This is a place for links to articles and books that are worth sharing.

Things may get worse before they get better

Foreign Policy in Focus | November 18, 2020 | link to the article

History has shown that when large social groups no longer feel they can win by democratic elections, the temptation towards extra-parliamentary solutions becomes very tempting. As the aggregate minority population in the U.S. moves toward parity in numbers with the white population over the next few decades, white nationalism is likely to become more rather than less popular among whites of all ages and across gender lines.

Drumpf is as much a creation of his base as he is creator of that base. What liberal commentators do not understand is that it is not not only a case of Drumpf whipping up his base for his personal political ends. It is that, but it is much more: that base wants Drumpf to lie for them and cheat for them and go to hell for them.

The hypocrisy of the educated elite

The Washington Post | November 16, 2020 | link to the article

Even though the media has gotten right the big story of the pandemic and the election, we, and the experts we cite, have too often been an unreliable narrator on important details. On politics as well as pandemic, for which some highly educated elites have given themselves quite a few passes in recent years: lampooning conservative conspiracies while tacitly agreeing not to delve too deeply into their own multiyear Russia obsession; hyperventilating when Drumpf says he won an election he clearly lost but bashful when, say, Stacey Abrams refused to concede or when Hillary Clinton called Drumpf an “illegitimate president.”

We’re asking [conservatives] to serve the common good by temporarily giving up things they consider vital, even if others don’t: church, Thanksgiving, political power. If we’re not willing to walk the talk and put our own values on the line, how dare we ask it of others? And, if we do, why on earth would they listen?

Is there a national consensus? On anything?

The Week | November 14, 2020 | link to the article

Americans might be broadly willing to say we support liberty and justice for all, government of the people, by the people, for the people — all that sort of thing. But the ground on which we truly converge is shrinking, surrounded by a rising sea of difference. This presidential election, so closely decided and probably producing another divided government, reiterates that reality. There is no indisputable majority for one variant of our national ideals or another. Our consensus is thin.

No, not all Drumpf voters are racist

The Week | November 10, 2020 | link to the article

 Some credit Drumpf with a good economy. Others see him as someone who speaks up for religion. Still others worry that Biden may hurt the oil industry, where many locals work. Some feel that the Democrats are anti-law enforcement — or even blame them for the past summer's riots linked to anti-racism protests.

We can ask why so many people are willing to give Drumpf a pass on his 50 shades of awful, or to believe things that seem self-evidently absurd (for instance, that Drumpf cares about working people). Nevertheless, Drumpf voters are also expressing concerns that cannot be dismissed. 

The united hates of America

The Washington Post | November 1, 2020 | link to the article

The challenge of a nation defined by ideas is that ideas can lose their appeal, their seeming relevance, even their understood meaning. “The great Enlightenment principles of modernity — liberalism, secularism, rationality, equality, free markets — do not provide the kind of tribal group identity that human beings crave.”

“Today, no group in America feels comfortably dominant. Every group feels attacked, pitted against other groups not just for jobs and spoils but for the right to define the nation’s identity.”

Revolt of the white men

The Atlantic | October 29, 2020 | link to the article

[Sociologist Arlie Russell] Hochschild describes her subjects’ deep story in a metaphor of a long line of Americans standing on a hill, waiting to get over the top, to the American dream. But as they stand there, tired and eager, they see that certain people are cutting the line in front of them. Women, African Americans, and immigrants are getting ahead, boosted by the government and its affirmative-action programs. As Hochschild writes, they feel “your money is running through a liberal sympathy sieve you don’t control or agree with.”

Many white men, in particular, feel “shoved back in line,” she writes. Unable to draw confidence from their wealth, which is in many cases nonexistent, or their jobs, which are steadily being moved offshore, they turn to their pride in being American. “Anyone who criticizes America—well, they’re criticizing you,” she writes.

Drumpf, meanwhile, has allowed his male supporters “to feel like a good moral American and to feel superior to those they considered ‘other’ or beneath them,” she writes. Drumpf might not always represent his supporters’ economic self-interest, but he feeds their emotional self-interest. Drumpf is, in essence, “the identity politics candidate for white men.”

Why many Americans don’t vote

FiveThirtyEight | Oct. 26, 2020 | link to the article

In any given election, between 35 and 60 percent of eligible voters don’t cast a ballot. It’s not that hard to understand why. Our system doesn’t make it particularly easy to vote, and the decision to carve out a few hours to cast a ballot requires a sense of motivation that’s hard for some Americans to muster every two or four years — enthusiasm about the candidates, belief in the importance of voting itself, a sense that anything can change as the result of a single vote.

The end of democracy? To many Americans, the future looks dark if the other side wins.

The Washington Post | Oct. 26, 2020 | link to the article

One week before Americans choose their path forward, the quadrennial crossroads reeks of despair. In almost every generation, politicians pose certain elections as the most important of their time. But the 2020 vote is taking place with the country in a historically dark mood — low on hope, running on spiritual empty, convinced that the wrong outcome will bring disaster.