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Category: Society

America’s complexity deficit has trapped us in a pandemic spiral

America’s complexity deficit has trapped us in a pandemic spiral

Ed Yong writes: Army ants will sometimes walk in circles until they die. The workers navigate by smelling the pheromone trails of workers in front of them, while laying down pheromones for others to follow. If these trails accidentally loop back on themselves, the ants are trapped. They become a thick, swirling vortex of bodies that resembles a hurricane as viewed from space. They march endlessly until they’re felled by exhaustion or dehydration. The ants can sense no picture bigger…

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Disdain for the less educated is the last acceptable prejudice

Disdain for the less educated is the last acceptable prejudice

Michael J. Sandel writes: Joe Biden has a secret weapon in his bid for the presidency: He is the first Democratic nominee in 36 years without a degree from an Ivy League university. This is a potential strength. One of the sources of Donald Trump’s political appeal has been his ability to tap into resentment against meritocratic elites. By the time of Mr. Trump’s election, the Democratic Party had become a party of technocratic liberalism more congenial to the professional…

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Seeing human society as a complex system opens a better future for us all

Seeing human society as a complex system opens a better future for us all

Jessica Flack and Melanie Mitchell write: We’re at a unique moment in the 200,000 years or so that Homo sapiens have walked the Earth. For the first time in that long history, humans are capable of coordinating on a global scale, using fine-grained data on individual behaviour, to design robust and adaptable social systems. The pandemic of 2019-20 has brought home this potential. Never before has there been a collective, empirically informed response of the magnitude that COVID-19 has demanded….

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The greatest weakness of American men? Fear of looking weak

The greatest weakness of American men? Fear of looking weak

Alex Abad-Santos writes: Fellas, is it gay to not die of a virus that turns your lungs into soggy shells of their former selves, drowning you from the inside out? Is wearing a mask to avoid death part of the feminization of America? Is it too emasculating to wear a mask to protect the others around you? Does staying alive make you feel weak? According to many American men, yeah. Poll after poll, most recently a Gallup poll from July…

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Trump’s history of racism and the reckoning it has forced

Trump’s history of racism and the reckoning it has forced

Ibram X. Kendi writes: Marine One waited for the president of the United States on the South Lawn of the White House. It was July 30, 2019, not long past 9 a.m. Donald Trump was headed to historic Jamestown to mark the 400th anniversary of the first representative assembly of European settlers in the Americas. But Black Virginia legislators were boycotting the visit. Over the preceding two weeks, the president had been engaged in one of the most racist political…

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In the pandemic, the United States stands out as an exceptional failure

In the pandemic, the United States stands out as an exceptional failure

The New York Times reports: Nearly every country has struggled to contain the coronavirus and made mistakes along the way. China committed the first major failure, silencing doctors who tried to raise alarms about the virus and allowing it to escape from Wuhan. Much of Europe went next, failing to avoid enormous outbreaks. Today, many countries — Japan, Canada, France, Australia and more — are coping with new increases in cases after reopening parts of society. Yet even with all…

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Landlord-leaning eviction courts are about to make the coronavirus housing crisis a lot worse

Landlord-leaning eviction courts are about to make the coronavirus housing crisis a lot worse

Eviction moratoriums have already begun to expire. Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images By Katy Ramsey Mason, University of Memphis The United States is on the verge of a potentially devastating eviction crisis right in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Federal, state and local eviction moratoriums had put most of the pending cases on hold. But as the moratoriums expire and eviction hearings resume, millions of people are at risk of losing their homes. That’s because the court process is…

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A prophet of uncertainty

A prophet of uncertainty

Adam Tooze writes: If it is true that we are now faced with pervasive risks generated and brought upon us by the forces of modernity and yet not accessible to our immediate senses, how do we cope? Until you start suffering from radiation poisoning, until your fetus suffers a horrific mutation, until you find your lungs flooding with pneumonia, the threat of the radiation or a mystery bug is unreal, inaccessible to the naked eye or immediate perception. In risk…

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Countries with levels of police brutality comparable to that in the U.S. are called ‘police states’

Countries with levels of police brutality comparable to that in the U.S. are called ‘police states’

Laurence Ralph writes: Public outcry over the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd earlier this year has ignited mass demonstrations against structural racism and police violence in the United States. The protests have reached every American state and spread to countries around the world; they arguably constitute the most broad-based civil rights movement in American history. Protests against the brutalization of communities of color by the U.S. criminal justice system have been growing for years, but the…

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Forging a right-left coalition may be the only way to end the War on Drugs

Forging a right-left coalition may be the only way to end the War on Drugs

Conor Friedersdorf writes: Nearly 30 years ago, the PBS program Firing Line convened a debate about the War on Drugs, which has contributed more than any other criminal-justice policy to deadly street violence in Black neighborhoods and the police harassment, arrest, and mass incarceration of Black Americans. Revisiting the debate helps clarify what it will take to end that ongoing policy mistake. Congressman Charlie Rangel led one side in the 1991 clash. Born in 1930, Rangel served in the Korean…

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How California went from coronavirus success story to disaster — and how it can regain control

How California went from coronavirus success story to disaster — and how it can regain control

George Rutherford writes: In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, California seemed to be a success story. Today, however, the state’s case count is surging, recently topping 400,000 total and surpassing New York. Compared with levels around Memorial Day in Southern California and around the second week in June in Northern California, daily cases have increased fourfold. In recent weeks, the average number of daily deaths statewide has increased by 50 percent. What is driving this surge, and how…

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Global ‘catastrophe’ looms as Covid-19 fuels inequality

Global ‘catastrophe’ looms as Covid-19 fuels inequality

The Observer reports: The pandemic has exposed and reinforced deep inequalities across the world, with the true extent yet to be seen, according to a major new report. The crisis in the poorest countries threatens to escalate into a catastrophe as job losses and food insecurity mount. “The economic, social and political impacts are only starting to unfold,” says Building Back with Justice: Dismantling Inequalities after Covid-19, to be published by Christian Aid later this month. The number of people…

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Inside the ideology of American policing — and how it justifies racist violence

Inside the ideology of American policing — and how it justifies racist violence

Zack Beauchamp reports: Arthur Rizer is a former police officer and 21-year veteran of the US Army, where he served as a military policeman. Today, he heads the criminal justice program at the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank in DC. And he wants you to know that American policing is even more broken than you think. “That whole thing about the bad apple? I hate when people say that,” Rizer tells me. “The bad apple rots the barrel….

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I’ve seen a future without cars, and it’s amazing

I’ve seen a future without cars, and it’s amazing

Farhad Manjoo writes: As coronavirus lockdowns crept across the globe this winter and spring, an unusual sound fell over the world’s metropolises: the hush of streets that were suddenly, blessedly free of cars. City dwellers reported hearing bird song, wind and the rustling of leaves. (Along with, in New York City, the intermittent screams of sirens). You could smell the absence of cars, too. From New York to Los Angeles to New Delhi, air pollution plummeted, and the soupy, exhaust-choked…

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Another Covid-19 disparity: Black and Hispanic Americans are dying at younger ages than white Americans

Another Covid-19 disparity: Black and Hispanic Americans are dying at younger ages than white Americans

STAT reports: Long after calls for more data on the disproportionate number of Covid-19 infections and deaths among Black Americans and Hispanic Americans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday released limited additional information, which revealed non-white and Hispanic Americans under age 65 are dying in greater numbers than white people in that age group. The agency reported that more than a third of deaths among Hispanic Americans (34.9%) and almost a third of deaths among non-white Americans…

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Solving the climate crisis is about everything and everyone

Solving the climate crisis is about everything and everyone

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson writes: The Black Lives Matter movement is not a distraction from saving the planet. We can’t solve the climate crisis without people of color, but we could probably solve it without racists. Whether it’s Hurricane Katrina or air pollution, storms and exposure to toxins cause much greater harm to communities of color. (Although, yes, in the longer term, climate change is coming for us all, even if you have a bunker in New Zealand.) So it follows…

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