"The Mainstream Left Is in Serious Trouble in the West"

"The ethnic change that is transforming western societies makes cultural issues more relevant, benefiting the Right while harming a Left that finds itself hemmed in by progressive norms, unable to adapt to new electoral realities."

Eric Kaufmann at Law & Liberty explains "Why the Left Is Losing."

"Anyone Who Expects a Restoration of the Status Quo Ante 2017 May Be in for a Rude Awakening"

"Take, for example, three cherished institutions—White House press briefings, independent courts, respect for nonpartisan law enforcement agencies and a nonpartisan civil service. Their foundations are more young and shaky than you might think, and once altered, they may not be easily restored. Future presidents may regard newer precedents as more binding. A once-sturdy nonpartisan civil service and equally assured nonpartisan courts may be too weakened to enforce a return to prior norms. A public once conditioned to expect certain things of its presidents may have lost a critical amount of muscle memory."

Joshua Zeitz at Politico discusses more damage Donald Trump has done.

"Torn Apart by Cross-Currents Over Immigration and by Tensions Between Socially Progressive Urbanites and Traditionalist Working-Class Voters"

"In a piece last year in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Yascha Mounk noted the industrial, trade-union roots of European social democratic parties and how a reason for their decline 'is, quite simply, that fewer and fewer people are now ensconced in the milieus that gave birth to these movements in the first place.'
"With cultural issues supplanting economic issues in salience during the 21st century and the former sense of economic solidarity giving way, the old center-left parties had trouble pleasing all of their supporters, or even most of them."

Rich Lowry at Politico compares Bernie Sanders to Jeremy Corbyn.

"It Has Failed Billions of People"

"Globalisation was sold as a way of boosting prosperity for all by making markets bigger and more efficient. For a while the model worked, but when it blew up and caused extensive collateral damage, a backlash was inevitable. Deglobalisation is the result."

Larry Elliott at The Guardian writes that the "era of open markets and open borders is over."

"Almost Single-Handedly Stunted the Growth of Every Other Center-Left Alternative"

"Biden has run for president three times. He has not yet managed to finish higher than fourth in any primary or caucus. Biden may, or may not, have been a good enough politician to win a presidential campaign in his prime. He is now well past his prime. His campaigning pace is languid, his debate performances unsettling. Nor has he built the kind of campaign apparatus that could drag him over the finish line. He has far fewer endorsements than a traditional establishment favorite, and his organization has underperformed in Iowa and New Hampshire.
"Yet, for most of the last year, Biden sat on the largest piece of real estate in the Democratic party. He has commanded the loyalty of voters who fondly recall Barack Obama's presidency and wish to replicate it, and whose primary goal is to assemble  majority coalition. They are disproportionately black and occupy the center-left heart of the party's base."

At New York, Jonathan Chait argues that Joe Biden's "2020 campaign is going to end in a disaster for the whole party."

"If You, an Individual, Want This Service, You'll Have to Pay for It, and Pay Big"

"The state should not 'subsidize intellectual curiosity,' Ronald Reagan told reporters in 1967, back when he was just the governor of California. At the time he took office, California had one of the most pristine public university systems in the nation, but Reagan saw the universities as fertile ground for budget cuts and a happy target in the culture war he was waging. It was a two-birds scenario for the burgeoning conservative lawmaker. Attacking the public system would not only solidify his legacy as a budget hawk but would directly drain the main source of income and professional growth for both his academic and working-class detractors. He would bring this same model to the presidency. As Devin Fergus, a senior fellow at Demos and professor of African American and African Studies at Ohio State University, wrote in a piece tracing this history for The Washington Post, federal spending on higher education 'was slashed by some 25 percent between 1980 and 1985,' and the Reagan administration 'shifted the federal government's focus from providing students higher education grants to providing loans.'"

Nick Martin at The New Republic reports on efforts to organize a student-loan strike.

"Read On for More"

"Depending on which universe we end up with in 2070, the impeachment will have accelerated the political rise of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, 'ushered in the age of the imperial presidency,' or 'sounded the death knell of impeachment as a bulwark against an outlaw president,' according to the experts." 

Politico asks historians to write passages from future textbooks about the impeachment of Donald Trump.

January 2020 Acquisitions

Books:
Neal Adams et al, Batman: Arkham--Ra's Al Ghul, 2019.
Tom King et al, Batman, Vol. 1: I Am Gotham, 2017.
Doug Moench et al, Batman: Arkham--Black Mask, 2020.
Allison Moorer, Blood: A Memoir, 2019.
David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present, 2019.
James Tynion IV et al, Batman Detective Comics, Vol. 1: Rise of the Batmen, 2017.

Music:
Breeders, Last Splash, 1993.
Camper Van Beethoven, The Virgin Years, 1994.
Cowboy Junkies, Best of Cowboy Junkies, 2001.
Eels, Beautiful Freak, 1996.
Foo Fighters, The Colour and the Shape, 1997.
Go-Go's, Return to the Valley of the Go-Go's, 1994.
Killing Joke, Laugh? I Nearly Bought One!, 1992.
Eddie Murphy, Comedian, 1983.
Pixies, Bossanova, 1990.
Pixies, Trompe le Monde, 1991.
Prince, Originals, 2019.
Rolling Stones, It's Only Rock 'n' Roll, 1974.
Soundgarden, Superunknown, 1994.
Matthew Sweet and Susannah Hoffs, Under the Covers, Vol. 1, 2006.
Suzanne Vega, Solitude Standing, 1987.
Vines, Highly Evolved, 2002.
Various, Elvira Presents Haunted Hits, 1988.
Various, Guitar Player Presents: Legends of Guitar--Classical, 1991.
Various, Singles: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 1992.

"A Fight Over Reality—and Whether Reality Matters"

"The Trump impeachment trial was a test of the American system. Could the politicians in charge handle the truth, evaluate it fairly and reach a reality-based conclusion (which could still allow for a vote not to remove Trump)? The Republicans failed. Instead, they rallied for Trump; they renounced reality. Their action was in synch with how George Orwell in 1984 described the most important need of an authoritarian political party: 'The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.' That was the GOP playbook for the Trump impeachment. This trial was a measure of whether truth could triumph over political hackery and the authoritarian impulse that Trump has injected into the Republican Party, and the Republicans have convicted themselves."

David Corn at Mother Jones reacts to the vote to block witnesses at Donald Trump's impeachment trial.

"The 'Anti-Woke' Backlash Is No Joke"

"Having spent so long feeling silenced by the liberal consensus, people in this group have been given a new lease of life by the right's new insurgents. Not only were they correct all along; they were actually victims, zealously persecuted by an oversensitive and censorious society. It is this righteous indignation that lends their antipathy to wokeness a defiant and almost celebratory quality. As a friend of mine puts it, we are living in 'bigot Christmas'."

At The Guardian, Ellie Mae O'Hagan warns that "[t]he social liberalism of the 90s is crumbling, and the people who hated it all along are finding their voice again."

"The End of Humanities Only Deepens Divides"

"Sunderland University wants to become more 'career-focused'. So it is to shut down all its language, politics and history courses and promote instead degrees that 'align with particular employment sectors'. It’s an illustration of what happens when universities turn into businesses, and their ethos is defined by the market. It's also symbolic of the divisions that now rend Britain's social fabric."

Kenan Malik at The Guardian warns of growing gaps in opportunity.

"Somewhere in the Heavens, the Gods Are Laughing"

"Boris Johnson has come to power at a moment of high uncertainty. Progressive theories that claimed to divine the future have proved as trustworthy as Roman auguries. Gramsci's belief that the working class makes history has turned out to be right, at least in Britain, but not in the way he and his disciples imagined."

John Gray at the New Statesman explains "Why the left keeps losing."

"The Story of How the Language of Scarcity and Individual Investment Became Bipartisan Orthodoxy"

"The neoliberal economists won: education became a commodity, and a large swath of the reshaping of higher education that economists like Buchanan and Devletoglou championed took place. But to their intellectual descendants, the economic disciplining of higher ed has not gone far enough: Federal and state governments still 'waste' precious taxpayer dollars on a dysfunctional and possibly even pointless enterprise structured around 'bad incentives,' clinging to economically 'worthless' subjects, and defined by the charade-like pretense of learning."

David Sessions at The Chronicle Review discusses Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education and Jason Brennan and Phillip Magness's Cracks in the Ivory Tower.

"But at No Time in History Have So Many Americans Been Drawn to What's Looking Increasingly Like a Cult"

"Understanding Trump is a fool's errand. He's sui generis, and far too erratic and finally insubstantial to reward close attention. Trump zealots are another matter. They are part of the tradition of radical converts in American history who elected to forfeit their authentic personalities and principles rather than refine or strengthen them. We need to stay focused on how so many American came to this pass and took this destructive course."

Virginia Heffernan at the Los Angeles Times explores the Trump Cult.

"It Is Also a Mistake to Pit Elements of the Working Class Against Each Other"

"While advocates of identity politics have unarguably good intentions, the delivery of the message has been lost, and has often left us defending the liberal status quo.
"The idea that capitalism can be made OK if we only make the 10 people sitting around the boardroom table creaming profits from the workers, female, BAME, or LGBTQ+ is a bogus one.
"By ignoring the very real need for sweeping socialist economic reform, we are hurting these groups of people most of all, since oppressed or marginalised groups are hardest hit by capitalism."

Beck Robertson at Morning Star argues that the Labour Party's problem is "identity politics and its role in the perception of the party as a vehicle for middle-class Islingtonites."

"The Simple, Small-C Conservative Comfort of Continuity with the Past"

"All this represents a double warning to advocates of a republic. First, after Brexit, the last thing anyone will want is the promise of, or even a debate on, more constitutional upheaval. Riding alongside 'Get Brexit Done' was the Tory claim that a Labour government would mean two referendums, one on Europe and a second on Scottish independence. The Conservatives intuited that a big chunk of the public longed for a period in which politics would leave them alone, and for something like a resumption of normality. (It's why the promise of 'radical change' is not always an automatic vote-winner.)"

Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian laments the difficulties anti-monarchists have in Britain.

"The Death of Hope by a Thousand Tiny Technocratic 'Nudges'"

"The Democrats' fecklessness, in other words, did not flourish in a partisan vacuum. It has been, at every juncture, inspired and influenced by the complete failure of the right to self-police. The American right, like the housing market and the banks and the hedge funds and the health insurers and providers, simply could not be induced to check its basest instincts in the face of an opponent that staked its entire political credibility on the promise that it could make Republicans fall in line with realigned incentives or One Weird Trick. If liberals want to get the next decade right, after the previous one in which we repeatedly failed to save the world while telling ourselves we were doing so, we will need to stop nudging and begin fighting."

Alex Pareene at The New Republic laments the Democrats' embrace of "Nudge-ocracy."

Favorites of the 2010s

The Late Adopter selects...
Movies:
Django Unchained (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2012)
Amazing Grace (dir. Sydney Pollack, 2019)
The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker, 2017)
Toy Story 3 (dir. Lee Unkrich, 2010)
Young Adult (dir. Jason Reitman, 2011)
Greenberg (dir. Noah Baumbach, 2010)
Nightcrawler (dir. Dan Gilroy, 2014)
The Lego Movie (dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, 2014)
Incredibles 2 (dir. Brad Bird, 2018)
56 Up (dir. Michael Apted, 2013)

Albums:
Paul Weller--Saturns Pattern (Parlophone, 2015)
Vaccines--What Did You Expect from the Vaccines? (Columbia, 2011)
Katy Perry--Teenage Dream (Capitol, 2010)
Kasabian--For Crying Out Loud (Sony, 2017)
Best Coast--Crazy for You (Mexican Summer, 2010) 
Horrors--Skying (XL, 2011)
Lana Del Rey--Born to Die (Polydor, 2012)
Saint Etienne--Words and Music by Saint Etienne (Heavenly, 2012)
Parquet Courts--Wild Awaaaaake! (Rough Trade, 2018)
Brian Wilson--Reimagines Gershwin (Disney, 2010) 

Songs:
Paul Weller--'Long Time'
Palma Violets--'Best of Friends' 
Icona Pop--'I Don't Care'
Vaccines--'If You Wanna' 
Best Coast--'When I'm with You' 
Kasabian--'Bless This Acid House' 
Robyn--'Dancing on My Own'  
Stone Roses--'All for One' 
Carly Rae Jepsen--'Call Me Maybe' 
Babymetal--'Gimme Chocolate!!'

2019 Favorites

The Late Adopter selects...
Movies:
Amazing Grace (dir. Sydney Pollack)
Joker (dir. Todd Phillips)
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (dir. Joe Talbot)
Blinded by the Light (dir. Gurinder Chadha)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (dir. Quentin Tarantino)
Yesterday (dir. Danny Boyle)
Toy Story 4 (dir. Josh Cooley)
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (dir. Mike Mitchell)
Us (dir. Jordan Peele)
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (dir. J.J. Abrams)

Albums:
Ocean Blue--Kings and Queens/Knaves and Thieves (Korda)
Liam Gallagher--Why Me? Why Not. (Warner Bros.)
Post Malone--Hollywood’s Bleeding (Republic)
The Beat feat. Ranking Roger--Public Confidential (DMF)
Bob Mould--Sunshine Rock (Merge)
Yola--Walk Through Fire (Easy Eye Sound) 
The S.L.P.--The S.L.P. (Columbia)
Lana Del Rey--Norman Fucking Rockwell! (Interscope)
3x4: The Bangles, The Three O’Clock, The Dream Syndicate, Rain Parade (Yep Roc)
Paul Weller--Other Aspects: Live at the Royal Festival Hall (Parlophone)

Songs:
Michael Marshall--'San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)'
Ocean Blue--'Kings and Queens'
Liam Gallagher--'One of Us'
Billie Eilish--'Bad Guy'
Post Malone--'Circles'
Lizzo--'Juice'  
Muffs--'That's for Me' 
Amyl and the Sniffers--'Some Mutts (Can't Be Muzzled)'
Fontaines D.C.--'Boys in the Better Land'
Dillon Francis--'Catchy Song'

December 2019 Acquisitions

Books:
Charles L. Black, Jr., and Philip Bobbitt, Impeachment: A Handbook, New Edition, 2018.
Howard Chaykin and Daniel Brereton, Batman: Thrillkiller, 2018.
Nathalia Holt, The Queens of Animation: The Untold Story of the Women Who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History, 2019.
Jonathan Kauffman, Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat, 2018.
Robert Kirkman et al, Battle Pope, Vol. 1: Genesis, 2009.
Grant Morrison et al, Secret Origins Featuring the JLA, 1999.
Matteo Pizzolo et al, Calexit, 2018.
Isha Sesay, Beneath the Tamarind Tree: A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram, 2019.
Steve Turner, A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song, 2009.
Marc Scott Zicree, The Twilight Zone Companion, 2018.
How to Tie a Scarf: 33 Styles, 2013.

Movies:
Elevator to the Gallows, 1958.
Los Angeles Plays Itself, 2003.
My Generation, 2017.

Music:
Billy Bragg, Best of Billy Bragg at the BBC 1983-2019, 2019.
Leonard Cohen, Thanks for the Dance, 2019.
Coldplay, X&Y, 2005.
Echo and the Bunnymen, The John Peel Sessions 1979-1983, 2019.
Electric Light Orchestra, Discovery, 1979.
Allison Moorer, Blood, 2019.
R.E.M., New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996.
Tyler the Creator, Igor, 2019.
Various, The Beat Generation, 1992.
Various, Hipsters' Holiday: Vocal Jazz & R&B Classics, 1989.

"The Decade That Forced American Politicians and Commentators to Confront the Limits of the Country's Own Mythology"

"Political elites in both parties had long shared the same conventional wisdom about the United States, grounded in ideas of exceptionalism and institutional perfection. But with the rise of Donald Trump and the return of a virulent politics of xenophobia and exclusion, it became increasingly difficult, even for many in the political establishment, to reproduce these past homilies. Today the US is truly at a crossroads. Are Americans willing to confront the failures that led to the present, or will the US remain trapped in the same cycles of crisis and popular disaffection?"

Aziz Rana at The Guardian looks the politics of the 2010s.

As does Annie Lowrey at The Atlantic, regarding the economy.

And Politico asks historians to write a paragraph about the decade for a future textbook.

I Have Always Thought in the Back of My Mind

"From 1973 onwards his musical director was John Altman, who said: 'He really was a very talented guy. When you heard his songs for the Rutles, you'd think "This is as good as the Beatles." George Harrison became a huge fan and was always in the studio when we were recording.' He famously said he that he liked The Rutles better than he did the Beatles.'"

Chris Welch at The Guardian writes an obituary for Neil Innes.

"Unmoored and Meandering"

"Streaming seems less active, a steady state that turns music into a utility, something on tap–like water. Where obsessive accumulation of solid-form music or immaterial files involved passion and even an element of pathology, streaming breaks with the hunter-collector psychology. It's like radio, except there's little or no public dimension. Occasionally, your streaming selection will coincide with large numbers of other people–the waning flickers of the monoculture drawing you all to the same spot. But mostly your journeys through the library of sound are solitary and asocial."

Simon Reynolds at The Guardian calls the 2010s "the decade that broke popular culture."

"The Central Question of Our Time Is What Comes Next"

"In 1982, as the neoliberal curtain was rising, Colorado Governor Richard Lamm remarked that 'the cutting edge of the Democratic Party is to recognize that the world of the 1930s has changed and that a new set of public policy responses is appropriate.' Today, people around the world have recognized that the world of the 1980s has changed and that it is time for a new approach to politics."

The New Republic runs an excerpt from Ganesh Sitaraman's The Great Democracy on "The Collapse of Neoliberalism."

"The Bohemian-Proletarian Coalition Is Dead"

"All across the world, left-wing parties can—and should—win elections on the promise to fix capitalism by standing up for the interests of working people. And all across the world, they can—and should—fight for an inclusive patriotism that promises solidarity to all citizens, irrespective of the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, or their religion. It remains possible for the left to build a broad coalition on a principled message. But to do so, it first needs to recognize that its old political strategy has become obsolete—and that an exclusive focus on mobilizing voters who already have all the 'right' views is unlikely to compensate for the loss of its historic base."

Yascha Mounk at Democracy argues that in "most developed democracies, social and cultural issues have, over the past decades, displaced economic ones as the principal political cleavage."

"Invariably Compete with Each Other Because They Are So Intertwined"

"If they fail to address the problem of growing inequality, liberal meritocratic capitalist systems risk journeying down another path—not toward socialism but toward a convergence with political capitalism. The economic elite in the West will become more insulated, wielding more untrammeled power over ostensibly democratic societies, much in the same way that the political elite in China lords over that country. The more that economic and political power in liberal capitalist systems become fused together, the more liberal capitalism will become plutocratic, taking on some features of political capitalism. In the latter model, politics is the way to win economic benefits; in plutocratic—formerly liberal meritocratic—capitalism, economic power will conquer politics. The endpoint of the two systems will be the same: the closing ranks of a privileged few and the reproduction of that elite indefinitely into the future."

Branko Milanovic at Foreign Affairs explains the "Clash of Capitalisms."

"In Trying to Keep Both Its Remain and Leave Voters Happy, It Has Pleased Almost No One"

"This had been less of an election and more of an unpopularity contest. Boris and Corbyn were widely disliked and mistrusted throughout the country. All that had been at stake was which leader was hated the least. And the exit polls had indicated that Boris had won. No one expected him to deliver on the promises he had made but they were less worried about that than the promises on which Labour might deliver. So we were heading for a Tory government and a Brexit that would continue to divide the country. Hell, it was odds-on that not even a majority of leavers would like the Brexit deal Boris ended up with. And in the meantime, Corbyn would soon be eased out. Written out of Labour's history. A bad dream that had cost the country dear."

John Crace at The Guardian discusses the worst election loss for the Labour Party since, perhaps, 1935

Phillip Blond at First Things adds an analysis.

As does Owen Jones, also at The Guardian, along with Alex Niven.

Ok, Boomers?

"Age ‬doesn't just divide Republicans and Democrats from each other, in other words; age divides young leftists from both Republicans and Democrats. Democrats under 30 have almost no measurable interest in the party's front-runner. Democrats over 65 have almost no measurable interest in the favored candidate of the younger generation. ‬This is not a picture of Democrats smoothly transforming into the 'party of the young.' It's evidence that age—perhaps even more than class or race—is now the most important fault line within the Democratic Party."

Derek Thompson at The Atlantic argues that the "young left has become a sort of third party."

For the People

"What doomed Harris wasn't just the Democratic Party's leftward shift on racial and criminal-justice issues. It was the party's lack of sympathy for the very different political environment Harris faced just a few years ago, when women and black candidates faced intense pressure to show that they were tough on crime.
"This is among the strangest twists of the 2020 presidential campaign. For good reason, Democrats have grown less tolerant of racism in the criminal-justice system. Yet that very intolerance—combined with insufficient recognition of the particular burdens that black women candidates face—has helped push the only black woman running for president from the race."

Peter Beinart at The Atlantic writes that had Sen. Kamala Harris "been the crusading criminal-justice reformer that Democrats now want to see, she would likely never have been in a position to run for president in the first place."

November 2019 Acquisitions

Books:
Devin Grayson et al, Batman: War Crimes, 2006.
Michael Green et al, Blade Runner 2019, Vol. 1, 2019.
Bob Kane et al, Batman: Featuring Two-Face and the Riddler, 2004.
Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist, 2019.
Alex Segura et al. Archie Crossover Collection, 2017.

Music:
Joan Armatrading, 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection: The Best of Joan Armatrading, 2000.
Baby Lemonade, Exploring Music, 1998.
Beta Band, The Best of the Beta Band, 2005.
Miles Davis, Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet, 1957.
Dire Straits, Money for Nothing, 1988.
Electric Light Orchestra, Out of the Blue, 1977.
Marvin Gaye, You're the Man, 2019.
Michael Kiwatuna, Home Again, 2012.
Sinead O'Connor, The Lion and the Cobra, 1987.
Rolling Stones, Metamorphosis, 1975.
Todd Rundgren, Something/Anything?, 1972.
Sweetback, Stage [2], 2004.
Various, Now That's What I Call Music! 72, 2019.

"Believe They're Being Routed in the War That Matters Most"

"Whatever Trump's moral failings, he's a street fighter suited for an era of political combat. Christian conservatives believe—rightly or wrongly—that they've been held back by their sense of righteousness, grace, and gentility, with disastrous results. Trump operates without restraint. He is the enemy they believe the secular deserve, and perhaps unfortunately, the champion they need. Understanding this dynamic is crucial to understanding the psychology that attracts establishment Republicans to Trump, and convinces them that his offense is their best defense."

Ezra Klein at Vox explains the concept of "post-Christian culture wars."

Human Values or Mercantile Values

"With the past two generations experiencing this reconfiguration of academic labor, the cultural memory of full employment and faculty control has faded, and the new normal will be unapologetically tiered. A classic definition held that the university was the corporate body of the faculty; they were the long-term core that sustained it and that those who passed through its doors encountered. Now we have a different sense of the corporate and the hierarchy of a large-scale company."

Jeffrey J. Williams at The Chronicle Review criticizes the rise of a"New Humanities."

"A Politically Motivated Falsification of History"

"There are many scholars, students and workers who know that the 1619 Project makes a travesty of history. It is their responsibility to take a stand and reject the coordinated attempt, spearheaded by the Times, to dredge up and rehabilitate a reactionary race-based falsification of American and world history.
"Above all the working class must reject any such effort to divide it, efforts which will become ever more ferocious and pernicious as the class struggle develops. The great issue of this epoch is the fight for the international unity of the working class against all forms of racism, nationalism and related forms of identity politics."

The World Socialist Web Site launches a multi-article attack on The New York Times 1619 Project.

Tom Mackaman includes an interview with Adolph Reed, Jr.

And Sean Wilentz at The New York Review of Books discusses the history of American anti-slavery, while John Clegg at Jacobin points to a different kind of slavery influence.

"Not Designed to Promote Federalism"

"In 'Federalist No. 68,' Alexander Hamilton contended that the Electoral College would frustrate 'the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.' It would also 'afford a moral certainty that the office of President [would] seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.' In addition, it would keep from the office candidates with 'talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity.' In evaluating the Electoral College today, one must judge whether Hamilton's hopes have been vindicated."

G. Alan Tarr at The Atlantic takes on defenders of the Electoral College.

"A Perverse Phenomenon Occurring Around Fiscal Policy"

"It seems that only Democrats actually have to figure out how to pay for budget priorities. Money spent on warfare abroad and obscenely wealthy interests at home requires no sacrifice or justification, but every cent spent on the basic dignity and welfare of the majority of the citizenry must be balanced and accounted for. No political system can function fairly when only one side is forced to pay for its priorities. Yet the notion that Democrats alone must shoulder this burden is such a deeply ingrained conventional wisdom in America that when newer progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently began to challenge it, it came as a shock to the entire discourse."

David Atkins at the Washington Monthly discusses the absurdity of political "pay-for."

"What May Be Deplorable Must Not Become Incomprehensible"

"As the political scientist Eric Kaufmann points out, income and social background are having ever less bearing on voting behaviour: 'Small-c conservative working-class voters have migrated to the Conservative party because of immigration and Brexit. On the other side, successful educated cosmopolitans opt for Labour or the Lib Dems.' This is most vividly seen in the correlation between remain voting and higher education. This is not a matter of economics, he says, but 'a measure of psychological openness and a liberal worldview'. "

Simon Jenkins at The Guardian discusses white identity politics in Britain and the United States.

Against "Promethean Politics"

"For basically my entire adult life, the default mode of Republican speechifying has been a kind of reheated 'optimism' with lots of waxing poetic about the great reserves of American can-do waiting to be tapped. These attempts to recapture 'Morning in America' have been delivered through clenched, Prozac-like smiles by men who promptly enter black SUVs to be hurried off back to their gated communities. I've always accepted that this is the way of electoral politics, which doesn't have much to do with a conservative intellectual disposition that tends to be more dour, or at least skeptical.
"But Hawley's speech went from those baleful statistics to a prophetic critique of a cult of the individual and self that is 'so thoroughly ingrained in American culture.'"

Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review praises a speech by Sen. Josh Hawley.

"The Making of a Writer and Self-Styled Political Prophet"

"While poverty is what inspired Beck and his common-law wife, Betty, to transmute his dark memories into a book, 'Pimp was also meant to be a contribution to the black revolution. Instead, it catapulted the pimp into American popular culture's pantheon of celluloid heroes and outlaws.'"

In a 2015 New Yorker article, Robin D.G. Kelley reviews Justin Gifford's Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim.

"Only Person Who Ever Truly Saw World For What It Is Starts Antidepressant Medication"

"At press time, accounts confirmed Pearson had already capitulated to the cosmic farce of humanity by enjoying a night out with friends instead of brooding over the cold and vast nothingness of the universe."

From The Onion.

Billionaire Tears

"'The vilification of billionaires makes no sense to me,' Cooperman told CNBC. He called her policies 'idiocy' and said it was 'appealing to the lowest common denominator, and basically trying to turn people's heads around by promising a lot of free stuff'.
"Warren responded with a tweet, saying: 'One thing I know he cares about–his fortune. He's a shareholder in Navient, a student loan company that has cheated borrowers and used abusive, misleading tactics. He even went so far as to ask how I might impact his investment in the last earnings call with Navient.'"

Dominic Rushe at The Guardian discusses the "great plute freakout of 2019."

"Precocious 5-Year-Old Already Holding Long, Pointless Business Meeting With Stuffed Animals"

"Sources further confirmed that on multiple occasions, the boy modulated his voice to ask a question as one of the female elephant attending the meeting before cutting her off and repeating a less coherent version of the same idea as though he himself had just thought of it, showing off his preternatural gifts for micromanagement and wasting his subordinates' time as he distributed crayon-drawn pictures of his vague future expectations for playtime that he had already voiced numerous times before."

From The Onion.

"What Was True in Hofstadter's Time Is All the More Urgently True for Ours"

"Vigilante violence, unfortunately, is a movie we've seen before. In the introduction to American Violence: A Documentary History, Richard Hofstadter wrote, 'What is most exceptional about the Americans is not the voluminous record of their violence, but their extraordinary ability, in the face of that record, to persuade themselves that they are among the best-behaved and best-regulated of peoples.' This historic violence, Hofstadter noted, was not initiated with a desire to subvert the state, and therefore didn't usually result in the undermining of authority. It was violence by and for the establishment and its preservation, unleashed at different times 'against abolitionists, Catholics, radicals, workers and labor organizers, Negroes, Orientals, and other ethnic or racial or ideological minorities, and has been used ostensibly to protect the American, the Southern, the white Protestant, or simply the established middle-class way of life and morals.'"

Alexander Hurst at The New Republic warns against pro-Trump violence in 2020.

Holidays from History in the Sun

"We all love a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an ending—preferably a happy ending but, above all, some clearly demarcated final page with a lesson. The lesson of 1989 is that there is no grand march, no dialectic of thesis versus antithesis resolving in some synthesis, no moral arc bending toward justice—or toward any particular thing. History is an unending whirlwind, and we're caught in it."

Fred Kaplan at Slate reflects on the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And Larry Elliott at The Guardian describes what was lost with the end of the Cold War.

fIREHOSING

"It might be tempting to write off personalities like Maher as eccentric and out of touch, and to leave them alone for fear of feeding the fire. I get that. After all, some studies show that repeating a lie, even to refute it, can help ingrain a false claim rather than dispel it. However, we cannot afford to be in denial about the power of science denial. When anti-vaxxers are in the spotlight, we need to expose the strategies they use for their own selfish benefit."

Lucky Tran at The Guardian warns against those "pushing out as many lies as possible as frequently as possible."

"The Days of That Kind of Singular, Culture-Uniting Hit Are Well and Truly Done"

"This story is not unique to streaming, or even entertainment. But the handiest analogy is the transformation of Hollywood filmmaking. Studios have wanted hits as long as movies have existed, but as the field has grown more crowded and their audiences more instantaneously global, the studios have put all their money on the same end of the betting table: more franchises, more reboots, more anything with even the vaguest connection to preexisting IP—a TV show, a board game, a piece of used bubble gum, it doesn't matter as long as the name rings some distant bell in a prospective viewer's cluttered mind. The strategy is epitomized by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, whose unprecedented dominance has transformed the nature of moviemaking in the past 11 years, but now even the MCU is just a piece of a much larger puzzle, sitting next to all the Star Wars movies and all the Pixar movies and all the Disney movies and all their infinite possible spinoffs. With their homogenous feel and post-credits teasers, the MCU movies provided an experience akin to watching a sporadic, incredibly expensive TV show. And now that they've turned movies into TV, they're going to help turn TV into the MCU."

Sam Adams at Slate says that "The Golden Age of TV Is Over."

"This Is the Heavy Undertow That Churns Beneath the Apparent Rising Tide of the American Left"

"This fundamental shift—from the party of Humphrey to the party of Schumer—remains the most important American political development that confronts the Left today. It is no accident that the decline of class voting has corresponded with fifty years of retreat for American workers: stagnant wages, accumulating debt, and increasing precarity, even as corporate profits have soared. Nor is it a coincidence that even popular two-term Democratic presidents in this era, elected by such dealigned class coalitions, have proven unable or unwilling to push for structural reforms on anything like the scale of the New Deal era, even after facing the biggest economic crash since the Great Depression."

Matt Karp at Jacobin contrasts Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

"Increasingly Also at Odds Over the Very Foundations of Our Constitutional Order"

"Regime cleavages, by contrast, focus the electorate’s attention on the political system as a whole. Instead of seeking office to change the laws to obtain preferred policies, politicians who oppose the democratic order ignore the laws when necessary to achieve their political goals, and their supporters stand by or even endorse those means to their desired ends. Today, when Trump refuses to comply with the House impeachment inquiry, he makes plain his indifference to the Constitution and to the separation of powers. When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell argues that impeachment overturns an election result, he is doing the same. In the minds of Trump, his allies and, increasingly, his supporters, it's not just Democrats but American democracy that is the obstacle."

Thomas Pepinsky at Politico explains "Why the Impeachment Fight Is Even Scarier Than You Think."