2024-12-27 10:00:23
Radical revisionism—by Donald Trump and on his behalf—is a strong contender for the theme of 2024, “in which some unique property of political alchemy managed to transform a defeated and disgraced ex-President facing four criminal indictments into a perfectly electable Republican candidate with a quirky communications style, a host of more or less legitimate grievances, and a plan to Make America Great Again by empowering his billionaire sidekicks and rolling back laws, regulations, geopolitical trends, and social norms that he and his voters don’t like,” Susan B. Glasser writes.
It’s become all too easy for Trump allies and detractors alike to disregard much of what Trump says and does, whether it’s his vow to close the U.S. border and begin the largest mass deportations in American history on the first day of his Presidency, to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, or to nullify the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. A new Associated Press / NORC poll, released Thursday, says 65 per cent of American adults now feel the need to limit their news consumption of news about politics and the government—the Great Tune-Out is real.
“Heading into 2025,” Glasser continues, “I do not believe that warnings about the dangers of an unchecked Trump are overstated. Instead, it is the creeping sense that Trump is entering office largely unopposed that more and more worries me.” At the link in our bio, read about the year in radical revisionism and collective forgetting, and what it portends for the next Trump Administration. Illustration by @sean_xdong .
2024-12-27 07:00:12
We have ways to assess our scientific beliefs. But what about our moral convictions? The German philosopher Hanno Sauer argues that morality—that body of judgments about good and evil, the practices that reflect those judgments, and the blame, guilt, and punishment that sustain them—hasn’t always existed. That’s why it had to be invented, rather than discovered. And the story of the invention of morality is really the story of the evolution of humanity.
In his new book, Sauer walks through distinct stages of human evolution to trace the invention of morality, drawing on research—some of it now well known—from evolutionary biology, game theory, neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and big-picture history. His approach leads him to conclude that there are “universal moral values that all people share with each other.” Distracted by our seeming divisions, he writes, we can forget the fundamentals: “We all share the same history of morality; our political disagreements are often shallow; underneath them are deep-seated, universal moral values that all people share with each other, and that can be the basis for a new understanding.” At the link in our bio, read about the argument that our sense of right and wrong is an evolutionary byproduct, and why there may be cause for optimism in that. Illustration by @till_lauer .
2024-12-27 03:00:02
During his bid for the Presidency, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., positioned himself as an alternative to two historically disliked candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. He spoke of breaking through the issues that polarized Americans—immigration, abortion, trans rights—to focus on the “existential” threats such as the country’s chronic-disease crisis. But what drew him into electoral politics in the first place was his role as a prominent vaccine skeptic. For more than a decade, he has promoted the belief that common childhood vaccines can cause autism and other developmental disabilities.
After his campaign collapsed, in August, Kennedy embraced his role as Donald Trump’s ally. Now, he’s the President-elect’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services. At the link in our bio, revisit Clare Malone’s Profile of the controversial figure, in which Kennedy speaks about his troubled past, how his family shaped his political identity, and, yes, that time he found a dead bear cub on the side of the road. Photograph by @danwintersphoto .
2024-12-26 22:00:58
A cartoon by @christopherweyant , from 2020. #NewYorkerCartoons
2024-12-26 06:00:15
A cartoon by @lizadonnelly , from 2012. #NewYorkerCartoons
2024-12-26 03:00:59
One doesn’t have to be a Dylanologist to know, or even to sense, that “A Complete Unknown” “simplifies Bob Dylan’s early professional life and dilutes its furies,” Richard Brody writes. The intrinsic pleasures of the film—a story of Dylan’s arrival in New York, in 1961, his rise to fame as a folk singer-songwriter, and his risking it all, in 1965, to become a plugged-in, noisemaking rock star—point to the purpose and the stumbling blocks of all bio-pics. The evasions and elisions that are inherent to the format—as here, with the cramming of four eventful years into just over two hours—are on view from the start.
Timothée Chalamet stars as the movie’s young hero, hitching a ride to New York in the rear of a station wagon, the driver unknown, the small talk between them nonexistent, and is dropped off at the open maw of a tunnel. He soon finds his way to Greenwich Village, stumbles upon a bar where folk musicians gather, and gets instructions from one of them on how to find the hospital in New Jersey where the chronically ill Woody Guthrie is confined. But who does Bob know in the city? Where will he stay? How does he begin his musical career? The movie offers answers that range from empty to artificial.
“The details that get sheared off matter, not least because they embody the spirit of the age: how a young musician without a day job finds a place to live in the Village is even more of an emblem of the times than the overwrought precision of the movie’s costumes, hair styles, and simulacra of street life,” Brody continues. “Without the anchor of material reality, the life of the artist is reduced to a just-so story of soaring above banalities and complications.” Read his full review at the link in our bio. Photograph courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
