jan 25 2020  once the senate concludes its trial of president trump it should go into recess
until next january
the house too
lawmakers shouldn't pass legislation consider nominations or make any important decisions whatsoever this is an election year and the voters will soon weigh in on the direction of america
the nation's business should await that judgment lest members of congress contradict it
a ludicrous proposal
indeed
but it's in line with — and an extrapolation of — a favorite argument against trump's conviction and removal from office
his republican supporters say that lawmakers shouldn't speak for voters on such a crucial issue
to preempt the verdict at the ballot box they say is to subvert the people's will
nice try
lawmakers are elected specifically to speak for voters on crucial issues
that's the system
that's their job
american government doesn't operate by daily hourly or issuebyissue polls at least not overtly
congress doesn't have exponentially more power one week after election day than it does one year later though it may indeed have more political currency
and lawmakers shouldn't defer to their constituents at every turn
those constituents expect them over the course of their legislative terms to use their judgment as betterinformed proxies for the people they represent
so does the constitution which created america as a representative democracy not a direct one
our lawmakers are supposed to lead as well as follow to be responsive to public sentiment but not mesmerized or paralyzed by it
that's even truer when the stakes are huge than when they're small
republicans have decided to sing a different tune
if it sounds familiar that's because they turned to the same music when the supreme court justice antonin scalia died president barack obama nominated merrick garland to replace him and the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell declared that a presidential election about eight months in the offing prevented the senate from taking any action
it was a song not of principle but of political convenience
the same holds true now
give the people back their power the house minority leader kevin mccarthy implored a few months ago arguing against impeachment itself
referring to the president's transgression and the november 2020 election mcconnell said the american people if they think this is a very significant episode can take it into account
senator lindsey graham chimed in i really do believe that the best person — group of people — to pick a president are the voters not a bunch of partisan politicians
pat cipollone one of the president's lawyers added no one ever thought that it would be a good idea for our country — for our children for our grandchildren — to try to remove a president from a ballot to deny the american people the right to vote
no one
really
how about the framers of the constitution who established the impeachment process to do essentially that and declined to add any asterisks about the next election's imminence
if the framers thought impeachment in an election year was a bad idea they could have set things up differently noted jill lepore a harvard history professor and the author of the 2018 book these truths a history of the united states
they could have instituted a mechanism for an interim election for instance lepore told me
they did not
they could have said 'except not in an election year' they did not
you want there to be no impeachments allowed in an election year ever
you have to get a constitutional amendment ratified
and that would never happen because it would be license for a president to do anything he or she wanted fearlessly if it synced with the calendar just so
the framers in fact wanted a government that wasn't too sensitive to voters — that mediated voters' whims and prejudices through representatives presumably taking a longer cooler view
senators' sixyear terms reflect that
as alison lacroix a university of chicago professor who teaches constitutional law and american history told me the senate is supposed to have a little more deliberative power and maybe be a little less beholden to the people
when senators say they should kick an issue back to the people they're arguably violating the spirit of the chamber
lacroix made another excellent point what's happening to trump isn't muscling voters out of the process but rather taking into account what voters recently did
you only get an impeachment vote when people have changed their minds she said referring to their opinions about a sitting president
the votes comes from the house and we know from things like the midterm elections that some amount of people have changed their minds
another party has gained control of the house
that has to be telling us something
granted that switch in the house majority wasn't a referendum on trump's interactions with ukraine which were the grounds for his impeachment and hadn't yet come to light
but they were absolutely a referendum in part on his behavior and character
lawmakers who are now assessing and acting on the worst of that behavior and character are hardly turning a deaf ear to voters
if republican leaders were really so invested in a government that didn't diverge from voters' desires more of them would be questioning the electoral college
because of it the country has a president trump who received about three million fewer votes than his opponent
because of it george w bush won the 2000 presidential election despite being the choice of fewer americans than al gore
but both trump and bush are republicans
so it's fine if the system and voter sentiment aren't perfectly aligned
similarly republicans — democrats too — are fond of tarring opponents by saying that they're too beholden to polls
the implication is that elected officials should have the courage of their own convictions and not outsource their judgment to constituents
saying that only voters should decide trump's fate is precisely such outsourcing
and election day is essentially the biggest poll of all
there's an additional profoundly important wrinkle in the case of trump's impeachment and trial
they stem specifically from actions he took to corrupt the next presidential election by getting a foreign government to smear a potential rival
to give those actions a pass is to greenlight more of the same or worse meaning that voters' verdict on trump's behavior might be fatally tainted not a clean expression of popular will but a product of well cheating
the election can't be the remedy when the election is what's at issue
but mccarthy mcconnell and other republicans are determined to spare their party the humiliation of trump's removal and to protect themselves from his wrath and his base's fury if he isn't saved
so they reach for whatever arguments they can
some are more plausible than others
the assertion that an election next november forbids honor this january is a joke and the framers would have laughed at it
bernie's angry bros by bret stephens jan 31 2020  barbara boxer minces no words when it comes to describing the people usually known as the bernie bros — a subset of bernie sanders supporters who hope to take over the democratic party and remake it in their image
there is so much negative energy it's so angry says the former fourterm democratic senator from california
you can be angry about the unfairness in the world
but this becomes a personal deepseated anger at anyone who doesn't say exactly what you want to hear
i ran into boxer earlier this week and got to talking about a superb report in the times by my colleagues matt flegenheimer rebecca r ruiz and nellie bowles bernie sanders and his internet army
the piece briefly mentions a 2016 incident in which boxer went to nevada to try to unify the party after hillary clinton defeated bernie sanders in the state's caucus
boxer was an early clinton supporter
but she's also a liberal lioness and felt sure she could mollify the crowd
i thought i could get the booing down she recalled
i said 'why are you booing
i'm bernie's friend
when you boo me you're booing bernie'  things only got worse
the heckling got louder
someone picked up a chair as if to throw it
security whispers in my ear you've got to get off the stage boxer said
when i left my heart was pounding
i'd never had that before
boxer's story is one of the milder ones the times tells about the internet trolls whose goals seem to have less to do with building sanders up than with hounding and humiliating anyone who stands in their man's way
when mr sanders's supporters swarm someone online they often find multiple access points to that person's life compiling what can amount to investigative dossiers the times reported
more commonly there is a barrage of jabs and threats sometimes framed as jokes
if the target is a woman and it often is these insults can veer toward her physical appearance
does this mean sanders himself supports this kind of behavior
no and occasionally he tries to disavow it
but not very hard last year he hired as a top aide and speechwriter david sirota accurately described by the atlantic as his twitter attack dog
nor does it mean that anything like a majority of sanders's supporters support the nastiness carried out in his name
yet no other democratic candidate has so many venomous followers — no biden brothers or warren sisters to return fire with fire
the only real analog in us politics today to the bernie nasties are the trump nasties
they resemble each other in ways neither side cares to admit
the most obvious resemblance is the adulation they bestow on their respective champions whom they treat less as normal politicians than as saviors who deserve uncritical and uncompromising support
surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment the philosopher eric hoffer observed in the true believer a book that remains as relevant in our populist era as it was in the totalitarian one
whither they are led is of secondary importance
since it's the usual destiny of saviors to be persecuted before they're exalted the response of their followers often is to persecute back
but persecute whom
in the demonology of most mass movements there is usually a near enemy and a far one and the near enemy must be dealt with first and hardest
to this day hardcore trump supporters reserve their deepest spite for republican nevertrump holdouts human scum according to the president
just so with the bernie bros who see more moderate democrats not as kindred spirits or potential converts but as sellouts even traitors — the proverbial enemy within
partly this is about the normal competition for power in which the show of ideological purity is treated as evidence of moral superiority
but it also goes to the heart of what the bernie bros are really about
as they see it ordinary civility isn't a virtue
it's a ruse by which those with power manipulate and marginalize those without
democrats like joe biden who play by the rules of civility and bipartisanship aren't just falling prey to the insidious manipulation
they are perpetrating and legitimizing it
no wonder nearly half of sanders's supporters won't commit to or are unsure about voting for the democratic nominee in the event it isn't bernie according to a recent poll
why bother voting for oligarchy lite
if there is a silver lining here it's that the world has long experience with this brand of zealotry
bernie sanders may not be one of his own awful bros and may condemn their worst excesses
but there's no reason to think they'll lose their influence should he win the white house — just as trump's presidency has emboldened and empowered many of his own worst followers
is this the democratic party the democrats want
they will cast their first votes for president on monday evening at the party caucuses in iowa
now is the moment for second thoughts
only you can prevent dystopia by farhad manjoo jan 1 2020  the new year is here and online the forecast calls for several seasons of hell
tech giants and the media have scarcely figured out all that went wrong during the last presidential election — viral misinformation statesponsored propaganda bots aplenty all of us cleaved into our own tribal reality bubbles — yet here we go again headlong into another experiment in digitally mediated democracy
i'll be honest with you i'm terrified
i spend a lot of my time looking for edifying ways of interacting with technology
in the last year i've told you to meditate to keep a digital journal to chat with people on the phone and to never tweet
still i enter the new decade with a feeling of overwhelming dread
there's a good chance the internet will help break the world this year and i'm not confident we have the tools to stop it
unless that is we are all really careful
as smokey bear might say of our smoldering online discourse only you can prevent dystopia
and so here are a few tips for improving the digital world in 2020
virality is a red flag
suspect it
if i were king of the internet i would impose an ironclad rule no one is allowed to share any piece of content without waiting a day to think it over
virality was once the delightful miracle of a networked age you'd see a funny video going around get caught up in the collective wonder and hilarity and forward it on to your 100 closest pals
at its memeified best participating in this sort of viral feast felt like a boon to collective social bonding
remember kids that one glorious day we were all talking about the crazy dress
what times what times
but the dress notwithstanding in the 2010s virality got too easy and then it grew sour venal and dishonest
nobody's counting but by my unscientific estimate almost everything that became instantly popular online in the last decade turned out to be problematic in one way or another
that photo of the shark washed onto a freeway by a hurricane
fake
the culturewardefining outrage your aunt just posted to facebook
debunked of course
the suddenly popular influencer
a milkshake duck running from his past
social networks and even governments are looking into ways to curb viral misinformation but this fight will define our age
the root of the problem is that humans are weak gullible dolts every day many of us even people who should know better — folks with fancy jobs and blue check marks next to our handles — keep falling for online hoaxes
virality hijacks our better instincts and because so many of the internet's business models benefit from instant popularity there's a great deal of money and power riding on our failings
there is only one longterm fix that a critical number of us alter how we approach viral content
let's all consciously embark on a mindset shift
in 2020 question anything that everyone's talking about especially if it fits all your priors or there's some kind of ad money involved
hint there's always ad money involved
if you can't stop sharing at least slow your roll
the stakes are enormous there's no room for error
strive to be better please
resist the easy dunk
in the 2010s twitter became the center of the political universe
in some ways this was for the better — twitter is a haven for righteous activism against the global powers that be — but most times it was for the worse
twitter is a daily toxic nightmare of reflexive egotism and groupthink that will prompt you to question your priorities not to mention your sanity
which is why if you're on twitter and can't muster the will to never tweet you should at least consider it your duty in 2020 to resist the network's worst impulses for your sake and all of ours too
what's twitter's most damaging sin
i say it's the tooeasy mocking joke — what's known in the jargon as the quotetweet dunk
here are two canonical examples  this scurrilous maneuver works like so you spot an easily ridiculed tweet by a member of some rival social or political tribe
like a 1990s fourth grader with phasers set to moded
you add a pithy rejoinder that's sure to please your side
it's best if you elide context depth or any intention of dialogue just straightup make fun of the person
then mash on the retweet button to broadcast your supposedly clever jape
the mechanism is part of the problem — when you quotetweet someone on twitter the service shows off your remark to your own followers while leaving the original poster's followers in the dark
another twitter feature the reply lets followers of both users see a response
if twitter is a cocktail party the quotetweet dunk is the equivalent of overhearing a guy across the room say something ridiculous then inviting the whole room to point and giggle at the idiot over there
the imbalance discourages any possibility of meaningful conversation and reduces all of political discourse to empty shallow quippery
the thing about the quotetweet dunk is that it can feel incredibly intoxicating in the heat of some whitehot political moment it's always tempting to shoot the fish in the barrel and watch the likes roll in
i swore off dunks years ago but i still find myself aping michael jordan now and again
twitter could instantly improve itself by removing quotetweet as a feature
failing that take the oath with me if the joke's too obvious to resist let it go
find a wellmoderated corner of the internet
it can sometimes seem as if all the internet is deep fakes and culture wars trump tweets and influencer scams
it's not of course
the internet still abounds in lovely wholesome niches — the fantasy sports circles the youtube and instagram communities devoted to any kind of craft the many subreddits where strangers come together to help one another out of real problems in life
what distinguishes the productive online communities from the disturbing ones
often it's something simple content moderation
the best places online are bounded by clear wellenforced community guidelines for participation
twitter and facebook are toxic because there are few rules and few penalties for flouting them
a reddit community like rrelationships meanwhile is a haven of incredible empathetic discussion because its hosts spend a lot of effort policing the discussion toward productive dialogue
this gets at the plain truth of the internet a better digital world takes work
it's work all of us should do
pete ain't it by farhad manjoo dec 18 2019  a funny debate has been roiling the online left do young liberals hate pete buttigieg too little or too much
in the past few months buttigieg the presidential candidate and young mayor of tiny south bend ind has enjoyed a steady unlikely rise in early state polls
but with success has come a backlash and then a backlash to the backlash
on paper buttigieg ticks a lot of presidentialcandidate boxes you can't write about mayor pete without mentioning he's a rhodes scholar he's a veteran and he has an articulate cooltempered decency reminiscent of barack obama
and yet the mayor has drawn the ire of the pluggedin progressive left
there's something curious about the disdain notes derek thompson in the atlantic
in a field of many other milquetoast moderates — including the frontrunner joe biden — why has mayor pete been singled out for special skewering by young radicals
i am not so young but i am one of those crazy radicals who have been concerned about the intractable domination of our society by a small band of wealthy interests
so i'll tell you why i don't like buttigieg
it's not because i think he'd be an especially bad president
like biden the mayor seems to possess the baseline capacity to run america in a way that isn't an embarrassment or a disgrace which would certainly be a step up from the current administration
he has also articulated some interesting policy ideas and he has managed to win a lot of hearts online — a talent of a sort in an election measured in cheesy viral hits
yet every time i hear him speak i get the sense that he's trying too hard to please everyone and that — in a way that recalls some of obama's worst tendencies toward misguided centrism — he'll end up pleasing no one in the process
ultimately i worry buttigieg will easily lose to trump because he is ill suited to make the simplest and most powerful argument against the current administration's apparent economic successes
that argument goes like this though the economic stats look pretty good the trump boom is a mirage and a moral disgrace
today's seemingly rosy climate is the culmination of a political economy that consistently rewards the already wealthy at the expense of everyone else
the only way to reverse the trend toward inequality is to reform the way america does business
a politician who pushes for these reforms needs courage because the forces arrayed against structural change are powerful
but while mayor pete has outlined several progressivesounding ideas for overhauling americans' economic lives — including a call for universal health care that will still include a hefty role for private corporations an idea for lowering student debt but not making college free a promise to strengthen regulations against monopolies but a reluctance to break up big tech — he lacks authenticity
rather than fundamental reform many of his proposals end up sounding like opportunistic incrementalism as if he wants to be seen to be doing something without really doing much at all for fear of arousing the forces arrayed against reform
even biden who has built his brand on commonman folksisms seems more believable and he has explicitly promised billionaires that nothing much will change for them
my fears about mayor pete's easy way with the wealthy were confirmed this week when he convened a group of bigmoney donors on a tour through silicon valley
i wasn't surprised that he has proved so attractive to the tech set
with his slick easy optimism mayor pete reminds me of so many techies who promise big disruptive change while refusing to accept the full costs of achieving their idealism
for them there's always an easy slapdash costfree revolution just use the right hashtag on instagram and you too can spark regime change in the arab world
i suspect we'll need a bolder candidate to take on trumpism and corporate control
the mayor from mckinsey is the wrong man to make the case
the democrat who meets trump in 2020 will face a big challenge countering the idea that trump's economic policies are working at least according to the traditional way we measure this stuff
the american economy we are told is resplendent and aglow
thanks to a tax cut that swelled corporate coffers and a frenzy of deregulation that unleashed longterm dangers in exchange for shortterm profits the hits just keep coming we're now in the longest expansion in history with little sign of abating
job growth regularly defies naysayers
the stock market seems to set a record more often than people stream mariah carey christmas hits
on cnbc the other day the anchor jim cramer reflecting the mood of wall street said these are the best numbers of our lives
for the president the political argument here is straightforward
like bill clinton in 1996 or ronald reagan in 1984 trump is planning to point to an economy doing its best george costanza we're back baby we're back
every week on twitter trump chefkisses new economic stats as if he'd personally assembled the national dish
that's one way to put it
here's another way this economy is stupid
as my colleague david leonhardt writes headline economic stats are increasingly divorced from more substantive metrics on american wellbeing
this is a country in which prosperity rains on the rich while hundreds of thousands of people go bankrupt every year for getting sick
this is a country in which it is not unusual to encounter developingworld misery alongside the most obscene collections of wealth ever recorded
there's a lot of job growth but a lot of the jobs are lowwage hightoil jobs
it's a country in which every nearly every economic sector trends toward monopoly and oligarchy and in which regulators let companies call the shots — see the faa
and boeing or the ftc
and google
elizabeth warren and bernie sanders have turned these dismal realities into the central pillars of their campaigns
both are calling for policies that fundamentally overhaul corporate control of the economy
as their detractors note it's unlikely that they will be able to achieve many of those goals in our polarized political climate
but what matters to me is that they are making the case
they have articulated both farreaching structural policy goals and political strategies that mesh with the spirit of those goals
not only are they calling for fundamental change that will alter vast sectors of the economy they are also committed to undoing the influence of corporations and the wealthy in their own path to the white house underscoring their commitment to their goals
i don't see how mayor pete can make a similarly compelling case
i don't see how he can take on trump's economy without at least attempting to fight the ceos who championed the corporate cashgrab that made it so hot
and i don't see how he can take on those ceos while holding fundraisers in napa valley wine caves
mayor pete seems like a lovely man
that's the problem
he'll get eaten alive by the corporate machine that now runs the world
pompeo called me a 'liar' that's not what bothers me
by mary louise kelly jan 28 2020  ask journalists why they do the job they do and you'll hear a range of answers
here's mine not every day but on the best ones we get to put questions to powerful people and hold them to account
this is both a privilege and a responsibility
january has been an interesting month on this front
i've had the opportunity to put questions one on one to the top diplomats of both the united states and iran in their respective capitals
iran's foreign minister javad zarif spoke to me on jan 7 in tehran
secretary of state mike pompeo spoke to me last friday in washington
each man represents a nation in conflict with the other speaking with them i wondered what path either could see out of the situation
in both cases i was allotted 10 minutes for questions
it turns out you can cover a lot of ground in 10 minutes
when mr zarif sat down with me on the sidelines of a big think tank conference focused on security in the persian gulf it was just four days after an american drone strike had killed maj gen qassim suleimani
we started there
how might iran retaliate for general suleimani's death
the united states has committed a grave error mr zarif told me
and it will pay for that grave error
i do not know whether at that moment he was aware that just hours later iran would unleash missiles on iraqi military bases where american troops are housed
we moved on to whether he would travel to new york later that week to attend security council meetings at the united nations
no he told me because mike pompeo decided i was too dangerous for the united states
the united states had denied mr zarif a visa in what some have branded a violation of the 1947 united nations headquarters agreement which generally requires the united states to grant access to the united nations for foreign diplomats
next i asked whether we were witnessing the death of the 2015 nuclear deal
mr zarif insisted no — even as he acknowledged that iran was suspending compliance with centrifuge limits
the foreign minister and i ended with a tense exchange on what is an uncomfortable question for him the status of united states citizens imprisoned in iran and whether future prisoner exchanges were off the table
we had proposed a universal exchange of all prisoners and we were doing that in good faith mr zarif said
but are those channels still open
no he conceded saying those talks are certainly suspended now
my interview with secretary pompeo came two weeks and three days later in the east hall of the treaty room on the seventh floor of the state department
by then an uneasy pause had taken hold the united states and iran appeared for the moment to have stepped back from the brink of war
i kicked off with a question on diplomacy
is there any serious initiative underway to reopen diplomacy with iran
we've been engaged in deep diplomatic efforts since the first day of the trump administration mr pompeo replied underlining american efforts to build a coalition to counter and contain iran
but in terms of american engagement with iran i went on are there any plans for talks
the diplomatic effort on this front has been vigorous robust and enormously successful mr pompeo said changing the subject back to engaging american allies to put pressure on iran
another question i was curious to hear secretary pompeo answer was how the trump administration plans to prevent iran from building nuclear weapons should it decide to do so given that iran is closer to a nuclear weapons capability than when president trump took office
here's the relevant portion of the interview  kelly how do you stop iran from getting a nuclear weapon
pompeo we'll stop them
kelly how
sanctions
pompeo we'll stop them
he did not offer specifics
nor did he elaborate when pressed on how to square his resolve with what mr zarif had just told me — that all limits on iran's centrifuge program have been suspended
yeah mr pompeo said
he's blustering
do you have evidence that he's blustering
he did not directly answer
in fairness i could hardly expect him to telegraph what intelligence the united states may possess on the iranian regime's nuclear ambitions
i write about all this now to refocus attention on the substance of the interviews which has been overshadowed by mr pompeo's subsequently swearing at me calling me a liar and challenging me to find ukraine on an unmarked map
for the record i did
that's not the point
the point is that recently the risk of miscalculation — of two old adversaries misreading each other and accidentally escalating into armed confrontation — has felt very real
it occurs to me that swapping insults through interviews with journalists such as me might terrifyingly be as close as the top diplomats of the united states and iran came to communicating this month
there is a reason that freedom of the press is enshrined in the constitution
there is a reason it matters that people in positions of power — people charged with steering the foreign policy of entire nations — be held to account
the stakes are too high for their impulses and decisions not to be examined in as thoughtful and rigorous an interview as is possible
journalists don't sit down with senior government officials in the service of scoring political points
we do it in the service of asking tough questions on behalf of our fellow citizens
and then sharing the answers — or lack thereof — with the world
requiem for a dream by roger cohen jan 31 2020  i have covered many stories that marked me over the past 40 years in war zones and outside them but none that has affected me as personally as britain's exit from the european union
brexit day now upon us feels like the end of hope a moral collapse a selfamputation that will make the country where i grew up poorer in every sense
poorer materially of course but above all poorer in its shriveled soul divorced from its neighborhood internally fractured smaller meaner more insular more alone no longer a protagonist in the great miracle of the postwar years — europe's journey toward borderless peace and union
britain in a fit of deluded jingoism has opted for littleness
the fiasco was captured this week when that pompous and pitiful british nationalist nigel farage waved a miniature union jack in the european parliament as he bid farewell and was cut off by the vicepresident of the parliament mairead mcguinness
put your flags away you're leaving and take them with you she said
farage looked like a sheepish schoolboy caught breaking rules
he blushed
an irish woman from a country uplifted by european union membership reprimanding the new breed of littleengland male as he exits history in pursuit of an illusion the symbolism was perfect
hip hip hooray
farage's flagwaving brexit party cohorts chanted
save me please for i shall weep
speaking of symbolism the fact that president trump has been a fulsome supporter of this folly is apt
an ahistorical amoral american leader cheering on a british abdication sums up the end of an era
the world was rebuilt after 1945 on something of more substance than britishamerican lies and bloviation it took resolve
the torch has passed
to whom exactly is unclear perhaps to a country slow to contain a plague
that is a problem
brexit belongs to this era in one quintessential way
it is an act of the imagination inspired by an imaginary past carried along by misdirected grievances borne aloft by an imaginary future
the age of impunity is also the age of illusion turbocharged by social media
inequality poor infrastructure low investment inadequate schools are real british problems but the takebackyourcountry transference of blame for them onto brussels bureaucrats proved that the imagination now overwhelms reality
truth withers
the mob roars
this too is a problem
yes britain was undefeated in world war ii and helped liberate europe
but it could do so only with its allies and it was precisely to secure what it is now turning its back on a free europe offering its people the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living
those are churchill's words in 1946 in a speech that also contained this phrase we must build a kind of united states of europe
unbowed britain was once consequential britain no longer
i used the word abdication advisedly
europe needs the great tradition of british liberalism at a moment when hungary and poland have veered toward nationalism and across the continent xenophobic hatred is resurgent
it is perverse for britain to try to look away
europe is part of britain
visit the great norman monasteries in england and tell me this is not so
the british dead who lie in the continent's soil having given their lives for its liberty tell the same story of interlaced fate from a different perspective
to be so orphaned is painful
the 47 years of british membership cover the entire arc of my adult life
europa was our dream
i covered anwar sadat the egyptian president speaking to the european parliament about hope and peace in 1981 eight months before his assassination
so much for dreams
yet they persist for otherwise life is unlivable
i wandered from brussels to rome to paris to berlin to london and everywhere i lived i experienced some iteration of europe's beauty as a physical thing as a cultural bond and as a transformative idea
the sensation was most acute in germany where the idea of the union was the most effective escape from postwar shame and the rubble of 1945 a form of atonement
but it was ubiquitous the guarantor of our deliverance and the symbol of our capacity to reinvent the world and even make it better
every european country through the goal of ever closer union changed itself
they grew richer no small thing
but they also reframed their selfimage
italy and spain left mussolini and franco behind to become stable prosperous democracies
france found its tortuous way to truth after the humiliations and predations of vichy and discovered a european avenue to express once more its universal message of human rights founded on human dignity
central european countries stabilized their escape from the deadening soviet imperium to which yalta had confined them
britain ceased equating europe with scourges like intellectuals rabies and garlic as it had in my childhood
hyde park became a babble of european tongues
the british economy surged
britain had given up its colonies and found a new identity in association with europe or so it seemed flickeringly
then i lived in sarajevo covering the bosnian war and i saw in inert bodies torn by shrapnel and in history revived as galvanizing myth of might and conquest the horror from which the european union had saved my generation
it had laid bad history to rest
that was enough to be forever a european patriot
but not enough for the british a quartercentury later
in the words of my friend ed vulliamy who also covered that war britain has become a country that boards cheap flights for stag outings to piss all over krakow
hip hip hooray
when i lived in berlin i would cross the nearby polish border and never failed to marvel that where millions had perished decades earlier a nonexistent frontier traced its invisible line across fields of wheat
i would pass from the german world to the lands of the slavs and nobody asked me who i was what papers i bore or what was my intent
if germanpolish reconciliation has been possible anything is possible my only solace at this moment
a bunch of flagwaving fantasists at the wrong end of actuarial tables have robbed british youth of the europe they embrace
they will be looking on as 450 million europeans across the way forge their fate
their automatic right to live and work anywhere from lisbon to stockholm will be lost
i've lost a limb more than a limb my heart
europe helped britain grow bigger and more open and more prosperous
now it will shrink
another suffering friend patrick wintour the diplomatic editor of the guardian sent me these lines of auden  in the nightmare of the dark  all the dogs of europe bark  and the living nations wait  each sequestered in its hate  intellectual disgrace  stares from every human face  and the seas of pity lie  locked and frozen in each eye
a better epitaph for the aborted story of britain in europe and the tragedy of a disoriented nation's willful infliction of enduring selfharm is impossible to imagine
senate republicans are bathed in shame by frank bruni jan 18 2020  the impeachment trial of donald john trump began on thursday when john roberts the chief justice of the supreme court directed all of the senators to stand and raise their right hands
ever since i can't get two questions out of my head
the first how in god's name — and it was in god's name — can the republicans who have already decided to acquit president trump take a solemn oath to administer impartial justice
they're partial to the core unabashedly so as their united march toward a foregone conclusion shows
a mindmeld this ironclad isn't a reflection of facts
it's a triumph of factionalism
the majority of the party's senators have said outright or clearly signaled that they have no intention of finding the president guilty and removing him from office
yapping lap dogs like lindsey graham and obedient manservants like mitch mcconnell have gone further mocking the whole impeachment process
so the oath they took how does that work
did they cross the fingers on their left hands
do they reason that american politics has reached a nadir of such fundamental hypocrisy and overweening partisanship that no one regards that pledge as anything but window dressing
certainly they're telling themselves that their own political survival hinging on obsequiousness to a president with a talent for retribution matters more than honor
over the three years of the trump presidency they've become expert at that calculation
my second question is really a subset corollary or anagram of the first how can marco rubio ted cruz and martha mcsally stand to look at themselves in the mirror
i'm singling out these three somewhat randomly but also because they've traveled particularly selfmortifying journeys away from selfrespect
at a news conference on thursday afternoon chuck schumer the leader of the senate's democratic minority said that when the chief justice walked into the chamber earlier that day i saw members on both sides of the aisle visibly gulp
schumer attributed that to the palpable weight of history
but for many of them it probably had more to do with their awareness that they were about to sell out again this time in circumstances that would be remembered long into the future
democrats too have made up their minds and that would be equally upsetting but for the mountain of actual evidence on which their judgment rests
you can erase all the testimony in the house by gordon sondland david holmes alexander vindman fiona hill and others
you can delete mick mulvaney's admission at a white house news conference of a quid pro quo
you can discount lev parnas's ongoing aria of atonement
still you have the transcript of sorts of trump's perfect phone call with the president of ukraine in which it's clear to any sane reader with a semblance of common sense that he's trying to trade american aid for the smearing of joe biden
if there were nothing to this why would trump stonewall congress to the extent that he has
that's not how the innocent act
when witness after witness tells a version of the same story providing pieces of a puzzle that fit snugly together you can reach a conclusion about the whole of it
that's called logic
and if the actual case against trump were weak why would republicans keep redirecting attention to democrats' motivations — to how much they despise the president
that's called distraction
mcsally practiced it on thursday when in a moment of breathtaking hostility she answered a reasonable question from manu raju of cnn about whether any new evidence should be presented during the senate trial by snarling liberal hack
she's terrified
her state arizona is increasingly purple
she lost her 2018 race for the senate and ended up in the chamber only by appointment following john mccain's death
she has to run again this year against mark kelly the former astronaut who's a popular figure
she's vulnerable and standing with trump is almost as much of a gamble as standing up to him would be
but she once did stand up to him
she used to have guts
before going into politics she blazed trails as an air force pilot and even sued the secretary of defense when she detected discrimination against women
during her successful campaign for the house in 2016 she pointedly didn't endorse trump and just as pointedly spoke out against the behavior that he copped to — no bragged about — in that infamous access hollywood tape
mcsally had a moral compass then
now she just has a hunger to hold onto her suite of offices in the capitol
she has wagered that emulating trump is her best bet
at the conclusion of this pathetic excuse for a trial she'll vote to acquit him — impartially of course
she'll be joined by cruz and rubio who are special targets of my disappointment because they were once special targets of trump's ugliness
they know it firsthand and well
they campaigned against him for the republican presidential nomination in 2016 when he didn't just criticize them but viciously belittled and even savaged them
he conspiracytheorized a role for cruz's father in john f kennedy's assassination
a pathological liar cruz called trump
but now that trump is president and his base has become the most impassioned constituency in the party cruz is his biggest cheerleader and a ready mouthpiece for all of those lies
he has swapped thoughts of 2016 for thoughts of 2024 when there's another opportunity to reach for the white house and trump's loyalists will come in handy
he'll have to muscle aside javanka and don jr but that's a pickle for another day
first step acquittal
rubio has long fashioned himself a foreignpolicy maven and took a hard line when it came to russia
so you might think that the trump presidency would be especially galling to him
you might also think that trump's bullying of ukraine — which left the country more vulnerable to russian aggression — would be some sort of breaking point
but he's a republican member of congress in 2020 which means he's a sycophantic shell of his former self
and having bitten his tongue about trump's global misadventures he'll now abet more of the same by helping trump stay in office
there are so many other republican senators to marvel at
mitt romney what was the point of diving back into public life if you're going to prop up a president whose fraudulence you once gave a whole long speech about
lamar alexander you venerated howard baker a fellow tennessean who once held your senate seat and put principle above partisanship by standing up to president nixon
why not do the same and stand up to president trump
susan collins i can't imagine the exhaustion of your role as political wild card scrutinized to a faretheewell
but come on
if you're going to pride yourself on autonomy you need to exercise it when it matters most
it's not fun to be any of you right now with mcconnell above you and maga hellions below you poised to make your life a misery if you stray
but no one forced you into public service
when you entered the senate you took an oath and you took another one on thursday
i have a third question maybe just a rewording of the first and second doesn't that nag at you even a little
'sesame street' is opening up to syrian refugees by alex carp jan 31 2020  in its 50 years on television sesame street has presented an expansive idea of the challenges of childhood offering lessons on divorce racism grieving and autism — as well as help with the alphabet and accepting friends who are a bit taller and more birdlike
next week a new version of the show will begin airing for an audience that less than a decade ago didn't exist children displaced by the war in syria and their neighbors in the communities where many of the refugees have fled or sought asylum
at this point there are lots of 7yearolds who were born as refugees from syria and remain far from permanent resettlement a staff member on the project said recently
that's not changing soon
since the start of the conflict in 2011 nearly seven of every 10 residents of syria have been forced from their homes
more than 11 million have fled to unfamiliar parts of syria or to the countries across its borders with only around 150000 permanently resettled
they are now the largest displaced population in the world
and displacement in the middle east and elsewhere lasts longer than ever before once refugees are displaced for at least five years as is the case for most syrian refugees the president of the international rescue committee david miliband said at a senate hearing last year they're likely to stay displaced for more than two decades
sesame street began as an experiment in television and became a global model for earlychildhood education
its new project launched with the irc
and educators in syria iraq jordan and lebanon is an effort to rethink humanitarian aid
aid is good at keeping people alive mr miliband has argued
but it doesn't give them the tools to thrive
it has traditionally been directed to immediate needs — nutrition security shelter — but displacement that can last for decades presents a very different kind of problem
parents often carry the trauma of forced migration with them in unexpected ways and a childhood of makeshift housing isolation from an extended community of familiar faces and few safe places to play can affect not only children's behavior and learning skills but also brain development gene expression and the ability to build the fundamental tools of resiliency
it can be very hard to moderate or to cope said sherrie westin sesame workshop's president of social impact and philanthropy
preliminary research conducted in jordan and lebanon found that displaced children have trouble finding the language to express their emotions
they describe what they feel only very broadly sad happy scared
the show will focus on identifying and managing emotions and will be coupled with thousands of outreach workers going to clinics community centers homes and other gathering spaces in the four countries where they will meet with children parents and caregivers to provide support and extend many lessons of the series
today less than 2 percent of humanitarian aid worldwide is targeted at education and just a tiny fraction of that goes to early education ms westin said
we're talking about a generationscale intervention
just as american sesame street teaches counting and the alphabet before deeper literacy and numeracy the new series called ahlan simsim or welcome sesame will start with the basics
we want this first season to dive into identifying different emotions like frustration and anger nervousness and loneliness fear scott cameron an executive producer at sesame workshop said
but we also have to make that entertaining
and we have to do that without in the case of fear terrifying the kids
to do that mr cameron and his colleagues built on techniques developed throughout the program's years on the air
we thought a lot about the iconic 'sesame' characters who've been useful for curriculum goals in the past he said
we need some kind of comedic foils but we don't want to do negative modeling — we don't want villains
oscar the grouch for example was developed in the very early stages of 'sesame' as a way to represent differences and a kind of mutual respect mr cameron explained
he's grumpy and he thinks smelly fish are great
but he can help model different perspectives
oscar and grover and cookie monster are all monsters — meaning they're not humanoid like bert and ernie — so they're a little bit removed from humans mr cameron explained
you get a little more leeway that way
ahlan simsim which will air in arabic and kurdish has two main characters
both were built at jim henson's creature shop in queens where rows of desks are covered with halfconstructed muppets and older ones midrepair
muppets bigger than a desk — mr snuffleupagus for example — might lean against a wall
jordan pioneers production company based in jordan collaborated with sesame workshop to develop the characters write scripts and shoot the episodes
when producers from sesame made a series of visits to the creature shop last year to discuss muppet design and look at prototypes zaid baqaeen and khaled haddad of jordan pioneers the show's head writer and an executive producer joined from amman via video chat
jordan pioneers pitched us a boy and a girl character that were roughly the same age and we loved that mr cameron said
two new friends who go on adventures together
for names they suggested basma and jad
basma means smile and jad has a bunch of meanings but connotes somebody who's kind of generous but a little bit buttoned up
very earnest
mr baqaeen added completely different but they complement each other
basma is dynamic adventurous gogogo
she's kind of impatient when she's excited about an idea or a challenge that she wants to take on
jad we think of him as the planner meticulous
he's a painter and he likes to paint plans in midair viewers will learn that his brush once belonged to his grandfather who is absent from the show
what basma should look like came relatively easily — a purple nonhumanoid girl like elmo is a boy but not necessarily a human boy mr cameron explained
skewed pigtails oval face no bracelets or jewelry
and no clothing which can bring in local connotations that interfere with a character's identity
it can also be hard to adjust bert and ernie have been stuck in striped shirts since 1969
jad was trickier
the team passed around some early sketches
we dragged a whole bunch of our monster muppets out said rollie krewson a master builder at the creature shop
she and jason weber the creature shop's new york creative supervisor and an expert fabric painter and dyer call them anything muppets — on occasion they sit in for firefighters or police officers in the background of a scene or once for elmo's grandmother
we had one in a drawer that sounded like what they were describing just characterwise mr weber said
it has this beautiful roundish head and the mouth is straight across but when you change the angle to make eye contact with the viewer you can start to see a friendly open smile just underneath
ms krewson adjusted the design to communicate jad's introversion and express the challenges he sometimes has letting his feelings out
he can also look very contemplative she said
he's got a very loose jaw
i can push it way forward and i can pull his chin back so he can look perplexed and sad more internal
mr weber added he has what we call a very good smile curve
smaller touches link the characters visually
jad's nose is purple like basma's and basma's nose is jad's golden yellow
the pair is joined by ma'zooza a goat sidekick who provides comic relief mostly by eating everything in sight
she's a baby learning how to walk and climb and she's voracious in the tradition of cookie monster mr cameron said
cookie has trouble with selfregulation selfcontrol
and ma'zooza allows basma and jad who are almost 6 to have a younger friend that they can nurture so they're not always the ones being nurtured
she also has these long floppy ears which are adorable
ms westin said that with basma and jad one has left his home becomes best friends with someone from somewhere else
you can see where that creates opportunities for children to relate to those stories and feel less alone
most refugee families live in host communities and neighborhoods and the benefit of mass media is that we know we can reach not only displaced syrian children but we can reach them side by side with their new neighbors
before shooting could begin basma jad and ma'zooza were bagged packed in boxes and shipped to amman
sesame estimates that the project through television mobile phones home visits preschools and the efforts of educators across the region will reach as many as nine million children — what they expect to be the largest earlychildhood intervention in the history of humanitarian response
to measure its effectiveness with parents caregivers and on tv childhood development specialists will design and conduct studies during the project's first five years
their work will double the amount of research available on the experience of childhood in humanitarian crisis
we're going to share what works and what doesn't work and not just to help us achieve the outcomes we're setting out to achieve here ms westin said
it will be one of the first projects of its scale to think about how fuller lives might be lived within the consequences of the conflict and within longterm crises elsewhere
we want this project to be a model for humanitarian response not just in the middle east ms westin added but for refugee children wherever they may be
starr chamber the sequel by maureen dowd jan 18 2020  can a woman be president of the united states
hell yes
i've covered the men who run the world my whole life
and there have been a lot of screwups from vietnam to watergate to afghanistan to iraq to pushing the economy off a cliff
there has also been plenty of creepy behavior culminating in the news that donald trump ken starr and alan dershowitz have joined together in a pervy hypocritical cabal to argue that trump did not smirch the constitution
so please elizabeth warren and amy klobuchar stop whingeing about sexism and just show how you could wield power like a boss
ibid nancy pelosi
when steve bannon called pelosi a total assassin according to the hot new book a very stable genius by washington post writers phil rucker and carol leonnig he meant it as the highest compliment
you won't find pelosi keening about gender she's too busy taking care of business
hillary clinton did not lose because she was a woman
she faced sexism of course just as barack obama faced racism
she lost because she ran an entitled joyless noseinthe air campaign and because she didn't emulate her husband's ethos of campaign 'til the last dog dies and the last bowling alley closes and always make it about the voters
she lost because she and her campaign manager robby mook didn't listen to bill clinton the world's leading expert on the white male rural vote when he warned them that there was trouble and offered to help out
donald trump operates from the id which is fitting because he represents a lastgasp primal scream from workingclass americans threatened by the changes transforming the country
women are now a majority of the work force and whites are heading toward a minority status
hollywood cannot cling to its benighted — and selfdefeating — desire to stay a white male club forever despite the fact that women have always made up half the audience
trump's ascent does not make it harder for women to ascend — just the opposite
look at the throng of women who were outraged enough about trump to march and run and get elected in 2018
once a woman electrifies democrats the way jfk bill clinton and obama did — and the way trump does his base — she will win
trump is once more doing his part to energize women voters
on friday we learned that the president will get help from starr and dershowitz for the impeachment trial in the senate
the starr chamber was a shameful period of american history with the prissy puritan independent counsel hounding and virtually jailing monica lewinsky and producing hundreds of pages of panting bodiceripping prose that read more like bad erotica than a federal report rife with lurid passages about breasts stains and genitalia
like the rev
arthur dimmesdale and other pharisaic holy rollers before him the prosecutor who read the bible and sang hymns when he jogged became fixated on sex in an unhealthy warped way
even trump was appalled
starr's a freak the bloviating builder told me back in 1999
i bet he's got something in his closet
in other interviews he called starr a lunatic a disaster and off his rocker and expressed sympathy for hillary having to stand by her man when he was being lambasted by this crazy ken starr who is a total wacko
starr who once clutched his pearls over bill clinton's sexual high jinks is now going to bat for president access hollywood
after playing an avenging javert about foreplay in the oval starr will now do his utmost to prove that a real abuse of power undermining congress and american foreign policy is piffle
in 2007 he defended jeffrey epstein
by 2016 starr was being ousted as president of baptist baylor university for failing to protect women and looking the other way when football players were accused and sometimes convicted of sexual assaults
in other words he's a complete partisan hack who doesn't give a damn about sexual assault
and then there's dershowitz whose past clients have included such sterling fellows as epstein claus von b�low oj
simpson and harvey weinstein
how did he miss ted bundy
still dershowitz has put himself on the side of an impressive pantheon of villainy in the realm of violence against girls and women
virginia giuffre prince andrew's accuser has also claimed that she was offered as a teenager to dershowitz for sex — a contention that dershowitz has denied in a countersuit
on fox news dershowitz has made the case that it is pelosi who put herself above the law by delaying the delivery of the articles of impeachment
good luck with that one
the government accountability office a nonpartisan government watchdog a few days ago deemed that trump's slimy ukraine gambit violated a law
yet dershowitz will somehow argue that it doesn't represent high crimes and misdemeanors
he tweeted that he's nonpartisan because he opposed bill's impeachment and voted for hillary even as he joined up with bill's persecutor
dershowitz said that he is participating to defend the integrity of the constitution
that assertion may fly in foxworld
but in the real world it's ridiculous
you can bet that trump and his buddies will continue to turn out the women's vote
steve jobs was right smartphones and tablets killed the pc
by farhad manjoo nov 13 2019  i got an ipad pro recently and i've fallen madly in love with it
this was unexpected
i've had ipads before but like a lot of people i hadn't found them to be very useful
tablets were good for surfing the web and watching netflix but they've always been dogged by the charge that you couldn't get a lot of work done on them
apple's latest ipads are different
not only can you get work done on them in many ways they're productivity dream machines
today's ipads are powered by customdesigned processors that are faster than the chips on some of the macs apple makes and the ipad's separately sold keyboard is better and more durable than the accursed fallingapart mess of a keyboard that apple is shipping on its muchmaligned current line of laptops
apple unveiled a new 16inch macbook with a revamped keyboard on wednesday good news for the many apple lovers who've been grumbling about the company's lackluster slate of recent macs
but i think the ipad is already beginning to eclipse the traditional personal computer
in the four months i've had this latest model the ipad pro has eaten into the time i spend on my phone and my oldschool laptop and desktop
among other things i now research and write just about every column using an ipad i still compose many first drafts by speaking into my headphones but i'm an odd duck
i thought i had gotten out of the gadgetreviewing business for good last year
since the smartphone had gobbled up everything from cameras to music players to portable gaming systems i declared the whole field of gadgetry dead
but just when i thought i was out they pulled me back in
the history of the ipad is a story about consolidation focus and the power of scale in the tech business
it's a story about how thoroughly one company apple has dominated the entire hardware business this decade
and it is also really a story about the only thing that mattered in tech in the 2010s — the smartphone — and the way that one device became the gravitational center of the entire tech business shaping every market in the industry and much of the nontech world beyond it
the ipad has always been freighted with great expectations
although the ipad was unveiled in 2010 three years after the iphone development of the ipad predated development of the phone and steve jobs apple's cofounder always seemed to have his heart in the tablet
in one of his last interviews before his death in 2011 jobs declared the ipad to be the future of computing
pcs are going to be like trucks he told the journalists kara swisher and walt mossberg — meaning the traditional mac and windows machines would still be around but like big rigs they'd be used by a small set of power users for a dwindling set of specific highpower tasks
the cars of the tech industry as jobs saw it would be phones and tablets
for a while he was only partially right
the ipad sold well at launch but after a few years it hit some hurdles
after jobs's death apple left the ipad to languish and did something similar with the mac
meanwhile something amazing happened with the iphone and the many androidbased copycat phones it inspired
in the 2010s smartphones became more popular more powerful and more profitable than anyone in the tech industry thought possible
within a few years their sales and usage eclipsed that of pcs and for much of the decade they were the fountain of most new consumer innovations across the technology industry
smartphones made uber and instagram and snapchat and tiktok possible
smartphone cameras began to surpass standalone cameras turning much of culture and society into a memesoaked playground where visual media matters more than text
the smartphone also altered the business dynamics of the tech industry
when the iphone came out apple was just one of many successful hardware companies in the world
but the smartphone decimated a host of phone brands remember nokia
motorola
 and as smartphones gained more power they began making life impossible for a slate of hardware startups from gopro to jawbone
on the strength of the iphone apple began capturing a greater and greater slice of the tech hardware business although it didn't sell a majority of units its commitment to the high end of the market allowed it to make the bulk of profits
in the last quarter of 2017 according to one estimate apple made 86 percent of profits in the smartphone industry
apple's dominance came despite the fact that the company made some big mistakes and was late to many big innovations
samsung not apple invented hugescreen phones
apple's mac line was plagued by delays and dead ends including a 2013 redesign of the mac pro that looked like a trash can and proved just as useful
and on the ipad for many years apple just seemed to fall asleep
the ipad's stylus and keyboardforward design
microsoft did it first on the surface
yet none of this mattered
because of its hold on the smartphone business and a very sticky software ecosystem that users found hard to leave apple has been able to incorporate many innovations pioneered elsewhere and sell its customers on a series of peripheral billiondollar businesses including the apple watch and airpods
and ultimately it's the ecosystem that explains why i can't stop raving about the ipad
when it came out the big knock on the ipad was that it was just a big phone today that's what i love about it — like the watch or airpods the ipad feels intuitive and natural to me because it works just like the device i use most often my phone
like a phone in most scenarios i find the ipad to be faster more portable and easier to use and maintain than any traditional pc
i've ever owned
the ipad's limited screen space and emphasis on fullscreen apps also makes for fewer distractions than on a traditional personal computer
the ipad like my phone lets me log in to my bank using my face the mac in 2019 doesn't even have a touch screen
the ipad still can't do everything a laptop can and i still have to log in to a real computer sometimes
i had a long chat recently with dan seifert the deputy editor of the verge who uses an ipad every day on the subway but often finds the device infuriating
for someone like me who's been using a desktop operating system for a long time there's a lot of builtin conventions that i'm used to that can be frustrating seifert said
in particular the ipad doesn't work with antiquated work flows that are built for pcs
say you need to log into your company's bespoke publishing system or expense program
it's possible those won't work on your ipad — at least not yet — because they were built for much older devices
but seifert agreed with me that many of these uses are a special case
he still uses pcs because often in jobs's parlance he needs a truck
most people however don't need trucks and few of us will need them in the future
seifert isn't teaching his kids how to use desktop operating systems like the mac or windows and neither am i
it took longer than he expected but steve jobs was right
over the past decade for most people in most use cases phones killed the pc
to get work done now you just use a big phone — which apple happens to call an ipad
tech loses a prophet
just when it needs one
by kara swisher jan 29 2020  it's nothing but noise all the time
we get hammered every second from an incessant sousaphone of tweets and from the righteous rage machine that screams at us in this digitized 247365 communications world that we have built
what you might not know is that we have long had a name for what started this all disruptive innovation
the concept was pioneered by clay christensen a highprofile and wellregarded harvard professor of management who died of cancer last week at 67
professor christensen's remarkable legacy grew out of a seminal book he published in 1997 the innovator's dilemma
the book covered esoteric industries like the disk drives market and excavating to analyze and illustrate the power of disruptive technologies
his ideas exploded through the thennascent internet scene and throughout silicon valley
i recall reading an early copy and thinking that it was a manifesto that the tech world would embrace — and that professor christensen was tech's prophet
the intel founder and chief executive andy grove was a fan
so was the apple legend steve jobs
both men were doubtlessly attracted to the idea that startups made up of outsiders could find ways to create new markets and new value — and disrupt and overwhelm established companies
in the face of disruption older companies could do almost nothing
it wasn't that they couldn't see the new threats of startups but that they were stuck on serving their current businesses and they failed to change their products and services out of fear of cutting into profits
professor christensen's formula was elegant first disruptive products are simpler and cheaper they generally promise lower margins not greater profits
second disruptive technologies typically are first commercialized in emerging or insignificant markets
and third leading firms' most profitable customers generally don't want and indeed initially can't use products based on disruptive technologies
it was that simple
professor christensen's book came out a year before google was founded seven years before facebook eight years before youtube and 11 years before uber
each of these companies knowingly or unknowingly would follow his map
while professor christensen would go on to write a sequel and many more books on adjacent topics ripe for disruption like education disrupting class in 2008 and health care innovator's prescription in 2009 it was his initial idea that was devastatingly insightful
i use the term devastate because though no fault of professor christensen's disruptive innovation took a turn for the worse in tech
silicon valley failed to marry disruption with a concept of corporate responsibility and growth at all costs became its motto
the more measured approach that professor christensen taught was ignored
thus in tech the idea was more like destructive innovation which to me was distilled in facebook's famous sign that was once plastered all over the walls at its headquarters move fast and break things
i have always wondered why the company chose those words
i have no problem with move fast which professor christensen would not have quibbled with since being nimble was a core competency that he touted
it was the word break that stuck in my head like a bad migraine
why use a violent and thoughtless word like break and not one more hopeful like change or transform or invent
and if break was to be the choice what would happen after the breaking
would there be fixing
could there be any fixing after the breaking
break sounded painful
and back to today's subject professor christensen never talked about that
in fact professor christensen's approach was quite the opposite
he learned in 2010 that he had lymphoma then he had a stroke
within two years he published the book that i like best titled how will you measure your life
it is at turns spiritual and sometimes selfhelpy taking professor christensen's management thinking and applying it to how to live a life
this book should be newly relevant as tech is casting about for its next act we've been talking about the negative impact of tech's disruptive innovations for a while now
techies measure everything — and so professor christensen's bracing prescriptions are perhaps perfect as the tech industry seeks redemption
for example he wrote  it's easier to hold your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold them 98 percent of the time
and in fact how you allocate your own resources can make your life turn out to be exactly as you hope or very different from what you intend
and most of all decide what you stand for
and then stand for it all the time
perhaps the tech industry does not deserve the kind and good advice that professor christensen imparted but it should take it anyway
that way while he rests in peace it could give us some too
that beloved hospital
it's driving up health care costs by elisabeth rosenthal sept 1 2019  as voters fume about the high cost of health care politicians have been targeting two welldeserved villains pharmaceutical companies whose prices have risen more than inflation and insurers who pay their executives millions in salaries while raising premiums and deductibles
but while the democratic presidential candidates have devoted copious airtime to debating health care many of the country's leading health policy experts have wondered why they have given a total pass to arguably a primary culprit behind runaway medical inflation america's hospitals
data shows that hospitals are by far the biggest cost in our 35 trillion health care system where spending is growing faster than gross domestic product inflation and wage growth
spending on hospitals represents 44 percent of personal expenses for the privately insured according to rand
a report this year from researchers at yale and other universities found that hospital prices increased a whopping 42 percent from 2007 to 2014 for inpatient care and 25 percent for outpatient care compared with 18 percent and 6 percent for physicians
so why have politicians on both the left and right let hospitals off scotfree
because a web of ties binds politicians to the health care system
every senator virtually every congressman and every mayor of every large city has a powerful hospital system in his or her district
and those hospitals are as politically untouchable as soybean growers in iowa or oil producers in texas
as hospitals and hospital systems have consolidated they have become the biggest employers in numerous cities and states
they have replaced manufacturing as the hometown industry in a number of rustbelt cities including cleveland and pittsburgh
can kamala harris ignore the requests of sutter health kaiser permanente ucla
or any of the big health care systems in california
can elizabeth warren ignore the needs of partners healthcare boston's behemoth
bernie sanders may be somewhat different on this front because vermont doesn't have any nationally ranked hospitals
beyond that hospitals are often beloved by constituents
it's easy to get voters riled up about a drug maker in silicon valley or an insurer in hartford
it's much riskier to try to direct their venom at the place where their children were born that employed their parents as nurses doctors and orderlies that sponsored local little league teams that was associated with their catholic church
and of course there's election money
hospital trade groups medical centers and their employees are major political donors contributing to whichever party holds power — and often to the outofpower party as well
in 2018 pacs associated with the greater new york hospital association and individuals linked to it gave 45 million to the democrats' senate majority pac and 1 million to their house majority pac
its chief lobbyist personally gave nearly a quarter of a million dollars to dozens of campaigns last year
senator sanders has called on his competitors for the democratic nomination to follow his lead and reject contributions from pharma and insurance
can any candidate do the same for hospitals
the campaign committees of all 10 candidates participating in the upcoming democratic debate have plentiful donations linked to the hospital and health care industry according to open secrets
but the symbiosis between hospitals and politicians operates most insidiously in the subtle fueling of each other's interests
zack cooper a health economist at yale and his colleagues looked at this life cycle of influence by analyzing how members of congress voted for a medicare provision that allowed hospitals to apply to have their government payments increased
hospitals in districts of members who voted yea got more money than hospitals whose representatives voted nay to the collective tune of 100 million
they used that money to hire more staff and increase payroll
they also spent millions lobbying to extend the program
members who voted yea in turn received a 25 percent increase in total campaign contributions and a 65 percent increase in contributions from individuals working in the health care industry in their home states
it was a winwin for both sides
to defend their high prices medical centers assert that they couldn't afford to operate on medicare payments which are generally lower than what private insurers pay
but the argument isn't convincing
the cost of a hospital stay in the united states averaged 5220 a day in 2015 — and could be as high as over 17000 compared with 765 in australia
in a rand study published earlier this year researchers calculated that hospitals treating patients with private health insurance were paid overall 24 times the medicare rates in 2017 and nearly three times the rate for outpatient care
if the plans had paid according to medicare's formula their spending would be reduced by over half
most economists think hospitals could do just fine with far less than they get today from private insurance
while on paper many hospitals operate on the thinnest of margins that is in part a choice resulting from extravagance
it would be unseemly for these nonprofit medical centers to make barrels of money
so when their operations generate huge surpluses — as many big medical centers do — they plow the money back into the system
they build another cancer clinic increase ceo
pay buy the newest scanner whether it is needed or not or install spas and zen gardens
some rural hospitals are genuinely struggling
but many american hospitals have been spending capital like water said kevin schulman a physicianeconomist at stanford
the high cost of hospitals today he said is often a function of the cost of new infrastructure or poor management decisions
medicare is supposed to pay the cost of an efficient hospital he said
if they've made bad decisions why should we keep paying for that
if hospitals were paid less via regulation or genuine competition they would look different and they'd make different purchasing decisions about technology
but would that matter to medical results
compared with their european counterparts some american hospitals resemble sevenstar hotels
and yet on average the united states doesn't have better outcomes than other wealthy nations
by some measures — such as life expectancy and infant mortality — it scores worse than average
as attorney general in california kamala harris in 2012 initiated an antitrust investigation into hospitals' high charges
but as a senator and presidential candidate she has been largely silent on the issue — as have all the other candidates
as uwe reinhardt the revered princeton health economist who died in 2017 told me if you want to save money you have to pay less
that means taking on hospital pricing
so fine go after drug makers and insurers
and for good measure attack the device makers who profit from huge markups and the pharmacy benefit managers — the middlemen who negotiate drug prices down for insurers then keep the difference for themselves
but with congress returning to washington in the coming days and a new democratic debate less than two weeks away our elected officials need to address the elephant in the room and tell us how they plan to rein in hospital excesses
beware the pandemic panic by farhad manjoo jan 29 2020  coronavirus is starting to freak me out — not the illness itself but the ampedup illconsidered way our frightened world might respond to it
yes the novel virus appears to be spreading quickly at the outbreak's epicenter in the chinese province of hubei but after a late start the chinese government is now imposing unprecedented measures to contain it
as the world health organization declared last week it remains too early to call the outbreak a global public health emergency
so far the wuhan coronavirus is not much more frightening than the outbreaks of other recent coronaviruses like sars in 2003 or mers in 2012 each of which killed fewer than a thousand people around the world
the new virus's death toll has just exceeded 130 for context according to the cdc about 15 million americans have been sickened by the seasonal flu so far in the 20192020 flu season and 8200 have died from it
the flu kills between 300000 and 650000 people around the world annually
what worries me more than the new disease is that fear of a vague and terrifying new illness might spiral into panic and that it might be used to justify unnecessarily severe limits on movement and on civil liberties especially of racial and religious minorities around the world
i also worry that the online world may give rise to dangerous skepticism and that in the event of an actual pandemic a large number of people may delay treatment or refuse vaccines because they don't believe the science or are suspicious of the government
i predict that the next major outbreak — whether of a highly fatal strain of influenza or something else — will not be due to a lack of preventive technologies warned heidi larson the director of the vaccine confidence project in a 2018 article in the journal nature
instead emotional contagion digitally enabled could erode trust in vaccines so much as to render them moot
social media she added should be recognized as a global publichealth threat
tech giants have been racing to tamp down conspiracy theories and hoaxes about the wuhan virus but i worry that their efforts won't be very successful because society seems to have no good answer to the kind of emotional contagion dr larson describes
it's not just that many people get their news from a medium given to rumor exaggeration and wild misinformation especially on issues about health or science — see the persistence of antivaxers or climatechange deniers
there is also a growing partisan divide over how americans interpret scientific expertise and health policy leaving decisions about public health vulnerable to the kind of partisan squabbling you hear on cable news every night
i also worry about the hairtrigger state of geopolitics
from donald trump to xi jinping to boris johnson strongmen with authoritarian tendencies run many of the world's most powerful governments
it is worth remembering that disease or the fear of disease can bring out the worst in humanity — pandemics often feed scapegoating jews were widely blamed for the black death creating a fertile field for demagogues
when you put all these factors together you've got a dangerous recipe for global repression
already china's response appears to be driven by political considerations more than epidemiological ones
the government has imposed a travel lockdown on more than 35 million people which experts say is a quarantine of unprecedented size and scale yet it may not even turn out to be very effective
experts say that quarantines work best during the earliest stages of an outbreak but that they can also backfire causing medical shortages corroding trust in health officials and pushing some people to look to evade care to escape any restriction on their rights
china took weeks to mount a fullscale response to the virus
according to wuhan's mayor five million people left the city before restrictions were imposed suggesting the country is effectively locking the barn door after the horse has run off
they're doing it because people who are in political leadership always think that if you do something dramatic and visible that you'll gain popular support lawrence o gostin a professor of global health law at georgetown university told the washington post
they couldn't have any sound public health advice
we should keep this sense of caution in mind in case american politicians begin pushing for travel bans overbroad quarantines or other measures that might not be supported by the science
you might wonder what the great harm is — if the government needs to temporarily limit people's movements or prevent some people from entering the country shouldn't it take those measures in the face of dangerous illness
perhaps but given the checkered history of quarantines — throughout history they have been used to persecute the marginalized — lawmakers and the media should rigorously examine the bases for any such restrictions
we should especially make sure any restrictions imposed are indeed temporary and adhere to the science — something we don't always do
consider that 30 years after the aids outbreak men who have sex with men are still restricted from donating blood in the united states long after the scientific basis for such a ban has passed
so far president trump has offered a measured response to the virus
we have it totally under control he said this week
but online misinformation about the scale of the virus is already trending
it is not as you might have read on twitter thermonuclear pandemic level bad
so are racist memes blaming chinese people and chinese culture for the virus
i fear that the conditions are ripe for a situation similar to what occurred in the summer of 2014 when an outbreak of ebola overran west africa
after the obama administration scrambled to bring home two american health workers who had become infected with the disease in liberia trump went on a monthslong twitter tirade about ebola
the future president favored extreme isolationism seeing no benefit to american help in africa
people that go to far away places to help out are greatbut must suffer the consequences
he wrote — ultimately sparking a growing partisan movement against the government's response to the virus
today trump runs an administration that is hemorrhaging scientific expertise and his political agenda is rife with efforts to target immigrants minorities and the poor
in 2016 a terrorist attack prompted trump to propose banning muslims from the country when he won the white house he instituted a version of that ban
i fear that panic about a foreign virus offers society another chance to target marginalized people
so let's keep our fear in check panic will hurt us far more than it'll help
the american health care industry is killing people by farhad manjoo dec 4 2019  won't you spare a thought for america's medical debt collectors
and while you're at it will you say a prayer for the nation's health care billing managers
let's also consider the kindly economically productive citizens in swing states whose job it is to jail pregnant women and the parents of cancer patients for failing to pay their radiology bills
put yourself in the entrepreneurial shoes of the friendly hospital administrator who has found a lucrative new revenue stream filing thousands of lawsuits to garnish sick people's wages
and who can forget the lawyers
and the lobbyists
oh aren't they all having a ball in america's health care thunderdome
like the two lobbyists who were just caught drafting newspaper editorials for state representatives in montana and ohio decrying their party's push toward a governmentcontrolled health care industry
it's clear why these lobbyists might prefer the converse status quo a government controlled by the health care industry
if we moved to a singlepayer system how would lobbyists put food on the table and who would write lawmakers' oped essays
welcome to the bizarre new argument against medicare for all it's going to cost us jobs
lots of jobs
good middleclass whitecollar jobs in america's heartland where democrats need to win big to defeat donald trump
the argument is specious and morally suspect
last week health researchers reported that american life expectancy is declining for the first time in half a century and some of the leading causes have to do with the ruinous health care system
even if it is the case that reforming american health care might eliminate some jobs it would seem to be a good trade for the likely benefit more people might gain access to affordable health care and get to keep living
but i worry that the jobs argument might sway moderate politicians centrist pundits and much of the establishment because it plays on one of the major fault lines of health reform that in fixing the system so that more people benefit those who now enjoy a privileged slice of american health care might end up worse off than they are today
as a matter of ethics and equality this should be ok
 sticking with a system that is the source of so much death debt and financial ruin just because you like your doctor or your insurance company or your medicalbilling job is not really a defensible position
on the other hand in america i've got mine and i don't want to lose it is always pretty good politics
the jobs argument goes like this there's a lot of fat in the american health care industry and any effort to transform it into a simpler system in which everyone is covered would necessarily eliminate layers of bureaucracy and likely reduce overhead costs
every year americans collectively pay about 500 billion in administrative costs for health care — that is for things like billing and insurance overhead not for actual medical care
these costs are significantly higher than in most other wealthy countries
one study on health care data from 1999 showed that each american paid about 1059 per year just in overhead costs for health care in canada the per capita cost was 307
those figures are likely much higher today
wouldn't lowering overhead costs be an obviously positive outcome
ah but there's the rub all this overspending creates a lot of employment — and moving toward a more efficient and equitable health care system will inevitably mean getting rid of many administrative jobs
one study suggests that about 18 million jobs would be rendered unnecessary if america adopted a public health care financing system
so what if some of these jobs involve debt collection claims denial aggressive legal action or are otherwise punitive cruel or simply morally indefensible in a society that can clearly afford to provide highquality health care to everyone
jobs are jobs folks as joe biden might say
indeed that's exactly what biden's presidential campaign is saying about the medicare for all plans that senators elizabeth warren and bernie sanders are proposing they will not only cost 160 million americans their private health coverage and force tax increases on the middle class but it would also kill almost two million jobs a biden campaign official warned recently
note the word kill in the statement
that word might better describe not what could happen to jobs under medicare for all but what the health care industry is doing to many americans today
last week the medical journal jama published a comprehensive study examining the cause of a remarkably grim statistic about our national wellbeing
from 1959 to 2010 life expectancy in the united states and in other wealthy countries around the world climbed
then in 2014 american life expectancy began to fall while it continued to rise elsewhere
what caused the american decline
researchers identified a number of potential factors including tobacco use obesity and psychological stress but two of the leading causes can be pinned directly on the peculiarities and dysfunctions of american health care
the first is the opioid epidemic whose rise can be traced to the release in 1996 of the prescription pain drug oxycontin
in the public narrative much of the blame for the epidemic has been cast on the sackler family whose firm purdue pharma created oxycontin and pushed for its widespread use
but research has shown that the sacklers exploited aberrant incentives in american health care
purdue courted doctors patient groups and insurers to convince the medical establishment that oxycontin was a novel type of opioid that was less addictive and less prone to abuse
the company had little scientific evidence to make that claim but much of the health care industry bought into it and oxycontin prescriptions soared
the rush to prescribe opioids was fueled by business incentives created by the health care industry — for purdue for many doctors and for insurance companies treating widespread conditions like back pain with pills rather than physical therapy was simply better for the bottom line
opioid addiction isn't the only factor contributing to rising american mortality rates
the problem is more pervasive having to do with an overall lack of quality health care
the jama report points out that death rates have climbed most for middleage adults who — unlike retirees and many children — are not usually covered by governmentrun health care services and thus have less access to affordable health care
the researchers write that countries with higher life expectancy outperform the united states in providing universal access to health care and in removing costs as a barrier to care
in america by contrast cost is a key barrier
a study published last year in the american journal of medicine found that of the nearly 10 million americans given diagnoses of cancer between 2000 and 2012 42 percent were forced to drain all of their assets in order to pay for care
the politics of medicare for all are perilous
understandably so if you're one of the millions of americans who loves your doctor and your insurance company or who works in the health care field i can see why you would be fearful of wholesale change
but it's wise to remember that it's not just your own health and happiness that counts
the health care industry is failing much of the country
many of your fellow citizens are literally dying early because of its failures
i got mine
is not a good enough argument to maintain the dismal status quo
the apps on my phone are stalking me by farhad manjoo jan 22 2020  there is much about the future that keeps me up at night — ai
weaponry undetectable viral deepfakes indefatigable and infinitely wise robotic oped columnists — but in the last few years one technological threat has blipped my fear radar much faster than others
that fear
ubiquitous surveillance
i am no longer sure that human civilization can undo or evade living under constant extravagantly detailed physical and even psychic surveillance as a species we are not doing nearly enough to avoid always being watched or otherwise digitally recorded
your location your purchases video and audio from within your home and office your online searches and every digital wandering biometric tracking of your face and other body parts your heart rate and other vital signs your every communication recording and perhaps your deepest thoughts or idlest dreams — in the future if not already much of this data and more will be collected and analyzed by some combination of governments and corporations among them a handful of megacompanies whose powers nearly match those of governments
why am i so pessimistic
over the last year as part of times opinion's privacy project i've participated in experiments in which my devices were closely monitored in order to determine the kind of data that was being collected about me
the experiments have given me new insight into the psychology underpinning surveillance i've realized how blind we are to the kinds of insights tech companies are gaining about us through our gadgets
our blindness not only keeps us glued to privacyinvading tech — it also means that we've failed to create a political culture that is in any way up to the task of limiting surveillance
that's why across the species whether under american or european democracy or chinese authoritarianism few of our cultural or political institutions are even much trying to tamp down the surveillance state
in china the government is building a frightening surveillance dragnet in broad daylight stitching together facial recognition fingerprint and other databases into an allseeing eye aiming to closely watch more than a billion citizens
yet the united states and other supposedly libertyloving western democracies have not ruled out such a future
just consider the odd politics surrounding privacy invasion
donald trump and his supporters repeatedly argue that the fbi
is corrupt and untrustworthy
yet like barack obama before him trump and the justice department are pushing apple to create a backdoor into the data on encrypted iphones — they want the untrustworthy fbi
and any local cop to be able to see everything inside anyone's phone
apple mercifully is resisting just as it did the request of barack obama's justice department to create a loophole in iphone security — but the fact that both obama and trump agreed on the need for breaking iphone encryption suggests how thoroughly political leaders across a wide spectrum have neglected privacy as a fundamental value worthy of protection
indeed because of a dearth of laws protecting our privacy — and almost no highprofile political discussion about the stakes at hand — americans are sleepwalking into a future nearly as frightening as the one the chinese are constructing
i choose the word sleepwalking deliberately because when it comes to digital privacy a lot of us prefer the comfortable bliss of ignorance
as a result much of the surveillance engine operates underground — just beyond where many of us dare to look
in recent months my colleagues at the times and other media outlets have published a series of shattering investigations into modern digital surveillance
among other revelations advertising companies and data brokers are keeping insanely close tabs on smartphones' location data tracking users so precisely that their databases could arguably compromise national security or political liberty
there are few meaningful checks on scanning for people using facial recognition genetic profiles or other biometric data
tracking technologies have become cheap and widely available — for less than 100 my colleagues were able to identify people walking by surveillance cameras in bryant park in manhattan
this past weekend the times's kashmir hill reported on a company called clearview ai that has created a tool that could end your ability to walk down the street anonymously
by scraping pictures from facebook youtube and other websites to create a huge database of faces the company lets cops identify people just by snapping a photo
it's shazam for faces not very different from the kind of facial recognition tools we worry the authorities may be using in china — and even though hundreds of police departments may have access to it almost no one outside the company understands how it works
the clearview ai story suggests another reason to worry that our march into surveillance has become inexorable each new privacyinvading technology builds on a previous one allowing for scary outcomes from new integrations and collections of data that few users might have anticipated
i was recently confronted by this sort of cascade with my own smartphone tracking data
late last year with the help of stuart thompson an opinion editor i set up my phone to monitor how certain apps were tracking me
i focused on apps that required me to grant them access to my physical location — among them apps to find cheap gas coupons and nearby retail discounts and to otherwise help me navigate and find deals as i wandered about the world
the upshot as the locationtracking apps followed me i was able to capture the pings they sent to online servers — essentially recording their spying
i sent the data to stuart and his team who interpreted and mapped the pings the apps had collected about me
their picture shocked me the apps had followed me far more closely capturing much more data and far more often than i had imagined when i'd said yes to their tracking
look at this map which follows the pings collected by the apps on one sunday afternoon last year  on the map you can see the apps are essentially stalking me
they see me drive out one morning to the gas station then to the produce store then to safeway later on i passed by a music school stopped at a restaurant then whole foods
but location was only one part of the data the companies had about me because geographic data is often combined with other personal information — including a mobile advertising id that can help merge what you see and do online with where you go in the real world — the story these companies can tell about me is actually far more detailed than i can tell about myself
like a lot of people i've long justified my apathy about privacy through innocence i'm a standup guy — what do i have to hide
but looking at the god'seyeview that a few coupon apps can glean about me i can no longer pretend i've got nothing to worry about
sure i'm not a criminal — but do i want anyone to learn everything about me
and more to the point is it wise for us to let any entity learn everything about everyone
because those are the stakes
the remaining uncertainty about the surveillance state is not whether we will submit to it — only how readily and completely and how thoroughly it will warp our society
will we allow the government and corporations unrestricted access to every bit of data we ever generate or will we decide that some kinds of collections like the encrypted data on your phone should be forever off limits even when a judge has issued a warrant for it
in the future will there be room for any true secret — will society allow any unrecorded thought or communication to evade detection and commercial analysis
and if there can be no more secrets how will we account for what we lose
how completely will living under surveillance numb creativity and silence radical thought
can human agency survive the possibility that some companies will know more about all of us than any of us can ever know about ourselves
i'm worried we'll soon be forced to find out
the bernie sanders fallacy by david brooks jan 16 2020  this is a golden age for theyism
this is the belief that there is some malevolent elite they out there and they are destroying life for the rest of us
there is donald trump's culturewar theyism the coastal cultural elites hate genuine americans undermining our values and opening our borders
and there is bernie sanders's classwar theyism the billionaires have rigged the economy to benefit themselves and impoverish everyone else
each of these stories takes a genuine tension in society and blows it up into an allexplaining cartoon in which one part of america is trying to destroy the other part
the gop
has been swallowed by trump's culture war and many democrats seem to be rushing to join sanders's class war
these democrats are doing this even though it's political suicide
classwar progressivism always loses to culturewar conservatism because swing voters in the midwest care more about their values — guns patriotism ending abortion masculinity whatever — than they do about proletarian class consciousness
democrats are doing this even though the sanders classwar story is wrong
sanders starts with a truth workers need more bargaining power as they negotiate wages with their employers
but then he blows this up into an allexplaining ideology capitalism is a system of exploitation in which capitalist power completely dominates worker power
this ideology crashes against the facts
in the first place over the past few years wages for workers toward the bottom of the income stream have been rising faster than wages for those toward the top
if the bosses have the workers by the throat how can this be happening
second wages are still generally determined by skills and productivity
for example edward lazear of stanford university finds that between 1989 and 2017 productivity in mostly highskill industries rose by roughly 34 percent and wages in those industries rose by 26 percent
productivity in industries with mostly lessskilled workers rose by 20 percent while wages grew by 24 percent
as michael strain of the american enterprise institute puts it capitalism is doing what it's supposed to do
it's rewarding productivity with pay and some people and companies are more productive
if you improve worker bargaining power that may help a bit but over the long run people can't earn what they don't produce
third and most important most of the increase in earnings inequality has happened between companies not within them
as john van reenen of mit
has found all over the world superstar businesses are racing ahead of their competitors
as those companies grow more productive they earn more profit per employee and pay their workers more
companies that can't match that productivity don't and their workers lag behind
a recent brookings institutionchumir foundation report also notes that there is a growing productivity gap between superstar companies and everybody else
whether it is in tech retail manufacturing utilities or services productivity growth at the leading companies in each industry has remained very strong
those productive businesses are capturing larger and larger market shares
but productivity is not growing fast among the lagging companies
workers in those businesses suffer
today's successful bosses are doing what they should be doing increasing productivity growing their businesses and offering great service
a side effect of their efficiency is they spend a smaller share of their revenue on labor even while raising their workers' wages
in a global informationage economy the rewards for being best are huge
thus the core problem is not capitalists exploiting their workers it's the rise of productivity inequality
it's the companies and individuals who don't have the skills to take advantage of new technologies
the real solution therefore is not class war to hammer successful businesses
it's to boost and expand productivity for everybody else
that's done the oldfashioned way — by having better schools and better vocational training by having more open competitive markets by creating incentives to expand investment by making sure superstar businesses don't use lobbyists to lock in their advantages
i understand if you want to stick to an usversusthem political ideology
it's emotionally satisfying to base your political ideology on blaming people you dislike
in fact i strongly recommend michael lind's new book the new class war which is the best version of usthem
lind makes a lot of vague generalizations about the managerial elite which he blames for our problems
but at least he's interesting and provocative
at least he understands that a politically plausible theyism is economically left and socially right — combining the culture war and class war into a tidy narrative
but if you want to deal with our real problems stop the usthem warfare and start dealing with productivity inequality
successful executives are doing what's best for their companies gathering as much talent as they can
this isn't evil
it's not exploitation
the job of public policy is to make it easier for everybody to do what successful people are doing
productivity is the key to national prosperity
every time we increase productivity for one person we all thrive a little more together
the flawed humanity of silicon valley by charlie warzel jan 28 2020  every week brings a fresh hell in the tech world
as news of the latest scandals pile up over weeks months and eventually years narratives switch
friendly tech companies become big tech
the narrative is flattened
the tech giants become monolithic and their employees become caricatures — often of villains
the truth is always messier more interesting and more human
it is a central tension animating anna wiener's excellent memoir uncanny valley
the book traces ms wiener's navigating the tech world as a startup employee in the mid 2010s — what might be thought of as the last years before silicon valley's fall from darling status
ms wiener said she was drawn into the tech world by its propulsive qualities
graduating into a recession and spending her early 20s in publishing tech offered opportunities jobs the seductive feeling of creating something and of course the money was good
but what makes uncanny valley so valuable is the way it humanizes the tech industry without letting it off the hook
the book allows us to see the way that flawed technology is made and marketed not by villains but by blind spots uncritical thinking and armies of ambivalent people coming into work each day trying their best — all while sometimes unwittingly laying the foundation of the surveillance economy
from a privacy standpoint uncanny valley is helpful in understanding what it's like being on the other end of the torrent of information that streams from our devices each minute
early on ms wiener recounts working for a successful data analytics company and the gold rush toward big data noting that not everyone knew what they needed from big data but everyone knew that they needed it
when confronted with the mass of information her company collected ms wiener describes feeling uncomfortable with the god mode view that granted employees full access to user data
this was a privileged vantage point from which to observe the tech industry and we tried not to talk about it she writes
this she notes becomes a pattern
when edward snowden blew the whistle on the national security agency's prism program in 2013 employees at her own data company never discussed the news
what she describes is a familiar dissociation for anyone who spends time interrogating tech companies on their privacy policies
her company simply didn't consider itself part of the surveillance economy  we weren't thinking about our role in facilitating and normalizing the creation of unregulated privately held databases on human behavior
we were just allowing product managers to run better ab tests
we were just helping developers make better apps
it was all so simple people loved our product and leveraged it to improve their own products so that people would love them too
there was nothing nefarious about it
besides if we didn't do it someone else would
we were far from the only thirdparty analytics tool on the market
the sole moral quandary in our space that we acknowledged outright was the question of whether or not to sell data to advertisers
this was something we did not do and we were righteous about it
we were just a neutral platform a conduit
if anyone raised concerns about the information our users were collecting or the potential for abuse of our product the solutions manager would try to bring us back to earth by reminding us that we weren't data brokers
we did not build crossplatform profiles
we didn't involve third parties
users might not know they were being tracked but that was between them and our customer companies
they were in other words just doing their jobs
ms wiener frequently returns to this reticence to question the product the end goals of the technology and the silicon valley ethos as a whole
at her next job working on the terms of service team for a large open source code platform she reveals how the evolution of the internet pushed her and her coworkers into becoming reluctant content moderators
soon it became her team's job to fashion a balance between preserving free speech on her platform and protecting it from trolls and neonazis  we wanted to tread lightly core participants in the opensource software community were sensitive to corporate oversight and we didn't want to undercut anyone's technoutopianism by becoming an overreaching arm of the companystate
we wanted to be on the side of human rights free speech and free expression creativity and equality
at the same time it was an international platform and who among us could have articulated a coherent stance on international human rights
as a journalist who has covered content moderation issues for the better part of a decade the perspective is somewhat clarifying
decisions that feel ad hoc or made by one or two people in the belly of a large company often are
what looks from the outside like a conspiracy or nefarious technoauthoritarianism is often just confusion caused by poor management poor communication and dizzying growth
most of the company did not seem aware of how common it was for our tools to be abused ms wiener writes of her group of de facto moderators
they did not even seem to know that our team existed
it wasn't their fault — we were easy to miss
there were four of us for the platform's nine million users
in this instance uncanny valley shows how the internet can thrust ordinary people into extraordinary positions of power — usually without qualifications or a howto guide
this is not to say that the book excuses any of the industry's reckless behavior
like a good travel writer ms wiener positions herself as an insideroutsider participating in something bigger than myself and still feeling apart from it
and she is sufficiently critical of her and her peers' participation in the industry
she writes that she would wonder whether the nsa
whistleblower had been the first moral test for my generation of entrepreneurs and tech workers and we had blown it she writes at one point near the end of the memoir
ms wiener's memoir comes at a point where the backlash against silicon valley is strong enough to have earned its own name
narratives have hardened and aggrieved tech employees are adopting a bunker mentality
as ranjan roy of the newsletter margins wrote recently of facebook the rank and file are seeing that they are the villains and will increasingly become so
as so much of the reporting shows the increased scrutiny and criticism of the techlash is important and almost all is warranted
big tech has amassed wild unregulated power that has grown unchecked
still it's easy to get conspiratorial and to fall comfortably into black and white notions of good versus evil
uncanny valley is a reminder that the reality is far more muddled but no less damning
our dystopia isn't just the product of mustachetwirling billionaires drunk with power and fueled by greed — though it is that too sometimes
it's also the result of uncritical thinking blind spots caused by an overwhelmingly white male work force and a pathological reluctance to ask the bigger question where is this all going
what am i building
what i'm reading facebook will now show you exactly how it stalks you — even when you're not using facebook
ring doorbell app packed with thirdparty trackers
leaked documents expose the secretive market for your web browsing data
40 groups have called for a us moratorium on facial recognition technology the future of american politics by david brooks jan 30 2020  men and women are primarily motivated by selfinterest
no other partial truth has done as much damage as this one
if you base your political and social systems on the idea that the autonomous selfinterested individual is the basic unit of society then you will wind up with an individualistic culture that widens the maneuvering room between people but shreds the relationships and community between people
you will wind up with a capitalism in which superstar performers get concentrated in superstar cities and everybody else gets left behind
in a system based purely on competitive individual selfinterest those who are advantaged get to race out further ahead year by year
the sense of common community and equal dignity is annihilated
this is the flaw of unrestrained liberalism what the radicals call neoliberalism or late capitalism
and they are not entirely wrong
populists on the right and the left look at this current reality and they come to a swift conclusion the game is rigged
liberalism is a con
then they come to a different conclusion
the essential logic of society is not actually individuals seeking their selfinterest
it's groups struggling for power
society is an arena where certain groups crush other groups
on the trumpian right it's the coastal cultural elite trying to crush and delegitimize the white christian patriots of the heartland
on the cultural left it's the whole michel foucault legacy
language is a tool the oppressor class uses to permanently marginalize the oppressed
on the economic left it's the bernie sanders class war
the greedy capitalist class rigs the system and immiserates the working class
the populist narratives differ but all have the same underlying structure
we're locked in a lifeordeath struggle of oppressor vs oppressed groups
it's us versus them — the good people here and the bad people there
the problems in society didn't just happen they were consciously engineered by the evil other who must be broken
our very existence is at stake
if the anthropology of unrestrained liberalism is the autonomous individual making his own way the anthropology of populism is warrior ants in a ruthless tribal war
these are very different views of human nature but they have something in common both narratives make us miserable
in one life is isolation inequality and the feeling of being invisible
in the other it's malice fear and constant war
and that's because both of these political tendencies are wrong about human nature
they create societies that pulverize who we are and are made to be
human beings didn't evolve into the world's dominant species because we are more autonomous
we didn't do it because we're more vicious in tooth and claw
we thrived as a species because we are better at cooperation
we evolved complex social networks in our brains to make us better at bonding teaching and collaborating
we don't cooperate only to get things we want individually
often we collaborate to build shared environments we can enjoy together
often we pick a challenge just so we can have the joy of collaborating
relationships are ends to themselves
thus the best future for american politics is not based on individual competition or group war
it's based on this narrative we are an incredibly diverse society that got good at collaboration because we had to
the best future politics puts collaborative pluralism weaving at the center
that means first electing leaders who are masters at cooperation
no offense but if you're supporting donald trump or bernie sanders this year collaboration skills are not high on your list of priorities
second it means infusing cooperative weaver values into all of our organizations
there's a fantastic community organization in baltimore called thread that has a few core competencies that shape its culture
we'd be in much better shape if every organization in america lived out these values  show all the way up
be fully present honest and vulnerable in all interactions
recognize your own value
push through discomfort to connect deeply with others
learn from all voices
most of our challenges are complex
it takes every perspective to see an issue whole
assume people have the best of intentions and actively focus on the value they bring
be intentional about being with those different from you
treat relationships as wealth
human bonds are the chief resource of your organization
recognize the inherent value of each person and meet each person where she or he is
fail forward
life is iterative
your vision is not always the answer but rather a step in a creative learning process
set up feedback mechanisms that support change and personal growth
dogma won't get you to the solution
openness and adjustment will
the third task of weaver politics is reforming institutions so they encourage collaboration
some of our institutions like congress have been completely subsumed by tribal warfare
other institutions as yuval levin writes in his book a time to build are no longer formative places where we learn and serve they have become platforms individuals use to broadcast their supreme selves
still other institutions have become dehumanized
our schools hospitals prisons and welfare systems don't embed people in thick relationships
they treat them as units to be processed and shoved out the door
still other institutions cease to exist
why do we still not have a national service program
america has an enormous task of institutional reform ahead of it just as it did in the progressive era
the fourth and final task of this kind of politics is transformative policies that directly address our most serious divides
for example reparations are a way to acknowledge the wrongs inflicted on africanamericans and to begin to heal that breach
congressman ro khanna has a proposal that would show rural america that everyone has a place in the new economy
he would fund research and technology hubs throughout the country — a land grant college system for the 21st century
the politics of weaving grows out of the acknowledgment that there is no dominant majority in america
there is no moderate center
your group will never pulverize and eliminate your opposing group
there's no choice but to set up better collaborative systems across difference
this is not a problem it's an adventure
yes human beings are partly selfish and selfinterested
but we are also supremely social and collaborative
this is the part we have to work on now
the meaning and melodrama of an italianamerican christmas by frank bruni dec 24 2019  grandma bruni lived in a workingclass neighborhood in a twofamily home that i'd struggle to describe — it was that ordinary that humble
but it was known for blocks in every direction at least around this time of year and not because she went wild with multicolored lights or put one of those sleighplussanta monstrosities on the roof the way some christmas exhibitionists did
no it was famous because it was where jesus was born
and born
and born
year after year decade upon decade in a ritual as reliable as the sunrise and equally comforting
presidents came and presidents went
the economy roared the economy whimpered
friends moved away favorite television shows went dark
but i could count on baby jesus in all his plasterofparis glory
grandma you see had this beloved cr�che but it wasn't the kind of miniature tableau that enabled the entire sprawling cast of the nativity to fit on an end table or a bureau
hers took up a significant patch of her front lawn in white plains ny and its centerpiece was a big wood shack the pieces of which were hauled every year from a backyard shed and hammered together so that mary and joseph would have somewhere dry to hang out from the end of november until the big day
they and their entourage were more than half lifesize
it was as if grandma had invited a large party of anachronistically dressed dwarfs to camp out in her yard for the holiday season
but for most of december something was missing baby jesus who was perhaps threequarters lifesize
he would stay missing — metaphorically in utero though technically in a bottom drawer of grandma's bedroom dresser — until the midnight moment when christmas eve became christmas day
grandma held to this schedule as if historical accuracy depended on it and white plains occupied the same time zone as bethlehem of millenniums ago
at 1158 pm on dec 24 she'd dim the lights
she'd put on a record of silent night
and she'd fetch baby jesus from that drawer where he lay swaddled in her finest white linens
gently cradling him in her arms she'd walk slowly through the living room out the front door and over to the shack
then she'd place him in a manger between mary and joseph
and she'd cry because the moment was an emotional one and she'd somberly inform us this christmas just might be her last
her talent for pasta was surpassed only by her gift for melodrama
religion played a smaller part in her midwifery than you'd think
grandma was nominally and notionally roman catholic and saw the church as the proper even necessary setting in which to mark the milestones of a life birth marriage death
but that was as much about continuity — about a predictable rhythm with reliable ornaments — as it was about creed
jesus was a character in a commonly adopted narrative a lyric in a widely sung song
he was a totem
above all he was a tradition and the nativity scene in front of her house went hand in hand with a christmas eve menu of seven fishes in accordance with italianamerican convention and with the rule that gift opening started with the youngest of the clan and proceeded upward in accordance with age
doing things the right way grounded her
it was her center of gravity
she died some three decades ago and i've no idea what happened to that cr�che
but i know what happened to the family who found it both bonkers and beautiful extravagant and essential
in the manner of modern america we scattered — pulled in this direction by work in that direction by adventure our commitments metastasizing our free time shriveling
we do better than most at forging moments together but they're less and less predictable
where i could once tell you without hesitation how i'd spent the previous two three or four christmas eves — with grandma and baby jesus — i now have to strain to remember
last year in a peculiar mood i went alone to las vegas
the year before that
i'm honestly not sure
that saddens me in ways that it would regardless of what's happening in this seething country and this fractious world but current events intensify my appreciation for customs now lost for touchstones that have crumbled
we're at one of those junctures where so little can be taken for granted so much is up for grabs
the worthiest of values come under fire
the sturdiest of institutions buckle
i'm sure i'm not alone in finding that holidays matter more as do the familiar scripts and cherished props with which they're celebrated
they're assertions of normalcy amid change and loss
the solace is in the details
grandma understood this
she had a wisdom as ancient as the birth of baby jesus
the meaninglessness of the org domain by sam wineburg and nadav ziv dec 5 2019  are today's high school students the ones we call digital natives able to separate fact from fiction
not according to a survey we released last month in which 3446 high school students across the country evaluated the trustworthiness of different websites
one such site was co2scienceorg a climatechange skeptic group that claims to disseminate factual reports and sound commentary
students could go anywhere on the web to investigate the site
a quick search uncovers the group's past ties to the fossil fuel industry
but 96 percent of students never uncovered this industry connection
too often students' evaluations stalled at three letters this page is a reliable source to obtain information from one wrote you see in the url that it ends in org as opposed to com
the kids are wrong
dotorg symbolizes neither quality nor trustworthiness
it's a marketing tool that relies on a widespread but false association with credibility
kids aren't the only ones misinformed
a 2012 international study found that nearly half of americans and larger percentages in france brazil and india believed that an organization must meet some criteria before it could register under org
the dotorg domain is controlled by the public interest registry which was sold last month to ethos capital a private equity firm
the three letters are marketed as a powerful signal that your site serves a greater good — rather than just a bottom line
it's a claim that leads people to make errors about whom and what to trust
unlike dotgov or dotedu which are closed to the general public dotorg is an open domain
anyone can register a dotorg without passing a character test
even commercial sites can be dotorgs
craigslist — among the world's largest ad sites — is craigslistorg
there are over 10 million dotorgs each of which pays roughly 10 per year to register
all you have to do to get one is fill out an online form and provide payment
registration fees generated 92 million in revenue for the public interest registry in 2018 alone
in theory these revenues could grow much larger soon — in june the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers the supervisory body that regulates the internet's domain name system agreed to lift price caps on dotorgs
still andy shea a spokesperson for the public interest registry says it plans to keep the pricing for dotorgs low with increases of no more than 10 percent on average a year
in the public interest registry's latest marketing blitz they unveiled a logo painted in deep royal blue a shade they say evokes feelings of trust security and reliability
they tell new customers to expect an increase in donations and trust for donors when they become part of the domain of trust
noteworthy nonprofits civic organizations and religious groups have embraced the domain — and so have a host of bad actors
all reaped the benefits of dotorg's association with credibility
educational institutions unwittingly shape misperceptions around dotorgs
many colleges and universities including harvard and northwestern steer students in the wrong direction
they equate dotorgs with nonprofit groups and issue no warning of the dangers lurking beneath the domain's positive aura
dotorg is the favored designation of astroturf sites groups that masquerade as grass roots efforts but are backed by corporate and political interests
one of these is the employment policies institute which claims to sponsor nonpartisan research
it was actually founded and run by the head of a public relations firm that represents the restaurant industry
another dotorg americans for prosperity foundation says it addresses major social problems through broadbased grass roots outreach
in reality it was founded by the billionaire koch brothers and many of its grass roots activists are paid
there's an even bigger risk to equating dotorg sites with dogooders
dozens of neonazi antilgbt antimuslim and antiimmigrant groups bear the dotorg seal
a random sample of a hundred organizations designated as hate groups by the southern poverty law center found that 49 percent carry the dotorg domain
typically the domain name system is not an appropriate tool to address website content questions and speech issues said shea the public interest registry spokesperson
that said if a site on a org domain engages in specific threats of violence we would not hesitate to take action on it under our antiabuse policy
a 2019 united nations survey showed that citizens the world over have lost trust in the internet
restoring it will take herculean efforts
the groups that control the internet's domain system could lead the way by being honest about what these initials do and don't represent
the public interest registry and ethos capital could channel some of the millions earned from the dotorg mirage to fund initiatives that educate the public on the domain's shortcomings
they can start by adding a bright red asterisk to their royal blue logo dotorg implies nothing about an organization's intent
buyer beware
the next decade will be just as bad by farhad manjoo nov 20 2019  we will remember the 2010s as a grifter's paradise
these were the years when our collective sense of objective reality totally fell apart and when politics business technology culture and even ordinary life fell fully under the sway of a new breed of swindler huckster influencer troll and hacker
scams and fakery were not just ascendant this decade — they were often the dominant story line
it was a time of life comes at you fast and milkshake duck
the primary feeling of the 2010s was one of punchdrunken disorientation of always having the rug pulled out from under you
and this was the big lesson of the 2010s almost nothing is as it seems
doubt everything
trust no one
not that this idea works very well doubting everything may be a workable plan for individual survival in a fracturing media universe dominated by algorithms and digital media of dubious authenticity but pervasive doubt could just as well bring on civilizational ruin
getting through modern life seems to require adopting a corrosive view of society that makes a hash of our fundamental ideas about the value of cooperation and trust among our fellow humans
we're bringing on a deathspiral of distrust — and i fear that in the 2020s and beyond grifters peddling alternative facts may come to suffocate us all
the most obvious example of the huckster's rise was of course donald trump
when trump announced his bid for the presidency in 2015 much of the political and media establishment including many leading republicans thought the idea of a selfdealing conspiracy theorizing reality tv star winning the white house was a pretty funny joke
few of them understood trump's effectiveness at hacking the news landscape to command our attention completely
few of them could have guessed that rather than the establishment foiling trump his slippery style and overwhelming blizzard of lies would so fully alter political and media culture that by the end of the decade members of the gop
would be embracing and echoing his conspiracy theories as a way to forestall his removal from office
while conspiracy thinking took full flower on the right it began to bloom on the left too
trump's election was followed by the rise of antitrump online influencers who came to dominate news and activism
these were the resistance grifters — michael avenatti the brothers ed and brian krassenstein the nearly selfparodic louise mensch — who peddled a selfserving brand of breathless antitrumpism heavily peppered with calls to buy their books and other merch
a specter of foreign disinformation led to widespread suspicion and it became a handy defense for grifters to dismiss opposition as bots or russian shills
the grift wasn't limited to politics
the tech industry welcomed hucksters with open arms
look at wework uber and theranos — once highflying startups that promised to change the world in big ways and small each unmasked for peddling false prospects unreal tech or hiding systemic corruption and abuse
facebook and other social media services were not just a haven of statesponsored disinformation with dodgy easily gamed stats social media increasingly came to provide a false view of the world
facebook admitted a series of errors overstating advertising metrics
youtube's stats were shown to be lousy with fake views twitter's were overwhelmed by fake followers and amazon was full of fake luxury goods
scams pervaded new technologies and old ones
the spectacular rise in the price of bitcoin in 2017 was later found to be the product of market manipulation
and according to a report by the telecommunications firm first orion about 29 percent of all voice calls placed in 2018 were scam robocalls one estimate puts the volume of spam calls at billions per month
why are we being overrun by scams
society's signals for judging reputation and trustworthiness haven't caught up with the changing tech
even though we know better we reflexively mistake instagram for reality — online influence is seen as a proxy for realworld authenticity and so we are constantly falling under the sway of people who've found ways to game the digital realm
on your phone the fyre festival looks irresistible
we are also too easily blinded by wealth or markers for wealth
anna sorokin the russian immigrant convicted this year of conning new york society into thinking she was a german heiress named anna delvey defrauded hotels and banks of hundreds of thousands of dollars by pretending to be rich
she'd hand out 100 bills to anyone and everyone
for a stretch of time in new york no small amount of the cash in circulation was coming from anna delvey jessica pressler wrote
you could argue that my take on the end of truth is too gloomy
consider the clarifying power of metoo — how in the cases of harvey weinstein jeffrey epstein bill cosby and other oncepowerful men we witnessed the power of facts and objective clear eyed investigation to alter the brutal power structures that had long held victims in silence
you might also argue that collectively we're getting better at spotting hucksters and frauds
the resistance grifters had a good run but we found them out
less than a year from now if not sooner trump too may hit the end of his run
but i'm skeptical that these things signal some reason for optimism
our information system has slipped its moorings and as a result lying and scheming and fraud has simply become too effective a life strategy
as i argued in march when the celebrity college admissions scandal broke we're seeing the uberization of corruption — bending the rules is becoming routine and pervasive a pushbutton cheat code for modern life
it's not a big leap from trust no one to swindle everyone
happy new decade i guess
the perverse servility of bill barr by frank bruni dec 10 2019  donald trump famously said that he could shoot somebody in the middle of fifth avenue and not lose any voters
i don't know about that
but i'm confident that he wouldn't lose bill barr
execution privilege barr would probably call it
he'd release a statement or hold a news conference to say that trump had a spastic trigger finger or was triggered by adam schiff or was set up by those dastardly ukrainians who are never up to any good
such is the magnitude of barr's servility the doggedness of his deference
he's the president's moral launderer
trump does evil and barr washes him clean
as attorney general he's supposed to be the nation's lawyer
but he has bought into the autocratic delusion that trump equals america that national interest and presidential prerogative are inextricably intertwined
so he's trump's advocate come hell or high crimes as surely as pat cipollone or rudy giuliani is
on monday showing fresh contempt for the people who work under him in the justice department barr renounced a determination by the department's inspector general that the fbi's investigation into the trump campaign's ties to russia was legitimate and that antitrump bias was not its animating force
he did this instantly
and then on tuesday did it again with even less subtlety and more sanctimony
it was a travesty he said of the investigation and he was speaking not just of the sloppiness and haste of some of the fbi's actions with which the inspector general also took issue
he was dismissing the whole effort as rotten
it was an eerie echo of his efforts last spring when he sought to neuter robert mueller's findings about the trump campaign's openness to russian help and the president's attempts to obstruct justice
give barr points for consistency
he has bought fully into the idea that the zeal of trump's detractors matters more than the presidents' abuses of power
but what of the constitution
what of common decency
barr isn't concerning himself with those
to do so would call into question the honor of serving in this administration the compliment of holding the job that trump gave him
and he wants that compliment
that pedestal
he prefers to see himself as a holy warrior than as an unholy dupe
to appreciate his perspective you must travel back two months to the university of notre dame where he delivered a speech that garnered some headlines but not nearly enough of them
you should read it
you should savor its grandiosity — it has references to the dawn of homo sapiens the twilight of the judeochristian order edmund burke james madison — so that you can understand his current overreach born of his certainty that he knows better than the rest of the body politic and is called to heal us
you should note his remarks' obsession with morality and you should try not to laugh the same way you stifle chuckles when you're reminded that mike pompeo is a putatively worshipful christian and you try to square that with how he abetted the persecution of marie yovanovitch leaves his state department charges twisting in the wind and genuflects before a false prophet
in trump he trusts
you should dwell on the part of barr's jeremiad where he says that men are subject to powerful passions and appetites and if unrestrained are capable of ruthlessly riding roughshod over their neighbors and the community
ruthless
roughshod
that's trump in an alliterative nutshell but barr seemed to be perversely oblivious to that
he was making a case for trump's presidency
the wonder of this wretched moment has never been the existence and stench of a bad egg in the oval office
that's hardly strange given how ably shamelessness serves ambition
the wonder is how many other bad eggs the current president has assembled or hatched
the wonder is this fluffy funky omelet of unscrupulousness
all these supposedly godly men — barr pompeo mike pence ben carson rick perry and more — cluster around such a demonstrably godless one
they rationalize that trump's indulgence of certain religious factions absolves him of his sins
barr is the principal agent of that absolution
he's also a paragon of hypocrisy telling pete williams of nbc news that the fbi
investigation of trump's campaign was an ominous abuse of government power for partisan aims
that description better suits the conduct for which trump is about to be impeached
i don't know how barr kept a straight face
actually i do
since betrothing himself to trump he has had ample practice
in the notre dame speech without any palpable sense of irony he urged a moral renaissance and delivered this priceless line no society can exist without some means for restraining individual rapacity
i agree
in our society impeachment is one of those means
the law is another
and if barr could dig out his conscience from under all those layers of ego he'd see that the rapacious individual in direst need of restraint is the one he's letting roam free
the politics of exhaustion by david brooks dec 12 2019  there are two power blocs driving politics today
first there's the proletariat
these are the workingclass voters who go to trump rallies in the us and powered brexit and boris johnson's campaign in the uk
they see their best world receding and they want a tough guy to bring it back
second there is the precariat
these are the young and educated voters caught in the gig economy who see no career security ahead
they want leaders like bernie sanders and jeremy corbyn who will promise enveloping policies — free college free internet free child care — to give them some sense of safety
these two groups are different in some ways
when the proletarians attack their enemies they do so from a position of perceived social inferiority so their attacks are resentful and brutal
when the precariat attacks it does so from a position of perceived moral superiority so its attacks are filled with ridicule mockery and scorn
but the movements do have parallels
both are driven by a fear of the future and of each other
both have a tendency to embrace catastrophic apocalyptic visions of the ruin around us
dystopia has become the opiate of the activist class
haunted by economic insecurity they will tolerate any sin in their leader — racism antisemitism dishonesty — so long as that person is willing to fight and be on their side
they both support massive unrealistic policy proposals because they reject the idea that politics is simply the muddled way we settle differences with people we disagree with
these two power blocs are driving the debate and setting the agenda
but there's another group of people who have become the most interesting part of the electorate both here and in britain
it's the exhausted 75 percent people who are defined not by any common ideology but by an affective state — they are simply worn out by the endless war between these two armies
exhaustion has become an independent force in modern politics
many people are voting for whatever candidate will exhaust them less
thursday's british election was defined by the fact that most voters were simply ground down by johnson and corbyn
the economist called the election britain's nightmare before christmas
writing in the guardian rafael behr observed we live with the undertow of sadness and dread
we are braced for that feeling like seeing callous hands rummaging in a private drawer where a delicate tangled identity is stored and pulling at the threads
it feels like exile
people in the exhausted camp are tired of having politics thrust in their face every hour
as ryan streeter of the american enterprise institute has found young people who are lonely at least once in a while are more than seven times more likely to be active in politics than those who are socially active
those who are exhausted have other things to do
they want to restore politics to its rightful place and find meaning attachment entertainment and morality in something else besides twitter wars and election campaigns
years and years of exhaustion have also made these people weary cynical and disgusted
exhaustion as always induces a sort of pessimism a feeling that we are living in terrible times a sort of weariness of the soul
as peter stockland of the think tank cardus put it the combined effect of fear and exhaustion is producing a cynicism so deep and murky and toxic that it verges on the sin of bearing false witness against reality
but the chief feature of the voters in the exhausted group is timidity
they do not get energy from conflict the way say trump does
their instinct is to keep their heads down and just get through this craziness
on campuses 10 percent of students are able to intimidate the other 90 percent who don't want to say the wrong thing and get canceled
in congress the trumpians are able to intimidate the members who realize what a problem he is
the people in the two big power blocs are not good at winning the war against each other but they are really good at intimidating the moderates on their own side
in this way those in the exhausted camp perpetuate their own misery
they complain about the terrible choices each election cycle but never organize enough or become imaginative enough to offer something they themselves might want
in britain they've mostly taken money out of politics but they still had an election even worse and more polarized than our own
in the end if johnson as expected wins easily it will be in part because exhausted voters will have swung to trumpjohnson nationalist demagogy since the only alternative is a corbynsanders class war
in the states voters still have a chance to turn the emotional page to elect a person who displays that you can be a progressive or you can be a conservative without turning politics into perpetual war
pete buttigieg is rising and joe biden's support is resilient precisely because they are not exhausting
the interesting question is whether in the heat of battle the exhausted voters can get over their fatigue cynicism and timidity and take their own side in a fight
a ridiculously optimistic history of the next decade by david brooks jan 2 2020  looking back at the 2020s from our vantage point in 2030 the first great event was the complete destruction of donald trump's republican party
as the former republican consultant mike murphy had noticed there were roughly 300 state and federal elections during the trump years and republicans did horribly in most of them
the 2020 vote was a continuation of that trend
trump's landslide defeat left him humiliated and the republicans lost their senate majority
trump cried fraud and tried to whip up his followers but they turned their backs
he went from idol to scapegoat in an instant
it seemed they could forgive him everything but losing
many temporarily retreated from political life the way evangelical christians did after the ignominy of the scopes trial
president joe biden faced an interesting dynamic in his party
the political power was with moderates
the intellectual power was with the left
people of color whose views were largely more moderate became the crucial swing faction
as president biden resisted the interest groups that wanted him to address health care first
instead he did child and earnedincome tax credits infrastructure expanded early childhood education expanded prison reform and so on — what some writers called reparations by any other name
he gave regulatory czar elizabeth warren a special portfolio to take on big tech
the major events of the decade were cultural not political
the trump era had witnessed a crisis of connection at the bottom of society and a crisis of authority at the top
social repair was the top order of the day once a new president took office
the first whiff of the cultural restoration was the accountability clubs that spread across the nation's campuses
college students realized that america stinks at accountability
either there is no accountability wall street after the financial crisis or people have their lives destroyed for a problematic tweet
the accountability clubs bore the motto truth and mercy
students wanted to restore a culture in which facts mattered
they were also searching for a way to judge others in a graduated and humane manner allowing for repentance forgiveness and restoration
marshall mcluhan once remarked that moral indignation is a technique used to endow an idiot with dignity
suddenly indignation the keystone emotion of the trump years was lame
empathy made a comeback
the second cultural trend of the decade was the rise of the urban church
suburban megachurch attendance fell because the pastors had disgraced themselves under trump
but suddenly there was a surge in church plants in places like brooklyn washington dc chicago and san francisco as highly educated people found homes for their spiritual longings
the churches were liturgically highly charismatic bethel music and highly universalistic and intellectual richard rohr
their politics were an odd mix — prolgbtq prolife active on climate change proanimal rights one of the signature moral causes of the decade
the religious left gained on the religious right
at the same time the racial justice conversation went intimate
america is involved in a multigenerational process of truth and reconciliation
in the teens the truthtelling had generally revolved around historic events — slavery lynching redlining
in the 2020s a series of writers artists and directors gave us vivid descriptions of the subtleties of contemporary black life
the profusion of video streaming networks allowed a new generation of artists to take audiences inside the psychological lives of people of color
these artists realized that structural change would happen when people learned to see one another whole
the most important cultural change came to be known as the civic renaissance
during the first two decades of the century hundreds of thousands of new civic organizations came into being — healing political divides fighting homelessness promoting social mobility and weaving communities
but these organizations were small
they did not grow into the big national chapterbased structures that had repaired america's social fabric a century earlier — the ymca the rotary the boy scouts
by the 2020s philanthropists and community builders realized the only way to change culture and weave the social fabric was by creating an aflcio
of civil society with big national voices and large decentralized national organizations so that people across america had easy and practical pathways to get involved in community revival
in the 2010s it seemed like the liberal order was cracking up
in the 2020s that feeling vanished
the decline of the chinese economy delegitimized the authoritarian model
it turns out you can't run a centrally controlled economy without a lot of waste corruption and riot police
meanwhile the american political system began to work better
the gop
reemerged under josh hawley and marco rubio as a better version of a workingclass party — socially right economically left
democrats remained dominant through the decade
their party's biggest accomplishment was in foreign affairs — the repair of america's alliances and the restoration of global american leadership
americans were more collaborative in the 2020s
and the new york mets won the world series every single year
the shaky future of org domains by josephine wolff jan 27 2020  online commerce and forprofit activity have largely shaped the internet over the past 25 years but a few important corners of the internet have remained staunchly nonprofit retaining some of the internet's early charm and resistance to commercial interests
one of those corners is the org toplevel domain the goto domain for nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations looking to establish an affordable and reputable online presence
domain names for websites like nytimescom or unorg or tuftsedu are the key real estate of the internet
without a domain it is next to impossible to have an online presence there are now more than 350 million domain names registered worldwide
those domain names are sold to customers by registrars like godaddy which partner with registries like verisign which manages the com toplevel domain or all the domain names ending in com
domain names are big business — there's a lot of money at stake when divvying them up among all the registrars and registries
at the top of the domain name hierarchy sits the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers a nonprofit that designates which registries control which toplevel domains and helps resolve disputes around domain ownership
icann has a unique governance structure it is run by a board of directors that incorporates feedback from different advisory committees composed of government officials industry representatives and civil society members
it is a model that icann refers to as multistakeholder governance based on the premise that all users of the internet deserve a say in how it is run
since 2002 domains ending in org have been purchased through an agency called the public interest registry which is owned by the internet society a wellregarded nonprofit working to expand access to the internet across the world
but in november the internet society announced it was planning to sell the public interest registry — along with control of all the org domains — for 11 billion to a recently formed private equity company called ethos capital with close ties to former leaders of the internet governance community
the proposed sale has sparked outrage from many people at prominent internet nonprofits including the wikimedia foundation and the electronic frontier foundation and rightly so
one worry is that ethos in an attempt to make the org toplevel domain as profitable as possible will rapidly raise prices for its customers
for years a 2013 contract capped the cost of an org domain at 825 with an allowed increase of no more than 10 percent a year — a restriction that kept org domains affordable
today a org domain costs 993 a year
but in june 2019 icann approved a new contract with the public interest registry eliminating the price cap even though thousands of people voiced opposition to that decision during a period of public comment
ethos has said it will continue to raise prices for org domains by no more than 10 percent per year but it's not clear how those promises will be enforced or by whom and the timing of the sale — following immediately on the elimination of the price cap — has contributed to some of the skepticism surrounding the deal
another fear is that ethos will cave to pressure from foreign governments about which organizations should and should not be allowed to own org domains
currently org is an open domain so anyone is allowed to register a org domain and there are more than 10 million of them registered worldwide
but the public internet registry has the authority to suspend domain names for illegal activity and one of the concerns raised in a public letter opposing the sale is the potential for governments to target ngos by accusing them of illegal activity and pressuring the public internet registry to take down their domains
just last month for instance the chinese government sanctioned five united statesheadquartered ngos for their involvement in the protests in hong kong all five of those ngos have org domains
there are other reasons to be worried about the sale
the circumstances of the deal between ethos and the internet society seem at odds with the multistakeholder model of cooperative transparent governance that the internet community has worked so hard to develop
beyond just threatening the integrity of the org toplevel domain the sale of the public interest registry without any further community involvement or oversight from icann threatens the integrity of that governance model and the public's trust that the organizations responsible for running the internet have their best interests at heart
icann has the ability to block the deal as well as to question the involved parties about how they would manage the org domain and protect customers but in a statement to the financial times icann said it does not have authority over the proposed acquisition a claim that is patently false
icann itself in a blog post last month acknowledged that pir must obtain icann's prior approval before any transaction that would result in a change of control of the registry operator and pledged to take its responsibility in evaluating this proposed transaction very seriously
but while icann says it has asked pir for more information about the sale it has told the public very little about those inquiries or the ensuing responses and it has not solicited any public comments on the transaction
icann's reasoning seems to be that since the sale does not threaten the security reliability or stability of the org domain it is not its place to intervene
but icann regularly makes decisions about domain ownership that are unrelated to issues of security and stability — just last year for instance it granted amazon ownership of the amazon toplevel domain over the objections of several south american countries
that decision resolved a sevenyearlong dispute dating to 2011 when icann decided to open up more toplevel domains beyond the standard ones like com org and gov
icann received nearly 2000 applications in 2012 for new toplevel domains like google love microsoft and wine and for each application the applicant had to pay icann 185000 in addition to ongoing fees for maintaining the domains
this brought a massive influx of cash for icann that helped fund its subsequent international expansion and the process of severing its final ties with the united states government in 2016
the point of severing those ties was to engender greater international trust in icann and by extension the system of global internet governance that it oversees
but instead icann seems at risk of being captured by commercial interests — a risk that first became apparent with the lucrative 2012 expansion of the toplevel domains that benefited no one besides icann
odds are that seven years later you've still never interacted with a website ending in one of those domains and if you have it was probably only a means of delivering spam or malware to your computer
today icann is in a very delicate position because it derives its authority not from a contract with the united states but instead from its ability to balance the interests of all its various stakeholders from government officials to civil society groups and forprofit companies and maintaining credibility with the worldwide community
it's easy to see why it is not eager to jump into the fray and interfere with or even question the ethos deal for fear of drawing criticism
but the real risk to icann is in failing to protect the remaining corners of the internet preserved for public good and letting its forprofit stakeholders become the dominant voice in its decisionmaking processes
just as icann's former relationship with the united states government proved problematic for it in trying to sustain a credible role in global governance activities so will a tooclose relationship with the forprofit sector at the expense of individual internet users
icann should publicly investigate this sale so that all of its stakeholders can see exactly which safeguards will be put in place to protect org customers
and if those safeguards are not sufficient or enforceable if they meet with widespread disapproval and dissatisfaction from org customers and registrars then icann should make good on its promise to provide consensusbased multistakeholder governance and if necessary block the deal from going through
icann cannot and should not be hiding from controversial domain disputes
it is the only entity with authority over these decisions and its willingness to exercise that power will ultimately be good not just for the internet and internet users but also for icann itself
the sidney awards by david brooks dec 19 2019  i've been giving out the sidney awards initially called the hookies for longform essays since 2004 in honor of the late great philosopher sidney hook
this year there were more phenomenal articles than ever before many more than i can list
the topics they tackled were also more downbeat than ever before
it's been that kind of year
several of the people who sent me their own lists of favorites suggested candace vogler's essay a spiritual autobiography in comment
it's unlike any essay you've ever read
vogler suffered a childhood of unimaginable sexual abuse and neglect
i was afraid to be alone
i was afraid of the other children in school
i was afraid of the other children in the neighborhood
i feared that an evil thing had attached itself to me and could injure anyone who got close to me
her life took a series of improbable turns berkeley feminism quakerism a range of gay friends in society high and low family disruption bar fights an afrobrazilian spiritual practice called umbanda
from jesus she learned that not all men are toxic
she is now an esteemed philosopher at the university of chicago
you can't summarize this essay because it's so hard to encapsulate this life's twists and turns
i enjoy a kind of peace now that i could not have imagined before
i am the luckiest person i know vogler writes reflecting on the arrival of many graces into her life
i've cotaught with her a couple of times she's an amazing teacher and had no idea of the back story that she carries around — a reminder that many people we meet carry back stories that are simply mindboggling
in when the culture war comes for the kids in the atlantic george packer describes what happens when the ferociously competitive meritocratic culture of the new york educated class collides with the ferocious social justice warrioring of the new york educated class
packer traces his own family's perilous adventure through a few brooklyn schools and writes a piece that captures the zeitgeist of our age
his son's public school coerced parents into opting out of standardized tests and made the bathrooms gender neutral leading female students to hold their bladder all day rather than go to the bathroom with boys
it taught the oppression of every outgroup but never the history of the american founding
it's not the school's decisions themselves that are so remarkable but the atmosphere of pc
religious zealotry that surrounds them and the anguish of progressive parents who have to send their precious children into the maw of ideological reeducation camps that in theory they agree with
in the unthinkable has happened in vulture jayson greene describes what happened when a brick fell from an eighthfloor windowsill and hit his daughter in the head
it's a father's wrenching and beautiful minutebyminute account of the next few days
at one point he and his wife are in the hospital absorbing the doctor's prognosis we know greta is going to die all of us although we haven't allowed the thought into our conscious minds yet
none of us is ready for it to maraud through our subconscious killing and burning everything it sees
but we hear banging at the gates
we glance around us realizing this is the last we'll ever see of the world as we've known it
whatever comes next will raze everything to the ground
you will read it and cry and hug your children tighter
i've always given sidneys to individual essays but this year it seems right to give one to an entire issue of a magazine the december issue of the atlantic titled how to stop a civil war
that issue felt like a civic act
i'd particularly recommend yoni appelbaum's essay how america ends which captures the political moment we are in
america is undergoing a demographic revolution with the dominant white majority becoming a minority
we're also at a moment when hyperpartisans fear that losing an election will be more catastrophic than losing our democracy
such people are willing to destroy democratic norms to stay in power look around you
appelbaum also argues that the key to the country's future is building a healthy centerright
as someone who's worked on this problem for 25 years i say good luck with that
i'd also recommend caitlin flanagan's the dishonesty of the abortion debate from that issue
flanagan does something that should be more common she takes the most vivid arguments from each side of a controversy and she jams them into one essay
the most vivid argument of the prochoice side is the backalley and other dangerous abortions that result when you make the procedure illegal and the women who die as a result
flanagan takes you there
the most vivid argument of the prolife side is the sonogram and the growing evidence that cognitive life begins sooner than we thought
these images flanagan writes are proof that what grows within a pregnant woman's body is a human being living and unfolding according to a timetable that has existed as long as we have
obviously it would take a profound act of violence to remove him from his quiet world and destroy him
there's a reason this debate is so hard
on a lighter note sports illustrated had an essay by emma baccellieri called mud maker the man behind mlb's essential secret sauce
in 1920 the cleveland indians shortstop ray chapman was killed when a pitch hit him in the head
baseball needed a way to help pitchers have greater control of their pitches
the solution was to coat the balls with a thin layer of mud thus improving their grip
jim bintliff is the man who collects that mud with shovels and buckets from a secret spot along the delaware river
his mud now coats roughly 240000 balls per season
the story is about bintliff who cultivates the mud as if it were fine wine
i know the mud
i'm the only one on the planet who does he says
in the day the dinosaurs died in the new yorker douglas preston describes what happened when an asteroid struck the earth 66 million years ago the most significant event in the history of our planet
twentyfive trillion metric tons of debris were thrown up into the atmosphere
the energy released was more powerful than a billion hiroshima bombs
a mountain rose up higher than mount everest
fires consumed 70 percent of the world's forests and killed 999999 percent of all living organisms
preston's tale gets more astounding from there
in magic eraser juice in hazlitt elizabeth rosen describes what it's like to be an emt
in the age of the opioid epidemic
the piece is gripping throughout but especially when she's describing how people who have overdosed are brought back to life when she administers narcan
some are overcome with grief that they have fallen so low
others are nonchalant oh i've od'd a bunch of times
i hope everybody has read richard powers's phenomenal novel the overstory about how trees communicate and a lot more
robert macfarlane's essay the understory in emergence magazine is even more astounding explaining how trees communicate underground
one of the ways they do it is through hyphae which are superfine threads that fungi send out through the soil to create an interconnected social network
a single teaspoonful of soil can hold up to seven miles of hyphae
i found the american scholar essay how i learned to talk by emily fox gordon a pure delight
when she was a young woman gordon found a psychoanalyst leslie farber who didn't try to force epiphanies and breakthrough aha
moments
he didn't treat therapy as work
he saw it as an occasion for friendship and beautiful talk
this kind of talk gordon writes is playful and gratuitous
though it often contains elements of argument and analysis its first aim is not to solve problems
in the case of farber's practice any therapeutic benefit lay in the talk itself the selfforgetting human connection that can lift a person out of desperate isolation and remind him that in the future such reprieves will continue to be possible
gordon's narrative voice is lovely and wise
farber is someone we would all like to have known — and can through this essay
the final sidney winner is a bit of a cheat
cop diary by edward conlon was first published in the new yorker in 1997 and was reposted this year by the sun
it's certainly the most realistic description of police work that i have read
i take prisoners conlon writes and to exercise that authority is to invoke a profound social trust
each time a surgeon undertakes the responsibility of cutting open a human being it should be awesome and new no matter how necessary the operation no matter how routine
a police officer who takes away someone's freedom bears a burden of at least equal gravity
let me tell you it's a pleasure sometimes
when i read these essays at the end of the year i feel like i've been given gifts and a deeper appreciation of the reality around us
when i spend the rest of the year following impeachment on twitter not so much
a lot of people help me find great essays each year but i'm especially grateful to robert cottrell who runs one of my favorite spots on the web the browser conor friedersdorf whose the best in journalism newsletter is a weekly dose of intellectual nutrition and robert atwan who runs the best american essays series at houghton mifflin
all three are generous with their time and erudition
full disclosure my wife is editor in chief of comment where the vogler essay appeared
the three crucial flaws in trump's 'peace vision' by micah goodman jan 29 2020  president trump's “ultimate deal for israelipalestinian peace isn't ultimate and it isn't quite a deal
released on tuesday the plan — or “peace vision as it's called in its official document — has three flaws
none are fatal
first the dissonance between its pretension and its timing it purports to change history but coming just one month before israel's elections it serves petty politics
second there is a mismatch between the plan's stated aim and the actors who are meant to put it into place it seeks to bring peace between israel and the palestinians but the palestinians are not full partners in its implementation
third and the biggest problem the plan doesn't meet the palestinians' minimum conditions
can anyone imagine that the palestinians who have previously rejected plans that offered them nearly 100 percent of the west bank might be happy with just 70 percent
the peace plan in other words will not bring peace
but these three flaws should not distract us from the big opportunity the plan presents it cleverly redivides even temporarily the territories in dispute
this division can rearrange the conflict
if put in place the plan would create a palestinian state with almost full sovereignty on some 70 percent of the west bank while fully addressing israel's security needs
the conflict would not end but it would be functionally different
the israelipalestinian conflict is a conflict between occupiers and the occupied
but after the plan it would become a conflict between two separate political entities — and that's an entirely new paradigm
this should be the plan's big ambition instead of seeking to end the battle it should fundamentally redraw the battle lines
the problem with the “ultimate deal is the mismatch between the plan and its stated aim
as a peace plan it's laughable
but sometimes all that's needed to fix a problem is to rethink the purpose of the solution
and here we can stop pretending that the united states plan will end the conflict and admit that it might be better at transforming its character
and with more modest goals it might enjoy better success
to turn the trump administration's proposal from a bad plan to end the conflict into a good plan to transform the conflict all references to ending the conflict should be removed
the palestinians cannot be expected to recognize israel as a jewish state formally renounce the right of return or sign a document announcing an “end to claims
what would israel gain from a plan to reconfigure the conflict
plenty
most israelis are trapped between two national aspirations
on the one hand they don't want to rule over the palestinian people but on the other they don't want to live under the threat of rockets from a palestinian state
the tension between these two impulses has paralyzed israel's ability to address the conflict
a plan to reconfigure the conflict would dramatically reduce israel's control over the palestinians and do so without putting israel in danger
in other words for israelis the trump plan would smash the zerosum game between security and ending the occupation
israelis would be able to greatly reduce their rule over the palestinians without being any more threatened by them
and what do the palestinians stand to gain from a plan to reconfigure the conflict
also plenty
the palestinians too are trapped
on the one hand they want an independent state of their own but on the other most of them want the palestinian refugees to “return — that is to be relocated to israel
moreover a large section of palestinian society is unwilling to recognize nonmuslim sovereignty over any part of the holy land
reconciling with israel would be a religious concession and relinquishing the “right of return would be a national concession
for many palestinians those two concessions would mean renouncing their most sacred beliefs which form a part of palestinian identity
for many years the various peace plans proposed to the palestinians expected them to forgo these two axioms
but the palestinians have always refused a deal in which they would have to relinquish core elements of their national identity as the price for independence
a plan to rearrange the conflict would give the palestinians a state without expecting them to pay for it by renouncing their demand for a right of return and thereby conceding a plank of their national identity
under the plan the new palestinian state will not be completely sovereign but it will be mostly sovereign and the elements of the occupation that immiserate palestinians in their daytoday lives — namely restrictions on movement construction and economic growth — will be swept away
in other words any plan would need to drop the pretense of realizing either side's perfect deal
this plan begins to do that
under it the palestinians could dramatically enhance their sovereignty without conceding their aspirations and israel should control far fewer palestinians without conceding its security
neither side will give up on what is truly important to it and both will reduce what is truly painful
it won't be peace
it won't be a new middle east
but it will be progress
conflicts between neighbors are not only healthier than conflicts between occupiers and the occupied — they are also more likely to support negotiations
talks in the future would be between two sovereign states
in other words reconfiguring the conflict will create new opportunities to continue shrinking it
it's time to stop devoting our energy and political capital to ending the conflict in a single “ultimate deal and start focusing on a much more modest mission — transforming its nature
instead of rejecting the plan — we should think again about what it can and should realistically achieve
that's the way to break through the deadlock minimize suffering and forge a new reality
the white house motto watch your back by michelle cottle nov 14 2019  there's no honor among thieves nor apparently among anxious political hacks who bound themselves to a president with a penchant for subordinating the national interest to his own
onceeager presidential enablers have turned on one another with feral abandon as the facts of what mr trump's flunkies were doing in ukraine have become clear and the impeachment investigation moves into its public phase
john bolton the former national security adviser appears to be spoiling for a fight
he has a deal worth around 2 million to write a book about his time in the administration which he left on notsofriendly terms in september
in a private speech last week mr bolton offered a harsh assessment of the president's foreignpolicy chops and suggested that mr trump's policy toward turkey has been driven by personal and business interests according to nbc news
mr bolton's lawyer told impeachment investigators that mr bolton has information about many relevant meetings and conversations concerning ukraine that he might be willing to share if the courts give him the goahead
mr bolton is awaiting the outcome of a lawsuit brought by his former deputy charles kupperman asking the courts to decide whether a congressional subpoena outweighs the president's order to ignore it
mick mulvaney the acting white house chief of staff tried to glom onto mr kupperman's lawsuit but mr bolton was having none of it
on monday a lawyer who represents both him and mr kupperman asked a judge to deny mr mulvaney's request citing among other objections that mr mulvaney may have waived any immunity from testifying when he acknowledged in a news conference last month that mr trump had sought a quid pro quo from ukraine in exchange for military aid and said that people needed to get over it
mr mulvaney who subsequently insisted he hadn't said what he said was a key player in the pressure campaign to have ukraine announce an investigation of former vice president joe biden while mr bolton reportedly said he wanted nothing to do with the drug deal mr mulvaney was cooking up with gordon sondland the ambassador to the european union
surprised by the blowback mr mulvaney dropped his court request and now says he will abide by the president's edict not to cooperate
even so he has been clashing with pat cipollone the white house counsel over what each sees as the other's mishandling of the president's impeachment defense
mr mulvaney also faces danger from house republicans looking for someone to blame other than mr trump for the ukraine mess
he is among the most promising scapegoats according to the washington post along with the president's lawyer rudy giuliani and mr sondland two of the principal players
but mr mulvaney has implied to people that he knows too much to be fired
mr giuliani now under criminal investigation over his ukraine dealings is facing newly revealed accusations from his associate lev parnas
mr parnas says mr giuliani directed him to help pressure ukrainian officials to investigate mr trump's political rival
for his part mr giuliani is contemplating starting an impeachmentthemed podcast which should terrify everyone concerned
the president meanwhile is said to want to fire not only mr mulvaney but also the inspector general of the intelligence community michael atkinson who alerted congress to the whistleblower complaint kicking off the impeachment inquiry
more publicly mr trump has been berating republican lawmakers for suggesting that his behavior toward ukraine was anything other than perfect — as he has taken to ranting on twitter
while secretary of state mike pompeo isn't under attack from his peers — yet — there are warning flags
last month his former senior adviser michael mckinley told investigators that mr pompeo ignored his pleas to protect marie yovanovitch the former ambassador to ukraine who became the target of a giuliani smear campaign that contributed to her ouster from kiev — pleas that the secretary claims never to have heard
who knows where this could lead
even white house players not directly tied to impeachment are getting in on the action
peddling her new memoir nikki haley the former ambassador to the united nations has been accusing former secretary of state rex tillerson and former white house chief of staff john kelly of having sought her aid in undermining the president's policy aims during their time in the administration
for his part mr kelly says he warned the president before being pushed out that if he were replaced by a yes man mr trump would end up being impeached
looking at you mick
then there's anonymous the senior administration official who published a september 2018 oped in the times who is out with a new tellall book painting an unflattering picture of the president and charging the white house quite simply is broken
to be fair with so many people having been pulled — willingly or otherwise — into mr trump's ukraine scheme it can be hard for the lackeys to keep their stories straight and avoid incriminating even themselves
for instance mr sondland originally told impeachment investigators that he had no knowledge of a quid pro quo involving ukraine
less than three weeks later he amended his testimony to say that he did recall telling ukrainian officials that they were unlikely to receive their promised military aid until they publicly announced the investigations sought by mr trump
this recovered memory brought mr sondland's testimony more into line with that of other witnesses
all this should serve as a warning for the president's many apologists
as the impeachment inquiry grinds on the circular firing squad is likely to grow still larger — and potentially armed with highercaliber ammunition
the wisdom your body knows by david brooks nov 28 2019  this has been a golden age for brain research
we now have amazing brain scans that show which networks in the brain ramp up during different activities
but this emphasis on the brain has subtly fed the illusion that thinking happens only from the neck up
it's fed the illusion that the advanced parts of our thinking are the rational parts up top that try to control the more primitive parts down below
so it's interesting how many scientists are now focusing on the thinking that happens not in your brain but in your gut
you have neurons spread through your innards and there's increasing attention on the vagus nerve which emerges from the brain stem and wanders across the heart lungs kidney and gut
the vagus nerve is one of the pathways through which the body and brain talk to each other in an unconscious conversation
much of this conversation is about how we are relating to others
human thinking is not primarily about individual calculation but about social engagement and cooperation
one of the leaders in this field is stephen w porges of indiana university
when you enter a new situation porges argues your body reacts
your heart rate may go up
your blood pressure may change
signals go up to the brain which records the autonomic state you are in
maybe you walk into a social situation that feels welcoming
green light
your brain and body get prepared for a friendly conversation
but maybe the person in front of you feels threatening
yellow light
you go into fightorflight mode
your body instantly changes
your ear for example adjusts to hear high and low frequencies — a scream or a growl — rather than midrange frequencies human speech
or maybe the threat feels like a matter of life and death
red light
your brain and body begin to shut down
according to porges's polyvagal theory the concept of safety is fundamental to our mental state
people who have experienced trauma have bodies that are highly reactive to perceived threat
they don't like public places with loud noises
they live in fightorflight mode stressed and anxious
or if they feel trapped and constrained they go numb
their voice and tone go flat
physical reactions shape our way of seeing and being
lisa feldman barrett of northeastern university also argues that a main purpose of the brain is to read the body and to regulate what she calls the body budget
you may see a bully on the playground
your brain then predicts your next action and speeds your heart rate and breathing to deal with it
you experience these changes as emotion — oh this is fear or oh this is anger — because your brain has created an emotion concept to make those physical changes meaningful
you might think that in everyday life the things you see and hear influence what you feel but it's mostly the other way around what you feel alters your sight and hearing barrett writes in how emotions are made
when we're really young we know few emotion concepts
young children say mommy i hate you
when they mean i don't like this because they haven't learned their culture's concepts for hatred vs badness
but as we get older we learn more emotional granularity
the emotionally wise person can create distinct experiences of disappointment anger spite resentment grouchiness and aggravation whereas for a less emotionally wise person those are all synonyms for i feel bad
a wise person may know the foreign words that express emotions we can't name in english tocka russian roughly for spiritual anguish or litost czech roughly for misery combined with the hunger for revenge
people with high emotional granularity respond flexibly to life have better mental health outcomes and drink less
if bodily reactions can drive people apart they can also heal
martha g welch of columbia university points to the importance of loving physical touch especially in the first 1000 minutes of life to lay down markers of emotional stability
under the old brainonly paradigm welch argues we told people to selfregulate their emotions through conscious selftalk
but real emotional help comes through coregulation
when a mother and a child physically hold each other their bodily autonomic states harmonize connecting on a metabolic level
together they move from separate distress to mutual calm
welch has created something called the welch emotional connection screen which measures the emotional connection between mothers and preterm babies
by encouraging this kind of deep visceral connection through 18 months her therapy can mitigate the effects of autism
when you step back and see the brain and body thinking together the old distinction between reason and emotion doesn't seem to make sense
your very perception of the world is shaped by the predictions your brain is making about your physical autonomic states
you also see how important it is to teach emotional granularity something our culture pays almost no attention to
you also see that we're not separate brains coolly observing each other
we're physical viscera deeply interacting with each other
the important communication is happening at a much deeper level
trump has made us all stupid by david brooks  donald trump is impulsedriven ignorant narcissistic and intellectually dishonest
so you'd think that those of us in the antitrump camp would go out of our way to show we're not like him — that we are judicious informed mature and reasonable
but the events of the past week have shown that the antitrump echo chamber is becoming a mirror image of trump himself — overwrought uncalibrated and incapable of having an intelligent conversation about any complex policy problem
for example there's a complex policy problem at the heart of this week's iran episode
iran is not powerful because it has a strong economy or military
it is powerful because it sponsors militias across the middle east destabilizing regimes and spreading genocide and sectarian cleansing
over the past few years those militias orchestrated by qassim suleimani have felt free to operate more in the open with greater destructive effect
we're not going to go in and destroy the militias
so how can we keep them in check so they don't destabilize the region
that's the hard problem — one that stymied past administrations
in the middle east and wherever there are protracted conflicts nations have a way to address this problem
they use violence as a form of communication
a nation trying to maintain order will assassinate a terrorism leader or destroy a terrorism facility
the attack says hey we know we're in a longterm conflict but let's not let it get out of hand
that's not in either of our interests
the attack is a way to seize control of the escalation process and set a boundary marker
these sorts of operations have risks and rewards
a risk is that it won't cease the escalation just accelerate it
the radicals on the other side will get enraged and take to the streets
their leaders will have to appease that rage
a reward is that maybe you do halt the escalation
the other side implicitly says message received
we'll do some facesaving things to appease the streets but we don't want this to get out of hand either
another reward is that you've managed to eliminate an effective terrorist like suleimani
talent doesn't grow on trees
the decision to undertake this sort of operation is a matter of weighing risk and reward
and after the suleimani killing you saw american security professionals talk in the language of balancing risk and reward
stanley mcchrystal a retired general and michael mullen a retired admiral thought it was worth the risk
susan rice a former national security adviser thought it wasn't
but in the antitrump echo chamber that's not how most people were thinking
led by bernie sanders and elizabeth warren they avoided the hard complex problem of how to set boundaries around militias
instead they pontificated on the easy question not actually on the table should we have a massive invasion of iran
a great cry went up from the echo chamber
we're on the brink of war
trump is leading us to more endless wars in the middle east
we're on the precipice of total chaos
this was not the calibrated language of risk and reward
it was fearstoking apocalyptic language
by being so overwrought and exaggerated the echo chamber drowned out any practical conversation about how to stabilize the middle east so we could have another righteous chorus of donald trump is a monster
this is trump's ultimate victory
every argument on every topic is now all about him
hating trump together has become the ultimate bonding attentiongrabbing and profitmaximization mechanism for those of us in antitrump world
so you get a series of exaggerated fervors — the mueller report
impeachment
the steele dossier
— that lead ultimately nowhere
most of this week's argument about the middle east wasn't really about the middle east
it was all narcissistically about ourselves
democrats defend terrorists
republicans are warmongers
actual iranians are just bit players in our imperialistic soap opera the passive recipients of our greatness or perfidy
the world is more complicated than this cartoon
love or hate him trump has used military force less than any other president since jimmy carter
when it comes to foreign policy he is not like recent republicans
he is as my colleague ross douthat put it a jacksonian figure wanting to get america out of foreign entanglements while lobbing a few longdistance attacks to ensure the crazy foreigners stick to killing one another and not us
and this is the final paradox
for all the sturm und drang that surrounds trump populist republicans and democrats are gravitating toward the same foreign policy we're in the middle of a clash of civilizations the middle east is so screwed up we should just get out we're too stupidineffectiveracistimperialistic to do any good there anyway
we fight viciously about trump but underneath a populist leftright curtain is descending around america separating us from the mideast china even europe
the real highrisk move is the one both parties are making together that if we ignore the world it will ignore us
it won't
maybe once the inflammatory one is finally gone from the scene we can have an intelligent conversation about that
trump's contempt for true professionals by frank bruni nov 12 2019  the impeachment inquiry and the events that led to it tell many stories
one obviously is about the abuse of power
another illuminates the foul mash of mendacity and paranoia at the core of donald trump
but this week as several longtime civil servants testify at the inquiry's first public hearings a third narrative demands notice because it explains the entire tragedy of the trump administration the larger scandals the lesser disgraces and the current moment of reckoning
that story is the collision of a president who has absolutely no regard for professionalism and those who try to embody it the battle between an arrogant unscrupulous yahoo and his humble principled opposites
right now the opposites have the microphone
i mean william taylor america's top diplomat in ukraine who is tellingly the first impeachment witness to testify on live television
stephanie grisham the white house's peerlessly nasty press secretary has sought to discredit taylor's account of the pressure on ukraine's new president by saying that he belonged to a cabal of radical unelected bureaucrats
hardly
he's a west point graduate and vietnam veteran with a halfcentury career that's devoid of obvious partisanship and entirely about the public good
he took the ukraine post despite profound qualms because he felt he owed his country his expertise
he's a creature of duty and discipline and earnestly accrued knowledge — all precious commodities that are worthless in trump's eyes
in other words he's a true professional and it was as such that he recoiled from what trump rudy giuliani and the wretched rest of them were up to
marie yovanovitch the former ambassador to ukraine has a diplomatic r�sum� that's three decades long and includes three ambassadorships an unusual feat
the fault that giuliani and trump found in her was her respect for correct procedure her resistance to corrupt politics and her reluctance to tweet out dopey praise for the president
they quibbled with her professionalism which had no place in their schemes
trump's disregard — no contempt — for professionalism is in some ways an anagram of his aversion to norms to tradition to simple courtesy
or at least these attitudes exist as a venn diagram with enormous overlap
they're hostile to any set of values that places personal glory below other ideals
but trump's war on professionalism and professionals is also its own distinct theme in his business career which is rife with cheating and his political life which is greased with lies
go back to his initial staffing of senior posts and recall how shoddy the vetting process was
also notice two prominent classes of recruits people who had profoundly questionable preparation for the jobs that he nonetheless gave them ben carson betsy devos stephen miller javanka and genuine professionals who wagered that their skills would be critically necessary — and thus highly valued — and that trump would surely rise to the established codes and expected conduct of his office
now look at how many of those professionals james mattis hr
mcmaster gary cohn dan coats are gone
and tell me whether trump has ever had the epiphany that the presidency is in fact a profession
a crisis of professionalism defines his administration in which backstabbing is the new gladhanding firings are cruel exits are ugly the turnover is jawdropping the number of unfilled positions is mindboggling and many officials have titles that are prefaced with acting — a modifier with multiple meanings in this case
trump slyly markets his antiprofessionalism as antielitism and a rejection of staid cautious thinking
but it's really his way of excusing his ignorance costuming his incompetence and greenlighting his hooliganism
he rejects professionalism because it tempers selfpromotion and forbids such grandiose claims as his insistence that he knows more about the islamic state than any military general
i alone can fix it he boasted at the republican convention in 2016
i'm the only one that matters he said the following year when dismissing any concerns about job vacancies
a true professional would have trouble uttering those words
they roll easily off a true huckster's tongue
professionalism involves credentials benchmarks all sorts of yardsticks by which a person can be judged sometimes unkindly
trump wants only affirmation
and professionalism is a realitybased enterprise
trump prefers fiction the ukraine call was perfect
read the transcript because it exonerates him
his critics are partisan hacks
he's the target of an interminable witch hunt
but robert mueller was no more hunting witches than bill taylor is an agent of the deep state
in fact mueller stands out as a consummate professional so much so that he politically neutered himself and deep state is trump's deeply cynical pejorative for seasoned professionals
it's the professionals who keep pushing back at him whether at the federal reserve the birmingham ala office of the national weather service or the state department which is where taylor yovanovitch and this week's other impeachment witness george kent worked
michael mcfaul a former united states ambassador to russia wrote about taylor and yovanovitch recently in an essay for the new york review of books titled the deeply dedicated state observing both always have struck me as firstrate government servants singularly focused on advancing american national interests
both have served republican and democratic presidents and even after decades of interacting with them both i could not guess how either of them votes
he characterized them as accidental heroes who aren't likely to seek the limelight
they are extremely well trained competent and highly regarded professionals he summarized
that's why they bucked trump
and that's why he can't bear them
trump's digital advantage is freaking out democratic strategists by thomas b edsall jan 29 2020  in a blog post published in november a year before the 2020 election brian burch the president of catholicvoteorg a socially conservative advocacy group announced that in wisconsin alone his organization had identified 199241 catholics who've been to church at least 3 times in the last 90 days
nearly half of these religiously observant parishioners burch wrote 91373 massattending catholics — are not even registered to vote
catholicvoteorg is looking for potential trump voters within this large untapped reservoir — republicanleaning white catholics who could bolster trump's numbers in a battleground state
burch whose organization opposes abortion and gay marriage made his plans clear  we are already building the largest catholic voter mobilization program ever
and no that's not an exaggeration
our plan spans at least 7 states and growing and includes millions of catholic voters
how did catholic vote come up with these particular church attendance numbers for 199241 catholics
with geofencing a technology that creates a virtual geographic boundary enabling software to trigger a response when a cellphone enters or leaves a particular area — a church for example or a stadium a school or an entire town
geofencing is just one of the new tools of digital campaigning a largely unregulated field of political combat in which voters have little or no idea of how they are being manipulated in which traditional disclosure requirements are inoperative and key actors are anonymous
it is a weapon of choice
once an area is geofenced commercial data companies can acquire the mobile phone id numbers of those within the boundary
this is how the national catholic reporter described the process in an article earlier this month  politically minded geofencers capture data from the cellphones of churchgoers and then purchase ads targeting those devices
that data can be matched against other easily obtained databases including voter profiles which give marketers identifying information such as names addresses and voter registration status
such information can be a gold mine
burch described what catholicvoteorg initiated in the 2018 election
we created ad campaigns targeted to mobile devices that have been inside of catholic churches burch explained
what's more  we told catholics in missouri the truth about thensenator claire mccaskill — that she was proabortion was unwilling to protect the little sisters of the poor and opposed catholic judicial nominees because of their religious beliefs
and she lost
if you attend an evangelical or a catholic church a women's rights march or a political rally of any kind especially in a seriously contested state the odds are that your cellphone id number home address partisan affiliation and the identifying information of the people around you will be provided by geofencing marketers to campaigns lobbyists and other interest groups
with increasing speed digital technology is transforming politics constantly providing novel ways to target specific individuals to get the unregistered registered to turn out marginal voters to persuade the undecided and to suppress support for the opposition
democrats and republicans agree that the trump campaign is far ahead of the democratic party in the use of this technology capitalizing on its substantial investment during the 2016 election and benefiting from an uninterrupted hightech drive since then
republicans have a big advantage this time ben nuckels a democratic media consultant said in a phone interview
they not only have all the data from 2016 but they have been building this operation into a nonstop juggernaut
the new technology nuckels continued allows campaigns to deliver a broader narrative over the top on television and other media while underneath in digital you are delivering ads that are tailored to those voters that you need to influence and persuade the most
the explosion of digital technology has created the opportunity for political operatives to run what amount to dark campaigns conducted below the radar of both voter awareness and government oversight
in some cases the technology is very simple the anonymous transmission of negative images of candidates by individuals to facebook groups
this activity is neither reported to the federal election commission nor linked to official campaigns
steven livingston a professor of media and public affairs and director of the institute for data democracy and politics at george washington university has been tracking this sub rosa electioneering in the current election cycle
he found that supporters of two candidates trump and bernie sanders are the primary practitioners
the washington post and the new york times have both reported on the activities of sanders supporters but livingston noted in an email our evidence suggests that trump supporters use automated promotion or cross posting four times as much as sanders supporters
livingston described these digital shadow campaigns as analogous to and perhaps an actual digital manifestation of 'dark money' influence campaigns
in addition he continued  overwhelmingly these pages and groups do not have ownership declarations or facebook verifications
we simply do not know what other digital properties might be operated by common sources with the groups
there is money being spent but we don't know the sources
it is unaccountable spending
livingston provided some of the kind of negative messages and images promoted by anonymous protrump activists
here is one  and here is one made by a sanders enthusiast  experts in the explosively growing field of political digital technologies have developed an innovative terminology to describe what they do — a lexicon that is virtually incomprehensible to ordinary voters
this language provides an inkling of the extraordinarily arcane universe politics has entered  geofencing mass personalization dark patterns identity resolution technologies dynamic prospecting geotargeting strategies location analytics geobehavioural segment political data cloud automatic content recognition dynamic creative optimization
geofencing and other emerging digital technologies derive from microtargeting marketing initiatives that use consumer and other demographic data to identify the interests of specific voters or very small groups of likeminded individuals to influence their thoughts or actions
microtargeting first had a significant impact on american politics in state level campaign work by alec gage a republican and his firm targetpoint in 2002
now political operatives are exploiting commercial techniques to correlate microtargeting data with the identification numbers of cellphones
this allows campaigns to mobilize persuade and turn out — or to suppress turnout among — key voters
in 2016 trump spent far more than hillary clinton on digital campaigning and since then his campaign under the direction of brad parscale has continued far outpace its democratic rivals
in a paper published this month the digital commercialization of us politics — 2020 and beyond kathryn montgomery a professor of communications at american university and jeff chester executive director of the center for digital democracy described the differences between the 2016 trump and clinton campaigns  whereas 31 percent of donald trump's total campaign expenditures were for digital media only 6 percent of hillary clinton's expenditures were for digital
moreover whereas almost 50 percent of mr trump's media expenditures were for digital only 8 percent of secretary clinton's media expenditures were for digital
so although secretary clinton outspent mr trump by 75 million on media it is quite possible that mr trump's heavy reliance on digital media allowed for a more efficient and targeted ad campaign that escaped the eye
parscale who is now managing trump's 2020 campaign claimed in a 2018 tweet that the trump campaign tech operation was 100 times to 200 times more effective than the clinton campaign's adding realdonaldtrump was a perfect candidate for facebook
on monday parscale boasted on the conservative website townhall that trump rallies are providing a gold mine of data for the 2020 election  out of more than 20000 identified voters who came to a recent trump rally in milwaukee wisconsin 579 percent did not have a history of voting for republicans
remarkably 4413 attendees didn't even vote in the last election — a clear indication that president trump is energizing americans who were previously not engaged in politics
similar findings are coming out of other rallies according to parscale  nearly 22 percent of identified supporters at president trump's rally in toledo ohio were democrats and another 21 percent were independents
an astounding 15 percent of identified voters who saw the president speak in battle creek michigan has not voted in any of the last four elections
in hershey pennsylvania just over 20 percent of identified voters at the rally were democrats and 18 percent were nonwhite
in the current election cycle montgomery and chester write  further growth and expansion of the big data digital marketplace is reshaping electoral politics in the us introducing both candidate and issue campaigns to a system of sophisticated software applications and datatargeting tools that are rooted in the goals values and strategies for influencing consumer behaviors
technologies used for identity resolution they write  enable marketers — and political groups — to target and 'reach real people' with greater precision than ever before
marketers are helping perfect a system that leverages and integrates increasingly in realtime consumer profile data with online behaviors to capture more granular profiles of individuals including where they go and what they do
the authors go on to warn that all of these developments are taking place moreover within a regulatory structure that is weak and largely ineffectual
tara mcgowan executive director of the recently created prodemocratic group acronym which plans to spend 75 million on digital and other media replied to my questions by email  there's no digital dark magic being deployed by brad parscale and the trump campaign
they just have near unlimited resources and are spending them wisely to reach their voters where they are — online and especially on platforms like facebook
the greatest advantage mcgowan continued that  the trump campaign has over democrats heading into 2020 is time
democrats may not settle on a general election nominee until late spring or summer
that gives the trump campaign much more time to talk to voters and define the democrats in places where it counts
in addition to acronym prodemocratic groups like priorities usa american bridge america votes and a host of others are working together prepared to spend more than 300 million to counter the trump efforts
in addition the campaigns of mike bloomberg bernie sanders and tom steyer are all spending huge amounts of money on digital strategies focused on facebook google and other social media
still there are concerns that much of the democratic spending will have limited value in the general election insofar as it is going toward states that will not be 2020 battlegrounds including for example alabama arkansas california massachusetts oklahoma tennessee utah and vermont on tuesday march 3 better known as super tuesday
in addition whoever becomes the democratic nominee will not be able to share his or her data with the independent prodemocratic groups according to federal regulation
apple google and most other major internet players have adopted privacy policies that would appear to significantly constrain the ability of data management firms to obtain detailed household information consumer spending and partisan leanings of smartphone users
but it turns out that there are ways to get around the rules
serge egelman a research director at berkeley's international computer science institute and a coauthor of the paper 50 ways to leak your data an exploration of apps' circumvention of the android permissions system replied to my email  most users are likely of the impression that apps will only collect the personal data that they're asked about in the 'permissions dialogues' that they encounter ie popup notifications asking if it's ok
for an app to access certain data such as location address book contacts photos etc
these unsuspecting users were mistaken
we discovered that there are back channels through which the same data is available without having to present the user with a permission dialogue
what does this mean for politics
we know that many of these entities are data brokers and analytics companies that are in the business of using this type of data to profile mobile device users and then selling these profiles to various entities including political campaigns
the data  generally provides information about individual users' daytoday activities and preferences where they shop what they do for fun what other apps they use for how long and what they do in those apps where they live where they work with whom they associate
this data he added enables campaigns to list individual attendees at political rallies to identify political leanings based on online and offline preferences where you live work shop play etc
 and to segment ads based on inferred psychographic traits ie exactly what cambridge analytica did but instead of personalized political ads on facebook users get personalized ads in potentially all of their mobile apps
egelman noted that from the user's perspective there's literally no way of preventing it from happening or even knowing when it's happening
the expectation that app users should be able to figure this all out and manage it is absolutely ludicrous
a prodemocratic strategist who is helping coordinate the independent effort to defeat trump — and who insisted on anonymity to protect his job — described what he believes is the current state of play in the role of digital technology in larger overall strategy  there's no question that as a technical matter the republicans and the kochs are spending much more and have better data than democratsprogressives
but they also have a much more difficult product to sell trump
if marco rubio were president in this thriving economy he continued 2020 would not be a competitive election and the democrats might not have claimed the house in 2018
crucially the strategist said  trump has two relevant advantages deriving from the asymmetry between the flow of republican and democratic information
first when trump says something fox repeats it
when a democrat says something the new york times and the rest of the msm knock it down if it's false or debatable
in other words a huge swath of trumpsupportive media does not perform factbased journalism
in addition the democratic strategist said  trump benefits enormously because of the right's aligned network of media properties ie sinclair facebook properties youtube influencers and botssock puppets
this kind of amplification network barely exists for democratsprogressives
while studies show that digital ads have at most a slight persuasive effect he noted  the real goal of paid advertising is for the content to become organic social media
for example a trump ad saying that he's brought back manufacturing jobs would persuade almost no one
but when local news or your neighbor starts repeating that it becomes more credible and persuasive
that's what they're after
to sum up their content is advantaged because it reaches their target audiences without friction from the media that audience trusts and is quickly and reliably repeated by other voices they trust in their world
what's the bottom line
finally there's the question of the size of the value of trump's datadigital advantage
big enough to enable him to win the popular vote
almost certainly not
big enough to win wisconsin
frighteningly so
trump wants law and order front and center by thomas b edsall jan 8 2020  unexpectedly the 2020 presidential campaign is drilling down on petty crime and homelessness
donald trump and his republican allies are reviving lawandorder themes similar to those used effectively by richard nixon and spiro agnew in the late 1960s and early 1970s to demonize racial minorities
to this end republicans seek to discredit liberalized law enforcement initiatives adopted by a new breed of democratic prosecutors
these democratic district attorneys — in cities counties and suburbs from philadelphia orlando chicago and st louis to contra costa county calif suffolk county mass and durham county nc — are pursuing policies intended to decriminalize vagrancy and eliminate cash bail and they are aggressively pursuing charges in cases of shootings by police officers
they are playing a key role in a hotly politicized movement to curb mass incarceration and to roll back what has become known as the carceral state
the decarceration movement is backed by a wide array of organizations tightly aligned with the progressive wing of the democratic party the real justice pac black lives matter the brennan center for justice the aclu justice democrats moveonorg and brand new congress
michael waldman president of the brennan center and adureh onyekwere a senior research and program associate there along with inimai chettiar and priya raghavan described the goals of the movement in a may 2019 essay ending mass incarceration ideas from today's leaders mass incarceration is the civil rights crisis of our time
the racial disparities pervasive in our justice system compound at every juncture african americans are more likely to be stopped by police arrested detained before trial and given harsher sentences than whites
how do we achieve change the authors ask
the solutions they envisage range broadly from eliminating prison for lowerlevel crimes to incentivizing states to decarcerate from ending bail to abolishing private prisons from reforming housing and employment laws to changing the public perception of the justice system and cultivating respect for all lives
at the same time as this movement has been gaining momentum it has provided ammunition for a powerful counterattack from president trump his attorney general william barr and other lawandorder republicans
the result is that the 2020 election is expanding the 50yearold culture war into new territory as democrats — often under pressure from younger voters — seek to extend broader rights to those who have been previously stigmatized or marginalized now moving beyond protection for minorities women and gays to provide more freedom to criminal defendants the homeless the mentally ill and unknown numbers of men and women imprisoned through prosecutorial misconduct judicial error or other forms of systemic failure
republicans in turn are betting that the democratic presidential candidates have moved substantially farther to the left on issues of crime and punishment than the voting public
leading democratic presidential candidates for their part are not shying away from the challenge endorsing in whole or in part the decarceration and decriminalization agenda
even joe biden one of the more moderate 2020 candidates argued at the september democratic presidential debate that we should be talking about rehabilitation
nobody should be in jail for a nonviolent crime and that nobody should be in jail for a drug problem
we build more rehabilitation centers not prisons
once a strong supporter of the death penalty biden now calls for its elimination noting on his website over 160 individuals who've been sentenced to death in this country since 1973 have later been exonerated
because we cannot ensure we get death penalty cases right every time biden will work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level
while many of the democratic presidential candidates have effectively joined the decarceration movement the same unity cannot be found among house and senate democrats
at this level the movement is one more source of conflict between the alexandria ocasiocortez wing and the many members of the house and senate who must fight for reelection in more moderate districts and states including those that cast majorities for trump in 2016
laurence tribe a professor of constitutional law at harvard described the thinking underpinning progressive democratic policies broadening the rights of the homeless
in an email tribe wrote the supposed rights of those who are upset or psychologically threatened by the homeless the deinstitutionalized or others similarly situated are what i would call secondorder rights rights that a polity cannot fairly treat as having as strong a claim to protection as trumps that override utilitarian claims as is true of genuine rights
put another way tribe continued my right not to be upset by your appearance or life choices cannot occupy the same plane as your right to live your life as you opt to or are compelled to live it if we are to have a viable social and legal system
one needn't be a libertarian to recognize that there is a difference in kind between someone's genuine right to be free of another's physical intrusion or displacement and someone's ersatz right to be free of another's merely offending or upsetting behavior or circumstances
in this view according to tribe rights of the first or primary sort can be universally recognized rights of the second sort must be subordinated if social life is to be tolerable
trump for his part clearly rejects tribe's distinction between first versus second order or genuine versus ersatz rights
for trump the people who come into contact with the homeless have first order rights
in a july 1 2019 interview with fox's tucker carlson trump declared you can't have what's happening — where police officers are getting sick just by walking the beat
i mean they're getting actually very sick where people are getting sick where the people living there living in hell too
trump went on we cannot ruin our cities
and you have people that work in those cities
they work in office buildings and to get into the building they have to walk through a scene that nobody would have believed possible three years ago
and this is the liberal establishment
this is what i'm fighting
republicans are responding to the initiatives of progressive prosecutors with a vengeance
in a fiery speech on aug 12 at the grand lodge fraternal order of police's conference in new orleans barr warned that progressive prosecutors in cities across the nation are demoralizing to law enforcement and dangerous to public safety
this threat barr continued comes from the emergence in some of our large cities of district attorneys that style themselves as 'social justice' reformers who spend their time undercutting the police letting criminals off the hook and refusing to enforce the law
these prosecutors barr declared have been announcing their refusal to enforce broad swathes of the criminal law
most disturbing is that some are refusing to prosecute cases of resisting police
some are refusing to prosecute various theft cases or drug cases even where the suspect is involved in distribution
and when they do deign to charge a criminal suspect they are frequently seeking sentences that are pathetically lenient
so these cities are headed back to the days of revolving door justice
the results will be predictable
more crime more victims
three days later william m mcswain the trumpappointed united states attorney for the eastern district of pennsylvania called a news conference to explicitly attack the philadelphia district attorney larry krasner
krasner was elected in 2017 on a platform promising to end mass incarceration stop prosecuting insufficient and insignificant cases review past convictions free the wrongfully convicted stop cash bail imprisonment treat addiction as a medical problem not a crime
to mcswain these policies are heretical there is a new culture of disrespect for law enforcement in this city that is promoted and championed by district attorney larry krasner — and i am fed up with it
it started with chants at the da's victory party — chants of f the police and no good cops in a racist system
there are mcswain argued plenty of criminal laws in this city — but what we don't have is robust enforcement by the district attorney
instead we have diversionary programs for gun offenses the routine downgrading of charges for violent crime and entire sections of the criminal code that are ignored
most recently president trump at a rally on dec 10 in hershey pa told the crowd you have the worst district attorney referring to the philadelphia da roughly 95 miles east
i've been hearing about this guy he lets killers out almost immediately
you better get yourself a new prosecutor
turning the decarceration movement into a 2020 campaign issue fits into trump's goto strategy of inflaming divisive conflicts especially those involving disputed rights — particularly those benefiting minorities — in order to activate racial resentment to mobilize his core voters and to goad swing voters into lining up against the democratic party
while trump's strategy was successful in 2016 it is by no means clear that this strategy will work as well in 2020
a february 2019 paper evaluating the impacts of eliminating prosecutorial requests for cash bail by aur�lie ouss professor of criminology at the university of pennsylvania and megan stevenson a law professor at george mason examined the consequences of philadelphia's nocashbail policies
contrary to fears that the elimination of cash bail would decrease accountability and increase failuretoappear in court the authors detected no change in failuretoappear in court or in recidivism suggesting that reductions in the use of monetary bail can be made without significant adverse consequences
at the same time however the violent crime rate in philadelphia has increased by 5 percent from 2018 to 2019 according to the city's police department
while homicide and rape both declined by 5 and 9 percent respectively robbery without a gun increased 11 percent aggravated assault with a gun by 13 percent and assault without a gun by 3 percent
there is no evidence that the partial elimination of cash bail caused the increase in violent crime
in fact in 2018 the first full year when the policies were in effect crime dropped 5 percent
in some other cities that have elected to reduce the use of cash bail crime has gone down
in boston crime dropped 5 percent from 2018 to 2019 the first full year in office for rachel rollins the suffolk county district attorney
rollins pledged that she would not prosecute such crimes as larceny under 250 disorderly conduct disturbing the peace receiving stolen property along with breaking and entering — where it is into a vacant property or where it is for the purpose of sleeping or seeking refuge from the cold and there is no actual damage to property breaking and entering wanton or malicious destruction of property drug possession with intent to distribute and a standalone resisting arrest charge ie
cases where a person is charged with resisting arrest and that is the only charge
the approach to prosecution adopted by rollins and others directly contradicts the broken windows policing strategy that was widely popular among both democrats and republicans in the 1990s
the economist described the premise behind broken windows law enforcement this way in environments where disorderly behavior goes unchecked — where prostitutes visibly ply their trade or beggars accost passersby — more serious street crime flourishes
over the past four years many progressive democrats have turned sharply against the aggressive policing that broken windows enforcement produced arguing that it has contributed to excessive incarceration that results in the disproportionate imprisonment of africanamericans and other minorities
at the presidential debate in september virtually every candidate voiced strong opposition to mass incarceration and support for the release or sentence reduction of those convicted of nonviolent crime
many of the crimes progressive prosecutors are declining to press charges on are linked to homelessness vagrancy drug possession disorderly conduct breaking into vacant property and so forth — which from a strategic point of view enables trump and his allies to link homelessness with progressive democratic law enforcement policies
on this issue one of trump's key allies is tucker carlson
every night this week carlson is devoting segments of his fox news show to homelessness
his show will reinforce the 2020 republican election theme that democrats are fostering endemic social disorder
on jan 3 carlson tweeted drugs
homelessness
third world inequality
san francisco's radical left wing government has turned their city into an american dystopia
this week's series is the second time in less than a year that carlson has devoted five straight nights to homelessness with footage of men and women injecting themselves evidence of public defecation the vagrant mentally ill and sidewalks in california lined for blocks with tents
the trump administration has been working for months to develop a new hardnosed federal policy on homelessness
citylab and other publications report that the administration is expected to fund local police efforts to remove public encampments and to put the homeless in federal shelters requiring strict adherence to rules of sobriety and nondisruptive behavior
the white house is taking steps toward decisive new action on homelessness bucking policies favored by advocates in favor of an aggressive approach that centers the role of law enforcement citylab reported on dec 17 2019 advocates say that they expect an executive order on homelessness to assign new resources to police departments to remove homeless encampments and even strip housing funds from cities that choose to tolerate these encampments
the trump campaign is gambling that democrats are outside the mainstream of public opinion on these issues while the leading democratic candidates are convinced that enough of the electorate has become sufficiently skeptical of lawandorder strategies — and the accompanying racial undertones and overtones — to produce a democratic victory on nov 3 2020
over the past 50 years democratic strategies based on the presumption of increasing liberalism among voters at large have rarely succeeded
perhaps 2020 will be different
tucker carlson is not your new best friend by frank bruni jan 11 2020  suddenly you're digging him
at least a little bit
i know i've seen the tweets read the commentary heard the chatter detected the barely suppressed cheer hurrah for tucker carlson
if only we had more brave principled republicans like him
right out of the gate he protested president trump's decision to kill qassim suleimani the iranian military commander noting that it didn't square with the president's determination not to get bogged down in the middle east and warning of the possibility and horror of fullblown war
your pulse quickened
you perked up
he sounded that same alarm on his next show and the show after that
every night at 8 pm he worried about the bellicose itch of our leaders
when all around him on fox news were playing their usual roles indeed his usual role as masseurs for the president's tender ego he administered slaps hard ones the kind that leave angry red handprints
ouch — and don't stop
you rejoiced
it's one thing when democrats challenge what looks like a rush to war by a republican president
it's another when typically fawning members of his own party do
and while carlson was hardly alone in his rebellion — three house republicans voted with democrats to check the president's warwaging authority and over in the senate mike lee and rand paul raised a dissident ruckus — no one else had his ardor his articulateness his megaphone
carlson to the rescue
oh please
the fascination with him is itself fascinating for many reasons
can you recall a modern president before trump whose moods and movements could be reflected and predicted simply by watching one news organization and for that matter just a few of its offerings
in lieu of a normally functioning white house communications department or a press secretary who holds actual press briefings what a thought
 we have fox  friends in the morning and carlson's and sean hannity's shows in the evening
they don't chronicle this presidency
they shape it not just in terms of the volume of their applause for trump who craves the loudest possible clapping but in terms of actual interactions
carlson — like hannity and another fox fixture lou dobbs — has in fact advised him behind the scenes
hence the rapt reaction to carlson's antiwar jeremiads
they may well matter
also those of us who regard trump as a menace can be so eager — too eager — to welcome newcomers to our shores that we overlook the polluted seas they sailed to get there
in a recent moment on the abc talk show the view that was awkward at best joy behar announced excitedly that the prominent white nationalist richard spencer had just disavowed trump because of iran
carlson mind you has not disavowed trump
in fact he performed semantic acrobatics to denounce america's military maneuvers against iran without precisely blaming trump
those slaps i mentioned landed more forcefully on the administration in general than on the manchild at its apex who is in carlson's tortured rendition a gullible marionette his strings pulled by inveterate habitual warmongers
if these profiteering elites would just let trump be trump and train his wrath on mexicans instead of iranians a great presidency would get its groove back
during his tuesday show carlson performed political jujitsu and held two of the president's principal democratic adversaries responsible for exacerbated tensions with iran
referring to the washington establishment and singling out nancy pelosi and chuck schumer he said these are people who have been basically advocating for a kind of war against iran for an awfully long time
it's infuriating he added
it's because of schumer and pelosi and people like them that we got into iraq in the first place
come again
a republican president george w bush urged and oversaw the invasion of iraq and while schumer authorized it pelosi voted against it as did many more democrats than republicans
and carlson's portrait of trump as puppet contradicts reporting from the times and other news organizations that some pentagon officials were stunned when the president ordered the strike against suleimani a measure more extreme than other options presented to him
carlson remains true to carlson selective with facts slanted with truths and — this is the most important part — committed to his vision of america as a land imperiled by nefarious democrats and the darkskinned invaders they would open the gates to if not for sentries like him and trump
as matt gertz of media matters perceptively noted carlson's antiwar stance is not a break from his past support for trump or his channeling of white nationalist tropes but a direct a result of both
gertz explained that in the mindset of carlson and many of his fans on the far right energy spent on missions in another hemisphere is energy not spent on our southern border
it's no accident that in regard to the middle east he and spencer are on the same page
following suleimani's death carlson asked his audience why are we continuing to ignore the decline of our own country in favor of jumping into another quagmire
carlson is defined not by a bold willingness to check trump's excesses or ugliest impulses but by his indulgence — no his fervent encouragement — of those impulses as they pertain to racism and immigration
on those fronts carlson himself grows ever uglier as my colleague farhad manjoo and others have noted
it's why many sponsors have defected from carlson's show
carlson repeatedly uses variations of the word invasion to characterize migrants from central america
he insists that white supremacy is a fiction a hoax
he has used language that buys into and promotes replacement theory — a farright fixation on the idea that declining birthrates among whites will cause a nonwhite takeover — and recently castigated immigrants for litter along the potomac river
just last month he gave precious time on his show to an obscure republican congressional candidate in north carolina pete d'abrosca who has warned white americans that they're being replaced by third world peasants
d'abrosca has also bragged of his support from the groyper army a farright group with more than a whiff of antisemitism
is carlson himself abetting hatred of jews
in a rare point of agreement some jews and white nationalists believe so pointing to an onair rant last month in which he bashed a jewish billionaire paul singer by comparing him unfavorably with henry ford who owned a newspaper that ran a lengthy series alleging a jewish plot to dominate the world
the fox news host goes full antisemite wrote tablet a jewish publication while mike enoch who rallied with the neonazis in charlottesville va said on his podcast if you didn't catch the german shepherd whistles where he praised henry ford and then went into a diatribe of a jewish financier you know i don't know what universe you're existing in
so that's some of what carlson was up to just before he turned his attention to iran
how warm and fuzzy are you feeling toward him now
black britons know why meghan markle wants out by afua hirsch jan 9 2020  the british press has succeeded in its apparent project of hounding meghan  duchess of sussex out of britain
the part it perhaps didn't bargain for however is the loss of prince harry — a much loved royal and a key part of the family's global brand — along with her
in a statement released this week the couple said they wanted to carve out a progressive new role within the royal family and would step back as 'senior' members and work to become financially independent
the british press reacted with surprise at the shock move abroad described variously as seismic selfish rogue and an atrocious lapse of judgment
if the media paid more attention to britain's communities of color perhaps it would find the announcement far less surprising
with a new prime minister whose track record includes overtly racist statements some of which would make even donald trump blush a brexit project linked to native nationalism and a desire to rid britain of large numbers of immigrants and an ever thickening loom of imperial nostalgia many of us are also thinking about moving
from the very first headline about her being almost straight outta compton and having exotic dna the racist treatment of meghan has been impossible to ignore
princess michael of kent wore an overtly racist brooch in the duchess's company
a bbc host compared the couple's newborn baby to a chimpanzee
then there was the sublimely ludicrous suggestion that meghan's avocado consumption is responsible for mass murder while her charity cookbook was portrayed as somehow helping terrorists
those who claim frequent attacks against the duchess have nothing to do with her race have a hard time explaining these attempts to link her with particularly racialized forms of crime — terrorism and gang activity — as well as the fact that she has been most venomously attacked for acts that attracted praise when other royals did them
her decision to guestedit british vogue for example was roundly condemned by large parts of the british media in stark contrast to prince charles's twotime guest editorship of country life magazine prince harry's of a bbc program and kate middleton's at huffington post all of which were quietly praised at the time
her treatment has proved what many of us have always known no matter how beautiful you are whom you marry what palaces you occupy charities you support how faithful you are how much money you accumulate or what good deeds you perform in this society racism will still follow you
in britain's rigid class society there is still a deep correlation between privilege and race
the relatively few people of color — and even fewer if you count only those who have african heritage — who rise to prominence and prosperity in britain are often told we should be grateful or told to leave if we don't like it here
the legacy of britain's history of empire — a global construct based on a doctrine of white supremacy — its pioneering role in the slave trade and ideologies of racism that enabled it and policies of recruiting people from the caribbean and africa for lowpaid work and then discriminating against them in education and housing is with us today the scandal surrounding the wrongful deportation of black british people in recent years is still reverberating
meghan's decision to join the family that is the symbolic heart of the establishment responsible for this troubled history was perplexing to many black british people as we wondered whether she fully appreciated the institution she had entered
both she and harry appear to have gained crystal clear vision as to their reality
it's no wonder the couple want to leave and — as the coded statement that they want to raise their son archie with the space to focus on the next chapter seems to suggest — protect him from the bile to which they've been exposed
the british press having attacked the couple continuously now reacts with shock at this move
but the clues have been there for some time for anyone willing to read them
there was the decision not to give archie a title from birth — something that is expected among royal children of this rank but which meghan and harry appear to have chosen to avoid
then there were the rumors last spring that they might relocate to a country in southern africa
in recent months the couple have begun bypassing official royal channels and communicating with the press directly — most notably when the duchess said in a television documentary that she found adjusting to royal life hard and harry revealed that the tragic experience of the death of his mother diana princess of wales made him want to protect his wife and family
all were signs that the couple would not abide by royal business as usual to the extent that even announcing this decision to step down from their roles as senior royals appears to have taken buckingham palace by surprise
i am not at all surprised
this was the bitter shadow of their sunny may 2018 wedding
how many of us suspected — hoping but doubting we were wrong — that what would really initiate meghan into her new role as a briton with african heritage would be her experience of british racism
and ironically by taking matters into their own hands harry and meghan's act of leaving — two fingers up at the racism of the british establishment — might be the most meaningful act of royal leadership i'm ever likely to see
two deaths and my life by roger cohen jan 10 2020  samuel beckett when asked one beautiful spring morning whether such a day did not make him glad to be alive responded i wouldn't go as far as that
life is a predicament death the elephant at the horizon that looms larger as the years pass
still life is what we have
to give less than everything to it is dereliction
in the end its wonder is unimaginable without the presence of death
as the dew dispels the mist dissolves and the sap rises on a morning such as the one that did not quite win over beckett the force of life is unmistakable
that is what put us here in the first place
great souls resemble the elements in their immensity
they absorb everything — pain injustice insult folly — and give back decency and kindness
they are not born of a piece
they come into being through unflinching confrontation with life's spears
they reach quiet
discipline is the backbone of graciousness
stoicism is the other face of wounds
in the most beautiful smile painful knowledge hovers
midwinter is not what prompted these reflections although when a freezing wind whips off the east river all thoughts turn to refuge
no the death in quick succession of two friends was the catalyst
they were older than me
but they were not old enough and not so distant in age that their memento mori feel less than urgent
sonny mehta who died last month at the age of 77 would caress the books he loved
for them he lived
he guided alfred a knopf through more than three decades of rapid change
he was a complete publisher eclectic in his tastes ferocious in his will guided by a mission to bring the finest books to knopf and publish them only once editing had honed them to irreproachable form
yet he wanted to be remembered above all as a reader
i knew sonny for three decades
he published my last two books
his civility never wavered
the twinkle in his eye never faded
his friendship was constant
whisky and a cigarette and the meandering conversation that went with them were more his thing than the treadmill
he was a beautiful man
how so
in his gentleness that contained wisdom in his diffidence that contained enthusiasm in his discretion that contained curiosity
you had to listen carefully for he spoke softly to the clues he offered
his long marriage to his wife gita brought to my mind in its respectfulness and vitality rilke's phrase about love as protecting the solitude of the other
a child of india brownskinned in what was when he started the white preserve of british publishing once asked if he was perhaps seeking a job in the stockroom mehta never stooped to unkindness
his writers knew they had come home
he commanded the unswerving loyalty of the likes of michael ondaatje kazuo ishiguro germaine greer and julian barnes
i feel that my heart has been ripped out jon segal his longtime colleague at knopf told me
when mehta's father a diplomat died in vienna mehta found in his desk a folder with every article ever published about him
the pride of his father who had never complimented his son was evident
remote fathers vast subject
hearing this story i understood more of my friend's elegant stoicism
earlier in december ward just a journalist who turned to fiction a great washington post correspondent in vietnam who became a great novelist died at the age of 84
like mehta he was a lover of scotch
i had not seen much of just since we became friends in berlin 20 years ago but his death hit me hard
i recalled him saying to me back then i was useless for journalism after vietnam
i knew i was not going to do any better work
truth he decided must be pursued elsewhere
many of the things that make you a good journalist have to be discarded to make you a good writer he said
in a novel every fact is a rock thrown in the hull and the boat sinks a bit
just probed the delusions of people and nations and the damage they suffer
his prose was understated
in a dangerous friend one character observes i have always believed that a mountainous ego resulted from an absence of conscience
and that was before his neediness seized the oval office
as with mehta just's prodding was subtle his smile contained sorrows his wisdom was hardearned his constant humor wry
wounded by a grenade blast in 1966 winched to safety by a chopper he later wrote as quoted in his washington post obituary when you got there you said instinctively i made it
and over and over again jesus christ
i can hear my friend saying that stress on the christ
life hangs by a thread
pay attention to its ephemeral gifts
of truman schockley dead at 19 in vietnam just wrote in 1967  smoking a lucky strike and staring off into the mountains schockley died with a sniper's bullet through the heart and stopped breathing before the cigarette stopped burning
now there's a perfect sentence that might even have persuaded beckett
spring passes
truth distilled does not
warren and klobuchar teach the boys a lesson by frank bruni jan 15 2020  would a female democratic nominee have a harder time beating donald trump than a male one
i can't tell you because i don't have a crystal ball and because it's a stupid question its answer dependent on which female candidate you're talking about on how she runs her campaign on the twists and turns of the national conversation between now and november
but i can tell you this either of the two women among the six candidates on the stage in des moines on tuesday night would give trump a serious run for his money
both have earned the right to take him on
both would be formidable presidents
and both made clear with commanding performances how absurd it is that this country hasn't yet shattered the highest glass ceiling of all
i'm focusing on elizabeth warren and amy klobuchar because during the most electric stretch of this seventh debate of the democratic primary the focus was indeed on them — or rather on the idea that their party couldn't risk nominating one of them at a juncture when getting rid of a republican incumbent has seldom if ever been so important
you know the back story
according to media reports over recent days warren and bernie sanders met 13 months ago to discuss their nascent presidential campaigns and he told her he didn't believe a woman could win the 2020 election
sanders denies saying that
he denied it again on tuesday night and warren declined to get into a backandforth about that conversation
what she did instead was more effective — and certainly more stirring she drew a contrast between the two women and the four men who had made the cut for this debate which was the final one before the iowa caucuses and had the fewest candidates so far
that contrast was perfect and got better still when klobuchar chimed in because what the two women said brilliantly cast them not as trailblazers who had something extra to prove not as outsiders who had finagled a way in not as underdogs urging voters to take some extraordinary leap of faith not as highminded gambles
they turned the stubborn sexist notion that their presence and presidential ambitions were exotic on its head citing yardsticks by which they were demonstrably superior to their male rivals
i think the best way to talk about who can win is by looking at people's winning record warren a secondterm senator from massachusetts said
look at the men on this stage
collectively they have lost 10 elections
she didn't name the men or the elections but joe biden is the veteran of two previous miserably unsuccessful campaigns for the presidency
pete buttigieg lost bids to become the treasurer of indiana and the chairman of the democratic national committee
in contrast warren noted the only people on this stage who have won every single election that they've been in are the women — amy and me
and the only person who has beaten an incumbent republican any time in the past 30 years is me
klobuchar a thirdterm senator from minnesota said you don't need to be male to win just as you don't need other qualities pronounced necessary or optimal by some unnamed amorphous committee of pronouncers
you don't have to be the skinniest person in the room she said
you don't have to be the loudest person
you have to be competent
and when you look at what i have done she added i have won every race every place every time
i have won in the reddest of districts
i have won in the suburban areas in the rural areas
that she added was why she had the most endorsements of current iowa legislators and former iowa legislators in this race
i don't mean to romanticize warren and klobuchar
warren's boast about vanquishing a republican incumbent
that incumbent was scott brown whose victory in a special election in deep blue massachusetts was considered something of a freak occurrence to begin with
and when klobuchar began to tick off the names of women recently elected to high posts she suddenly froze unable to remember who the governor of kansas was though she'd just said i'm very proud to know her
her name is laura kelly
i'm also not saying that warren or klobuchar would be the party's best bet
i don't know who would be
i'm just saying that on a night when the viability of women aiming for the white house went from subtext to text these two women found words — not just in addressing that issue but also in talking about prescriptiondrug prices climate change nuclear weapons and more — that exposed the bigotry and shamefulness of doubts about female candidates
otherwise the seventh debate was sleepily like many of the first six biden seemed to be campaigning for a third barack obama term and his sentences were less straight lines than knots
they didn't build toward a conclusion so much as sag until they finally gave out
warren said corruption every chance she got
sanders called for revolution and correctly emphasized that many trade and foreignpolicy positions that other democrats came around to he embraced from the start
buttigieg pivoted from the question at hand to a practiced soliloquy that almost always had something to do with turning the page and a new generation
tom steyer insisted that no one cared about the environment as much as he did
and klobuchar talked about so many different pieces of legislation with her name on them that you had this image of her racing around the capitol with an outstretched pen stopping all aides who passed by and scrawling her signature on any paper they were carrying
one new wrinkle was warren's clear and proud positioning of herself to sanders's right on trade and on health care
she was making the case for herself as a progressive who would favor incremental fixes if those were the only available improvements and who could be a unifier she suggested that sanders lacked that potential
buttigieg meanwhile was more determined than ever to mention and reach out to voters of color from whom he enjoys little support
but what most distinguished the debate was the way in which gender came to the fore
there was a memorable moment when sanders sought to correct warren on her 30year claim noting that he'd defeated a republican in 1990 and she did some quick outloud arithmetic to determine that 1990 was well 30 years ago
mansplaining met mathematics
warren also said this since donald trump was elected women candidates have outperformed men candidates in competitive races
and in 2018 we took back the house we took back statehouses because of women candidates and women voters
back in the 1960s she added people asked 'could a catholic win' back in 2008 people asked if an africanamerican could win
in both times the democratic party stepped up and said yes got behind their candidate and we changed america
that's who we are
it was a selfserving edit of history sure and it put the most positive gloss possible on the nation's character
but that didn't make it any less important
or any less inspiring
we can't afford trump as our commander in chief by frank bruni jan 7 2020  we choose our presidents in happy times and sad amid bull and bear markets when we're trying to conserve what is and when we're itching to discover what might be
we should always choose them as if we're on the brink of war because it's impossible to predict when we'll find ourselves there in petrified need of a strong stable leader we can trust
donald trump was chosen in a fit of longbuilding and largely warranted cynicism as a gamble and protest
he hadn't demonstrated any particular strength only that he could perform a peculiar burlesque of it
he showed zilch in the way of honor but had a genius for stoking doubts that it still existed in politics at all
his supporters thrilled to a pledge of disruption not a promise of safe harbor
and here we are with an inexperienced impulsive and perpetually aggrieved commander in chief precisely when we can't afford one
i hope i have him wrong
i do
i hope that some of his worst colors are an act that some of his rashest outbursts are a strategy that instinct can be as useful as erudition and that in ordering the killing of maj gen qassim suleimani he has persuaded iran to rethink rather than redouble its aggression
but there are reasons to be worried even terrified and they're rooted in his untraditional and sometimes irrational approach to the presidency — and in the wages of that
i'm scared because all presidents are only as good as the counsel they seek and the counselors who provide it and trump has burned through so many top advisers and so much good will that he operates with a hollowedout staff of halfbaked experience
his second and current defense secretary mark esper lacks the seasoning and stature of his first jim mattis who resigned 13 months ago when trump rejected his pleas and vowed to pull american troops out of syria
that at least was the specific prompt for mattis's departure
but mattis also found the president to be of limited cognitive ability and of generally dubious character wrote jeffrey goldberg the editor in chief of the atlantic in a profile of mattis last fall
limited cognition
dubious character
those may not matter when you're choosing the gilt for a golf resort or skyscraper
they do when you're deciding whether to put american lives on the line
trump is on his fourth national security adviser robert o'brien whose r�sum� is thin for the job
and throughout the trump administration there are relevant posts unfilled or occupied by officials never confirmed by the senate
we're estranged from some of our most important allies who are exhausted by trump's moods offended by his mockery of them and chilled by his ignorance
they have concluded that if he is america america is no longer trustworthy
as greg miller of the washington post recently observed the president has disparaged us intelligence agencies disrupted relationships with european partners and diluted the power of the bully pulpit with thousands of falsehoods
all of that is coming home to roost
it's impossible not to hear his justifications for suleimani's killing through the filter of his past exaggerations and lies
it will be equally difficult to have faith in the information that he doles out going forward
and it's hard to make sense of this
erratic in so many other ways trump was fairly consistent in opposing american military entanglements in the middle east to the point of scornfully bashing republicans who got us into iraq and ignoring recommendations for reprisals against iran before last week
but in targeting suleimani he embraced a course that his predecessors in the oval office rejected as too extreme
according to the times's reporting pentagon officials were stunned
is trump's spectacular turnabout a function of fresh developments or a spasm of ego
we're always yoked to a president's psyche — to george w bush's itch for separation from his father to barack obama's investment in his own unflappability
trump's selfsoothing pantomimes of potency could strangle us
and what of his recklessly provocative tweets
they're one thing when he's baiting democrats quite another when he's thumbing his nose at international law
on twitter he threatened to bomb important cultural sites in iran and later explained to reporters aboard air force one that if it and other countries were going to engage in terrorism and torture hell why should we be any better
here mr president is the reason because we aspire to values that are actually worth fighting for
and the day we take our cues from the likes of the taliban and the islamic state is the day we should just junk the statue of liberty and retire the national anthem
reshaping america's image in 280character yowls and uppercase yelps trump told iran to be prepared for military attacks of a disproportionate manner
please god let richard nixon's madman theory of international relations — which held that an aura of recklessness might cow adversaries — have merit
otherwise there's no telling where this mad man might drag us
donald trump has not made a single public statement since ordering last thursday's operation that has not been either unhelpful or counterproductive noah rothman the associate editor of commentary wrote on monday
rothman is conservative does not routinely bash trump and defended suleimani's killing itself
but in his essay titled a dangerous man in perilous times he noted that the best anyone can say about trump's spasmodic conduct is that it won't matter
serious moments demand sober and rational minds at the helm and the president's behavior so far does not inspire confidence rothman added
no it makes you tremble
we hate data collection
that doesn't mean we can stop it
by farhad manjoo nov 15 2019  we're being watched
we know we're being watched and we don't think the watchers have our best interests at heart
they try to mollify us arguing that we're being watched for our own good and that in fact we're the ones in charge of the scale and scope of all the watching but deep down most of us are confused and suspicious about this sudden state of affairs
why are they watching us so closely
what will they do with all they learn about us
is there any hope of stopping them
and does it even matter that we do not want to be watched — or is it of no consequence because they know we're trapped and so do we
the above may sound like the ravings of a wretch imprisoned in the panopticon but according to a survey of more than 4000 people conducted this summer by the pew research center it is the widespread sensibility of the day
according to the survey americans in 2019 feel adrift and powerless about living under the glare of digital surveillance
twothirds of americans believe that surveillance is an inevitable consequence of modern existence — it is not possible to go through daily life they say without companies and the government collecting data about them
more than 70 percent believe that most or all of what they do online is being tracked and nearly that many believe the same is true of what they do offline
and more than 80 percent feel like they have very little or no control over the data being collected about them
in some ways the numbers are unsurprising of course people who are being watched all the time feel that they're being watched all the time
yet the survey also suggests a major failing on the part of corporations and the government to mitigate our concerns about the tradeoffs we're making for digital conveniences
in the past few years google facebook and other companies that collect and keep gigantic troves of data about us have stepped up their efforts to give us control over that data
their primary argument is that users not the companies are in charge of the whole game — we can affect what data is collected about us and how it's used
that message doesn't seem to be getting through
large majorities of americans feel as we have little or no control over our search and purchase and browsing histories that our texts and social media wandering are easily monitored and that even our physical location may be up for grabs
it gets worse
not only do we feel we have no control over our data but we're also sure there will be few consequences for misuse
most americans say they don't trust companies to own up to mistakes in the handling of our data or to suffer any serious punishment when things go wrong
most of us say the companies' own privacy policies are meaningless
not that this is a paranoid view
if you consider recent history — say the fact that equifax was allowed to stay in business after its gargantuan 2017 breach in which it failed at its one job collecting and maintaining americans' financial data — it stands to reason that punishments for wrongdoing will be light
in july facebook was fined 5 billion by the federal trade commission for its role in the cambridge analytica privacy scandal — a fine that set a record but was of so little consequence to facebook's business that its stock price actually rose after the punishment was announced
the pew survey shows americans are eager for more power over our data
threequarters of respondents said there should be more regulation of what companies can do with our data the view was shared across the political spectrum
and americans are wary of the fundamental tradeoff we're making for technology
datahungry corporations insist that we're benefiting from the surveillance state — and that our very acquiescence to the collection is a signal of our contentment
in fact the vast majority of americans say that the potential risks of data collection by companies and the government outweigh the benefits
but where does all this leave us
ordinarily a finding of widespread discontentment should spark a sense of optimism — if people hate the status quo so much and are begging for a new way forward won't the market or the government step in and give us something better
but there is anothermore pessimistic way to read this survey
the tech companies still enjoy enormous financial success and have seen little impact from increasing scrutiny on their businesses
this suggests none of it matters
we hate the way things are but we've traded away our power to stop it and our worries won't change anything
the prison is terrible
we all know it
enjoy your stay
we made the coronavirus epidemic by david quammen jan 28 2020  the latest scary new virus that has captured the world's horrified attention caused a lockdown of 56 million people in china disrupted travel plans around the globe and sparked a run on medical masks from wuhan hubei province to bryan texas is known provisionally as ncov2019
it's a clunky moniker for a lurid threat
the name picked by the team of chinese scientists who isolated and identified the virus is short for novel coronavirus of 2019
it reflects the fact that the virus was first recognized to have infected humans late last year — in a seafood and liveanimal market in wuhan — and that it belongs to the coronavirus family a notorious group
the sars epidemic of 20023 which infected 8098 people worldwide killing 774 of them was caused by a coronavirus and so was the mers outbreak that began on the arabian peninsula in 2012 and still lingers 2494 people infected and 858 deaths as of november
despite the new virus's name though and as the people who christened it well know ncov2019 isn't as novel as you might think
something very much like it was found several years ago in a cave in yunnan a province roughly a thousand miles southwest of wuhan by a team of perspicacious researchers who noted its existence with concern
the fast spread of ncov2019 — more than 4500 confirmed cases including at least 106 deaths as of tuesday morning and the figures will have risen by the time you read this — is startling but not unforeseeable
that the virus emerged from a nonhuman animal probably a bat and possibly after passing through another creature may seem spooky yet it is utterly unsurprising to scientists who study these things
one such scientist is zhengli shi of the wuhan institute of virology a senior author of the draft paper not yet peer reviewed and so far available only in preprint that gave ncov2019 its identity and name
it was ms shi and her collaborators who back in 2005 showed that the sars pathogen was a bat virus that had spilled over into people
ms shi and colleagues have been tracing coronaviruses in bats since then warning that some of them are uniquely suited to cause human pandemics
in a 2017 paper they set out how after nearly five years of collecting fecal samples from bats in the yunnan cave they had found coronaviruses in multiple individuals of four different species of bats including one called the intermediate horseshoe bat because of the halfoval flap of skin protruding like a saucer around its nostrils
the genome of that virus ms shi and her colleagues have now announced is 96 percent identical to the wuhan virus that has recently been found in humans
and those two constitute a pair distinct from all other known coronaviruses including the one that causes sars
in this sense ncov2019 is novel — and possibly even more dangerous to humans than the other coronaviruses
i say possibly because so far not only do we not know how dangerous it is we can't know
outbreaks of new viral diseases are like the steel balls in a pinball machine you can slap your flippers at them rock the machine on its legs and bonk the balls to the jittery rings but where they end up dropping depends on 11 levels of chance as well as on anything you do
this is true with coronaviruses in particular they mutate often while they replicate and can evolve as quickly as a nightmare ghoul
peter daszak the president of ecohealth alliance a private research organization based in new york that focuses on the connections between human and wildlife health is one of ms shi's longtime partners
we've been raising the flag on these viruses for 15 years he told me on friday with calm frustration
ever since sars
he was a coauthor of the 2005 batsandsars study and again of the 2017 paper about the multiple sarslike coronaviruses in the yunnan cave
mr daszak told me that during that second study the field team took blood samples from a couple of thousand yunnanese people about 400 of whom lived near the cave
roughly 3 percent of them carried antibodies against sarsrelated coronaviruses
we don't know if they got sick
we don't know if they were exposed as children or adults mr daszak said
but what it tells you is that these viruses are making the jump repeatedly from bats to humans
in other words this wuhan emergency is no novel event
it's part of a sequence of related contingencies that stretches back into the past and will stretch forward into the future as long as current circumstances persist
so when you're done worrying about this outbreak worry about the next one
or do something about the current circumstances
current circumstances include a perilous trade in wildlife for food with supply chains stretching through asia africa and to a lesser extent the united states and elsewhere
that trade has now been outlawed in china on a temporary basis but it was outlawed also during sars then allowed to resume — with bats civets porcupines turtles bamboo rats many kinds of birds and other animals piled together in markets such as the one in wuhan
current circumstances also include 76 billion hungry humans some of them impoverished and desperate for protein some affluent and wasteful and empowered to travel every which way by airplane
these factors are unprecedented on planet earth we know from the fossil record by absence of evidence that no largebodied animal has ever been nearly so abundant as humans are now let alone so effective at arrogating resources
and one consequence of that abundance that power and the consequent ecological disturbances is increasing viral exchanges — first from animal to human then from human to human sometimes on a pandemic scale
we invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes which harbor so many species of animals and plants — and within those creatures so many unknown viruses
we cut the trees we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets
we disrupt ecosystems and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts
when that happens they need a new host
often we are it
the list of such viruses emerging into humans sounds like a grim drumbeat machupo bolivia 1961 marburg germany 1967 ebola zaire and sudan 1976 hiv recognized in new york and california 1981 a form of hanta now known as sin nombre southwestern united states 1993 hendra australia 1994 bird flu hong kong 1997 nipah malaysia 1998 west nile new york 1999 sars china 20023 mers saudi arabia 2012 ebola again west africa 2014
and that's just a selection
now we have ncov2019 the latest thump on the drum
current circumstances also include bureaucrats who lie and conceal bad news and elected officials who brag to the crowd about cutting forests to create jobs in the timber industry and agriculture or about cutting budgets for public health and research
the distance from wuhan or the amazon to paris toronto or washington is short for some viruses measured in hours given how well they can ride within airplane passengers
and if you think funding pandemic preparedness is expensive wait until you see the final cost of ncov2019
fortunately current circumstances also include brilliant dedicated scientists and outbreakresponse medical people — such as many at the wuhan institute of virology ecohealth alliance the united states centers for disease control and prevention cdc
 the chinese cdc
and numerous other institutions
these are the people who go into bat caves swamps and highsecurity containment laboratories often risking their lives to bring out bat feces and blood and other precious evidence to study genomic sequences and answer the key questions
as the number of ncov2019 cases has increased and the death toll along with it one metric the case fatality rate has remained rather steady so far at about or below 3 percent
as of tuesday less than three out of 100 confirmed cases had died
that's relatively good luck — worse than for most strains of influenza better than for sars
this good luck may not last
nobody knows where the pinball will go
four days from today the number of cases may be in the tens of thousands
six months from today wuhan pneumonia may be receding into memory
or not
we are faced with two mortal challenges in the short term and the long term
short term we must do everything we can with intelligence calm and a full commitment of resources to contain and extinguish this ncov2019 outbreak before it becomes as it could a devastating global pandemic
long term we must remember when the dust settles that ncov2019 was not a novel event or a misfortune that befell us
it was — it is — part of a pattern of choices that we humans are making
we really must stop starting wars by farhad manjoo jan 9 2020  let us not go again to war
let us not go to war because we cannot afford to win another war
there would be no winning this war
there is only losing at a cost that staggers every dimension on all sides — in lives in money and in the squandered opportunity to do anything better with our collective time and resources on this already beset planet
i'm speaking here of war with iran our current precipice
but i issue the warning more generally too
bookmark this page and pull it up as prophylaxis anytime the drums of war begin rattling anew war isn't just tragic
it is increasingly dumb and pointless too
war is becoming an outdated means of human conflict resolution
technology is turning armed conflict into an endeavor increasingly dominated by what war scholars call asymmetric warfare — meaning that weaker powers like iran can now marshal so much strength that they are no longer very weak exacting a mighty cost of victory even to the world's preeminent global superpower
then there is climate change which has ratcheted up the opportunity cost of every conflict anytime we are fighting each other we are absconding in the larger and more important fight for the habitability of the planet
you may debate whether any particular historical war worked out well for its agitators
but there should be no debate that many of america's recent wars have ended in misery for all
our politicians talk of war as a last resort but that is only to keep up appearances because the truth is too terrible to admit that our evermoreexpensive war machine a cost of nearly 740 billion in 2020 can buy us little peace
rather than a last resort war now offers no resort
war can no longer be defended as the thing to do after everything else has failed
war must instead be seen as failure itself
i had thought the futility of war might be grasped by most american politicians by now
one of donald trump's rare bright spots as a candidate was his departure from the post911 bushcheney doctrine that doubled down on heedless american military interventionism
in his oftstated aversion to endless war trump's sentiment matched the public's — a pew poll this summer showed that most americans including most military veterans now believe that our wars in afghanistan and iraq have not been worth fighting
trump seemed to be heeding the public's caution back in the summer when he abruptly called off a strike against iran in retaliation for its shooting down an american surveillance drone
but in killing iran's most important military leader maj gen qassim suleimani trump opened the door to war
now iran is retaliating and a cycle of escalation looks possible — even if for now trump is backing away from further conflict
it's beginning to feel a lot like 2003 again with some of the same pundits and politicians who were in favor of a war with iraq now repeating similar talking points about iran
while noting that he'd like to avoid war trump himself has suggested that war with iran would be a cakewalk it wouldn't last very long i can tell you that the president told fox business in june
don't fall for it
it's plain dishonesty how could anyone who has lived through the quagmire of iraq and afghanistan think war with iran will be anything but long and brutal
in those conflicts america's overwhelming military might stumbled on local culture geography ethnic and religious rivalries and most of all the determination of an entrenched committed foe that could melt in and out of the local population
as vox's alex ward points out iran has almost three times as many people as iraq did when we invaded in 2003
it also has treacherous geography and it controls a great many proxy forces across the middle east and even in likely sleeper cells in europe and latin america
iran also possesses a sophisticated cyberwar operation — it is believed to be behind recent hacks into american banks and other targets and to have spread disinformation and propaganda on social networks around the world
the united states would overwhelm iran in a conventional headon war but like china and russia iran has adopted a deep capacity to mount hybrid war — conflict that involves both conventional and unconventional means of war
for example iran could expand its operations on oil tankers in the strait of hormuz dealing a costly rise in global energy prices
as ward concludes a usiran war would be a bloody hell during and after the fighting
this gets to the immense folly at the heart of our military might
though the united states spends more on the military than the next nine countries combined we have not been able to purchase much peace through strength
that's because our strength is clearly of a type and our years in iraq and afghanistan have made plain our vulnerabilities
among other shortcomings our military is still buying mostly big old defense technologies like aircraft carriers and bombers from the militaryindustrial complex even if many of these technologies face obsolescence under a future of artificial intelligence unmanned battlefield robots and other cyberweapons
our country's efforts at adopting artificial intelligence technology in the military might not be enough to counter our rivals including russia and china
the upshot is this the united states holds military supremacy over the world's waters and the airspace but our control is limited and contestable
the last two decades have made clear that even for america war is never simple
we should fear it
we should avoid it
and we ought to look for more fruitful things to do with our money and our lives like making life on earth more livable not less
what does it mean to have a serious drinking problem
by nancy wartik jan 31 2020  one day in the fall of 2018 i woke up feeling wrecked
the night before i'd had beers with colleagues and wound up braying loudly to one of them about something she'd confided and what i thought she should do
i wish i'd never told you this she finally blurted and i knew i'd betrayed a trust
a few nights before i'd been more inept
a group of us had held a memorial for a friend
at a gathering later i'd had a martini with prosecco chasers then picked a senseless quarrel with our hostess a close friend as bereaved as i was
now i sat there head pounding stomach roiling
it was another in a string of mornings when i'd woken wanting to smother myself with a pillow
booze it didn't take much for me to feel the effects
alcohol could make nights glittery and fun make me love all humankind
it could also and unpredictably rouse demons that turned me into a wifely shrew sparked bruising arguments unleashed embarrassing faux pas
this morning a new thought struck penetrating to the bone
i can't do it anymore
i quit
although i'd grappled for decades with my relationship to alcohol i didn't consider myself an alcoholic
in online quizzes asking how many drinks i typically had per day i could fairly accurately answer two very generous drinks
on the world health organization's audit quiz which tests for drinking problems i scored eight of 40 points making me a medium drinker with a risky pattern
but medium didn't sound too bad and the website said i could alter my drinking without too much difficulty
plus i had the vaunted female triumvirate husband kid respectable job
friends when they weren't mad at me
ok sometimes i overdid it
but it was easy to imagine myself as your average funloving parisian oenophile
and yet
i was in my late teens when i discovered what alcohol could do quash my inhibitions kindle false intimacies provoke brilliant revelations that i soon forgot
alcohol made me the outgoing person my unconfident self wanted to be let me talk to people i normally wouldn't have
yes occasionally i awoke to see a head on the adjoining pillow and felt a bolt of regret
damn
why did this guy seem cute last night
but i'd call a friend guess what i did this time
i'd ask turning discomfort into a hilarious anecdote
or a friend would inform me of my revelry nancy the bartender threw you out
you couldn't stay on your stool
alcohol was also medication
i drank to quiet angst or because i was lonesome
i drank it took years to realize because i had clinical depression
eventually i treated the depression but kept drinking
alcohol was my stress reducer my reality fighter the conferrer of artificial joys
life changed in my 40s
i married and with my husband adopted our beloved daughter now 17
working from home i made dinner drinking wine with a neighbor mom
my morningafter headaches were worsening though
nights rather than reading or chatting with my husband i'd crash
i feared my drinking was destroying brain cells
i'd written about how alcohol is harder on women than men and that worried me too
some years ago to prove i had control i cut down to five nights a week
it was tough
how could i not drink after a rough day
i couldn't manage two consecutive sober nights
achieving my two sober nights was always an exercise in militarylevel strategizing
but every sunday i felt virtuous
an actual alcoholic couldn't skip any nights i thought
but i could
what does it mean to have a serious drinking problem
the answer is surprisingly vague
alcoholism isn't an actual diagnosis
in 1980 the american psychiatric association's authoritative diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders established two different classifications alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence
in 2013 the dsm
combined the categories to create alcohol use disorder a spectrum ranging from mild to severe based not on how much someone drinks but on how many of 11 behavioral or psychological symptoms a person has
meanwhile the centers for disease control and prevention has its own standards focused more on quantity of alcoholic consumption
seven drinks per week or fewer is considered safe for women 14 or fewer for men
but guidelines fluctuate internationally according to a stanford university study from 2016
in canada or france you can drink more weekly and be considered low risk
moreover a recent study in the lancet concluded alcohol is so tough on health that there's no safe level
in short if you wonder whether you drink too much sometimes it's best to trust your gut
i don't know exactly what happened that fall morning as i sat in bed achy and humiliated
as viscerally as i've known anything i knew i was in trouble
so what if i didn't swig a bottle of scotch daily
i'd hit medium drinker rock bottom and it was enough
despite the website saying i could change my drinking without too much difficulty quitting booze is one of the hardest things i've ever done
i pined for it at restaurants i'd gaze at ruby goblets as if at a divine elixir
after workouts i'd crave a beer
and what was the point of socializing sober
eventually i had to try
guzzling nonalcoholic beer — before i wisely switched to seltzer — while chatting with people savoring complex pinot noirs was initially daunting
but astonishingly my nonintoxicated brain still found what they said funny touching or interesting
i didn't join aa though i don't rule it out
i sought support from my husband daughter and friends — those i'd offended those surprised i even had a problem
i devoured others' stories watching movies about alcoholics reading memoirs lurking in subreddits for people struggling to quit
but what really kept me on the path was the remarkable difference between the drinking and not drinking me
i hadn't grasped the degree to which a sense of shame had insidiously undergirded my life
now it was gone replaced by an unaccustomed pride
the longer i abstained the better i felt in ways that spilled into marriage work parenting friendships
recently someone unaware i'd quit told me i looked years younger
i'm more patient
my headaches are infrequent my energy up
those results fit with a study published in the canadian medical association journal among the first focused on moderate drinkers' mental health
researchers studying cohorts of people in hong kong and the united states found even safe drinkers women in particular showed improved wellbeing if they stopped
today i can label myself
i had moderate alcohol use disorder a chronic relapsing brain disease marked by loss of control over alcohol
the national institute on alcoholism and alcohol abuse says 62 percent of american adults more than 15 million people are on the alcohol use disorder spectrum
other research puts the numbers higher
i'd guess many like me drink modestly enough that they don't believe they have a problem
i feel lucky i quit before anything worse happened
sobriety can still be a challenge
if all goes according to plan i'll never again experience the soft scrim that drops between me and reality as wine drains from my glass
it seems sad until i remember that three times since quitting i've tried a celebratory drink
most recently in peru i had one of the country's famous pisco sours
it gave me a mild buzz and a hangover
i haven't had a drop since
these days i awaken clearheaded
i'm closer than ever to being the mother wife relative and friend i want to be
it feels good
really good
i get up the next morning
i do it again
what if it were obama on trial
by nicholas kristof jan 25 2020  what if it were president barack obama who was the subject of the senate impeachment trial
how would we feel then
cass sunstein a professor at harvard law school suggests a question along those lines in his book impeachment a citizen's guide
it's one of several thought experiments that i suggest in order to step back from the hurlyburly in the senate and interrogate our own principles and motivations
the first approach as sunstein puts it is this  suppose that a president engages in certain actions that seem to you very very bad
suppose that you are tempted to think that he should be impeached
you should immediately ask yourself would i think the same thing if i loved the president's policies and thought that he was otherwise doing a splendid job
alternatively if you oppose impeachment and removal sunstein suggests you ask yourself would i think the same thing if i abhorred the president's policies and thought that he was otherwise doing a horrific job
in practical terms this amounts to what if it were obama who had been caught in this ukraine scandal
my guess is that if it were obama republicans would be demanding witnesses as they did in the 1999 trial of bill clinton
given how aggressively republican members of congress pursued the benghazi events — multiple investigations eventually finding no evidence of wrongdoing by either obama or thensecretary of state hillary clinton — i'm confident that the gop
would be insisting that obama be removed with frequent chants of lock him up
yet i suspect that many democrats would also switch sides finding it easier to excuse misconduct by someone they admired — and seeing it as more important in that situation to preserve executive privilege and leave it to voters to decide the matter in the fall
that's why we owe it to ourselves as a matter of intellectual honesty to think through how we would react if it were the other guy on trial
progressives may be scoffing that this exercise is unrealistic obama was meticulous in avoiding scandal and ethical conflicts
he checked with the justice department before accepting the nobel peace prize and for him a scandal was something like wearing a tan suit
the ukraine mess would have been out of character for obama while it is entirely in character for trump
but republicans will see this differently
the second thought experiment comes from another distinguished lawyer neal katyal in his new book impeach the case against donald trump
imagine if it had worked katyal suggests
imagine if our president had leveraged his role as commander in chief to convince a foreign power to open an investigation into his political opponent
imagine if the president's rival lost the primary because news broke that he was under investigation
imagine if that meant the president faced a weaker candidate in november 2020 — and won reelection as a result
the foreign country could then blackmail our president by threatening to expose the corruption gaining leverage over our foreign policy
meanwhile the president might abuse presidential power in other ways in the belief that impunity was complete
if all this eventually became public and truth does have a way of trickling out this would have devastating consequences for the legitimacy of american elections
this thought experiment perhaps isn't so farfetched
we know now that trump's pressure on ukraine caused alarm in the white house and the intelligence community with national security adviser john bolton likening it to a drug deal
yet for all that uproar it almost didn't become public
it was only because of a whistleblower that the information began to emerge and the military aid to ukraine was released only after the white house became aware of the whistleblower and was being pressured by congress
in short trump's plan almost succeeded — and in any case he will get away with it in the sense that he is sure to be acquitted by the senate
when republicans suggest that trump did nothing wrong what message does that impunity send to trump and to future presidents
the third thought experiment is simple what if trump weren't president but was like almost any other person in america
what if he were a high school vice principal who ensured that a police detective's son would be accepted in advanced placement classes — and then added i'd like you to do us a favor though
the favor would be an investigation of the vice principal's exwife before their upcoming child custody hearing in hopes of tilting the outcome in his favor
in that situation the vice principal would be fired
we all recognize that no school official or other person in a government bureaucracy should use public power for private benefit
so a last query shouldn't we have as high a standard for the president of the united states as for a school vice principal
what if trump gave alaska to putin
by nicholas kristof jan 22 2020  let's not dismiss the senate impeachment trial as a kangaroo court
that's an insult to kangaroos who lately have been suffering enough
president trump and senate republican leaders seem to be planning a rushed sham trial with no witnesses and limited evidence
this reminds me of a trial i once monitored of a chinese journalist in beijing the proceedings were held in a majestic court building with high ceilings plush courtrooms crisp microphones and attentive security officers all overseen by solemn judges — everything a justice system might want except justice
what's at stake in this trial is the basic idea that america's leader is accountable for misconduct
without that concept we may have a grand senate chamber and eloquent speeches but our democracy rings hollow
without that principle of equality before the law our grand senate under mitch mcconnell simply becomes an american analogue of china's rubberstamp national people's congress
mcconnell's grim determination to see no evidence and hear no witnesses is particularly hypocritical because in 1999 during the impeachment trial of president bill clinton he did favor allowing witnesses
it's certainly not unusual to have a witness in an impeachment trial he said then
lindsey graham a member of the house and an impeachment manager at the time was even more blunt
if there's any doubt call witnesses he urged
in every trial that there has ever been in the senate regarding impeachment witnesses were called graham noted then
by the count of house democrats the average number of witnesses is now 33 for each of the past impeachment trials
knowing that john bolton as national security adviser referred to the ukraine mess as a drug deal why would senators not want to clarify what he meant
why risk covering up a coverup
there are less strained arguments that mcconnell and others could make against removing trump from office
they could say that the president's conduct while improper did not rise to the level requiring removal
instead trump and his defenders are pursuing a line of defense that would create an imperial unchecked presidency because it's not clear what would ever merit impeachment and removal by their standards
trump's team even suggests that abuse of power itself cannot be grounds for impeachment calling it the house democrats' newly invented 'abuse of power' theory
newly invented
abuse of power was central to the discussions of impeachment at the constitutional convention
alexander hamilton said that impeachment was the remedy for the abuse or violation of some public trust
it was also the basis for articles of impeachment approved by the house judiciary committee against both clinton and richard nixon the full house rejected that article against clinton and nixon resigned before a full house vote
frank o
bowman iii a constitutional law scholar who is cited in the president's legal brief called that same brief a wellcrafted piece of sophistry
trump and his supporters simply make assertions without regard to reality
this is an echo in the impeachment domain of the 16241 false or misleading statements trump made in his first three years in office by the count of the washington post
for example trump's backers insist that impeachment and conviction require a violation of a particular criminal statute even though most scholars agree that that is not the case
indeed one early impeachment was of a judge who presided while drunk which was not a violation of criminal law
trump's lawyers argue that removal from office would amount to nullifying an election and subverting the will of the american people
under that reasoning despite the constitution a president could never be removed — and in that case a president is untouchable
we all recognize that a president has the right to pardon criminals but suppose he pardoned hackers in exchange for investigating the bidens
or what if trump announced that he would pardon every republican bank robber
or suppose trump fawned over vladimir putin to the point of returning alaska to russia
as it happens alaska isn't my example but that of alan dershowitz the president's lawyer
assume putin decides to 'retake' alaska the way he 'retook' crimea dershowitz wrote in a 2018 book
assume further that a president allows him to do it because he believed that russia has a legitimate claim to 'its' original territory
even that would not merit impeachment and removal by dershowitz's standards
note to alaska senators lisa murkowski and dan sullivan your thoughts comrades
do we really think that there should be no checks on a rogue president as he handed alaska over to putin — or florida to spain while we're at it — or even as he pardoned streams of republican bank robbers
must we tolerate an outof control ruler who engages in the words of the declaration of independence in a long train of abuses and usurpations
that's the kind of system that we rebelled against in 1776 no
what will you do when the culture war comes for you
by charlie warzel jan 29 2020  the culture war will come for us all
on sunday it came for a washington post reporter felicia sonmez
nine people were killed in a helicopter crash in calabasas calif that morning including the basketball legend kobe bryant and his 13yearold daughter gianna
the news rocketed around social media where mourners shared their heartbreak at the news
as is common with major breaking news some reports were inaccurate or false layering anxiety on top of grief
into the mix ms sonmez tweeted the link to a 2016 article from the daily beast about a young woman's accusation that mr bryant had raped her in colorado
criminal charges against him were dropped in 2004 and a civil suit was settled out of court
the tweet highlighted the fact that mr bryant's legacy is fraught and complicated and attracted the attention of fans as well as trolls who bombarded her inbox with abuse and posted her home address online
ms sonmez then posted a selection of the threats she received without obscuring the names of the people who had sent her hate mail
she slept in a hotel on sunday night fearing for her safety at home she said
we don't know all the details but it seems that the post's managing and executive editors were not pleased
they chastised her over email and placed her on administrative leave while the organization reviewed whether she had violated the company's social media guidelines
their reasoning on monday the tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues
the post reversed her suspension on tuesday roughly 36 hours after the initial tweets stating that senior managers had concluded that ms sonmez's tweets didn't violate company policy
this of course was obvious to almost everyone but the post's higherups
it was impossible to imagine how posting a link to a story by a different publication on twitter could undermine the work of colleagues
just as it was impossible to imagine which colleagues would have felt undermined more than 300 of ms sonmez's colleagues expressed solidarity with her in a letter from the post's union to management
there remain glaring questions
did the executive editor marty baron inquire about ms sonmez's safety when he emailed her to criticize her tweets
what beyond a reflex for online civility led the post to determine the reporter was hurting this institution by discussing a part of mr bryant's legacy that appeared in the post's own news pages
why after years of watching journalists women and vulnerable individuals being trolled and abused by viral outrage online are newsrooms still falling for the same gamergatestyle tactics
the post's official statement it doesn't quite rise to the level of an apology which included the caveat we consistently urge restraint for reporters online doesn't begin to answer these questions
the incident also raises headier questions including in the world of online journalism what specifically do writers owe to their publications via their social media presence
surely there's a bare minimum if they're collecting a paycheck
journalists obviously shouldn't undermine their colleagues with cheap shots or reckless speculation as to others' work
they should stay professional
after that things get murky
twitter is a gordian knot of news and opinion that can't be untangled
inside publications news and opinion bleed together opinion writers report while reporters opine via news analysis
partisan commentary once a third rail for objective reporters is omnipresent on twitter
in the past news organizations — and the people who work for them — would never have called the president a racist
some now do so explicitly
newsrooms and even the platforms have struggled with finding a new standard in the trump era of disinformation meanwhile journalists are expected to sort it out in real time while on the job
and to get it right or face consequences
journalists who build followings online in part by being incisive combative funny and omnipresent on twitter are often hired because of that exposure — because they're a known quantity
at a larger organization though those same attributes may quickly be seen as a liability
publications hire diverse outspoken writers and then get anxious when these writers start tweeting about politics
some outlets ask staffers who don't cover incendiary beats like politics to refrain from commenting on political goingson
but what happens when politics touches everything
for those who've made a name being outspoken suddenly saying nothing is a statement in itself
for newsroom leaders the questions get tough fast
few if any outlets seem to want to draw exact lines
and so they become blurred
there's also a double standard
while few publications would say it it's all but required for young journalists to jump into the culture war online
it's a way to find stories
and in a volatile industry it gets you noticed
being part of the discourse each day means being marketable
it helps writers but it also bolsters publications helping promote big stories and creating all kinds of dystopian forms of content like microscoops or breaking news too small to merit its own article but enough to tout to competitors on twitter
this exposure is a drug for journalists
the realtime sparring and feedback is seductive and the endorphin boosts of constant mentions is addictive
but it's also exposure in the truest sense great visibility and great vulnerability blended seamlessly together
though an argument could be made that all the timewasting injokes and gaffes from idle reporters and editors on twitter subtly undermine the rigorous parts of the work newsrooms benefit greatly from the constant exposure of their journalists
reporters use twitter to poke and prod sources
writers sometimes enhance their stories with long tweet threads that explain the reporting process
and reporters build trust with audiences by including or signaling to their audience perspectives in their online analysis ms sonmez who has come forward with details of her own sexual assault told her colleague erik wemple that her tweets were in part to make survivors like herself who follow her feel seen
when important news breaks newsrooms claim credit when their reporters break it first on twitter
which is why the post's statement especially its urging of restraint is so fraught
the same editors who want restraint from reporters online during a celebrity death would most likely also be furious if their capitol hill reporters were slow in livetweeting a hearing or impeachment proceeding and fell behind the competition
restraint is a virtue in journalism no doubt but so are tenacity and transparency
the message is contradictory broadcast everything but exercise restraint
twitter isn't real life but tweets can and will get you fired or suspended
but these qualities have been in conflict and competition for long before twitter and newsrooms understood a journalists exposure during breaking news and had their backs accordingly
evidence suggests that's not always the case in the face of a cascade of online outrage
that's less a change in the industry than it is a failure of newsroom leaders to understand the information war it sends its journalists out to fight in each day
while the internet's culture war dynamics are fraught they're not all that hard to understand
they come in the form of intimidation and threats toward journalists and angry campaigns toward advertisers and executives
some of the responses are posturing and some are real but all are engineered for maximum virality and outrage
yes sometimes journalists make mistakes
sometimes work will harm the institution or undermine coworkers but newsroom leaders ought to be trained to distinguish trolls from goodfaith criticism
it's a weird moment that newsrooms aren't talking about enough
just as social media platforms allow celebrities politicians and influencers to circumvent traditional press gatekeeping the same thing has happened to journalism's own practitioners
despite all the social media guidelines there's an unanswered question who do those followers really belong to
perhaps it's most accurate to say they're an asset and a liability for both parties
everyone's exposed
but there's an asymmetry to that exposure
the culture war will come for us all institutions and individuals alike
one group can weather the storm the other needs protection
newsrooms need to get smart prepare and protect their foot soldiers
it's the least they can do
'bojack horseman' ended with a necessary reckoning by charles dunst feb 1 2020  this essay contains spoilers for the final season of bojack horseman
i haven't done anything
since i got out of rehab i have been on my best behavior proclaims bojack horseman voiced by will arnett the eponymous protagonist of the animated netflix show
in the second half of the sixth and final season bojack a washedup 1990s sitcom star and anthropomorphic horse has found out reporters are planning to publish a damning expos� of his prerehab behavior
they can't get me on old expletive he pleads
i'm a different person now
but they do get him
after bojack gives a prince andrewlike interview he's ostracized and falls off the wagon almost drunkenly drowning to death in the pool of his former home
he's convicted and sentenced to 14 months in prison for breaking and entering although he admits it was kind of for everything — including seducing and almost sleeping with an exgirlfriend's 17yearold daughter and providing a former costar with the heroin on which she fatally overdoses
male antihero tv characters like bojack — the don drapers and walter whites who dominated the late 2000s and early 2010s — are usually designed to be empathetic
we're supposed to root for them despite their wrongdoings and cheer when they ride off into the proverbial sunset as some karmic justice restores the brokenness they've left behind
since it began bojack horseman has offered an alternative forcing viewers to repeatedly see the damage its destructive protagonist inflicts while complicating any empathy they might feel for him
this unique approach arrived at its logical conclusion with the final installment of episodes released friday punishing bojack while also laying out a path for his redemption
if this remains a rare outcome on tv it is even rarer in real life — and it's likely to resonate with viewers wrestling with what a transgressor's path to atonement might look like
in crucial ways bojack bears resemblance to jon hamm's don draper on mad men — both characters treat women horribly using their professional power to get what they want without any serious selfreflection
yet unlike don bojack eventually tries to better himself address his drug addiction and repair the relationships he has broken
at first there seems to be hope for a neat ending for bojack
but that would have betrayed the show's underlying message that actions have consequences — and that the acknowledgment of this fact is central to one's personal penance and evolution
when a bowl or teapot falls and shatters most people might throw it away considering the object broken ruined and without value
the japanese art of kintsugi takes a radically different approach using precious metal to bring the broken piece back together
bojack horseman does something similar
take for example bojack's confidant and former biographer diane nguyen alison brie
though thriving in her personal life she's struggling to write her promised collection of essays
as she tries to focus she's interrupted by a surreal blackandwhite m�lange of key contributors to her emotional wreckage including her father and bojack
a figment of her exhusband mr peanutbutter paul f tomkins appears in her mental chaos offering tidbits of insight
cracks in an object are part of its history he says
bojack is also trying to piece himself back together
after years of blaming his misdeeds on childhood trauma he at last accepts responsibility for his behavior
he emerges sober thinking himself to be a new man and mostly escapes professional punishment
the movie he filmed right before entering prison has positive buzz
the industry has forgotten bojack's indiscretions allowing him to walk entertainment's dollarpaved road to rebirth
people have short memories says princess carolyn amy sedaris his agent and friend
it's the best and worst thing about people
but a stint in rehab cannot erase the hurt he's caused the people in his life just as similar periods out of the spotlight have not repaired the damage inflicted by reallife men who resurface in attempted comebacks
princess carolyn declines to continue representing bojack
hollyhock aparna nancherla his half sister sends him a letter the contents of which are never revealed to the viewer but which clearly marks her permanent exit from his life
and diane whom bojack has unfairly imagined to be his savior wishes him well but implies their friendship has reached its end
this bittersweet ending shows how within the last decade writers and audiences have come to think differently about socalled difficult men
many people admired don draper — whom jon hamm himself called a pretty dismal despicable guy — despite seven seasons of narcissism callous womanizing and a layered platonic relationship with his onetime secretary peggy olson that often borders on the emotionally manipulative and abusive
by the show's end don appears to remain on good terms with some of those he wronged and is set to look after his children in the eventual absence of his dying exwife betty
the series ends with him ostensibly at peace dreaming up the 1971 landmark cocacola ad i'd like to buy the world a coke
viewers also rooted for walter white on breaking bad despite his deceitful and exploitative actions toward others most notably jesse pinkman his partner in crime and skyler white his wife
skyler anna gunn was the only character who truly challenged walter's behavior ms gunn herself received hate mail as a result
the backlash was so strong that the actress penned a new york times oped in 2013 observing that male characters don't seem to inspire this kind of public venting and vitriol which is instead reserved for tv wives like skyler and betty draper on mad men
we're primed to extend empathy to the reckless antihero rather than the characters representing the moral considerations that probably should hold them in check
in its final episode breaking bad valorizes walter a man who once coldly watched a woman die of an overdose without doing anything to save her among many other horrific deeds
he gets to go out on his own terms after magnificently mowing down a conglomerate of neonazis perhaps the only characters who outrank him in insidiousness
bojack horseman is uniquely out of step here
its creator raphael bobwaksberg doesn't want to give his protagonist such a satisfying ending
mr bobwaksberg has said he based season 5 of the show on the actor mel gibson whose recorded racist rants failed to end his career
and while the showrunner said he found himself unwilling to forgive the actor he admitted to believing in the power of forgiveness generally
this ambivalence speaks directly to the tone of the final season of bojack
as a viewer it would have felt preposterous for bojack to be readily accepted back into the fold by the people who cared about him the most
it's fitting that the show forces him to reckon with his past in a way characters like don draper and walter white never did
the series' arc matches the public's growing concerns about how to measure and take part in accountability across all walks of life — the metoo abusers and manipulators yes but also those who may have for instance said or done racist or homophobic things in their past
by the end bojack comes to understand that rather than disappear or drag him down his past wrongs linger like precious kintsugi cracks in his reformed self serving as indelible reminders of where brokenness once was — and to illuminate who he is now as a whole
life's a expletive and then you die bojack tells diane in the final scene
they are sitting on a maroonshingled roof having what they both recognize is likely to be their last interaction with one another
but she disagrees
instead she urges him to see the cracks of his past as fortification for the future offering a correction he seems to accept
life's a expletive she says and you keep living
where the frauds are all legal by elisabeth rosenthal dec 7 2019  much of what we accept as legal in medical billing would be regarded as fraud in any other sector
i have been circling around this conclusion for this past five years as i've listened to patients' stories while covering health care as a journalist and author
now after a summer of firsthand experience — my husband was in a bike crash in july — it's time to call out this fact headon
many of the democratic candidates are talking about practical fixes for our highpriced health care system and some legislated or regulated solutions to the maddening world of medical billing would be welcome
my husband andrej flew over his bicycle's handlebars when he hit a pothole at high speed on a sunday ride in washington
he was unconscious and lying on the pavement when i caught up with him minutes later
the result six broken ribs a collapsed lung a broken finger a broken collarbone and a broken shoulder blade
the treatment he got via paramedics and in the emergency room and intensive care unit were great
the troubles began as i knew they would when the bills started arriving
i will not even complain here about some of the crazy high charges 182 for a basic blood test 9289 for two days in a room in intensive care 20 for a pill that costs pennies at a pharmacy
we have great insurance which negotiates these rates down
and at least andrej got and benefited from those services
what i'm talking about here were the bills for things that simply didn't happen or only kindof sortof happened or were mislabeled as things they were not or were so nebulously defined that i couldn't figure out what we might be paying for
to be clear many of the charges that i would call fraudulent — maybe all of them — are technically legal thanks sometimes to lobbying by providers but that doesn't make them right
and no one would accept them if they appeared on bills delivered by a contractor or a lawyer or an auto mechanic
there were so many of these charges that i came up with categories to keep track of them  1
medical swag in the trauma bay someone slapped a hard brace around andrej's neck until scans confirmed that he had not suffered a grievous spinal injury
it was removed within an hour
the medical equipment company that provided that piece of plastic billed 319
our insurer paid 215 90 percent of its discounted rate of 239
we were billed 24 our patient responsibility
companies are permitted by insurers to bill for durable medical equipment stuff you receive for home use when you're in the hospital or doctors' office
that yields some familiar markedup charges like the sling you can buy at walgreens for 15 but for which you or your insurer get a bill for 120 after it is given to you at urgent care
the policy has also led to widespread abuse with patients sent home with equipment they don't need my mom's apartment for example holds an unused wheelchair a walker and a commode paid for by medicare by which i mean our tax dollars
it's as if you were given a swag bag at a conference and then sent a bill for hundreds or thousands of dollars
at least with swag you get to keep it
my husband's hardly worn neck brace didn't even come home with us as a souvenir
2
the cover charge the biggest single item on andrej's er
bill was a 714399 trauma activation fee
what was that for since every component of his care had been billed and billed handsomely
among the line items 3400 for a highlevel er
visit
1030 for the trauma surgeon
between 1400 and 3300 for five purported ct scans
and i say purported because one trip into a scanner examined the head upper spine and maxillofacial bones but was billed as three separate things
there was also an administration fee of more than 350 each for four injections
trauma activation fees have been allowed since 2002 after 911 when the trauma center association of america an industry group convinced regulators that they needed to be compensated for maintaining a state of readiness
wait
isn't the purpose of an er
to be ready
isn't that why the doctors' services and scans are billed at higher rates when they are performed in an emergency department
despite scrutiny from researchers about whether trauma fees are deserved trauma activation fees have only grown in size 15 percent annually in recent years and can reach into the tens of thousands of dollars
on average medicare pays a fee of about 1000
some have likened trauma activation fees to a cover charge for being wheeled into an er
with major trauma
but does a cover charge typically cost more than the meal
3
impostor billing we received bills from doctors my husband never met
some of these bills were understandable like for the radiologist who read the scans
but others were for bedside treatment from people who never came anywhere near the bed to deliver the care
andrej had a small finger fracture with a cut that needed some stitches which a resident a surgeonintraining sutured
but the 1512 billed came in the name of a senior surgeon as if he had done the work
physicians and many other health professionals are allowed to bill for the work of extenders — standins with less training who see patients and work under the supervising doctor
these might be residents physician assistants or nurse anesthetists for example
for billing purposes this allows the senior providers to be in two three sometimes more than half a dozen places at once often even when they are physically miles away
the resident did a fine job on my husband
but if an assistant did the work shouldn't it be billed for less
at law firms the hourly rates for paralegals and junior attorneys are lower than those for partners
on a website called clinical advisor a reimbursement expert himself seemed to wonder at the profession's luck that such billing is tolerated i hear people ask 'how can i do that
the doctor never saw the patient never had any interaction with the patient and yet i can still bill this service under the physician'  4
the driveby the day before andrej left the hospital a physical therapist visited and asked a few questions
from that brief encounter the therapist noted ambulation deficits balance deficits endurance deficits painlimiting function transfer deficits
that translated into a bill of 64615 for what was recorded as a pt
evaluation 1st session only billable
he said he was there for 30 minutes but he was not
he said he walked andrej up 10 steps with a stabilizing belt for assistance
he did not
there was no significant health service given
just an appearance and some boxes checked on a form
it's a phenomenon called driveby doctoring
more shockingly the drivebys continued at our home presaged by a call on andrej's cellphone a day after he was discharged
a physical therapist from a private company wanted to visit him for athome therapy
in his discharge instructions no one had mentioned this service and his injury was clearly too fresh to benefit
she came
she didn't know which body part had been injured and concluded he was in too much pain to participate
the same company called twice more the following week to schedule visits
by the third time i told andrej not to open the front door
nonetheless our insurer was billed — and paid — for three visits
it's as if alexa noticed that my dishwasher makes too much noise it does and took it upon herself to send over a repair guy
but if i turned him away at the front door saying i'm ok
with the racket i am would i still be billed for the visit
5
the enforced upgrade one monday when andrej was in pain and out of pills the trauma doctor suggested we meet in the emergency room because the trauma clinic was open only from 8 to 1045 am on wednesdays and thursdays
so we met the trauma doctors in the er and they talked to andrej who remained in his street clothes
they gave him a prescription
because the interaction — which could have happened in the lobby — happened in the er it resulted in an er
visit charge of 1330
but when the trauma clinic is open less than six hours a week billing for an er
visit that doesn't tap into any of the emergency room resources feels like a scam
is an er
visit determined by the content of the services rendered or merely by the location
andrej had a similar experience when his broken finger was treated with a plastic splint that folded over his fingertip
he complained because the upper layer pressed on the fracture
at a followup visit someone took a pair of scissors and cut off the upper half of the splint and taped the lower half back in place
that translated into a 481 charge for surgery in addition to the 375 charge for the office visit and a 103 facility fee
doesn't surgery by definition involve cutting into flesh or an animate object — not a piece of plastic
sure it sounds fancy to upgrade a meeting to an er
visit or to call the tweaking of a splint surgery but if an airline overbooks my flight and puts me on another flight where the only seat available is in first class it does not charge me for the more expensive ticket
my insurer paid for most of these questionable charges though at discounted rates
but even a discounted payment for something that never really happened or didn't need to happen or that we didn't agree to have happen is still according to common sense a fraud
why do insurers pay
partly because insurers have no way to know whether you got a particular item or service
but also because it's not worth their time to investigate the millions of medical interactions they write checks for each day
despite the advertised concern about your wellbeing as one benefits manager enlightened me they're too big to care about you
electronic records which autofill billing boxes have probably made things worse
for example the birth of a baby boy may automatically prompt a bill for a circumcision having day surgery may prompt a check for sedation
so what is the appropriate payment for swag i didn't ask for outrageous cover charges standin doctors driveby visits and faux surgery
in some cases zero in others far less than was paid
and yet these are all everyday normal experiences in today's health care system and they may be perfectly legal
if we want to tame the costs in our 3 trillion health system we've got to rein in this behavior which is fraud by any other name
why america needs a royal family by jennifer weiner jan 10 2020  like everyone else on the internet i've been watching the royal rumble as prince harry and his american bride are attempting to carve out new roles in the royal family and i've reached a conclusion we the american people need some royals of our own
i know
you're thinking didn't we fight a revolution so we wouldn't have kings
aren't monarchies expensive and aren't european nations streamlining their monarchies for this very reason
and isn't prince harry quitting so that he won't have to participate in an archaic obsolete system with unpleasant echoes of imperialism and elitism that has made his wife a target for racists
all true
but hear me out because as the house of windsor burns and as recriminations ricochet from instagram to the tabloids with courtiers and conference calls and competing tales of who knew what when there's the kernel of something that might be worth pulling out of the dumpster fire and reinventing as our own
based on my understanding of british government which full disclosure is largely informed by memories of my 10thgrade world history class plus three seasons of the crown the prime minister and parliament are democratically elected and do the actual governing while the dynastic unelected royals have ceremonial roles
the kings and queens and their offspring live in the palace wear fabulous jewels drive or are driven in fancy cars to events like trooping the color excuse me the colour and swan upping which sounds made up but isn't all while draining the nation's coffers to the tune of some �824 million this year per the royal family or �345 million per republic a group that advocates abolition of the monarchy
the subjects pay the bills and in return the royals live their lives in public enjoying various richpeople pursuits attending weddings in nice clothes and the aforementioned jewelry cutting ribbons standing on balconies and waving
they are england's celebrities in chief the stars of one of the world's longestrunning reality shows
they either serve as expensive anachronisms or useful distractions depending on whom you ask
that's the thing about the monarchy says helena bonham carter playing princess margaret on season 3's finale of the crown
we paper over the cracks
the problem with a realtime soap opera that draws the entire world's attention is that very few people are equipped to be its stars
recent history proves the point the beautiful princess becoming a desperately unhappy young mother who dies tragically trying to escape the paparazzi rest in peace princess diana
her husband the dashing prince caught on tape musing about becoming his mistress's tampon really who's writing this dialogue
an uncle bounced out of the family business after consorting with a notorious pedophile
is it any wonder that we now have a prince who wants to be written off the show or at the very least become a recurring guest star not a series regular
in the united states meanwhile we expect our elected officials with their unelected spouses and children to serve that public ceremonial role
which has meant first children going through adolescence on the world stage and spouses who've worked as lawyers and teachers pressed into thankless unsalaried and highlyscrutinized service as hostesses in chief
wouldn't it make sense to separate those spheres the way they have in iceland where there's an elected president to handle ceremonial tasks and a prime minister to govern
we too could give the power to an elected official and keep a different person around to handle the hostingribbon cuttingrose garden tourleadinggossip lightningrod stuff
we could keep it simple and give the gig to miss america who's already been chosen and already has a tiara
or we could have a televised reality contest a royality contest — see what i did there
to elect our king and queen
we could recruit the glittering couples we think would be best suited for the job of representing america on the world stage beyonc� and jayz
jennifer lopez and arod
george and amal clooney
danny devito and rhea perlman
ina garten and jeffrey
we would put the wouldbe royals through their paces — can she keep her cool while shaking hands in fourinch heels for three hours
can he entertain foreign dignitaries even if he doesn't speak their language
can they wrangle a gaggle of corgis or visiting college football champs
do they look good in funny hats
we let people vote
we move the winners into the white house and relocate the president into some nearby more modest digs
then we let the president govern while our king and queen cut the ribbons and host state dinners pardon the thanksgiving turkeys and light the christmas tree
we give them a salary and strict instructions about the values they are to uphold one single brooch like princess michael of kent's and you're out
and we give them crowns and titles because symbols have weight and meaning and because fairy tales and hallmark movies have trained us to believe that precious metal headgear and titles confer prestige and desirability
there's a reason we aren't all bingeing a netflix series called the baseball cap a reason that — no offense iceland — cinderella and sleeping beauty dream of a prince and not a president
elected royal couples would eliminate the problem of the unpaid first ladies shifting the burden of being a hostess a charity patron and a fashion plate onto the shoulders of someone who has skills for it allowing the president's spouse to continue on whatever path he or she previously chose — health care administrator librarian lawyer pilatesclass frequenter
even better it would eradicate the possibility of a president who would rather be a king
any candidates who prefer campaigning to governing who would rather speak at a rally than sit through a briefing or who understand the hierarchies of fox news but do not seem to have read the constitution can run to be a royal not a president
give the power with no crown to the hardworking camerashy introverts give a crown with no power to the preening spotlight hogs
for all we know prince charles who's been kind of a yawn as a royal could have been a solid politician and our disastrous president might have been at least a contained disaster as king donald the first
why donald trump hates your dog by frank bruni nov 5 2019  reaching for verbs to describe abu bakr albaghdadi's final moments president trump grabbed hold of crying screaming and whimpering
reaching for nouns he said that albaghdadi died like a dog
i wasn't aware that canines expired in a signature fashion but trump knows best even if he doesn't know so very many words
about a week later when he took characteristically nasty note of beto o'rourke's decision to abandon the presidential race he said that o'rourke quit like a dog
some similes demand repetition
this wasn't one of them
but a lack of verbal ingenuity never stopped trump
and an animus toward a certain animal has long well hounded him
in his boundless unoriginality he has likened women he dislikes to dogs
in his infinite incoherence he has repeatedly tweeted of people being fired like dogs
i personally haven't met all that many gainfully employed pooches unless digging holes in the backyard is a profession and when those excavators received orders to desist none of them got a pink slip and a referral to career counseling
trump did recently make the acquaintance — from a distance — of a dog with a bona fide job
that dog is a belgian malinois named conan
and conan's job brilliantly executed was to find chase and corner albaghdadi
trump called conan a beautiful dog a talented dog
the new york post put conan's picture on its front page along with the headline zero bark thirty
trump also tweeted a photoshopped image in which he draped a medal around conan's neck
so this malinois warrants decoration while a dog gets derision
or is it just that every dog has its day
i used to believe that adage until trump came along
he has had more than 1000 days in the presidency even as the white house goes to the dogs
journalists with many news organizations the washington post new york magazine slate and more have had a field day with trump's dogged use of dog as an allpurpose putdown
when it comes to like a dog he's like a dog with a bone
you're no one until he's divined the fleabitten mongrel within you — and you've joined a dog pound that includes the likes of mitt romney gen stanley mcchrystal bill maher steve bannon george will omarosa manigault newman my fellow times columnist gail collins and many more
fun doggy factoids cling to him like so much samoyed fur
he's the first president in more than a century who doesn't have a dog
according to the chinese zodiac he was born in the year of the dog
according to ivana trump he provoked growls from her dog chappy a poodle who could suss out a peacock
the media's nickname for his first defense secretary james mattis was mad dog
and from the forehead up he's a dead ringer for a distressed pomeranian
but no one has definitively solved the riddle of what seems like a rabid case of canine contempt
i have my own theories but first i have the more erudite insights of justin frank a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and the author of the book trump on the couch
frank noted that trump is phobic about germs and no doubt sees dogs as fourlegged germ factories
he probably also thinks dogs are stupid because they obey frank said
disobedience is trump's preferred posture at least for himself although he broke with that to become in frank's words putin's lap dog
disobedience that is and distemper
frank raised another issue that the president might well have with dogs when they're around they often steal attention becoming the objects of people's oohing and cooing
trump likes the oohing all to himself
my own sense
for trump all relationships are transactional and god's creatures possess value only in accordance with their ability to elevate and enrich him
his affection for kellyanne conway hinges on her superhuman power not to break into laughter or spontaneously combust when she puts the most ludicrously adulatory spin on his most transparently execrable deeds
if border collies performed that trick he would keep a kennel of them at maraloco
his regard for rudy giuliani depends on the hunched henchman's openness to unscrupulous errands
if doberman pinschers could pressure ukrainian officials to investigate joe and hunter biden trump would repurpose camp david as a dog run and turn ivanka's pumps into chew toys
but they can't just as siberian huskies can't hack democrats' emails — for that a husky siberian is handier — and golden retrievers can't retrieve gold
dogs are useless to trump at least by the criteria he cares about
there's no money in most of them no votes in any of them and they can't play golf with him and tell him along the way what a manly drive and graceful putt he has
that's lucky for lindsey graham who would otherwise be swapped out for a labradoodle licketysplit
conan passed muster only by being a proxy for trump's own imagined machismo
maybe chappy was merely yappy
like a donald
why trump persists by thomas b edsall jan 22 2020  the failure of the american electorate to rise up in opposition to president trump — whose outrages are welldocumented — suggests that voters are less tolerant less empathetic and less insistent on integrity than many believe
the election of trump and his first three years in office have revealed a nation deeply ambivalent about immigration race equality fairness — even about the ground rules of democracy itself
what if the belief systems used to justify antiimmigrant policies and to justify race prejudice for that matter — hostility to outsiders insularity high sensitivity to external threat — are as deeply ingrained in the american body politic as belief systems sympathetic to immigration and to racial equality — openness receptivity to new experiences trust
karen stenner a political psychologist and behavioral economist best known for predicting the rise of trumplike figures under the kinds of conditions we now confront responded to my emailed inquiries by noting the conflicting pressures at play i don't think i would agree that trumpian conservative stands on immigration race and homelessness are a more natural or default position
communities with a good balance of people who seek out diversity complexity novelty new and exciting experiences etc and those who are disgusted by and averse to such things avoid them and tell others to do likewise tend to thrive and prosper in human evolution
finding the right balance stenner said is vital to both societal cohesion and human flourishing
but she warned we may have tipped the balance too far in favor of unconstrained diversity and complexity pushing the boundary beyond many people's capacity to tolerate it
at this juncture she argued we need to tinker with that balance and get it right for everyone
so there's the paradox of our times it is likely that rather less liberal democracy will ultimately make liberal democracy more secure
among liberals stenner argued the greatest ambivalence attaches to immigration issues and that ambivalence is only worsened by the unwillingness of liberals to accept an open debate in which immigration opponents can express their fears and concerns without being called racists
suzette brooks masters — who has written extensively about immigrant integration detention employmentbased immigration and the immigrants' rights field generally — made a parallel point in her recent study of immigration change is hard academics agree that it is the pace of change relative to the composition of the receiving community that matters most
simply put if a place is already quite diverse making it more diverse matters less
even significant inflows of diverse newcomers will be perceived as less threatening because the community has already adapted to greater diversity
by contrast in a relatively homogeneous location even small absolute numbers of newcomers such as refugees can be disruptive and activate cultural anxiety
jonathan haidt a professor at nyu's stern school of business offered a similarly nuanced examination of how the balance between tribalism and openness might play out
tribalism he wrote by email is not a mindless and eternal us versus them mentality
it is a set of psychological adaptations that make people respond to threats and intergroup competition with an urge to band together enforce loyalty to the team and guard boundaries or territory
in the political arena haidt continued if one gains prestige for outdoing others on one's devotion to sacred values — such as guarding america's borders on the right or being antiracist on the left — then the party's rhetoric will shift to the extremes with candidates making more extreme proposals that gain them prestige
the pressures to go to extremes haidt suggested are roughly symmetrical between left and right
john r hibbing a political scientist at the university of nebraska takes a more uncompromising stance
in an email he wrote though consideration of such matters is always speculative suggesting the possibility that conservative orientations particularly on topics such as immigration and race are evolutionarily more primal is perfectly reasonable
in their book predisposed liberals conservatives and the biology of political differences hibbing kevin b smith of the university of nebraska and john r alford of rice argue that liberalism is an evolutionary luxury that can emerge in people when negative stimuli becoming less prevalent and less deadly or as hibbing put it in an email when daily threats to life and limb posed by other human beings have diminished
conversely they write if the environment shifts back to a threatfilled atmosphere then positive selection for conservative orientations would reappear
let's take a look at one of the core divisions between liberals and conservatives the causes of poverty
the right tends to blame individual failings while the left tends to place the onus on economic and political forces
the accompanying chart created from 2019 voter study group data by zach goldberg a doctoral candidate in political science at georgia state shows the difference
linda j skitka a professor of psychology at the university of illinois at chicago and four colleagues conducted an intriguing set of tests to determine the durability and strength of liberal and conservative beliefs on poverty in a 2002 paper dispositions scripts or motivated correction
understanding ideological differences in explanations for social problems
they found that in troubled times when competition for limited goods intensifies liberals move to the right it is much easier to get a liberal to behave like a conservative than it is to get a conservative to behave like a liberal
liberals act like conservatives when resources are scarce cognitive load is high and aid serves secondary rather than primary needs
conservatives only act like liberals when they are asked to consider helping a person with internally controllable causes of need who has convincingly reformed
in an email skitka provided some reasons for this difference my research has found that holding people responsible for their plight is a more natural response than feeling sympathetic to those in need
under most conditions liberals are more sympathetic to the needy in large part because they are more likely to attribute the causes of their need to something about the situation
conservatives in contrast tend to attribute the causes of people's need to something about the needy person they don't work hard enough etc
because blaming the individual is a default or fallback position liberals have to go through a more cognitively effortful process to reach their less natural conclusion — people have to basically override a more natural inclination to make dispositional attributions instead according to skitka
as a result she continued under certain pressures liberals respond to the needy more like conservatives when resources are scarce or when they are under a lot of cognitive load eg they are distracted or their ability to engage in selfcontrol is reduced eg when under the influence of alcohol
the leftright differences over the causes of poverty apply to other controversial subjects highly salient in contemporary american politics skitka and her colleagues write liberals tend to focus on situational or institutional explanations for things like homelessness or why people commit crimes whereas conservatives tend to focus on personal explanations for the same phenomena
skitka and her fellow authors received strong support for their argument in a 2012 paper loweffort thought promotes political conservatism by scott eidelman a professor of psychology at the university of arkansas and three coauthors
eidelman and his colleagues conducted a series of tests comparing the answers of two groups to ideologically revealing questions
the first faced time pressure or were forced to answer with distracting background noises in environments taxing limiting or otherwise disengaging effortful deliberative thought
the second group was asked the same questions with plenty of time to think and without noise or other distractions
in each case those tested under favorable circumstances provided more liberal answers than those tested under more hostile conditions
the adverse conditions forced those participants to perform what the authors called loweffort thinking and the results showed that loweffort thinking promotes political conservatism
in one of their four experiments the authors went to an unidentified bar in new england and persuaded 85 drinkers to take the test and have their alcohol levels measured
the results bar patrons reported more conservative attitudes as their level of alcohol intoxication increased
because alcohol limits cognitive capacity and disrupts controlled responding while leaving automatic thinking largely intact these data are consistent with our claim that loweffort thinking promotes political conservatism
diana mutz a professor of political science and communication at the university of pennsylvania pointed out that one effect of increasing education levels is to fundamentally change individual world views
the one sense in which there is evidence that we do 'overcome' our tendencies toward tribalism is through education she wrote by email
every study i've ever seen across the social sciences shows that education promotes less ingroup favoritism and greater tolerance toward those unlike ourselves she continued
in panel studies that track the same people over time as people gain advanced levels of education they become more tolerant and favorable toward liberal democratic norms
one scholar who has devoted much of his career to the study of the transition in developed countries from materialist to postmaterialist values — from a value orientation that emphasizes economic and physical security to one that emphasizes selfexpression and quality of life — is ronald inglehart a professor of political science at the university of michigan
he sees a generalized transition to more liberal world views — perhaps as a concomitant of voters with college and graduate school degrees
liberal values are not a veneer masking a much less pleasant reality inglehart pointed out in an email
a sizable and growing segment of the american public he wrote has tolerant liberal views and these views are deeprooted and enduring
inglehart's research has found that those who developed postmaterialist values which strongly correlate with what you think of as liberal values in their preadult years remained relatively postmaterialist 40 years later
materialists and postmaterialists take opposing sides in response to these statements a woman has todoesn't have to have children to be fulfilled i wouldwouldn't want foreigners homosexuals or people with aids as neighbors a child needsdoes not need a home with both a father and a mother in order to grow up happily imagination isis not one of the most important things to teach a child men dodon't make better political leaders than women homosexuality isis never justifiable
from 1970 to the present the ratio of materialists to postmaterialists has gone from 41 to 11 according to inglehart
ryan enos a political scientist at harvard whose research has demonstrated the precariousness of liberal racial commitments when tested in real world circumstances replied by email to my inquiries there is no doubt that there is more ambivalence on these issues among liberals and moderates than is reflected in the polls
in addition to the pressures of social desirability bias to give the liberal answer enos wrote others will lie to themselves telling themselves they believe something that they really don't and others are liberal in theory but less so in practice when it comes to things like homelessness in their own city or neighborhood
there are other sources of internal tension and conflicting interests among democrats and liberals
i have written frequently on the problems confronting the upstairsdownstairs democratic coalition — combining welleducated relatively affluent voters who are disproportionately white with poor and working class voters who are heavily minority
in his book politics is for power how to move beyond political hobbyism take action and make real change and in an atlantic article eitan hersh a political scientist at tufts has focused on the relatively weaker commitments of the upscale constituency of the democratic coalition to policy initiatives aimed at providing substantive help
many collegeeducated people think they are deeply engaged in politics hersh wrote in the atlantic they follow the news — reading articles like this one — and debate the latest developments on social media
they might sign an online petition or throw a 5 online donation at a presidential candidate
in fact he argues their consumption of political information is a way of satisfying their own emotional and intellectual needs
these people are political hobbyists
what they are doing is no closer to engaging in politics than watching sportscenter is to playing football
hersh is hard on these voters a group he describes as collegeeducated white people a demographic group that is now predominately democratic
these voters he writes do politics as hobbyists because they can
on the political left they may say they fear president donald trump
they may lament polarization
but they are pretty comfortable with the status quo
they do not feel a sense of obligation of linked fate to people who have concrete needs such that they are willing to be their allies
they might front as allies on social media but very few white liberals are actively engaging in facetoface political organizations committing their time to fighting for racial equality or any other issue they say they care about
why does all this matter
what difference does it make if liberals and democrats are more ambivalent than conservatives and republicans
for one thing it means that in elections that are increasingly negative ambivalent partisans — democrats in this case — will be more vulnerable to attacks designed to generate conflict to weaken enthusiasm and to increase the likelihood of nonvoting
president trump and the proponents of the republican party he dominates are certain to do all they can to capitalize on this vulnerability
most importantly democratic ambivalence in a year when high turnout is mandatory reflects the larger problem facing a political party that is now focused on its shared animosity to trump
that animosity may or may not be enough to propel its presidential candidate to victory but the inherent tension between different sectors of the centerleft coalition over ideological economic and social issues — not to mention glaring levels of intraparty income inequality — calls into question exactly what common ground holds the democratic coalition together
how common is it
brexit has arrived
but boris johnson's reign is just beginning
by richard seymour jan 31 2020  london — the moment has arrived
britain is out of the european union
prime minister boris johnson and his people's government — it scarcely calls itself conservative at this point — has fulfilled the promise on which it was elected in december and got brexit done
there are difficulties ahead
mr johnson has promised impossible and contradictory things on brexit maximum regulatory freedom where it suits his government maximum frictionless trade where it suits the british economy
the european union is unlikely to give him what he wants in the months of negotiations to come
but by fulfilling his pledge mr johnson has won enormous good will from nationalist voters across england and wales
outside the european union he will also have more scope to change the british government's role in the economy
this gives him a unique opportunity do what his predecessors could not build a lasting popular base for the conservative party
mr johnson can now take advantage of his big majority to overhaul british capitalism incentivizing longterm conservative voters while permanently annexing chunks of the labour party's historic base
already the dimensions of mr johnson's plans are becoming clear
he has no intention of running the country as any conservative leader since margaret thatcher would have he is not out to roll back the state
instead he is out to secure the support of workingclass voters who handed over to the tories dozens of seats formerly held by labour
his premiership set free by brexit could reshape britain's electoral map for decades
during the election mr johnson campaigned as an almost singleissue nationalist the phrase get brexit done falling robotically from his lips between every other stammer
beyond that much of what he said was conventionally tory he promised harsher restrictions on immigration meaning an end to free movement from the european union and the expansion of the hostile environment for migrants
domestic repression the manifesto promised would also tighten with a bigger penal system and a greater emphasis on counterextremism which as home secretary priti patel has indicated will target parts of the left
mr johnson has also hinted at constitutional reforms which would strengthen the executive and weaken judicial challenges
he promises an attack on liberal norms and legality in the name of national invigoration
tellingly he distanced himself from the last government
he would end austerity raise spending on the national health service guarantee pensions raise the minimum wage and borrow �100 billion to invest in infrastructure
many of these promises were grossly exaggerated but they served to underline the point that a johnson administration would be different
and since the election the government has acted to carry out its commitments passing legislation to guarantee nhs
spending increases and proposing moderate improvements to workers' and renters' rights
it has also promised that most of the infrastructure spending will be invested in england's deprived northern regions — and this week backed up the promise by nationalizing the north's major rail service
if this sounds like an incursion into labour territory it is
many of the policies are directly taken from labour's plans
the push for a larger state resonates with a politically ambiguous popular memory of the postwar era — a certain nostalgia for the era of big dynamic industries owned by the british government inflects both a version of the leftwing politics of the labour party leader jeremy corbyn and a version of brexit sentiment
mr johnson knows that many of the votes contributing to a conservative majority were lent by voters who wanted brexit done
a more interventionist state is a way to shore up a lasting broad coalition
this pragmatic raid on enemy turf was first conceived under mr johnson's predecessor theresa may
more thoughtful tories knew they had to change
the british state and economy had become dysfunctional gaping regional inequalities a housing market inaccessible to younger workers weak labor productivity sluggish investment and very little to export
mrs may's advisers understood that the conservatives had to break with the formula of austerity and financialization somehow
but while she used the rhetoric of workingclass uplift she was unable to back it up with policy
her chancellor philip hammond a traditional ally of the banks was determined to keep austerity going
if nothing else he could see no other way to create a fiscal surplus big enough to soften the impact of brexit
mr johnson by contrast is just enough of an opportunist to see that delivering brexit in however selfinjuring and punitive a form gives him both the political power and the regulatory latitude to do things differently
there is a risk though of succumbing to mr johnson's own mythmaking
as much as he needs workingclass conservatives they have always existed
and the core tory voter remains the affluent middle class
what's more when it comes to public spending he's limited in what he can do by his commitment to freezing most taxes
in an economy that is already weak and likely to be weaker after brexit he has little room for serious investment
and mr johnson will face conflicting demands from within his own party
the chancellor sajid javid has demanded 5 percent cuts from most government departments making plain that the spending spigots are not about to freely flow
and the prime minister is surrounded by allies who far from wanting a more interventionist state want to cut taxes and slash regulations in the interests of a more globally competitive economy
during the election mr johnson was able to glide over the glaring contradictions in what he said with a bustling con man's charm but in office he has to navigate them
with a big majority he can no longer play the outsider
however the lesson of nationalist leaders globally is that in this jittery era they don't have to deliver booming success to keep power
from viktor orban in hungary to narendra modi in india these leaders have expanded their base by delivering a personalized charismatic form of rule in which they are militant defenders of the nation against all comers — be they foreigners traitors liberals or leftists
mr johnson is not a nationalist by conviction
he is the epitome of the reckless opportunists that as the sociologist aeron davis says run britain
his voting record in parliament shows him to be slightly more liberal than his party
but his performance over the last few months — during which he agitated against parliament accused opponents of collaboration with europe and saberrattled against the courts and media — showed him to be adept at using the far right's template
whenever the contradictions in his government threaten to unravel he is likely to return to these tactics
indeed brexit fits in with that method perfectly
after today mr johnson will be able to continually remind voters that he was able to overcome the hostility of the liberal elite and accomplish his goal
and as negotiations proceed he can gin up hostility against his supposed enemies whenever he doesn't get his way
whenever any politician claims to speak for the people someone always pays the price
migrants are first on the list for mr johnson
but they will not be the last