The way things are going, they will not be going far, so it’s time to bring back the weekly reader…
Writing in Unherd, Aris Roussinos argues that American is a failed state:
Trump is a morbid symptom of this chaos, rather than its cause. The forthcoming election, which pits two gerontocrats of dubious mental acuity against each other, resembles the late Soviet era, before the regime collapsed under its own absurdities. America indeed represents a strange inversion of the Soviet collapse: the economy dwarfs that of any other nation, save China; its empire is still intact, and its military spans the globe more powerfully than any single challenger.
Farrah Hasnain remembers the late, great, Hana Kimura:
And not just love but admiration. She definitely earned my admiration both as a young woman who invested herself in her friendships with every emotion and who, just by existing, represented something that we don’t always get to see on TV: an authentic biracial woman who wasn’t there for a laugh or set dressing. I think her legacy will continue to be built on by way of Tokyo Cyber Squad’s message of solidarity and acceptance: “Everyone is different, everyone is good.”
Arundhati Roy writes in Financial Times about what comes next after the global pandemic:
Mariame Kaba on abolishing the police for the New York Times.
Jessa Crispin on the liberal cheapening of “Believe Women.”
The language of abuse and trauma is creeping into political rhetoric, as if every interaction between a man and a woman these days can be understood as a potential violation. Virginia Heffernan wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Sanders had gaslighted Warren over whether he told her a female candidate couldn’t win the 2020 election.” Gaslighting is a term for one person lying to their romantic partner so effectively and consistently that they start to question their version of reality. Had Heffernan simply said Sanders lied, it would not have given the accusation the melodramatic pull of centuries of stories of women being tormented and abused by the men in their lives. Lying is something politicians do. Gaslighting is something misogynistic monsters do.