We’re still a week away from the time when most public pools open, but whether you’re visiting the local park or sticking a hose in your backyard inflatable, here’s a bit of info about what’s in there besides water. Check Compound Interest for a full-size version.
In APR, I usually try to focus on what the pundits are talking about and not waste this space spraying my own opinion. Okay, that’s a lie. But usually I try to be subtle about it.
This isn’t subtle. You’ve got some pundits talking to you right now telling you that the solution for progressives is simple: Quit. Walk away. Sit it out. Let it burn. Now is that advice: 1) lazy, 2) foolish, 3) childish, 4) all of the above. Guess which one I’d pick?
Sure, last time the upstart, progressive, young, out of left field, amazing, challenging, black guy with the funny name who couldn’t possibly win tossed convention its head, conquered the party, won the presidency, saved the economy, got healthcare to millions of people, and spent every day fighting against people who want to disassemble the nation for profit. But this time, in this particular election, things didn’t go the way you like. So… so screw the party.
Which means what? You think Clinton is the party? You think the election is the party? You think it’s Debbie f#cking Wasserman Schultz? That’s not the party.
The party is five hundred monthly meetings in the back of bad family restaurants, and Knights of Columbus halls, and bowling alley bars. The party is making calls to get people to city council meetings when minority companies are being cut out of road-building bids. It’s showing the colors at the Greek festival, the Bosnian festival, the county fair, and the 4-H livestock finals. The party is ten thousand down-ticket candidates most of whom are running hard for positions you wouldn’t want if they were handed to you on a plate. The party is all the people who worked all the months, weeks, and days when it wasn’t election season, creating the (pitiful, understaffed, underfunded, badly-organized) infrastructure that makes is possible for any Democratic candidate to have a ghost of a chance.
You know what the people who spent every week in Lent, every year for the last ten years, driving to different churches so they could eat soggy fish and shake hands and maybe have a conversation or two about candidates for the local school board say when you get frustrated and quit?
Who? That’s what. They’ve got a whole warehouse full of the world’s tiniest violins. They’re free. Take two.
Quitting doesn’t impress these people. Quitting is what they see all the damn time. The woods are full of quitters. Every election season there are people who come to sit in front of a phone, or knock on a few doors and grab a slice of campaign pizza. Then they’re gone. Not-quitting… that’s the hard thing. You want to shake the party? Try not-quitting. For once. And maybe, if you work for it, in four years the party won’t just be better organized and more efficient, it will also be more progressive.
By the way. I voted for Bernie, not that it should make any difference.
Okay, come on in. Let’s pundit.
Leonard Pitts on Trump’s idea of the Most Dangerous Places on Earth
I hesitate to bring up facts.
If recent years have proven nothing else, they’ve proven that we have fully embarked upon a post-factual era wherein the idea that a thing can be knowable to an objective certainty — and that this should matter — has been diminished to the point of near irrelevancy.
Donald Trump is the avatar of the era. Not content to rest on his laurels, he recently provided superfluous proof of his supremacy in mendacity. Asked by the New York Times to name the most dangerous place in the world he’s ever visited, Trump replied that “there are places in America that are among the most dangerous in the world. You go to places like Oakland. Or Ferguson. The crime numbers are worse. Seriously.”
You wonder whether it’s worth correcting him.
It’s not that Trump’s followers believe Trump more than anyone else. They simply don’t believe that truth is something to worry about. Telling it like it is doesn’t mean telling the truth. It means expressing the anger they want to hear, flavored with just the right dash of racism they crave, a jigger of nationalism they long for, an air of the arrogance they admire. It doesn’t matter what Trump says. He doesn’t have to use the best words. He probably doesn’t have to use words. Growling would be enough.
Dana Milbank on the disdain Trump holds for America, and Americans.
Just how gullible does Donald Trump suppose the American voter is?
The billionaire showman has been the presumptive Republican presidential nominee for only a couple of weeks, yet his general election strategy is already becoming clear: hope for a mass nationwide outbreak of short-term memory loss. His top strategist, Paul Manafort, has said that the “part that he’s been playing is now evolving.” But this isn’t evolution — it’s reincarnation.
So, Trump is going to pretend that everything said during the primaries (and everything he’s said before the primaries) doesn’t count? So far as I can determine, that makes Trump… exactly like every other Republican nominee of my lifetime.
That call Trump made “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”? Turns out that was “just a suggestion,” he now says.
The federal minimum wage increase, which he repeatedly opposed? Now he’s “looking at” an increase, he says.
The massive tax cut he proposed during the primary, which analysts said would add $10 trillion to the federal debt? Never mind! He’s hired experts to rewrite it in a way that cuts taxes less for the wealthy.
Those tax returns he promised “certainly” to release? Not going to happen, he says now.
The astounding thing isn’t that Trump is going to maintain that the last six months didn’t happen. The real wonder is going to be watching news organizations allow him to do so without bothering to correct him. What’s your favorite color, Donnie? Oh, sorry for that hardball question.
The New York Times celebrates the distance we’ve traveled from don’t ask, don’t tell
Last week an openly gay man, Eric Fanning, became secretary of the Army. Read that sentence again and contemplate what it reveals about how much and how quickly American society has changed. Only five years ago, openly gay people were barred from serving in its armed forces. During Mr. Fanning’s lengthy confirmation process, his sexual orientation was simply not an issue. That is a tribute to those who fought so hard to repeal the ban, and a measure of the nation’s at times uncertain, but as yet unfailing, march toward equality.
In retrospect the fight that convulsed this country over whether gay Americans should serve in uniform seems senseless, almost absurd. Yet it is instructive, if only because a Pentagon plan to allow transgender Americans to serve openly in uniform remains stalled by a similar, albeit quieter, debate.
Those who opposed extending civil rights to some subset of their fellow citizens always seem to develop a case of amnesia about their previous positions once the wave has passed. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
Ross Douthat is complaining about Facebook. But I don’t care because I don’t use Facebook. And also because Ross is on double-secret probation this week. He’ll be back next week. Maybe.
David Shribman looks at how much of 90’s Clintonism survives in 10s Clintonism
Celebrated by its supporters as a synonym for peace, prosperity and a common-sense centrism, Clintonism was — and is still — derided by its detractors on the left as corporatism and on the right as a shorthand for scandal and impeachable offenses. …
In its original form, Clintonism was an effort to pull the Democratic Party — which had lost five of the six presidential elections between 1968 and 1988 — back into political relevance. Forged out of Mr. Clinton’s years as governor of Arkansas, it involved more than just tweaking Democratic orthodoxy. Mr. Clinton wanted to help big corporations thrive, favored trade policies that unions loathed and spoke of reining in welfare and fighting crime.
There were good things in the Clinton presidency. The Family and Medical Leave Act has been there for over 20 million Americans who needed to take time away from work without losing their job. The Brady Bill introduced common sense gun safety rules that have had a demonstrable effect on the use of guns in crimes. Clinton started five new national parks, had a nicely diverse cabinet, and… yeah, lots of good statistics. But some of those good statistics came at a big cost and with acceptance of conservative theories about the economy. Clinton’s quick acceptance of traditionally Republican positions didn’t so much as place Democrats in the good graces of big business as throw shade on the relationship between the party and labor.
But Clintonism 1.0, designed to carve out a middle ground, may prove obsolete in 2016, when the center might not hold. Senator Bernie Sanders is trying to push Mrs. Clinton left on the issues of income disparity, student loan debt and health care costs.
Let’s hope so. If there has to be triangulation in Clintonism 2.0, let’s make it by picking a place between Sanders and Obama. Personally, I’d rather have a place on the other side of Sanders, but there’s a lot of levels in “win.” Let’s win.
David Harsanyi is here to prove that Trump isn’t the only one coming up with astoundingly dangerous ideas this election season.
Never have so many people with so little knowledge made so many consequential decisions for the rest of us.
A person need only survey the inanity of the ongoing presidential race to comprehend that the most pressing problem facing the nation isn’t Big Business, Big Labor, Big Media or even Big Money in politics.
It’s you, the American voter. And by weeding out millions of irresponsible voters who can’t be bothered to learn the rudimentary workings of the Constitution, or their preferred candidate’s proposals or even their history, we may be able to mitigate the recklessness of the electorate.
Can you see where this is going? I bet you can. Hello, Mr. Crow? Do you still have some of those old “literary tests” handy?
If you have no clue what the hell is going on, you also have a civic duty to avoid subjecting the rest of us to your ignorance.
Unfortunately, we can’t trust you.
Now, if voting is a consecrated rite of democracy, as liberals often argue, surely society can have certain minimal expectations for those participating. And if citizenship itself is as hallowed as Republicans argue, then surely the prospective voter can be asked to know just as much as the prospective citizen. Let’s give voters a test. The citizenship civics test will do just fine.
No. Let’s not. But how about we pass legislation that says anyone trying to limit someone else’s ability to vote looses their own right to vote? Figuring out the paradox alone should keep the obstructionists busy for years.
Kathleen Parker goes where I didn’t expect.
The adage that our presidential election is a nose-pinching exercise — or a choice between lesser evils — doesn’t approach the rising level of ennui flooding the American street.
I would characterize this larger constituency as also including people who, though they may lean left or right, suffer a greater repulsion to the political moment than to a single candidate, though there’s plenty of revulsion to go around. To the extent that the remaining candidates are central to the current environment of anger, paranoia and, in some cases, violence, all are equally unappealing.
The only thing encouraging me to violence? The idea that Hillary Clinton is equal to Trump in encouraging violence. For the last eight years, Republicans have rested on idea that President Obama was somehow to blame for the hatred directed his way. It wasn’t true of him, it’s not true of Hillary. Nevertheless…
There is only one candidate for whom this middle bloc of voters could reasonably stomach voting. Given that Trump is such an unpleasant character and, by virtue of his own statements, unqualified to lead the most powerful nation on earth; and given that Sanders wants to create a nation that most Americans wouldn’t recognize; be it resolved that the saner choice is Clinton (notwithstanding everything you hate about her).
Which… honestly, surprised me. I thought Parker was running up to a “both sides are equally bad” conclusion. That she would say this, even as almost all elected Republicans have become reluctant Trumpistas… it’s kind of impressive.
Eli Rosenberg on why Everest may not be the highest mountain on Earth.
Move over, Everest. Scientists say that by one measure, the world’s highest peak is actually Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador.
Mount Chimborazo? Um. How?
The summit of Chimborazo, an inactive volcano in the Andes, rises about 20,500 feet above sea level, far short of Everest’s renowned 29,029 feet. But it’s a different story when you measure from the center of Earth: Chimborazo’s apex rises the farthest, at about 21 million feet or 3,967 miles, while Everest’s doesn’t even crack the top 20.
This is because, while Earth is not flat, it is also not a perfect sphere. The planet flattens at its poles and bulges slightly around its waistline — don’t we all? — making its radius about 13 miles greater at the Equator. Chimborazo is close to the Equator, but Everest is 28 degrees north latitude, nearly one-third of the way to the pole.
It's a technical distinction, but I like it—mostly because a 20,000 peak seems like something I might be able to do (though 14,400 is actually as high as I've ever been).
The Washington Post warns against a rising tide of anger and darkness.
Hardly a day goes by without evidence that the liberal international order of the past seven decades is being eroded. China and Russia are attempting to fashion a world in their own illiberal image; Britain is debating a departure from the European Union; Austria’s front-running presidential contender espouses fear of migrants, trade and globalization; and far-right parties are thriving in Europe. The radical Islamic State group wields merciless violence on its own lands in Iraq and Syria and exports terrorism beyond. In the United States, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has attracted millions of voters by campaigning against some of the foundations of American leadership in the world such as the defense alliance with Japan and South Korea, while Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has drawn millions more with the false promise of trade protectionism.
You want a worthy challenge? You want to prove that this generation is as great as any other? Unfortunately, that test is here. The fight many not come on a battlefield—yet—but that doesn’t make the challenge any less important.
Every election season since I moved here from Kentucky, more than thirty years ago now, I’ve gone down to whatever storefront or empty office was serving as campaign headquarters and made calls for the “integrated campaign.” I’ve also knocked on a lot of doors. I like the door knocking. It gets me outside, gives me a chance to learn some neighborhoods, and every now and then someone’s actually happy to see me.
But when the season is over, I fade away. Usually I come to the post-election party. Then I make it to a meeting or two (my local party really does meet it that bowling alley bar), then I kind of get busy with other things.
And I stop coming. I quit.
But here’s what I’m going to do after the presidential election this season. This November, I’m going to not-quit. I’m going to be in there every month, eating stale pretzels and making suggestions, and working to make my party more effective. They’re going to hate that. Whoever they is.