“The protesters are railing against a society that isn’t cohesive enough to summon a response. They’re hammering on a hollowed-out structure, and it very well may collapse,” George Packer writes:
Month: September 2024
****** History Will Judge the Complicit
What would it take for Republican leaders to admit to themselves that Trump’s loyalty cult is destroying the country they claim to love? @anneapplebaum asks.
**** The Judges Who Serve at Trump’s Pleasure
American judges are well paid, unafraid of dismissal, and free from legal and political pressures. But that hasn’t stopped some of them from seeking to alter the law in egregiously partisan ways. @anneapplebaum on how judicial independence could end:
****** NYTimes.com: Trump Dislikes Ukraine for the Most MAGA of Reasons
Trump Dislikes Ukraine for the Most MAGA of Reasons
The country lies at the heart of overlapping conspiracy theories important to the former president.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/15/opinion/trump-debate-ukraine-russia.html?smid=em-share
The Gilded Age on PBS rj
Aired February 6, 2018
The Gilded Age on PBS
The American Experience
Gilded is not golden.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/gilded-age/
Film Description
In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, during what has become known as the Gilded Age, the population of the United States doubled in the span of a single generation. The nation became the world’s leading producer of food, coal, oil, and steel, attracted vast amounts of foreign investment, and pushed into markets in Europe and the Far East. As national wealth expanded, two classes rose simultaneously, separated by a gulf of experience and circumstance that was unprecedented in American life. These disparities sparked passionate and violent debate over questions still being asked in our own times: How is wealth best distributed, and by what process? Does government exist to protect private property or provide balm to the inevitable casualties of a churning industrial system? Should the government concern itself chiefly with economic growth or economic justice? The battles over these questions were fought in Congress, the courts, the polling place, the workplace and the streets. The outcome of these disputes was both uncertain and momentous, and marked by a passionate vitriol and level of violence that would shock the conscience of many Americans today. The Gilded Age presents a compelling and complex story of one of the most convulsive and transformative eras in American history.
*** NYTimes.com: MAGA vs. Science Is No Contest
MAGA vs. Science Is No Contest
A substantial number of Republican voters are losing faith in science.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/11/opinion/republicans-science-denial.html?smid=em-share
NYTimes.com: An Infantilizing Double Standard for American College Students
An Infantilizing Double Standard for American College Students
It’s time for students to take back their independence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/opinion/college-students-adulting.html?smid=em-share
NYTimes.com: An Infantilizing Double Standard for American College Students
An Infantilizing Double Standard for American College Students
It’s time for students to take back their independence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/opinion/college-students-adulting.html?smid=em-share
The Panopticon Is Already Here
China’s ascent to AI supremacy is a menacing prospect, @andersen writes, because the country’s political structure encourages, rather than restrains, this technology’s worst uses.
***** Facebook Has a Superuser-Supremacy Problem
Facebook is giving the most abusive people on its platform too much power to shape what it is, write @MattHindman, @natelubin, and Trevor Davis.