- How nationalist and religious ideologists are against education, example 5,271,009;
- How Trump has invited Putin to attack American allies;
- About Biden’s memory, from a neuroscientist;
- Short items about Nextdoor.com, the Supreme Court, how the Republican problem is metastasizing;
- How Paul Krugman is now deeply worried for America;
- And a link to Connie Willis’ latest summary of political developments.
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NY Times, 10 Feb 2024 (in today’s print paper): ‘It Is Suffocating’: A Top Liberal University Is Under Attack in India, subtitled “A campaign to make the country an explicitly Hindu nation has had a chilling effect on left-leaning and secular institutions like Jawaharlal Nehru University.”
Print title: “Hindu Radicals Target Colleges As ‘Anti-India’.
The point here is that religious and nationalist groups around the world — not just Christians in the United States — are pushing back against education, and globalization, in order to preserve their traditions, their culture, their identity. This is an expression of tribalist human nature. Another big example, in the US, are the orthodox Jews in New York who educate their children in the Torah, and virtually nothing else, leaving them essentially uneducated. (e.g. In Hasidic Enclaves, Failing Private Schools Flush With Public Money)
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WTF? This is in the news feed the past couple days.
Washington Post, 10 Feb 2024: Trump says he’d disregard NATO treaty, urge Russian attacks on U.S. allies, subtitled “GOP front-runner said he would encourage Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want’ to member countries he views as not spending enough on own defense”
Today, fellow Republicans bend over backward to express their unconcern about Trump’s intended betrayal of America’s friends in the world, while instead worrying over Biden’s gaffes.
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On the Biden point,
NY Times, guest essay by Charan Ranganath, 12 Feb 2024: I’m a Neuroscientist. We’re Thinking About Biden’s Memory and Age in the Wrong Way.
As an expert on memory, I can assure you that everyone forgets. In fact, most of the details of our lives — the people we meet, the things we do and the places we go — will inevitably be reduced to memories that capture only a small fraction of those experiences.
It is normal to be more forgetful as you get older. Broadly speaking, memory functions begin to decline in our 30s and continue to fade into old age. However, age in and of itself doesn’t indicate the presence of memory deficits that would affect an individual’s ability to perform in a demanding leadership role. And an apparent memory lapse may or may not be consequential depending on the reasons it occurred.
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A quick catch-up on other items recently.
Washington Post, Rick Reilly, 5 Feb 2024: Opinion | Nextdoor has gotten way out of hand
The perils of social media, in miniature. I subscribe to Nextdoor, and see every report of a stolen car or a suspicious black man walking down the street. And I try to dismiss them. Look hard enough, you will always find bad things in the world (as I alluded to regarding David Brooks yesterday).
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LA Times, Robin Abcarian, 7 Feb 2024: Column: In a righteous world, Trump couldn’t run. Does the Supreme Court live in that world?
I think everyone assumes the court will support Trump. After all, he put three of the justices there.
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Washington Post, E.J. Dionne Jr., 11 Feb 2024: Opinion | Let’s just say it: The Republican problem is metastasizing
Twelve years ago, political scientists Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein shook up Washington with their argument that the U.S. government wasn’t working because of what had happened to the Republican Party.
They made their case in a book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” and in a powerful Post op-ed titled “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”
“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics,” they wrote. “It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”
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Paul Krugman, NY Times, 12 Feb 2024: Why I Am Now Deeply Worried for America
Until a few days ago, I was feeling fairly sanguine about America’s prospects. Economically, we’ve had a year of strong growth and plunging inflation — and aside from committed Republicans, who see no good, hear no good and speak no good when a Democrat is president, Americans appear to be recognizing this progress. It has seemed increasingly likely that the nation’s good sense would prevail and democracy would survive.
But watching the frenzy over President Biden’s age, I am, for the first time, profoundly concerned about the nation’s future. It now seems entirely possible that within the next year, American democracy could be irretrievably altered.
He recalls the kerfuffle over Hillary’s email server. Who remembers that? Why was that significant? And yet it might have swung the election, as the Biden gaffes might.
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Latest Connie Willis post: CONNIE WILLIS, February 9, A Partisan Hit Job
