America – Excerpted

“The reality of this primary process is that if you aren’t on the stage in Houston next week, you aren’t going to be the Democratic nominee”

12 September 2019 Drew KaplanPolitics in America

…the 10 men and women not on the stage will argue that the Democratic National Committee’s rules on how to qualify for the Houston debate (2% in four early state or national polls and 130,000[…]

“Invoking the word does not demean the memory of the Holocaust. Instead, the lessons of the Holocaust will be lost if we refuse to engage with them.”

24 June 2019 Drew KaplanPolitics in America

…it’s important to note that despite the contemporary association of concentration camps with the Shoah, they are not a Nazi invention. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, various imperial forces — including the[…]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “has become a handy and versatile symbol — the representative representative”

22 May 201922 May 2019 Drew KaplanPolitics in America

The congresswoman has become a handy and versatile symbol — the representative representative. For the leftward and younger wings of the Democratic Party, she serves as a figurehead and a hero; for conservative media outlets,[…]

“Likability is associated with an emotional connection between candidate and voter that makes a politician worthy of trust”

22 May 2019 Drew KaplanGender

Likability seems to have emerged as an important personality trait in the late 19th century, when it became closely associated with male business success. Before this, people liked or disliked one another, of course, but[…]

Anti-vaxxers are “emblematic of too many people’s willful disregard of evidence, proud suspicion of expertise and estrangement from reason”

1 May 201930 April 2019 Drew KaplanAmerica

…the anti-vaccine crowd (or anti-vaxxers) aren’t trafficking in anything as concrete, mundane and quaint as facts. They’re not really engaged in a debate about medicine. They’re immersed in a world of conspiracies, in the dark[…]

“Spreading conspiracy theories once had a price — printing or even mimeographing a tract costs money — but now…, anyone can post a madcap theory or a doctored photograph virtually for free”

29 April 2019 Drew KaplanAmerica

Democracies depend on buy-in; citizens need to believe in certain basics, starting with the legitimacy of elections. Trump both runs the government and runs it down. The electoral system, he asserts, can’t be trusted. Voter[…]

“American cultural history could probably be parcelled out as a sequence of sensational murder cases”

23 April 2019 Drew KaplanIncarceration

American cultural history could probably be parcelled out as a sequence of sensational murder cases. There was nothing remotely “typical” about the Manson murders or, for that matter, about the O. J. Simpson case, but[…]

“The very things that can make the center so appealing, however, are also its great weaknesses”

5 March 20195 March 2019 Drew KaplanPolitics in America

The very things that can make the center so appealing, however, are also its great weaknesses. As worried centrists have long noted, it can be hard to rally the people behind a message of pragmatism,[…]

“There are really important arenas…where the comparisons between these two countries need to be interrogated, and where deep work has to take place in order to ensure that the two societies are not reinforcing each others’ weaknesses”

25 February 2019 Drew KaplanAmerica

There are really important arenas – ideological trends like the rise of nationalism and shifts in how democracy is valued and understood, and political alliances like the dangerous dalliance between Trump and Netanyahu – where[…]

“The Middle East has gone from an addiction to a distraction”

4 November 20182 November 2018 Drew KaplanAmerica

And too often we forget that the people in these countries are not just objects. They are subjects; they have agency. South Africa had a moderate postapartheid experience because of Nelson Mandela and F.W. de[…]

Excerpted

Excerpts of Interest

Category: America

“The reality of this primary process is that if you aren’t on the stage in Houston next week, you aren’t going to be the Democratic nominee”

“Invoking the word does not demean the memory of the Holocaust. Instead, the lessons of the Holocaust will be lost if we refuse to engage with them.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “has become a handy and versatile symbol — the representative representative”

“Likability is associated with an emotional connection between candidate and voter that makes a politician worthy of trust”

Anti-vaxxers are “emblematic of too many people’s willful disregard of evidence, proud suspicion of expertise and estrangement from reason”

“Spreading conspiracy theories once had a price — printing or even mimeographing a tract costs money — but now…, anyone can post a madcap theory or a doctored photograph virtually for free”

“American cultural history could probably be parcelled out as a sequence of sensational murder cases”

“The very things that can make the center so appealing, however, are also its great weaknesses”

“There are really important arenas…where the comparisons between these two countries need to be interrogated, and where deep work has to take place in order to ensure that the two societies are not reinforcing each others’ weaknesses”

“The Middle East has gone from an addiction to a distraction”