BeyondGeography
BeyondGeography's JournalWhere the New Identity Politics Went Wrong
Don’t let right-wing culture warriors obscure the fact that some ideas behind this progressive ideology have genuine problems.By Yascha Mounk
…As the identity synthesis has gained in influence, its flaws have become harder to ignore. A striking number of progressive advocacy groups, for example, have been consumed by internal meltdowns in recent years. “We used to want to make the world a better place,” a leader of one progressive organization complained recently. “Now we just make our organizations more miserable to work at.” As institutions such as the Sierra Club and the ACLU have implemented the norms inspired by the identity synthesis, they have had more difficulty serving their primary missions.
…The identity synthesis is also starting to remake public policy in ways that are more likely to create a society of warring tribes. In the early months of the pandemic, for example, a key advisory committee to the CDC recommended that states prioritize essential workers in the rollout of scarce vaccines rather than the elderly, in part because “racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented” among seniors. Not only did this policy, according to the CDC’s own models, have the probable outcome of increasing the overall number of Americans who would perish in the pandemic; it also placed different ethnic groups in competition with one another for lifesaving medications.
When decision makers appear out of touch with the values and priorities of most citizens, demagogues thrive. The well-founded fears roused by the election of Trump accelerated the ascendancy of the identity synthesis in many elite institutions. Conversely, the newfound hold that these ideas now have over such institutions makes it more likely that he might win back the White House in 2024. The identity synthesis and far-right populism may at first glance appear to be polar opposites; in political practice, one is the yin to the other’s yang.
More at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/woke-ideology-history-origins-flaws/675454/
Ex-Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson claims Rudy Giuliani groped her on January 6
Source: The Guardian
Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump aide turned crucial January 6 witness, says in a new book that she was groped by Rudy Giuliani, who was “like a wolf closing in on its prey”, on the day of the attack on the Capitol.
Describing meeting with Giuliani backstage at Donald Trump’s speech near the White House before his supporters marched on Congress in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Hutchinson says the former New York mayor turned Trump lawyer put his hand “under my blazer, then my skirt”.
“I feel his frozen fingers trail up my thigh,” she writes. “He tilts his chin up. The whites of his eyes look jaundiced. My eyes dart to [Trump adviser] John Eastman, who flashes a leering grin. I fight against the tension in my muscles and recoil from Rudy’s grip … filled with rage, I storm through the tent, on yet another quest for Mark.”
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/20/rudy-giuliani-grope-cassidy-hutchinson-claim-january-6-trump-aide?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
A Trip to Ukraine Clarified the Stakes. And They're Huge.
By Thomas Friedman
Because if Ukraine can escape this war — even if it has to temporarily cede some territory to Putin — and can complete the anti-corruption and other regulatory reforms that are required for it to join the European Union, the brainpower, agricultural power and military power that Ukraine represents would serve as an important model and magnet for Russians wanting a different future, not to mention other shaky Balkan states.
…Which is why, as much as I value NATO as a security alliance, I have never lost sight of how the European Union — which Americans tend to know little about — has managed to quietly build itself into its own kind of United States of Europe, another great center of free markets, free people democracy and the rule of law. To be sure, the E.U. has plenty of its own problems managing day to day. But considering Europe’s long history of fratricide, the E.U. is a quiet, boring miracle. Adding Ukraine to it would make it only stronger.
Indeed, as I’ve thought about what could be the most meaningful and painful punishment for Putin and his war crimes, I decided it would be for him to be sentenced to sit in the Kremlin for the rest of his life, hiding from coup plotters and having to look out at a Ukraine that is a secure and flourishing member of the single largest democratic, free market/free travel zone in the world — the E.U — while Putin’s citizens would be left with the freedom to vacation and invest in North Korea and Iran.
That would be Vladimir Putin’s nightmare. Our job is to help make it come true.
(Gift link) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/ukraine-war-putin.html?unlocked_article_code=_shXNurOe-J5qx42jNmZw_c27LLzewm3ayHlLWSjNoVqsPQsBKICwIf-7N3SPpYazeF78nsy9Ir0Y4vZZAyRAgSG2GE8o-OL-0O0G0YquQ9W71DVSYnaUWktLyg84e7lPabKIMPdN_Efdzn7hE7RU40kGLiRRXRvbmYrO1dzmL1k4gvIfLmpJ2uDWSM_nMUHvGdJ3ZMlVsnwb_Nx8Q25A9V2didrXkevIs58w_VMqcvpTSN5KyMgF2d1kLAYhLxN5tHpABRcE3UVaodxyVdyG9MGXhwtgqCNvwGbBmCeAJNt0iRDrP3R2iws4JYDv3zbTL1tvKgRJfI3D_s&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
This is as good as it will ever get from Friedman. Highly recommend.
Joyce Vance FTW
On MSNBC just now re why Kemp is standing by Willis against the GA wingnuts who want to remove her from office:
“Gov. Kemp can read the writing on the wall. He knows that Donald Trump is about to get to the find-out portion of this little adventure.”
Narcissists who avoid treatment
Per Scientific American:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-narcissism-science-confronts-a-widely-misunderstood-phenomenon/
"Meaner, dumber, and wholly divorced from the issues Americans actually care about."
Jill Filipovic on where the Trump Effect has taken the Republican Party:
What did the Republican candidates identify as the problems plaguing America? Hunter Biden. Teachers’ unions. George-Soros-funded district attorneys. Critical race theory in schools and trans kids in locker rooms.
What did they shrug off? Climate change and the deadly disasters it has caused. Endemic gun violence that is now the leading killer of American children. The man who will likely beat them all for the Republican nomination being indicted for a slew of crimes.
This country is worse thanks to today’s Republican party, and today’s Republican party is among the worst aspects of this country. Over and over again, Republican politicians and conservative commentators talk about all of the ways in which life in America has deteriorated, how we are no longer as great as we once were. They often pin the blame on immigrants, feminists, racial justice activists, Democrats, and changing social mores. But if Americans really want to see a striking example of our national nosedive, they needn’t look further than at the ridiculous men (and one woman) on a Fox News stage tonight.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/24/who-won-the-republican-debate-our-panel-reacts?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Steve Schmidt reacts to the 2024 Republican presidential debate on Fox News
?si=YajrWihFesp_zHjZTo Stop an Extinction, He's Flying High, Followed by His Beloved Birds
Using an ultralight aircraft, Johannes Fritz once taught endangered ibises a migration path over the Alps. Because of climate change, he is now showing them a much longer route to a winter’s refuge.To survive the European winter, the northern bald ibis — which had once disappeared entirely from the wild on the continent — needs to migrate south for the winter, over the Alps, before the mountains become impassable.
But shifting climate patterns have delayed when the birds begin to migrate, and they are now reaching the mountains too late to make it over the peaks, locking them in an icy death trap.
“Two or three years, and they’d be extinct again,” Mr. Fritz said.
Determined to save them, Mr. Fritz decided he would teach the birds a new, safer migration route by guiding them himself in a tiny aircraft. And he was confident he could succeed in this daring, unconventional plan — because he had done it before.
Gift link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/world/europe/johannes-fritz-ibises-migration.html?unlocked_article_code=EVxd2PGud8bYvOeSb1tNDY63_bHIVe6qXThZpL4i5GWvV6e8iOD6WA6XZ9CjT237vs6InyOh3AjWTiILwdk6wYfWgoSqFh5D4kvdanpT7aKhiThHNRYBd6KzAvgzh4LwLUHBenxGQGOyHRowh7K3Idf3mj89zGZqV2pCmNL_XM-mgi_0uNhfy4fgP2qtknon_pcbSlPKekbprGc-f0WWhUbtjsnIzXB1SqfA22Ezkmyoc_HIwCZI81daAGRh7PuQm1nApiwnRoTw9nBbsAoIRRx_4DUSpk8TDBSrGxS_z1DEiIZQypEVa6iFbcwImA2U3W51VCfS1BCss6uE5eKNwwu52G7dDF7bzbXqfhXd&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Hear key witness respond to Trump saying 'he shouldn't' testify
Geoff Duncan response segment starts at 2:17.
Robbie Robertson, Leader of The Band, Dies at 80
Source: Variety
Guitarist-songwriter-singer Robbie Robertson, who led the Canadian-American group the Band to rock prominence in the 1970s and worked extensively with Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese, has died. He was 80.
According to an announcement from his management, Robertson died Wednesday in Los Angeles after a long illness.
In a statement, Robertson’s manager of 34 years, Jared Levine, said “Robbie was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, including his wife, Janet, his ex-wife, Dominique, her partner Nicholas, and his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine, and Delphine’s partner Kenny. He is also survived by his grandchildren Angelica, Donovan, Dominic, Gabriel and Seraphina. Robertson recently completed his fourteenth film music project with frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese, ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’ In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to the Six Nations of the Grand River to support a new Woodland Cultural Center.”
Read more: https://variety.com/2023/music/news/robbie-robertson-dead-the-band-1235692172/
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