Overactive distrust leads to a dangerous endgame of broken institutions: politics, media, religion, science, expertise itself are all more suspect than ever. Should we complain about that? Fear it? Fix it? Or is the real problem within us?
Author: Mark Kingwell | Source: The Walrus | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
The presence of affective polarization in democratic nations has grown perceptibly since the turn of the millennium. This is the term political scientists use to describe negative feelings about political opponents. “Affective” because it is a matter of feeling: that the other side is not just divergent in views but beyond redemption, perhaps insane or evil. Actual policy differences may be less stark, but that … [ Read more ]
Author: Mark Kingwell | Source: The Walrus | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
The hottest commodity of today’s online cultural ecosystem is open conflict. Chitchat on podcasts and livestreams is transfixing because it’s unruly, argumentative, and unafraid of causing offense.
Author: Spencer Kornhaber | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Culture, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
The so-called Breitbart Doctrine stated that “politics is downstream from culture”—that is, the ideas conveyed by popular entertainment shapes consumers’ worldviews. This proposition called for conservatives to build a shadow Hollywood that tells conservative stories and raises up conservative stars… In the long run, though, the doctrine’s biggest impact has been encouraging the right to get creative with online culture.
Author: Spencer Kornhaber | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy
As the old aphorism puts it, Americans do the right thing only once we have exhausted every other possibility.
Author: Jon Meacham | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy
Back in 2021, I wrote a book about the rise of “illiberal populism,” the self-destructive tendency in some nations that leads people to participate in democratic institutions such as voting while being hostile to democracy itself, casting ballots primarily to punish other people and to curtail everyone’s rights—even their own. These movements are sometimes led by fantastically wealthy faux populists who hoodwink gullible voters by … [ Read more ]
Author: Tom Nichols | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
Democracy is premised on the belief that we can trust ordinary people to make consequential decisions. It’s in some ways an enlightenment ideal premised on another enlightenment ideal: the triumph of reason and the capacities of ordinary people. To buy into it, you have to believe that people will be more loyal to principles and discernment than to leaders and groups, and in that sense, … [ Read more ]
Author: Rebecca Solnit | Source: The New York Times | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
In red world, being called a racist — that accusation has no purchase, really. Here’s what’s the terrifying thing on the right that can be a career- and reputation-ending allegation: “You’re weak. You’re a coward.” So the transformation, this flipping upside down of morality, turning bullying into strength, turning restraint into vice, all of that, what has then happened is it enables the Trumpists and … [ Read more ]
Author: David French | Source: Vox | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy
In fact, one of the recurrent themes in all [Joan] Didion’s books, both fiction and nonfiction, is Americans’ penchant for reinventing themselves, their belief in fresh starts and second acts — a faith, on the one hand, that helped settle this country and fueled the American dream, and yet, on the other, has resulted in rootlessness and anomie, the discarding of personal and public history. … [ Read more ]
Author: Michiko Kakutani | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: America, International, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Our political process not only spurns consensus but also works by “turning the angers and fears and energy of the few” against “the rest of the country.”
Authors: Joan Didion, Michiko Kakutani | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy
The NatCons are wrong to think there is a unified thing called “the left” that hates America. This is just the apocalyptic menace many of them had to invent in order to justify their decision to vote for Donald Trump.
They are wrong, too, to think there is a wokeist Anschluss taking over all the institutions of American life. For people who spend so much time … [ Read more ]
Author: David Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: America, International, Politics & Public Policy
Conservatives have lately become expert culture warriors—the whole Tucker Carlson schtick. This schtick demands that you ignore the actual suffering of the world—the transgender kid alone in some suburban high school, the anxiety of a guy who can’t afford health care for his brother, the struggle of a Black man trying to be seen and recognized as a full human being. It’s a cynical game … [ Read more ]
Author: David Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost … [ Read more ]
Author: Carl Sagan | Source: Goodreads | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Math & Science, Politics & Public Policy
I’ve always thought of freedom as an activity, not a condition. There’s a tendency, especially in our culture, to think of freedom as “freedom from.” To be free is to not be tyrannized by some outside power, and that’s fine, but it’s incomplete. You can be free of tyranny, but if you’re destitute, if you’re abandoned, if you don’t have agency because your most immediate … [ Read more ]
Author: Sean Illing | Source: Vox | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Conservatives are concerned with an outside threat, and liberals, they’re much less worried about outsiders. In fact, they’re often quite open to them culturally. What they’re worried about is internal unfairness. If you take those two concerns and you marry them together in one society, you have a society that can both protect itself and run a fairly equitable system. Either one by itself wouldn’t … [ Read more ]
Author: Sebastian Junger | Source: Vox | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
For most of human history, freedom had to be at least suffered for if not died for. That raised its value to something almost sacred. In modern democracies, however, an ethos of public sacrifice is rarely needed because freedom and survival are more or less guaranteed. […] The idea that we can enjoy the benefits of society while owing nothing in return is literally infantile. … [ Read more ]
Author: Sebastian Junger | Source: Vox | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Rage and frenzy will pull down more in a half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.
Author: Edmund Burke | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior
When those accustomed to breaking things try to build them, they seem to have little idea of how much work it actually takes. They seem to think that actual accomplishments are there for the taking, and that splashy announcements and dramatic actions can solve intricate problems.
Author: Heather Cox Richardson | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
By the 21st century it became clear that Americans were no longer disagreeing with one another; they didn’t even perceive the same reality. You began to hear commencement speakers declare that each person has to live according to his or her own truth. Critics talked about living in a post-truth society. [James Davison] Hunter talks about cultural exhaustion, a loss of faith, a rising nihilism … [ Read more ]
Author: David Brooks | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: America, Culture, History, International, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
James Davison Hunter… reminds us that a nation’s political life rests upon cultural foundations. Each society has its own way of seeing the world, its own basic assumptions about what is right and wrong, its own vision of a better world that gives national life direction and purpose. Culture is the ocean of symbols and stories in which we swim.
American culture, Hunter argues, was formed … [ Read more ]
Author: David Brooks | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: America, Culture, History, International, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy