Depolarization. Read the work of Amanda Ripley, a journalist dedicated to depolarizing us. Her website. Here is a link to her Atlantic Articles. Here' s an interview with podcaster Mike Pesca (The Gist), in which she talks about her book, High Conflict, and how it illuminates America's polarized political climate. Her interview starts at about 5 minutes into the podcast.
Ukraine. Watch this fierce debate on "The Agenda" between liberal internationalists and idealist foreign policy experts on the causes of the Ukraine War. Mentioned in this discussion is John Mearsheimer, referred to as the Dean of the foreign policy realists. A critic of Mearsheimer lays out his case in the WAPOST. Read the comments too. This quote from a realist in The Agenda debate give you a sense of the realist position.
It's very dangerous for you to poke your fingers into something that somebody else considers their vital interest, because if they consider it to be a vital interest they will fight for it. And if it's only a secondary interest to you, you will not fight for it, and therefore, what you are doing is essentially messing around somewhere they are willing to fight and you are not.
So the Russians will devastate Ukraine and it's people while the West praises the courageous Russian resistance, and sends in weapons that will prolong the fight but won't change the inevitable outcome.
It might help to look back to the 90s, right after the fall of the Soviet Union and the carving out of a "new world order." Was the emergence of a new Cold War between Russia and the West inevitable? Listen to Terry Gross interview Historian Mary Elise Sarotte, author of Not One Inch: America, Russia,and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, a history of those years.
Can we trust the dramatic images coming back from Ukraine?
A lot of the commentary on the Ukraine invasion and the Western response suggest, like this Washington Post essay, that Putin's invasion is "steering history in a new direction and switching up 75 years of relations among some of the world’s most powerful and wealthy countries." It will surely make the history that 11th graders at Exeter learn this spring tremendously relevant. It is also relevant to the content of HIS420: Wilson's dream of a "world safe for democracy," the isolationism of the 1930s, Munich, and FDR's Atlantic Charter. This piece points out that a realist analytis of international relations in the 1930s by history EH Carr failed to take the threat of Hitler seriously enough, and that contemporary realist analysis is making a similar mistake.
It's important, as we learned in 420, to understand the dividing lines among different foreign policy thinkers. This podcast features Bret Stephens, an interventionist who argues that the relative peace of the late 20th and early 21st centuries relied on US power and willingness to intervene in foreign countries, vs. Matt Taibbi, an anti-interventionist who argues that America's botched and misguided interventions have done more harm than good. Here, Ezra Klein does a good job of pushing against Fareed Zakaria's interventionism. A big question that comes up in discussions of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is how it will affect international relations and the balance of power among China, Russia, the West, and everyone else. Here's a sobering take on China by Matt Stoller.
Climate Change is the policy issue hanging over the head of your generation. Maybe the future is not as bleak as some climate activist would have you believe. Here, on the NYT Argument podcast, two climate journalists discuss the possible future scenarios, who really is to blame (hint, unless you are part of the 1 percent, it's not you), how real progress is taking place, and what individuals can do that might make a difference. Matt Yglesias argues that climate fear-mongering is breeding despair, which is making people less likely to take action that could solve the problem. Also: this author argues that oil companies have tried to convince us that we, not them are to blame by getting us to focus on our own carbon footprint rather than political action that would hurt their bottom lines.
Party politics. Ross Douthat on the "emerging Republican majority." "In this possible future, it will become clear that the Glenn Youngkin result in Virginia was a bellwether — that there’s certain kind of suburban voter who will vote for a moderate-seeming Democrat over the Trumpiest Republican, but who will swing back to the G.O.P. as soon as there’s any excuse to do so. Meanwhile the characteristic Obama-Trump voter, whether in rural white America or in Latino areas of Florida or Texas, will remain so culturally alienated from contemporary progressivism that there’s no easy way for Biden or any other Democratic politician to win them back. And especially not our aging president’s two obvious heirs, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg, who built their careers in deep-blue precincts, embodying aspects of elite progressivism that have dubious national appeal." The title of Douthat's column is a play on the title of an influential book from the turn of the century that argued Democrats were destined to develop a permanent majority because of demographic trends. Ruy Teixeira co-author of that book now says Democrats are getting its lessons all wrong.
What happened when workers at a Dollar General store in Connecticut tried to unionize.
Heeding Steve Bannon's call, Election Deniers Organize to Seize Control of the GOP and Reshape America’s Elections — ProPublica
Karen Stenner and Jessica Stern write in Foreign Policy: How to Live With Authoritarians: Democracies have to learn how to manage some people’s innate fears of change. Stenner is an important thinker about the sources of authoritarianism.
Eric Levitz: Is the GOP’s Policy Agenda Hidden or Nonexistent?
Inflation is sure to be an issue in the upcoming elections of 22 and 24. Here's a summary of the different theories about why it's happening and what the government's response should be.
Thomas Edsall: As more women enter leadership positions, the implications for Politics. In all of his columns, Edsall consults experts on the topic and gives us long quotes from their emails to him.
Education is political. And a lot of people are playing hardball politics with education these days. In public schools, there's a movement to ban Critical Race Theory. In private schools diversity programs are causing controversy. Michael Powell covers cancellation stories in which politics and free speech collide. He wrote about controversies over diversity and antiracism at elite private schools and about conservative efforts to ban CRT in public schools.
Democrats are angry that in spite of having Congressional majorities, they can't get bills passed because of Party moderates blocking the Biden agenda. Matt Yglesias argues that we would be better off and less angry if we had more parties and if a centrist coalition were running Congress, like what happens in Parliamentary systems. On a similar note, he calls on Dems to compromise and get things done re: electoral reform (with Repubs) and Build Back Better (with Joe Manchin)
One proposal for saving local newspapers is to provide public funding. This story, out of Exeter's neighbor, Brentwood, NH, illustrates the problem with that solution.
America is in the middle of a housing crisis. Both buyers and renters are having trouble finding housing they can afford. It's generally agreed that we need more housing, but Nathan Robinson worries that the wrong kind of housing will lead to gentrification without answering the housing needs of lower income folks. Matt Yglesias disagrees. He sees a parallel in the recent spike in car prices.
How is the culture war causing a divide on the left between a race-first (aka race reductionist, aka woke) left vs. a class-first (aka class reductionist, aka vulgar Marxist) left? One place to look is in the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) which got a huge boost from Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign and boasted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib as members. Michael Powell wrote about one conflict here. There is now a Class Unity Caucus of the DSA in Chicago, rebelling against DSA leaders for emphasizing identity issues.