Quote of the Month
"Given the character of the person in question, this outcome was inevitable. To want it not to be the case is to want a fig tree not to have sap. In any case, remember this: in no time at all both you and he will be dead, and shortly after that not even our names will remain." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.6
What I’m Reading:
1. Why diplomacy can’t save U.S.-China relations
Why you should read it: In Foreign Affairs, Tufts University political science professor Michael Beckley argues against popular claims that better communication and more diplomacy can improve relations between the United States and China, saying they don’t reflect the reality of incompatible goals and interests and could actually make conflict more likely rather than less.
“With U.S.-Chinese relations worse than they have been in over 50 years, an old fairy tale has resurfaced: if only the United States would talk more to China and accommodate its rise, the two countries could live in peace. The story goes that with ample summitry, Washington could recognize Beijing’s redlines and restore crisis hotlines and cultural exchanges. Over time and through myriad points of face-to-face contact—in other words, reengagement—the two countries could settle into peaceful, if still competitive, coexistence. Talk enough, some analysts contend, and the United States and China might even strike a grand bargain that establishes stable spheres of influence and something akin to a G-2 to solve global problems such as climate change and pandemics… It is an enticing vision. The world would certainly be better off if great powers could settle scores through diplomacy rather than by squaring off in a security competition. Yet the history of great-power rivalry, and of U.S.-Chinese relations in particular, suggests that greater engagement is unlikely to mend ties between the countries and, if performed hastily, could actually catalyze violent conflict. Of the more than two dozen great-power rivalries over the past 200 years, none ended with the sides talking their way out of trouble. Instead, rivalries have persisted until one side could no longer carry on the fight or until both sides united against a common enemy.”
“The United States and China are unlikely to buck this pattern. Their vital interests conflict and are rooted firmly in their respective political systems, geographies, and national experiences. Many of the connections binding the countries together, such as their extensive trade, are also driving them apart by giving policymakers additional reasons to fight and pressure points to exploit. Neither side can make major concessions without exposing itself. And after decades of dealing with each other, both governments have accumulated long lists of grievances and view the other with deep mistrust. The United States tried to work with China repeatedly from the 1970s to the 2010s, yet top Chinese leaders consistently viewed U.S. outreach, especially the American attempt to integrate China into the U.S.-led liberal order, as an insidious form of containment—a plot designed to weaken the grip of the Chinese Communist Party and lock China into economic dependence and political subservience to the West. American outreach to China during this period was more extensive than the proposals being seriously considered by U.S. policymakers today. Nevertheless, these overtures failed to fundamentally change Chinese assessments of American intentions or dissuade efforts by the CCP to dominate East Asia and beyond.”
Why it matters: “The bottom line is that great-power rivalries cannot be papered over with memorandums of understanding. Diplomacy is necessary but insufficient to resolve disputes nonviolently. Sustainable settlements also require stable balances of power, which usually emerge not through happy talk but after one side realizes it can no longer compete… In the meantime, containment does not have to lead to violent conflict. Competition could see the United States and China engage in a technology race that pushes the frontiers of human knowledge to new heights and creates innovative solutions to transnational problems. It could also mean the two rivals cultivate internally peaceful blocs of like-minded states, and in which they use nonviolent means, including the provision of aid, to try to win hearts and minds and expand their influence at the margins. This type of rivalry might not be so bad for the world and certainly would be better than the great-power wars that have characterized most of modern history. The ‘one world’ dream of a single, harmonious international system may be impossible for now, but that does not rule out peaceful, if tense, relations between two rival orders. Containing China in that competition will entail severe risks and costs, but it is the best way to avoid an even more destructive conflict.”
2. How a left-wing American millionaire funds Chinese propaganda around the world
Why you should read it: New York Times reporters Mara Hvistendahl, David A. Fahrenthold, Lynsey Chutel, and Ishaan Jhaveri dig into the activities of tech mogul Neville Roy Singham and his pro-China left-wing propaganda networks.
“From a think tank in Massachusetts to an event space in Manhattan, from a political party in South Africa to news organizations in India and Brazil, The Times tracked hundreds of millions of dollars to groups linked to Mr. Singham that mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points… These groups are funded through American nonprofits flush with at least $275 million in donations… The result is a seemingly organic bloom of far-left groups that echo Chinese government talking points, echo one another, and are echoed in turn by the Chinese state media.”
“The Times untangled the web of charities and shell companies using nonprofit and corporate filings, internal documents and interviews with over two dozen former employees of groups linked to Mr. Singham. Some groups, including No Cold War, do not seem to exist as legal entities but are tied to the network through domain registration records and shared organizers… At its center were four new nonprofits with dust-dry names like ‘United Community Fund’ and ‘Justice and Education Fund.’ They have almost no real-world footprints, listing their addresses only as UPS store mailboxes in Illinois, Wisconsin and New York.”
Why it matters: “From the UPS store nonprofits, millions of dollars flowed around the world. The Times tracked money to a South African political party, YouTube channels in the United States and nonprofits in Ghana and Zambia. In Brazil, records show, money flowed to a group that produces a publication, Brasil de Fato, that intersperses articles about land rights with praise for Xi Jinping… These groups operate in coordination. They have cross-posted articles and shared one another’s content on social media hundreds of times. Many share staff members and office space. They organize events together and interview one another’s representatives without disclosing their ties.”
3. How bad policy and regulations can undermine the potential of Biden’s clean energy investments
Why you should read it: The Breakthrough Institute’s Ted Nordhaus and Alex Trembath outline the challenges the Biden administration’s signature investment in clean energy—the Inflation Reduction Act—faces from other policies and regulations that many progressives support.
“While IRA supporters managed to avoid many of the mistakes that derailed past efforts in the legislative process, many now appear determined to repeat them via IRA implementation. Progressive technocratic hubris, driven by overreliance on energy system models, an uncritical fetishization of industrial policy, and an unwillingness to fully account for the implications of political polarization and divided government, risks undermining much of what the IRA could accomplish… The good news is that much of the necessary policy and public investment for sustainable climate policy is now in place. But to succeed, the Biden administration would be wise to resist the siren song of regulatory certainty and focus on fundamentally reducing the cost and improving the performance of the myriad technologies necessary to deeply decarbonize the U.S. economy. Over the long term, better, cleaner technologies—with a helping hand from policy—will win the day. But it won’t necessarily happen in the ways that many technocratic progressives imagine or on the timetable that the environmental community demands.”
“By definition, technology-led climate mitigation cannot guarantee any specific emissions outcome. In a market economy, public investment does not assure that technology will be adopted at any particular rate, nor that it will fully displace emissions producing activities… IRA implementation is riddled with similar uncertainties and challenges. Rapid expansion of wind and solar power depends upon sustained declines in the cost of those electricity sources. In reality, though, the rate of cost improvements has halted in recent years, as supply chains, siting, value deflation, and other factors have negated continuing improvements in manufacturing efficiencies. Rapid adoption of electric vehicles will require overcoming a range of challenges, from charging infrastructure limitations to range anxiety to rising battery material costs that may cancel out continuing improvements in battery manufacturing and vehicle performance.”
Why it matters: “Making the most of it will require an honest appraisal of the ways in which maximalist climate ambition can undermine climate progress, and a concomitant determination to pursue climate policies that are robust to both the enormous uncertainties that attend long-term decarbonization of the U.S. economy and to the inevitable shifts in partisan control of the federal government that America’s two party system virtually assures… It is understandable why, in the face of the sheer scale of IRA investments, many have concluded that they mark a watershed—a qualitative shift in America’s commitment to address climate change based upon the large quantitative increase in public spending. But it is worth noting that the half a trillion dollars in estimated spending is prospective, based upon assumptions about how much clean technology, subsidized primarily through tax credits, will be deployed over the next decade.”
4. Don’t bet on a peaceful Russia
Why you should read it: Rutgers political scientist Alexander Motyl contends in Foreign Policy that there’s no realistic settlement in Ukraine that will leave Vladimir Putin’s Russia satisfied.
“Both supporters and opponents of a negotiated agreement with Russia to end the war in Ukraine are making bets on the future. Proponents of a deal are betting that, while negotiations may not satisfy Ukraine’s aims to fully restore its territory, they will end the war and produce a genuine peace. Opponents of negotiations are betting that, while a deal with Moscow may put an end to the fighting temporarily, it will only induce Russia to resume its aggression in the near future… For a plausibility check on whether a negotiated settlement could produce a durable peace—in short, whether Russia will abide by a deal—we can look at history, compare to similar situations, and invoke international relations theory. The question always comes back to Russia, as no serious analyst or policymaker would expect Ukraine to reignite the war after its negotiated conclusion.”
“Russian history is sobering. To this day, it is one of almost relentless expansion. Beginning in the 15th century, the Duchy of Moscow (which later called itself Russia) progressively seized territory in all directions to become, and remain, the world’s largest country. That expansionist drive hasn’t subsided since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which Russian President Vladimir Putin explicitly views as a temporary setback. Belarus has been brought almost entirely under the Kremlin’s control, parts of Georgia and Moldova have been re-occupied, and Ukraine is once again the target of Russia’s sustained imperialist project. The past does not necessarily predict the future, but countries have foreign-policy traditions and dynamics that should not be ignored… The second plausibility check involves Moscow’s behavior in similar situations—that is, does the Kremlin have a record of abiding by agreements with Ukraine? Russia has twice guaranteed the sanctity of Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, including Crimea—once in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and a second time in the 1997 Ukraine-Russia friendship treaty. It is now clear that Putin never intended to abide by the Minsk agreements that were supposed to bring peace after the first Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014.”
Why it matters: “Those calling for an immediate negotiated settlement are thus making an extremely risky bet. History, comparison, and much of theory isn’t on their side. Effectively, they are advising Ukraine to put its survival on the line—in exchange for the flimsy hope that Russia will behave exactly as one tiny set of academics expect it to, according to their theory. That doesn’t guarantee that they are wrong, but the overwhelming evidence from historical precedent, regime behavior, national ideology, and international relations theory suggests that no durable negotiated peace is on offer.”
5. How social media fuels a rising murder rate among young Americans
Why you should read it: ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis details how social media has fueled murders among young Americans by escalating and expanding violent disputes well beyond immediate social circles.
“Criminologists point to a confluence of factors, including the social disruptions caused by COVID‑19, the rise in gun sales early in the pandemic and the uproar following the murder of George Floyd, which, in many cities, led to diminished police activity and further erosion of trust in the police. But in my reporting on the surge, I kept hearing about another accelerant: social media… Smartphones and social platforms existed long before the homicide spike; they are obviously not its singular cause. But considering the recent past, it’s not hard to see why social media might be a newly potent driver of violence. When the pandemic led officials to close civic hubs such as schools, libraries and rec centers for more than a year, people — especially young people — were pushed even further into virtual space. Much has been said about the possible links between heavy social media use and mental health problems and suicide among teenagers. Now Timpson and other violence prevention workers are carrying that concern to the logical next step. If social media plays a role in the rising tendency of young people to harm themselves, could it also be playing a role when they harm others?”
“The current spike in violence isn’t a return to ’90s-era murder rates — it’s something else entirely. In many cities, the violence has been especially concentrated among the young. The nationwide homicide rate for 15- to 19-year-olds increased by an astonishing 91% from 2014 to 2021. Last year in Washington, D.C., 105 people under 18 were shot —nearly twice as many as in the previous year. In Philadelphia in the first nine months of 2022, the tally of youth shooting victims — 181 — equaled the tally for all of 2015 and 2016 combined. And in Baltimore, more than 60 children ages 13 to 18 were shot in the first half of this year. That’s double the totals for the first half of each year from 2015 to 2021 — and it has occurred while overall homicides in the city declined. Nationwide, this trend has been racially disproportionate to an extreme degree: In 2021, Black people ages 10 to 24 were almost 14 times more likely to be the victims of a homicide than young white people… To the extent that online incitement has drawn attention, it’s been focused on rap videos, particularly those featuring drill music, which started in Chicago in the early 2010s and is dominated by explicit baiting of ‘opps,’ or rivals. These videos have been linked to numerous shootings. Often, though, conflict is sparked by more mundane online activity. Teens bait rivals in Instagram posts or are goaded by allies in private chats. On Instagram and Facebook, they livestream incursions into enemy territory and are met by challenges to ‘drop a pin’ — to reveal their location or be deemed a coward. They brandish guns in Snapchat photos or YouTube and TikTok videos, which might provoke an opp to respond — and pressure the person with the gun to actually use it.”
Why it matters: “Communities, meanwhile, have been left to fend for themselves. But violence prevention groups are dominated by middle-aged men who grew up in the pre-smartphone era; they’re more comfortable intervening in person than deciphering threats on TikTok. Before the pandemic, an intern at Pittsburgh’s main anti-violence organization scanned social media posts by young people considered at risk of becoming involved in conflicts. The Rev. Cornell Jones, the city government’s liaison to violence prevention groups, told me that the intern had once detected a feud brewing online among teenagers, some of whom had acquired firearms. Jones brought in the participants and their mothers and defused the situation. Then the intern left town for law school and the organization reverted to the ad hoc methods that are more typical for such groups. ‘If you’re not monitoring social media, you’re wondering why 1,000 people are suddenly downtown fighting,’ Jones said ruefully. In early July, a shooting at a block party in Baltimore validated his concern: Though the event had been discussed widely on social media, no police officers were on hand; later, a video circulated of a teenager showing off what appeared to be a gun at the party. The shooting left two dead and 28 others wounded… For now, the system is failing to anticipate violence — and even, quite often, to convict people whose social media feeds incriminate them. In May, three teens were tried for the murders of Jarell Jackson and Shahjahan McCaskill in Philadelphia. At the time of the shooting, two were 17 and the third was 16. Social media activity formed a key part of the prosecutors’ evidence: Instagram posts and video feeds showed the three defendants driving around in a black SUV seemingly identical to the one that had pulled up alongside Jackson’s car. Other posts showed two of them holding a gun that matched the description of one used in the shooting. After a day of deliberations, the jury acquitted them of murder, finding two of the defendants guilty only of weapons charges.”
6. How Egypt is destroying Cairo under the guise of development
Why you should read it: Egyptian writer Yasmine El Rashidi takes to the Washington Post to demonstrate the ways the government of dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is destroying Cairo’s historical and cultural heritage to build highway overpasses and strip malls in the name of “development.”
“Cairo, a city of 22 million, is one of the most densely populated metropolises on the planet. Stacked side by side and almost atop one another, buildings swallow the city’s skyline, which itself is shrouded with sand blown in from the surrounding deserts. Public gardens offer an oasis in this parched expanse — where young people can picnic, walk or enjoy respite from cramped home life. Lovers find refuge and privacy. For many people, old and young, the gardens are the only place away from the city’s lung-scratching pollution to take in nature, relax, stretch and breathe deeply… Yet the gardens of Cairo are disappearing. I have watched them transform, one after another, from lush green spaces into construction sites, buried in concrete and steel. Along the street where I grew up, a 1-kilometer stretch of verdant Nile bank with 100-year-old trees has been razed to make way for a strip mall featuring some three dozen American-style cafes. Across the river, gardens, where as a child I collected flowers to press, are now a string of multilevel retail complexes alongside a gas station with blinking neon lights.”
“Paving over public parks and gardens to make way for bridges, roads, cafes and gas stations has become de facto policy under the government of President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, who led the military overthrow of his predecessor in 2013. ‘Build it and the money will come’ is the mantra of his regime, which is often characterized as an army with a state attached to it. Once tasked with protecting the country’s borders, the armed forces now lay their heavy hand on every aspect of the country’s management, including its built and natural heritage. Over the past few years, hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land have been transferred to the military, including historic sites, public gardens and parks, along with the Nile banks. The public rationale is ‘development’ and the maximization of land use for economic gain. ‘Money, money, money,’ Sisi has said. ‘It’s the most important thing in the world…’ Heritage buildings are being demolished, historic neighborhoods and ancient cemeteries — including the 1,400-year-old City of the Dead — are being leveled, displacing thousands of families who have lived there for generations. Landmark mausoleums are disappearing, too, and acres of gardens. The most charming flourishes in this ancient city are being replaced by bland markers of contemporary capitalism, including near the once-untouched Giza Plateau — now being built out with retail and food outlets. Most of these projects are managed by the army, with lucrative contracts divvied among its patrons and friends. And though we have long known that this government privileges megaprojects over people, now our history is up for grabs, too.”
Why it matters: “Amid all the infrastructure spending, Egypt is facing the largest foreign debt crisis of its modern history. Food prices (and shortages) have soared this year as inflation hit 40 percent. The International Monetary Fund has repeatedly cautioned the government to curtail public spending. And yet, Sisi’s modernization campaign continues at breakneck speed. On national TV, the president has boasted that he has built close to 1,000 new bridges and 7,500 kilometers (nearly 4,700 miles) of roads since he took office. Yet numbers don’t tell the whole story; one of those new billion-dollar highways along the country’s North Coast was so hastily designed with perilous elevated roundabouts, it caused a series of deadly accidents… Those of us mobilizing to protect our country’s heritage are acutely aware of the poor roads that can no longer contain an exploding population. But it is well-known that widening roads doesn’t curb congestion. Nor will it bring in tourists when it is built at the expense of Egypt’s history.”
7. Why the world really needs to get space junk under control
Why you should read it: MIT graduate research fellow Thomas G. Roberts identifies the ways space junk poses a threat to the world in the Washington Post.
“The number of satellites launched into orbit each year is growing almost exponentially. Last year, researchers at the University of British Columbia estimated that if this pattern continues, there’s a 1-in-10 chance in the next 10 years that debris from space activities — often scalding-hot metal shards — will fall from the sky and kill someone… Space operators can control how some large objects return to Earth. But this requires extra fuel reserves and adaptive control technologies, which translate into higher costs. As a result, many countries and companies prefer to let debris fall where it may. In effect, this merely transfers the expense to other people who live where the objects land.”
“For decades, the United States has required that launches from U.S. spaceports fly over unpopulated areas vacated of all private and commercial ships and aircraft. Other major space superpowers with poorer records on space debris — China and Russia — should follow suit… Space-faring powers and private companies should also invest in technologies to better track and model space objects’ descent to the earth and share observational data with one another as objects fall. And countries should work together to write and carry out new rules on space behavior. More importantly, they need to enforce rules that already exist.”
Why it matters: “Countries and companies that litter the globe with debris — not the people and places it lands on — should pay the price.”
8. When Britain’s imperial past explains everything, it explains nothing
Why you should read it: For Englesberg riter Samuel Rubinstein notes the emergence of a new genre of popular histories in the UK that blames everything wrong with modern Britain on the country’s former empire.
“A genre is hardening. It is becoming easy to identify a type of non-fiction book currently in its ascendancy. It owes its existence to Nigel Farage, who killed the Britain of the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony, and Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd. A group of talented writers have looked behind 2016 and 2020 and found the ghost of empire… Their project is a worthy one, which is why it is a shame that they have generally diverted themselves with a frivolous parlour game. The game, as I see it, works something like this. You pick a phenomenon, any phenomenon, real or imagined; then you try to explain, as best you can, how it is ‘rooted in’ or ‘suffused by’ the British Empire. The game rewards the nimble-minded. The possibilities are endless… [Journalist Sathnam] Sanghera acknowledges the lingering effects of empire on Britain’s former colonies; his focus in Empireland, and indeed the focus of the broader genre to which it belongs, is ‘how imperialism has shaped modern Britain’. But what precludes all serious reflection on this question, as the preceding examples make clear, is that he is always working backwards: he starts by observing disparate things about modern Britain, usually things he dislikes, and then tries to trace them back to the Empire, getting there any which way he can. For all his efforts to present himself in the book as a tabula rasa, his strategy forces him to have in mind what he wants to argue before consulting the evidence. What he is doing, in short, isn’t history; it’s word-association.”
“This genre must be understood as a subset of a much broader wave of post-Brexit literature, written by Remainers and for Remainers, attempting to pathologise the Leaver mind. The notion that the Leave vote was guided by national ‘imperial nostalgia’ is a popular one – a ‘cliché’, Sanghera admits – yet, as the historian Robert Saunders has shown, it is unsound for four main reasons. First, it is politically-charged. Some clichés ‘exist for a reason’, as Sanghera says, but others exist because they are expedient for those who use them. Scholars of a Remainer cast of mind ought perhaps to heed Saunders’ caution against ‘arguments that so directly suit their own political preferences’. Second, the ‘imperial nostalgia’ idea takes as given that ‘it is only Leave voters who are haunted by the ghosts of empire’. Third, ‘we should not conflate nostalgia for the Empire with enthusiasm for the Commonwealth’ – not least because ‘enthusiasm for the Commonwealth’ is fairly widespread among ethnic-minority Britons, for whom ‘empire’ carries different connotations. And fourth, ‘historians must be careful not to confuse nostalgia with amnesia’: a vital corrective not only to the ‘imperial nostalgia’ myth about Brexit specifically, but to the concept as a whole. All this seriously troubles the Sanghera-[Peter] Mitchell-[Charlotte Lydia] Riley thesis on Brexit. It seems to me, anyway, that the British Empire did not loom very large in 2016 save in a generic, watery sense of rhetoric about ‘Britain’s place in the world’ – rhetoric which could readily be found on either side of the debate… ‘Education’ occupies a sacred space in this genre. It is a panacea: if only people were more educated about empire, Britain’s problems would be solved, its sins redeemed. Calls for ‘more education’ can also provide cover for ideas that strike me as ill-thought-out. One of Sanghera’s more bewildering flights of fancy is that race relations in Britain would be improved if we educated people to accept that ‘ultimately, multiculturalism is, in the words of the Jamaican poet Louise Bennett, just “colonizin’… in reverse”’. On the grounds that ‘colonising’ is a bad thing (with which I should think the authors agree), this would be a terrible idea – unless one wanted to give a boon to Great Replacement-style conspiracy theories.”
Why it matters: “If imperialism is there, call that ‘imperial nostalgia’; if not, call that ‘imperial amnesia’; either way, it proves that Britain needs more ‘education’, more empire on ‘the curriculum’, more books like these. Empire, in these books, is everything and nothing, everywhere and nowhere; point to anything you like, or anything you hate, and you will find your way back to it, one way or another. The bad air of empire, noxious and invisible, will always hover over our empire-land. It seeps into everything and pollutes all it touches. And empire and imperialism will cease to exist as meaningful historical concepts for as long as this Imperial Miasma Theory prevails.”
9. How Trump’s revival of “America First” ideology recalls the original Lindbergh-ian version
Why you should read it: In The Bulwark, writer Matt Johnson enumerates the similarities between Donald Trump’s version of America First and Charles Lindbergh’s original articulation.
“When Trump announced the campaign slogan ‘America First,’ he was instantly and rightly criticized for running under the same banner as Charles Lindbergh’s isolationist, antisemitic movement to keep the United States out of World War II… Lindbergh, the world-famous aviator who had been speaking out against U.S. involvement in the war in Europe, joined the [original America First] group in April 1941. The group encouraged Americans to look upon their allies and fellow citizens as warmongers who were acting selfishly against the country’s best interests—a view that had considerable popular support until Pearl Harbor instantly shifted public opinion in favor of war. The importance of resisting fascism in Europe was lost on Lindbergh, who, in an infamous September 1941 speech in Des Moines, Iowa, declared that Americans ‘cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.’ Lindbergh was referring to such ‘other peoples’ as European Jews, who wanted the United States to join the fight against fascism for ‘reasons which are not American.’”
“America First turned out to be an apt brand for Trumpism. Just as Lindbergh instrumentalized prejudice and paranoia with his warnings about shadowy forces controlling the country, Trump and many of his allies on the nationalist right use the same strategy today. When Trump was indicted in March for allegedly falsifying business records and violating state and federal election laws (yes, that indictment), he declared that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was ‘handpicked and funded by George Soros…’ When Trump isn’t echoing Lindbergh, he’s channeling Joseph McCarthy. Unlike his predecessors who urged unity after tragedy, Trump sowed fear and hatred… Isolationism and prejudice are often entwined, but it’s especially unsurprising that an isolationist as opportunistic and vindictive as Trump is willing to exploit bigotry and conspiracism. Like Lindbergh, Trump uses scapegoats to make his case for isolationism because it’s much easier to manipulate public opinion when you manufacture a nefarious enemy within—especially when the country faces real enemies abroad, like an imperialist dictator in Russia who is prosecuting the largest conflict in Europe since World War II.”
Why it matters: “Trump’s America Firstism is far more dangerous than Lindbergh’s. Trump isn’t just an isolationist and a bigot; he’s the most powerful demagogue in the country who stands a real chance of returning to the Oval Office. And if he wins in 2024, he will be more paranoid and vindictive than ever… Trump recently declared that the ‘greatest threat to Western civilization today is not Russia. It’s probably, more than anything else, ourselves.’ He went on to condemn the ‘Marxists,’ ‘globalists,’ and other ‘horrible USA-hating people’ who are ‘doing more damage to America than Russia and China could ever have dreamed.’ This has been Trump’s central message to Americans from the beginning—that the gravest threats are all around them.”
Odds and Ends
See how Taylor Swift’s Era Tour dominated the summer of 2023 in ways other superstars couldn’t begin to imagine…
Scientists think they’ve figured out why Neptune’s clouds have vanished—and the number one culprit is the sun…
Explore fifteen unique regional variations on that humble American staple, the hot dog…
How an eleven year-old Michael McDonald superfan got to meet her idol at a Doobie Brothers concert in Lincoln, Nebraska…
Philosopher Daniel Dennett offers his advice on how to live a happy life…
What I’m Listening To
The end credits from the new Star Wars series Ahsoka by composer Kevin Kiner.
“Rose-Colored Rearview” from Grace Potter’s new album, Mother Road.
“Want You Back,” the first track off Haim’s sophomore record Something To Tell You.
Image of the Month
