Pankaj Mishra · Flailing States: Anglo-America Loses its Grip · LRB 16 July 2020. ‘The abyss of history is deep enough to hold us all,’ Paul Valéry wrote in 1919, as Europe lay in ruins.
The words resonate today as the coronavirus blows the roof off the world, most brutally exposing Britain and the United States, these prime movers of modern civilisation, which proudly claimed victory in two world wars, and in the Cold War, and which until recently held themselves up as exemplars of enlightened progress, economic and cultural models to be imitated across the globe. ‘The true test of a good government,’ Alexander Hamilton wrote, ‘is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.’ It is a test the United States and Britain have failed ruinously during the current crisis. Peter Kruger's answer to What don't most liberals realize?
Geographic Evidence that Gun Deaths are Cultural - Handwaving Freakoutery - Medium. Lithium, a Strategic Resource: Here’s Why The US Wants To Break Bolivia To Bits With Hybrid War. Political bias is destroying people’s faith in journalism. Lara Logan, former correspondent for “60 Minutes,” caused a stir last week when, on a podcast called “Mike Drop,” she said that too many in the media have become “political activists.”
New CPRC Research: How a Botched Study Fooled the World About the U.S. Share of Mass Public Shootings: U.S. Rate is Lower than Global Average - Crime Prevention Research CenterCrime Prevention Research Center. What economists have gotten wrong for decades. In a House hearing on monetary policy last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell made a telling confession in response to a question from Rep.
Why Is Measles Back? AP FACT CHECK: Blue high-tax states fund red low-tax states. WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders have spent months promoting the myth that red low-tax states are subsidizing blue high-tax states because of the deduction for state and local taxes.
An Associated Press Fact Check finds it’s actually the other way around. High-tax, traditionally Democratic states (blue), subsidize low-tax, traditionally Republican states (red) — in a big way. Republicans are trying to eliminate the deduction as part of the sweeping tax package working its way through Congress. They added back a deduction for up to $10,000 in property taxes, in a concession to Republicans from high-tax states such as New York and New Jersey. California Republicans are pushing to extend the deduction to local income taxes, too. It is true that taxpayers in high-tax states benefit the most from the deduction. Canada’s health-care wait times hit new record high, again. Bacchus Barua is associate director of the Fraser Institute’s Centre for Health Policy Studies We finally did it last year.
In 2016, we hit the 20-week mark for the average wait time for treatment by a specialist (across 12 medical specialities) after referral from a general practitioner. Canada’s national shame had reached a record high of 20 weeks, a far cry from the 9.3-week wait measured by the Fraser Institute’s annual survey in 1993. One would have thought, nay, hoped, that this milestone would have served as a wake-up call to rally politicians and policymakers to improve the dismal situation faced by patients in our country. Bernie's Democratic Socialism Isn't Socialism, It's Social Democracy. Over here in Europe, we've had more in-your-face experience with socialism than the U.S. so it might be the case that we pay more attention to the gradations of leftist political thought.
Socialism is a political (or economic, your choice) system in opposition to capitalism. America Finally Admits Recycling Doesn’t Work. Which of the 11 American nations do you live in? - The Washington Post. Red states and blue states?
Flyover country and the coasts? How simplistic. Colin Woodard, a reporter at the Portland Press Herald and author of several books, says North America can be broken neatly into 11 separate nation-states, where dominant cultures explain our voting behaviors and attitudes toward everything from social issues to the role of government. The 11 nations of the United States and their cultures - Business Insider. No, the Divide in American Politics Is Not Rural vs. Urban, and Here’s the Data to Prove It. For several years now, political journalists, analysts, and pundits have been arguing that U.S. politics has increasingly turned into a struggle between urban and rural voters.
The Best Map Ever Made of America’s Racial Segregation. Last year, a pair of researchers from Duke University published a report with a bold title: “The End of the Segregated Century.”
U.S. cities, the authors concluded, were less segregated in 2012 than they had been at any point since 1910. Did 30,000 scientists declare that climate change is a hoax? 10 Countries You Didn't Know Existed. How Star Trek Became A Tribal Battleground Of PC Art. It has become commonplace to lament that we don’t have a common culture any more—a repertoire of art that we can all enjoy regardless of our political loyalties.
Well, maybe it’s because we have a lot of people trying to mark off parts of the culture as their tribal territory, off-limits to partisan enemies. I thought of this when someone sent me a link to a recent podcast for science-fiction fans, in which political commenter Ana Marie Cox puzzles over the fact that Ted Cruz is a big Star Trek fan. (To save you some trouble, it’s about 28 minutes in.) Steven Brill's "Tailspin": How My Generation Broke America. Lately, most Americans, regardless of their political leanings, have been asking themselves some version of the same question: How did we get here?
How did the world’s greatest democracy and economy become a land of crumbling roads, galloping income inequality, bitter polarization and dysfunctional government? As I tried to find the answer over the past two years, I discovered a recurring irony. About five decades ago, the core values that make America great began to bring America down. Understanding Victimhood Culture: An Interview with Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning. Bradley Campbell, Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University, and Jason Manning, Associate Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University, have been described as “prophets of the academic world” by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and their new collaborative work The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars, “a book of revelations,” by the sociologist Donald Black.
The two sociologists have aimed to supply us with an empirical sociological analysis of the recent moral conflicts that have erupted on U.S. college campuses—and the extent to which these conflicts are spreading outwards into mainstream society. After reading the book, I reached out to the American sociologists to interview them about some of the key themes of their book, and also to gain insight into some recent cultural trends that were not covered. What follows is a transcript of our interview conducted via email.
I. Understanding Victimhood Culture: An Interview with Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning. Why Do Mass Shootings Happen? Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns? Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled, while imports have doubled. This doesn’t mean more households have guns than ever before—that percentage has stayed fairly steady for decades. Rather, more guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University. Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns? America's massive decline in gun violence.
This week’s mass shooting in San Bernandino, which killed 14 innocents and wounded another 21, seems sadly routine. We’ve had so many of these incidents in recent years that they flow together. And yet, as Max Ehrenfreund notes at the Washington Post, we’ve actually had a “massive decline” in gun violence over the last two decades. Premeditated mass shootings in public places are happening more often, some researchers say, plunging towns and cities into grief and riveting the attention of a horrified nation. In general, though, fewer Americans are dying as a result of gun violence — a shift that began about two decades ago.In 1993, there were seven homicides by firearm for every 100,000 Americans, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 6 Reasons Your Right-Wing Friend Isn’t Budging On Gun Control. I’ve seen my friends and colleagues on the Left side of the gun control debate dumbfounded at why Second Amendment advocates don’t seem to budge on their views after mass shootings.
I Am A Gun Owner, And Here's What I Have To Say About Gun Laws. “Fuck you, I like guns.” – Engineering, Parenthood, and a Solid Attempt at Adult Status. There’s a Way to Stop Mass Shootings, and You Won’t Like It. The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Biggest Lie In Investing That You Believe In. The real truth about the 2008 financial crisis. Entitlement Programs Are a Fiction. The Left Cannot Defeat the Right Through Violence and Suppression. How Postmodernism Undermines the Left and Facilitates Fascism. The President and the bomb. The Real War on Science. A new theory for why Trump voters are so angry — that actually makes sense. The Post's Dan Balz explores some of the factors behind President-elect Donald Trump's victory against his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
SHOCK: One Liberal Actually GETS The Trump Phenomenon! How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind. How Post-Watergate Liberals Killed Their Populist Soul. The Clearest (No Spin) Summary of FBI Report on Hillary Clinton Email. The week democracy died: How Brexit, Nice, Turkey, and Trump are all connected. Black Minister asks "What if Whites Strike Back?" New DOJ Statistics on Race and Violent Crime. Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About The First Amendment.
Islam-Related Stuff. Universal Basic Income Stuff. Transcript of the Constitution of the United States - Official Text. Libertarianism as Ten Questions Rather Than Ten Answers. America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny. The smug style in American liberalism. Why boys don't read. Harvard prof. takes down gender wage gap myth.
Bernie Sanders Is a Social Democrat, Not a Democratic Socialist. Bernie Sanders’s Dark Age Economics. How 37 Banks Became 4 In Just 2 Decades, All In One Astonishing Chart. Ban On Gun Violence Research. Sufficient Reason - Dear Liberal…Here’s Why I’m So Hostile. America Is Becoming More Liberal. Will the Republican Party Survive the 2016 Election?
Why the Economic Fates of America’s Cities Diverged. When Social Justice Isn’t About Justice. Debunking 5 Phony Statistics Liberals Love To Toss Around - John Hawkins - Page full. Sufficient Reason - Dear Liberal…Here’s Why I’m So Hostile. How Star Trek Explains The Decline Of Liberalism. Men and mass murder: What gender tells us about America's epidemic of gun violence. The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin. Hillary Clinton email scandal: Explained. The New Totalitarians Are Here. How World War III became possible: A nuclear conflict with Russia is likelier than you think. This computer programmer solved gerrymandering in his spare time - The Washington Post. This is what America would look like without gerrymandering.
20 Questions You’re Not Supposed To Ask In America Today - John Hawkins. Shut Up, Have a Cheeseburger. Heads Christians Win, Tails They Lose. How To Spot And Critique Censorship Tropes In The Media's Coverage Of Free Speech Controversies. David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show' How Corporate America Invented Christian America.
A Short History of White Racism in the Two-Party System. Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party. KOHLBERG'S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT. Social Justice Bullies: The Authoritarianism of Millennial Social Justice. Top 20% of Earners Pay 84% of Income Tax. The War on the Private Mind. 2016 Budget Interactive. Barry Goldwater. 31 states have heightened religious freedom protections. Confessions of a Public Defender. Why America's Internet Is So Shitty and Slow. Myth Of The 28% Foreign Aid Budget. USA QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau.