TLP Week in Review, 9/10-9/16
Your weekly summary of what we've been up to here at The Liberal Patriot.
What We’re Reading (and Watching and Listening To…)
“Bayard Rustin Challenged Progressive Orthodoxies”: Writer Jamie Kirchick profiles the late civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in the New York Times and notes that he should be recognized for his ideas and moral courage—particularly his willingness to challenge the prevalent left-wing dogmas of his day, especially on race and foreign policy—than his identity as a gay black man. “A descendant of slaves who was himself a victim of brutally violent racism,” Kirchick writes, “Mr. Rustin never let his country’s many sins overshadow his belief in its capacity for positive change”—a belief that “was unfashionable among progressives while he was alive and is even more exceptional today.”
“Trump’s Electoral College Edge Seems to Be Fading”: New York Times political number-cruncher Nate Cohn and graphics maven Alicia Parlapiano show that former president Donald Trump’s alleged electoral college advantage likely isn’t as big as many political analysts tend to assume. While that assumption appears reasonable given the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, in the 2022 midterms “Democrats fared about the same in the crucial battleground states as they did nationwide,” while recent Times/Siena college polls “have shown Mr. Biden running as well or better in the battlegrounds as nationwide, with the results by state broadly mirroring the midterms.”
“The Power and Purpose of American Diplomacy in a New Era”: Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent remarks at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies offer a good framework for understanding how the Biden administration thinks about and has positioned its foreign policy over the past two-plus years, just as the UN General Assembly kicks off next week.
Exit Ghost: by Isabella Hammad—A novel by Isabella Hammad, a British-Palestinian author offers a textured, nuanced picture of the lives Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, and diaspora live today via an attempt to mount a production of Hamlet in the West Bank.
Where Is My Flying Car?: Where indeed? You will likely not agree with everything J. Storrs Hall argues in this book, but it is guaranteed to make you think about technological stagnation and the vexing question of energy abundance—as in, why don't we have it?
Pentiment: Fans of Umberto Eco’s cerebral medieval murder mystery The Name of the Rose will enjoy this text-based, side-scrolling video game that dwells on a series of murders in a fictional early-sixteenth century Bavarian town. In contrast to the cutting-edge graphics of many top-flight games, Pentiment derives its visual aesthetic from the illuminated manuscripts of the time period it depicts—of particular note, the style and font of the texts displayed on screen changes based on who’s speaking and what the player’s character knows about their social and educational background.
What We’ve Posted
“Union Voters Could Be Decisive in 2024: Biden’s chances in the Midwest may depend on how this longtime Democratic constituency votes,” by TLP contributor Michael Baharaeen.
“The Democrats' Oliver Anthony Problem: Get ready for more education polarization,” by TLP politics editor Ruy Teixeira.
“Voters Aren’t the Problem. It’s the Media and Political Institutions,” by TLP editor-in-chief John Halpin.
“Would You Buy a Used Car From Vladimir Putin?: The Prigozhin affair offers the most recent example of why the Kremlin can’t be trusted,” by TLP senior managing editor Peter Juul.
“Are Hurricanes the Icons of Climate Change They are Made Out to Be?” by Breakthrough Institute climate scientist Patrick T. Brown.
“Trump is Not as Strong as He Looks,” by American Enterprise Institute fellow and director of the Survey Center on American Life Daniel A. Cox.
Ruy’s Science-Fiction Pulp Cover of the Week
Just one more thing…
Medieval European whale hunting may well have driven some cetacean species extinct well before the advent of industrial-scale whaling in the 19th and 20th centuries, archaeologists studying whale bones unearthed at sites from Norway to Portugal say.
