culture

Instead of any substantive exploration of the candidates’ proposals, we will be treated to a mélange of showmanship and complaining, obstinacy and irrelevance, petty quibbles, grandstanding, pandering, half-truths, and punchlines. The candidates will be rehearsed, the moderators timid, the questions calculated, and the answers at once too short and too long. We will learn little to nothing that could not be discovered at this very moment by any Google user of modest skill.

I would love to see an Oxford-style presidential debate. And the idea to replace the audience with in-ear laugh tracks is brilliant.

NYT:

But the political issues, [refugees Anwar and Daleen] said they knew only from television. Their closest interactions with Americans have been largely with the members of Johnson Ferry Church, like Mr. Stocks. It was members of the church… who outfitted their tiny apartment and showed them how to navigate America’s cavernous grocery stores. They also steered Anwar through the health care system as he prepares for heart surgery.

Excellent case study of people disadvantaging themselves for the advantage of others, especially those who might be perceived as political “untouchables.”

The title the NYT gave to article — “Evangelicals Ignore G.O.P. by Embracing Syrian Refugees” — betrays the mistaken view that church ministries should somehow be beholden to a particular political platform.

Quartz:

The number of people driven from their homes by wars and persecution has hit a record high, with the majority stemming from just three countries.…

On average, 24 people were displaced from their homes every minute of every day during 2015, compared to six per minute in 2005, according to UNHCR.

NYT:

For many members of Congress, being open to an immigration overhaul is increasingly a matter of political survival: About 27.3 million Latinos are qualified to vote in this year’s election, according to the Pew Research Center, constituting a record 11.9 percent of eligible voters. Latino organizations have been focused on encouraging turnout in a year some speculate could make Hispanic voters an electoral heavyweight for years to come.

Bruce Ashford reviewing Os Guinness’ new book, Impossible People in TGC:

Modernity, it turns out, is an equal opportunity offender, posing challenges not only to monotheistic religions but also to atheism…. however, atheism is Christianity’s leading rival in the West and is the dominant worldview of those with cultural power. The new atheists attack Christianity overtly while social and political activists attack it implicitly by presupposing atheism. If atheists win the day in the West, political liberalism will become increasingly illiberal and eventually nihilistic. In response to the pervasive influence of atheism, Guinness challenges the church to love atheists individually to help them see that atheism is bad for them and bad for society, and to work with them corporately to forge a constructive way forward for Western society.

Excellent book review full of thought-provoking content. I was particularly struck by the discussion of “threats to the West.” One might expect things like “secularism” or “individualism” to threaten Western ideals in general and Christianity in particular, but reading of the Western Christian tendency to “ignore or minimize spiritual realities and spiritual warfare” also as a threat provided a sobering reality check.

Bart Schaneman in The Week:

You can attempt to relate your experiences to your friends and family, but you can only start so many sentences with “In Asia…” [or “In Latin America…”] before their eyes start to glaze over. Handing out a stack of pictures in your family living room helps, as long you’re okay with some of the most formative experiences of your life reduced to the same level of interest as your second cousin’s trip to Branson.

I nodded along to every paragraph. Beautifully written.

Vikki Ortiz Healy for the Tribune:

When two Pullman residents, the Rev. William Cowardine and Jennie Curtis, a seamstress, brought the unfair work conditions to the attention of the American Railway Union in 1894, it prompted a nationwide shutdown of railways that begged action from then-President Grover Cleveland.

(h/t Lindsay Greer)

Time:

[Pornography’s] producers have one goal: to get men off hard and fast for profit. That means eroticizing the degradation of women. In a study of behaviors in popular porn, nearly 90% of 304 random scenes contained physical aggression toward women, who nearly always responded neutrally or with pleasure.

Growing numbers seem to be recognizing pornography’s destructive effects. (Never mind that the first line of the linked article is negated by the entire body of the same article.)

Excellent long-form reporting — a year in the making — from Steven Brill¹ in The Atlantic:

This is the story of the first 15 years of how we have dealt with that newfound fear—how we have confronted, sometimes heroically and sometimes irrationally, the mechanics, the politics, and the psychic challenges of the September 12 era.

Have we succeeded in toughening up what overnight became known as “homeland security”? Absolutely. But not without a series of extravagant boondoggles along the way.

Footnotes

1. I’ve been a fan of Brill’s content (pun intended) for years, particularly his reporting on healthcare costs. ↩

Lynsey Chutel in Quartz:

While the term coloured seems antiquated and cringe worthy in some social contexts, particularly in the United States or Britain, it is still a recognizable identity and culture in South Africa. Somewhere else, van Niekerk would probably have been black. In South Africa, his racial classification remains a key identifier as he moves through the world. For many coloured South Africans, the sight of coloured man winning the medal was affirming, seeing themselves represented—and succeeding—at the world’s premier sporting event.

Here’s a great interview with van Niekerk. And here is his record-breaking race.

Polina Aronson in Aeon:

The clash of romantic regimes was precisely what I was experiencing on that day in the school library. The Seventeen girl was trained for making decisions about whom to get intimate with. She rationalised her emotions in terms of ‘needs’ and ‘rights’, and rejected commitments that did not seem compatible with them. She was raised in the Regime of Choice. By contrast, classic Russian literature (which, when I was coming of age, remained the main source of romantic norms in my country), described succumbing to love as if it were a supernatural power, even when it was detrimental to comfort, sanity or life itself. In other words, I grew up in the Regime of Fate.

Exceptional article that illustrates, among other things, the power of cultural difference to highlight otherwise-invisible cultural presuppositions. In the end however, both “regimes” — the traditional and the progressive — are tyrannies, and both fall short of the highest view of love, sex, and romance.

(h/t @nickoparsons)

Nicholas Kristof in the NYT:

I mourned [our family dog’s] passing on social media and received a torrent of touching condolences, easing my ache at the loss of a member of the family. Yet on the same day that Katie died, I published a column calling for greater international efforts to end Syria’s suffering and civil war, which has claimed perhaps 470,000 lives so far. That column led to a different torrent of comments, many laced with a harsh indifference: Why should we help them?

The numerous comments defending sympathy for the pet and indifference (or worse) for the person only illustrate Kristof’s tragic observation.

MTV executive Nick Shore in Fast Company:

A century of “parent-centered” nuclear family has steadily been under-going a paradigm shift, and may have just passed the tipping point. The nucleus of the family has been moving towards the child, and Millennials look like the first generation raised in that new nuclear family structure. No longer the hierarchical structure with authoritarian parent “leadership,” the new family is flattened to a democracy, with collective (if not kid-driven) decision-making process. Parents are more like best friends, life coaches, or as we at MTV call them “peer-ents.”

h/t @briankruck

The Economist:

…Nigeria’s faith leaders also played a constructive role, at times, helping for example to keep last year’s election peaceful…. …perhaps the best recent example of religious leaders helping to maintain social peace: in the turbulent run-up to this week’s local elections in South Africa, church leaders (including Anglicans, Catholics and pan-Christian bodies) have played an outstanding role in calling for calm and denouncing politicians who in their view were inciting tension for their own ends.

The percentage of American adults who say they smoke weed has nearly doubled in three years, according to a new Gallup poll.

For reference, we’re closing in on smoking marijuana (13% of adults) surpassing smoking cigarettes (16%).