The 11 Nations of the United States and Their Cultures
So what if North America dissolved into 11 separate nations along these historical and cultural lines? I'm having an ongoing conversation with people around me about who would be elected King or Queen for life of each nation. This is a topic I'm actually pretty interested in and am low-key considering starting a podcast series on. Wes B. has even agreed to help co-host it. So stay tuned maybe? -B
Private Schools Are Indefensible
I'm some sort of Christian anarcho-libertarian free market individual responsibility type dude. In general I want as little top down solutioneering as possible. To that end if people want to use their own resources to have ridiculously luxurious private schools my political principles have no issue with that. But this line in this fantastic article I mostly disagree with hit me like a sledgehammer and still has me thinking through the implications, because I'm pretty sure my savior would agree with it. -B
Shouldn’t the schools that serve poor children be the very best schools we have?
Charles Cooke writes good things I often agree with. He's a UK transplant to Florida and has a very classically liberal / enlightenment set of principals. -B
Tweet by Randall Munroe on Twitter
Randall Munroe is the eponymous XKCD guy. His take on an election map blows apart the red and blue monoliths that exist in our head, which I think is healthy.
There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than NY, more Trump voters in NY than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont.
-B
Ok Boomer / OK Zoomer
Two links, one writer, highlighting the assumptions one generationally specific tribe makes about the other. - C
Part 1: What the Old Don't Get About the Woke
Part 2: What The Woke Don’t Get About the Old
Preliminary Theory of the In-Group Contrarian
The group feels strongly about outsiders. But it feels even more intensely about the people inside the group who criticize the group consensus. To clumsily insert a medieval analogy, the group hates the infidel in a far away land and maybe sometimes even fights them. But the group burns the homegrown heretic at the stake, quickly and without hesitation.
This outsider who's inside is called an In Group Contrarian (IGC). You'll probably see me reference it moving forward so you should go ahead and get up to speed. -B
Why Is Mystery Russian Spacecraft Cosmos 2542 Suddenly Stalking a U.S. Spy Satellite?
And here's another followup article on a supposed satellite weapons test from the same satellite. Apparently satellites with guns is a thing now. -B
Trump & Coronavirus: Commentators Invoke Concept of Karma
In this column, Kevin D. Williamson highlights the "willful moral illiteracy" of several writers when the news came out about Trump's coronavirus infection. This quote sums it up well. -C
There is an alternative approach, that we might extend the grace and love we would have for ourselves and our families not only to the stranger and the rival but to the enemy, that we would bless them that curse us and pray for them that despitefully use us, even those who persecute us, from whom no reciprocity can reasonably be expected. That we would not reserve grace and charity for those who deserve it and return it but instead extend it without hesitation to those who don’t. This requires something more than what Colston dismisses as “sentimentality.” It requires a radically different way of thinking about how to be a human being, one that cannot be learned from the New York Times.
A bewildered European redditor recently asked how Trump was elected in 2016. As you can imagine the thread (on the famously very left leaning Reddit) quickly devolved into a mess of ad hominen attacks, snide cheap shots, and a few honest analyses from mostly left leaning commentors. There were a (very) few actual admitted Trump voters here and there. I've picked out one that I thought gave an interesting analysis on one strand of right leaning thinking. I can't find the direct link so I've copied the text into a google doc. If you want to read more feel free to descend into the abyss yourself.
"Steel Man" refers to the hypothetical strongest argument you can think of for something you disagree with (as opposed to "Straw Man"). As someone who voted third party in 2016 for the first time in my life I think it is a good exercise for all of us to steel man in good faith the viewpoints of those we disagree with. -Brian
I've learned that emailing links to Google Docs is no bueno, so in an effort to continue landing this newsletter in inboxes, I've copied that doc into a page on my personal site. But I did try my best to find the comment in that mess of a thread and it's not there anymore. Alert the conspiracy theorists! - Calvin
How a new consensus against racism became a moral panic
It's simultaneously encouraging that we as a country seem to have made real progress in the fight against racism, while also demoralizing that the media and Twitter mobs are using this fight to push people into a never-ending outrage–and not just about systemic racism. There is much more work to be done, but we shouldn't waste this moment because we can't figure out how to have civil debates and honest conversations. - Calvin
100% agreed. Elevating the voice of the hurt and marginalized and listening and sacrificing to bring new life sounds pretty similar to the gospel. Subverting it for personal power unfortunately also sounds too familiar. -Brian