What determines whether someone feels sympathy or scorn for the victim of a crime? Is it a function of political affiliation? Of gender? Of the nature of the crime? In a recent series of studies,[…]
Continue reading …
Month: July 2016
“The era of the fact is coming to an end: the place once held by ‘facts’ is being taken over by ‘data'”
The era of the fact is coming to an end: the place once held by “facts” is being taken over by “data.” This is making for more epistemological mayhem, not least because the collection and[…]
Continue reading …
“Clinton has…assumed the cool posture of the in-the-know Twitter enforcer who shames people for their garbage posts…. Trump plays the troll”
Clinton has, herself, assumed the cool posture of the in-the-know Twitter enforcer who shames people for their garbage posts: “Delete your account,” she tweeted at Trump in June. For people who have never actually set[…]
Continue reading …
“Seldom in a modern presidential campaign has the selection of a running mate mattered as little as it does for [Clinton]”
Here’s what we journalists don’t like to tell you or even admit to ourselves as we furiously stir the speculation, breathlessly thicken the suspense and whet Americans’ appetites for the big reveal of who will[…]
Continue reading …
“Having a title in front of your name is important, but it does not mean you have a career”
Having a title in front of your name is important, but it does not mean you have a career. It means you have a qualification. The practical and existential question is what you’re qualified to[…]
Continue reading …
“Though many working-class whites have lost any ties to church, they haven’t necessarily abandoned their faith”
…church attendance has fallen substantially among the members of the white working class in recent years, just when they need it most. Though working-class whites earn, on average, more than working-class people of other ethnicities,[…]
Continue reading …
“…much of contemporary discourse and pretty much all of American politics is a dispute over evidence”
Empiricists believed they had deduced a method by which they could discover a universe of truth: impartial, verifiable knowledge. But the movement of judgment from God to man wreaked epistemological havoc. It made a lot[…]
Continue reading …
“… one of the most predictive variables for a place becoming more Republican has been the number of people ethnically identifying as ‘American’…”
Something real has been percolating over the past decade in the Republican base when it comes to race and identity. When looking at the change in the county-by-county vote from 2000 to 2012, one of[…]
Continue reading …
“Mr. Trump…offers little more than an excuse to project complex problems onto simple villains”
In the white working class, there are far too many wolves: heroin, broken families, joblessness and, more often than we’d like to believe, abusive and neglectful parents. Confronted with those forces, we need, most of[…]
Continue reading …
“Somewhere in recent years, the GOP’s engagement with modern America…became dysfunctional”
Somewhere in recent years, the GOP’s engagement with modern America and how to best project those values into a nation of 320 million people became dysfunctional. As the country has diversified, the party has remained[…]
Continue reading …