The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan (private feed for kbockus@gmail.com)

Anne Applebaum On The Ukraine Crisis

(Apologies if you receive this email twice — last night we accidentally published this pod page for paid subscribers only.)We’ve released this page early this week … because we don’t know what’s going to happen next and don’t want to be caught short by events. And who better to comment on the Ukraine standoff as the days unfold than Anne Applebaum? She’s a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of many formidable books, including Red Famine, Gulag: A History (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app,” which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. For two clips of my conversation with Anne — on whether the West provoked Russia into its possible invasion of Ukraine, and on what the US should do now — head over to our YouTube page.Also up-coming on Ukraine: I’ve recorded a great and ranging conversation with Edward Luttwak — the legendary grand strategist — about the broader tensions with Russia, China, and Brexit, and we’ll be airing that episode soon. But first, below is an assortment of reader dissents and assents over our recent episode with foreign-policy realist John Mearsheimer, whose position on this question is not Anne’s. Here’s a quick reminder of John’s approach to Ukraine:Our first reader writes:I often listen to lectures while exercising. Today was John Mearsheimer on the roots of liberal hegemony — a subject that interests (and troubles) me greatly. When I took a break to read email, I was amazed to see him on the newest Dishcast. He reminds me a great deal of an amazing international relations teacher from community college — and I can’t imagine a more sane commentator for the currently troubled international scene. So thanks for hosting.Another also enjoyed it: “One of my favorite episodes so far — extraordinarily clarifying and stimulating!” But this reader is less of a fan:Let’s get one thing out of the way: Mearsheimer is a renowned scholar and I am not. I’m just a regular listener who is passionate about history and happens to have some direct knowledge of Ukraine, its history, and its people. I very much respect Professor Mearsheimer.However, I think he conveniently omitted some crucial elements. For example, I think it would have been worth pointing out that it was the former Warsaw Pact countries and the Baltics who asked for EU and NATO integration. They did so because they were concerned by an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive Russia, and it took a lot of work and effort on their side to convince NATO and especially the EU to even have that conversation. I also think it was slightly unfair to recall that in 2008 at the Bucharest Summit, NATO did indeed reiterate openness to Ukraine and Georgia’s membership (which is NATO’s standard open-door policy) without mentioning that the statement was made after both countries had just been denied a NATO action plan. And finally, I think Mearsheimer is being naive if he really believes that Putin would be content with a neutral Ukraine.These are all points I am sure you are familiar with. My real issue with the Dishcast conversation in itself was that, once again, the people with the most skin in the game — the Ukrainians — were almost erased from the picture. Too often we keep framing this as an imperialist US/Russia power game in which the people of central and eastern Europe are denied any agenda or agency, and to some extent even their own national identity. The very few words Mearsheimer actually spent on Ukraine and Ukrainians suggested a lack of knowledge of the country's history. In the same way you felt it was appropriate to invite Yossi Klein Halevi to discuss Zionism, it would be very interesting to hear your conversation with someone who knows and understands Ukraine and has produced some really influential work on the subject — such as Serhii Plokhy, Timothy Snyder, and Anne Applebaum. I think it could be very interesting for the audience to hear that side of the story as well. You ask, we deliver. Another reader asks a simple question:My main concern is, why do we still have NATO? After the Soviet Union fell, didn’t that end the need for NATO? If the Europeans want to still band together, wouldn’t a European Treaty Organization — one set up to make sure European nations don’t start fighting each other — have been the correct course? I can’t believe I agree with anything that Putin says, but looking at it from the Russian viewpoint, NATO is an enemy, lined up against Russia. I can see their point.Any conflict in Ukraine will not end well for the world. The Ukrainians will suffer greatly and Russia, which always seems to be teetering, will suffer even more as body bags of soldiers start arriving and piling up in Moscow. I have a hard time believing that the everyday Russian citizen really believes there is a threat (but I don’t know any of them, so I speak from ignorance).I do think that NATO mission creep has been a problem since the end of the Cold War. If it’s a defense pact, against whom, exactly? And would the US really risk nuclear war over the Baltics? It’s a question I discuss with Anne. Another reader stays optimistic about the state of the world:I think the pessimistic view of the post-Cold War era really just depends on where you look. OK, great, we have a mess to deal with regarding China. But there is less poverty in China and worldwide than ever before. Less starvation and disease. There are fewer coups in Latin America in the neoliberal era than before it — and more democracy, even if it hasn’t always been smooth. But most importantly, we don’t live within 30 minutes of the end of civilization all the time. Even if there was a nuclear war now, the stockpiles are so reduced that it would be of a different kind than degree of destruction.Which leads to my main point: the neoliberal order constructed at Bretton-Woods and elsewhere after WWII has been the golden age of humanity. We have had no cataclysmic wars since. We have worldwide trade and communications. Fewer people are living in totalitarian regimes. It’s mostly good stuff if you look at the big picture.So maybe there’s a reason we want more of this and want to spread it, rather than us just being naive. Maybe our national interest is in a relatively peaceful, relatively stable world-trade system where we contribute the plurality of security but reap the plurality of the benefits. Does “liberal internationalism” live up to its own hype? No, but it’s results aren’t bad. Better, I would say, that the results of pure realpolitik. Some kind of perspective like this matters. An expert weighs in:I work in the national security field, so I always appreciate when you bring on guests to discuss international relations. The discussion with Mearsheimer was no exception, particularly since “realists” in the field can often provide a good baseline check on how structural power is affecting foreign affairs. However, there were a few points where I would like to push back on his criticism of American foreign policy post-Cold War.First, Mearsheimer was too dismissive of the benefits that institutional structures like NATO bring to Europe. He was highly critical of NATO expansion, saying it antagonized Russia and fostered a security dilemma. However, he does not fully include on the ledger the benefits institutions like the EU and NATO bring in fostering democracy and internal stability within Europe. It should be noted that Mearsheimer has always been skeptical of these institutions, wrongly predicting back in the 1990s that the end of the Cold War would witness German aggression. He underestimated the moderating influence that binding Germany and other countries to liberal institutions would have and how it would encourage cooperation. The benefits from these liberal institutions — free trade, democratic accountability, respect for territorial sovereignty — act as a pull to Eastern Europeans whose historical experience has been the Warsaw Pact, the only security pact which invaded their members rather than fighting an external enemy. The US should lean into these liberal values of freedom and commerce to enhance their attraction and strengthen their alliances and partnerships, as opposed to adopting a strict realpolitik stance that would grant Russia a “sphere of influence” to undermine the rights of its neighbors.Second, I think Mearsheimer is placing too much blame on Western policy for the Ukraine crisis by discounting the role of national identity. I appreciated that he acknowledged how nationalism factors into Russia’s expansionary policies. However, he does not seem to extend that line of reasoning to see how Russian nationalism has played a role in stoking tensions by justifying expanding into the Donbas region into eastern Ukraine to “protect” Russian speakers from supposed persecution and to check Russian imperial decline. Additionally, this recognition of national motivation does not seem to register on how the desire to preserve national identity are motives for why Ukraine does not want to be under Russian control. Ukraine itself opposed the Russian-backed Viktor Yanukovych because he rejected a EU free-trade agreement and fostered corruption with Russia, something that was not in line with the majority of the Ukrainian population’s more western-inclined sentiments. Until Ukraine’s own agency is acknowledged, observers will miss an important factor on why Ukraine has drifted from Russia and how to manage regional tensions.Another reader looks to the diversity of Ukraine:I was surprised to hear that neither you nor Mearsheimer discussed western Ukraine, home to nearly 20 percent of the country’s population. It was never part of Russia, like the rest of the country. Until Poland was partitioned in the 18th century, it was part of that kingdom. And then until 1918, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Four languages were widely spoken: German, Ukrainian, Polish, and Yiddish. After WWI, it was returned to Poland and through population swaps the German/Austrian presence pretty much vanished. The Soviet Union took control of western Ukraine in 1939 when it partitioned Poland with Nazi Germany. Two years later, when Germany invaded the USSR, the Germans took control. After the war, it went back to the USSR, and much of the Polish population was transferred out and, for the first time, Russians became residents in significant numbers. However, the percentage of Russian speakers peaked in the 1960s, and in another decade or two, the overwhelming majority of residents were native Ukrainian speakers, many or most of whom speak no Russian. So, understandably, it has been western Ukraine that is most opposed to Russian interference in the country.Yet another critic of the convo with Mearsheimer:I’ve loved listening to several episodes of your podcast, but I was disappointed by your ill-informed conversation about NATO and Russia. Far from being eternal “mortal foes,” it’s worth remembering that Putin offered support to NATO after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and attended a NATO summit in 2008. When NATO expanded in 2004 and eight Eastern European countries joined the EU, not only did Putin not amass a hundred thousand troops on his border, he actually expressed approval of the idea that Ukraine might join the Union in the future. In 2010, Putin’s ambassador to NATO published an op-ed in the New York Times encouraging NATO to keep up the fight in Afghanistan, where US troops were technically on what Putin now calls his “porch.”These actions are hard to reconcile with your guest’s declaration that “basic realist logic” explains everything we need to know about Putin’s behavior. The fact that France and Germany, or California and Texas, are not launching nuclear missiles at each other is not a “liberal dream” or a “great delusion,” and realists need to account for these exceptions. Thousands of Ukrainians have died — as, it seems, will thousands more — for the modest dream of becoming a Latvia or a Kansas. Anybody who believes in the rule of law over imperial “realist logic” should be rallying behind Ukraine, not deriding their ambitions.Next, a reader broadens the debate to include China, but first a quick reminder of John discussing how the US is largely responsible for China’s rise:Here’s the reader:Mearsheimer stated he wanted some form of a US-Russia détente so the US could focus more on China. I understand the need to prioritize threats, and I would agree that greater emphasis needs to be placed on confronting China and to let Europe take on a larger role in their own security. However, he never really grappled with what might the West have to concede to get Russia’s consent and if this arrangement is even feasible. Given Putin’s pugnaciousness, it is likely that NATO would have to tolerate Russia’s breach of sovereignty norms in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine and Georgia, and crushing political dissent, including the poisoning of dissidents abroad. It is important that Russia not be seen as getting a free pass on breaking these norms, since other authoritarians might believe they have the right to impose compromised sovereignty on their weaker neighbors as well. Regarding whether this arrangement is feasible, I would suggest the track record of Bush II, and Obama’s reset policy, is evidence that Russia is not a good faith actor. They will likely pocket the gains while still pursuing their globally disruptive policies. Russia would also need a strong push factor to align them towards the US and away from China, much like the Soviet-China border war pushed Mao towards Nixon. At the moment, Sino-Russian relations, although not warm, are based on a shared antagonism against the liberal international order that will continue to foster a measure of cooperation against the West.Another reader folds in the domestic politics of the US:“Do you think the American people are going to vote on whether we are going to defend Taiwan or not? (chuckle) That’s not how it works in the United States.” Thus spoke (and chuckled) foreign policy “realist” John Mearsheimer. Of course, that is the view of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment (the Blob) that Mearsheimer criticizes for its manifest failures over the past 30 years, but apparently it is also his view. That’s too bad. Because, as Mearsheimer himself stated, all those foreign policy failures contributed to the nomination and election of Donald Trump.So the American people DID “vote on whether we are going to” continue our failed hegemonic foreign policy in 2016 — they voted no, and Trump changed the policy. In 2020, Trump nearly won again, and his narrow loss cannot be attributed to his abandonment of hegemony. If anything, that helped him. If Biden takes us to war over the “defense” of Taiwan, can anyone doubt that he and the Democratic Party will be overwhelmingly repudiated by “the American people going to vote” in 2022 and 2024? Perhaps Mr. Mearsheimer is not as realistic as he imagines. Perhaps we could hear from you on this?I think history shows the danger of extending commitments abroad in a way that will not ultimately be supported by the bulk of the population. And by that, I mean in the medium- and long-term. Another reader says that the “excellent interview with Mearsheimer provoked an interesting conversation with my spouse about US-China competition in our field”:For context, we’re both academics working in the humanities. I grew up in the US; my spouse is from the Greater Bay area of Guangzhou/Hong Kong. We pay close attention to the academic job market in Hong Kong. As that city has become thoroughly dominated by the CCP over the last few years, positions there have increasingly selected for Marxist / anti-liberal candidates in our field. You won’t be surprised to learn that US universities are producing plenty of appealing, successful candidates for these jobs.American academia is correct to call attention to the injustices in our nation. Indeed, as my spouse reminded me, that is what separates our system from China’s. And yet it strikes me as unmistakably troubling that so many of the graduates of our top humanities programs are ripe candidates for employment in Hong Kong, a city whose universities have begun intentionally selecting for pro-Marxist, anti-liberal, and — whether functionally or explicitly — anti-American points of view.As a scholar who cares about free speech, open intellectual inquiry, and patriotism, a salient question for me is: how can our humanities programs better serve the individual states and nation that support them? What would a trenchant, intellectually serious embrace of patriotism look like in disciplines like English, History, Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, and Disability Studies? I’d love to see President Biden convene a national conference addressing this question. And yes, I realize that so many letters to the Dish are all about what Biden should or could do, but “convening” is something the US presidency is well equipped to accomplish. If the call came from any other quarter, most scholars would no doubt refuse to attend. But if it were a presidential call, addressing an issue of vital national importance, perhaps eminent academics will accept. I’d love to see state-funded scholars like Colleen Lye, Jasbir Puar, Katherine Bond Stockton, and Sami Schalk thoughtfully and publicly engage with these questions.One more reader:Your discussion with Mearsheimer was the first episode of the Dishcast I’ve listened to end to end. It was frustrating, because there were so many interesting questions left unasked. The most glaring example is when he indicates, in effect, that regardless of the likelihood of failure of Chinese engagement policies, engagement should never have been pursued, because being more populous, even a liberal democratic China would be a rival and threat to the US. As a realist, is he espousing not only that great states do pursue power maximization but they should do so to the exclusion of everything else? That values should play absolutely no part in evaluating strategies or outcomes? I guess I’ll have to buy Mearsheimer’s book. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Kathleen Stock On The Nature Of Sex And Gender

Kathleen was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex for nearly 20 years. Last fall, she resigned under duress following a vicious campaign to have her fired for questioning the policy goals of radical trans activists. Her latest book is Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism. We bonded, to be honest, I think because we’ve both experienced the sting of harassment and caustic criticism from our peers among gays, lesbians and trans people, in different ways and for different reasons. And we’re both from England.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above. For two clips of my conversation with Kathleen — on whether being transgender is “natural” and if that matters, and on the homophobia baked into radical trans ideology — head over to our YouTube page.A reader comments on last week’s episode:Thanks so much for your conversation with Johann Hari. It was refreshing and challenging — refreshing to hear about a topic we all need to be thinking about, regardless of our politics, and challenging as I think we all struggle in the area of attention discipline and focus.Here’s a clip from that convo:Another reader “thoroughly enjoyed your podcast with Johann”: I was already planning on reading his book, but your conversation prompted me to order it today. He is funny — particularly at the beginning, while talking about the Dalai Lama, and his crazy family. I’m not sure if this is an observation worth sharing (and I can’t make it without seeming cranky), but our decreasing ability to focus is alarmingly apparent in young people. I’m a professor of recent American history, age 51, so I’ve been teaching long enough to observe this.It is nearly impossible, nowadays, to get the average college student to read a book (particularly a long one). They won’t read an entertaining novel (such as Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities), or a masterpiece of literary nonfiction (Anthony Lukas’s Common Ground), a hilariously funny political book (Thomas Frank’s What's the Matter With Kansas?), or one of the 20th century’s most impactful memoirs (The Autobiography of Malcolm X). I mention these titles because they are books that I greatly enjoyed and learned from when I was younger, which is partly why I’ve assigned them in my courses. But they all flopped. They flopped despite addressing topics students profess to be interested in! (They will, however, watch loads of television. Tony Kushner’s six-hour miniseries Angels in America was a big hit last semester.)Sometimes I wonder if the streaming miniseries model is our new novel. Meanwhile, many readers are continuing the debate over Whoopi Goldberg’s comments last week. This first reader runs through many good points:The mistake that Whoopi made is that she was trying to express something we can all agree with (Nazis are bad), but she didn’t have a very good understanding of where Jews fit into the picture. I recommend you read Yair Rosenberg’s reaction to her, as it explains that Jews are, all at the same time: a race (the Nazis certainly thought so), a religion, an ethnicity, a culture, a nation, and therefore perhaps the best way to view Jews is as a very diverse family. Whoopi was viewing the Holocaust from a very narrow, US construct where the term “racism” refers to views between whites and blacks. I think that’s what she meant to say, and that’s fine. As a Jew, I’m not offended by that. I’d take it as an invitation to explain the nuances of anti-semitism and Jews — how the Nazis were all about race (you know, Aryans), and viewed Jews as an inferior race. There are white Jews, but also black Jews (for example, Ethiopian Jews). Jews can lead entirely secular lives and still view themselves (and be viewed by others) as very Jewish. All these things. I don’t think that Whoopi meant to offend or insult, and I don’t for a minute think she’s anti-semitic. I just think she was out of her depth.And you did touch on this a little: many American progressives try to impose their racial constructs on Jews, and then on Israel. For example, they view Israeli Jews as “white European colonial oppressors” and Palestinians as the “black oppressed.” They ignore that there are Ethiopian Israeli Jews, who are black, and Yemenite Israeli Jews, who are very dark-skinned, if not black. And more than half of Israel’s Jewish population has its origins in North Africa and the Middle East. These are the mizrahim — Jews from places like Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Iran — who were expelled en masse following the establishment of Israel.US progressives would have a hard time distinguishing an Israeli Jew from a Palestinian based on skin color alone. But this complexity and nuance doesn’t fit their preconceptions that Israel must be European, white, and colonial, and that you can just graft the US black-white experience on a different population thousands of miles away.A reader highlights a classic scene:Your column on whiteness and Jews reminded of this clip from the ‘90s television show “Northern Exposure” — still relevant to discussions we’re having today:Another snippet of pop culture from a reader:Or as Woody Allen said in Annie Hall, “My grammy never gave gifts, you know. She was too busy getting raped by Cossacks.”Some history from this reader:You are absolutely correct that out-group prejudices and suspicion of “the other” is deeply ingrained in all of us through human evolution (hell, we spent 99% of our existence living in small bands on the African savannah and fighting off other bands who threatened us or our resources). In that sense “racism” as the term is colloquially used is ubiquitous and universal.  However, it is also true that the concept of “race” developed in Europe (and European colonies) in the early modern period. The example I always give is that in a pre-racial world, the 16th century Venetians have no problem giving their most important command to General Othello, but it would be centuries before a black man achieved four-star rank in the US military, in a society constructed around race and white supremacy. As you observe, the concept evolved differently in the old and new worlds. Thus, by the mid-20th century, the Nazis believed Germans, Jews, Poles, Italians, and the English were different races, even though all would be considered “white” in North America.  The book Race: The History of an Idea in the West provides a comprehensive and exhaustive history (though it’s not, unfortunately, well-written or an easy read). One interesting tidbit: the English word “race” is derived (through Italian) from the Arabic al-ras “the head” and originally referred to social hierarchy. This is why a road “race” with its hierarchy of first, second, and third place uses the same term. The first known use of the word “race” to refer to pigmentation is from the late 1600s. This is also around the time that the term “white” replaces “Christian” in the New World to refer to European immigrants/settlers.So it is true that “racism” as prejudice against outsiders is universal, it is also true that “race” and “racism” is a specifically modern way of slicing and dicing the human family. This gives one hope — the concept is actually relatively recent and can be undone (though the tendency toward prejudice will require ever-constant vigilance).Agreed. And I’m grateful for the distinction. But the shifts in our genetic understanding of human evolution offer another, less fraught, future possibility. We all have different genetic ancestries that show how genes cluster in populations in regions over aeons. That’s how we are able to spit in a cup and find out our roots from 23andMe and the like. That’s how we are quite good at seeing resemblances between people from the same regions. But this isn’t “race” and it sure isn’t “hierarchical.” It’s just difference — not in kind, but in complex and subtle degree that we do not yet fully understand. This may well mean different outcomes in different areas for different genetic clusters. Some of this maps clumsily onto crude understandings of “race” and “ethnicity,” and can thereby generate old-school racism. And we should guard against this vigilantly. But the key, it seems to me, is to accept the empirical reality — because it is true — but not to essentialize or in any way moralize it. The only way to do this is through individualism, seeing people as unique, precisely because the varying blends of nature and nurture do indeed make each of us unique, and attempting to create more and more equality of opportunity for every individual. Color-blindness may be impossible, but it is surely an admirable goal, a pole-star to navigate by.And it may be, in this rubric, that overall, we see some genetic cluster-groups do better in some areas of life than in others. While we should be concerned this is a function of racism, we can’t assume that all variation is entirely a function of discrimination, and constantly attempt to regulate society to achieve total equality of outcome across all groups. That’s a recipe for endless failure, a government powerful enough to intervene in every human relationship, and metastasizing social conflict. We have to find a way to acknowledge genetic differences — individual and population-wide — without succumbing to race essentialism or racism itself. Maybe this is beyond us. But for me, it’s the only intellectually honest and morally just approach. Another bit of history from this reader:Your excellent piece on anti-semitism and anti-whiteness left out a glaring example of non-white racism: Japan. Not only was Japan an imperialist nation, there was a strong racial element to that imperialism — that is, the Japanese race was superior to other Asian races. Even now, Japan looks down on non-Japanese, using the common pejorative “gaijin” to refer to foreigners, particularly white ones.Obviously, none of this squares with woke theories of race.Another reader takes extreme CRT thinking and turns it against itself:You quoted a CRT catechism: “How did the Holocaust shift Jewish Americans’ position in American society?” The correct answer was: “gained conditional whiteness.’” When I read that, I wondered if someone could argue something similar about American Descendants of Slavery Who Are Black. They are arguably the most affluent and influential group of Black people in the world. (I believe it was Dr. Glenn Loury who made that economic observation.) Did slavery do something similar for these Black people in the US — “gain conditional whiteness”?Another reader also focuses on that “conditional whiteness” quote:First of all, I agree with your statement about the parochialism of viewing racism as white-on-black oppression. I’ve written to you several times in the past about how ludicrous it is that my $2T tech company asks us to take classes where we’re told of the dangers of white people oppressing black and brown people — in a company where an Indian American is a well-regarded CEO, and Asian Americans of all backgrounds are represented way above their fraction of the population. If this is white supremacy, we’re not very good at it.Secondly, you wrote:In California’s proposed mandatory class in critical race theory, for example, one original curriculum question was: “How did the Holocaust shift Jewish Americans’ position in American society?” The correct answer was: “gained conditional whiteness.” Yes, this is the upshot of the mass murder of millions of Jews, according to CRT: it gave them a leg-up in America!I think you err in making fun of that statement. In a real sense, the extreme racism of the Nazis put a “quick” end to eugenics and eugenics-based laws in this country, and the Holocaust started Americans down a road of viewing people of all ethnic backgrounds as “conditionally white.” Within 20 years of WW2’s end, we have LBJ passing the Civil Rights Acts, the Immigration Act of 1965, and the end of segregation in the South. In 1968, restrictive covenants became illegal, and in that same year the Fair Housing Act made discrimination in housing illegal (though we’re still fighting that battle today). So, if you’re willing to buy a definition of “quick” as 20-25 years, this answer isn’t that far off the mark.I take your point. The impact of the Holocaust on Americans’ understanding of race and racism is a rich topic. My mockery of the ethnic studies curriculum was less about its accuracy than its American parochialism, and its seeming indifference to the horror of the actual Shoah. More on the Nazis from this reader:There is a Yiddish expression that “Jewish wealth is like snow in March.” Before Hitler came to power, the Nazis pointed to Jewish success in Germany as detracting from “Aryans.” Jews were parasites — even decorated German Jewish veterans — who fed off the German nation. Roosevelt himself “understood” German resentment towards Jewish “success,” as if people are successful as a group, not as individuals. It is frightening to me that some of the extreme left has adopted this neo-Nazi system of categorizing people based on “race” and not as individuals. Pretty clearly, with the collapse of the USSR, the left has lost faith in the class war and has adopted a theory of racial minorities as the vanguard of the revolution. Today’s leftist race theorists classify Jews as white, some Arabs as people of color, Latinos as people of color and Asians as white — or at least white adjacent.As a Jew, I’m pretty despondent about America and the future of Jews in America if this ideology isn’t thoroughly defeated in the near future. As always, send us your thoughts over the Dishcast or the main newsletter here: dish@andrewsullivan.com. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Johann Hari On Our Attention Crisis

Johann is a close friend, so let’s get that out of the way. His latest subject is the modern curse of screen-driven distraction, and how to combat it: “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention — And How To Think Deeply Again.” I even appear in the background in his account of how he tried to escape Internet addiction one summer in Provincetown. So excuse some of the informality and jokiness at the beginning of this chin-wag.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app,” which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. For two clips of our conversation — on whether it’s a good idea to ban the Twitter business model, and on the value of reading fiction — head over to our YouTube page.My chat with Johann touched on many of the themes in my 2016 essay on web addiction, “I Used To Be Human.” Here’s a bit:As I had discovered in my blogging years, the family that is eating together while simultaneously on their phones is not actually together. They are, in Turkle’s formulation, “alone together.” You are where your attention is. If you’re watching a football game with your son while also texting a friend, you’re not fully with your child — and he knows it. Truly being with another person means being experientially with them, picking up countless tiny signals from the eyes and voice and body language and context, and reacting, often unconsciously, to every nuance. These are our deepest social skills, which have been honed through the aeons. They are what make us distinctively human.A reader illustrates how social media not only destroys attention, but also friendships:I want to begin by saying I’m so thankful for having access to your thoughts on a weekly basis. I feel a great deal of comfort and catharsis while listening to the Dishcast, and always admire your compassionate tenor. Your background as a Catholic has challenged some of my narrower preconceptions and helped invigorate a spiritual flame within me that needed nurturing. I was especially intrigued and moved by your conversation with Michael Brendan Dougherty, which I’ve since re-listened to twice.That being said, what has prompted me to write you is, unfortunately, more in the spirit of a lamentation. I usually avoid posting political commentary on social media because the harsh reactions always outweigh whatever good I hope might come of sharing my thoughts. But I nevertheless posted on Instagram a short quote from your latest newsletter, where you plainly (and relatable) describe the escalating cycle of both political fringes pushing us further apart and into illiberalism.As a result, a close friend of mine went off the rails, essentially denouncing any form of compromise and accusing me of being a “centrist.” By some kind of hyper-aggrieved, radical-activist logic, he suggested that I am unwittingly harming gay, trans and other marginalized communities and thereby not a true ally. This was somehow his attempt at giving me a chance to defend myself before being blocked, and we’ve never even spoken about this topic before.I’ve been genuinely depressed since I got his message. Despite being so hurt and sad, I responded as kindly and honestly as I could. I told him I missed seeing him and his wife (my childhood friend). I informed him that, in fact, the writer of the excerpt I posted is himself gay. I said I felt like attacking my character over a benign, non-partisan observation felt unfair and undeserved. I’ve gotten no reply, and when I tried calling a day later, I was sent to voicemail. I can’t help but feel like I’ve been shadow-banned from their lives, which is crushing. This is someone I have only tried to be a good friend to, and who I assumed would defend my character if challenged by a third party. This isn’t even the first friend who has distanced themselves from me as a result of their own submission to the radical left. Yet, these very people never see the irony in claiming that the far-right is the threat we need to fight first and foremost.I suppose all this to say: feeling stuck in the middle is a fucking miserable place to be.It can be. My hope is that the current polarization will unwind at some point so that friendship — defined as the radical acceptance of the other, flaws and virtues — can recover. I wrote a long essay on friendship, the modern decay of an essential human virtue, and how the loss of one of my dearest contemporaries from AIDS deepened my understanding of it. It’s the piece of writing I’m proudest of in my career: the last third of “Love Undetectable.”Another reader feels he doesn’t have a choice but to surrender to the algorithms when it comes to dating:In one of your recent columns, this caught my eye: “say no to Tinder and Grindr.” I’m a 35-year-old straight male who has been avoiding dating apps for a while because I didn’t want to believe that we’ve reached a point where the most basic of human interactions needs technological mediation.But this year I’m giving in. The straight women I interact with all seem to consider dating apps the only acceptable place to meet people. Even bending over backwards to give off the most neutered and #metoo-appropriate vibe you can, if something isn’t purely social, it can be thrown back at you as “predatory.”My gay friends don’t seem to have this problem. Running through my head with straight friends’ relationships that have started during the pandemic, the only one that started without an app was in Colombia, where dating mores are different. The following excerpt from Kate Julian’s Atlantic cover story sums it up perfectly:I mentioned to several of the people I interviewed for this piece that I’d met my husband in an elevator, in 2001. (We worked on different floors of the same institution, and over the months that followed struck up many more conversations — in the elevator, in the break room, on the walk to the subway.) I was fascinated by the extent to which this prompted other women to sigh and say that they’d just love to meet someone that way. And yet quite a few of them suggested that if a random guy started talking to them in an elevator, they would be weirded out. “Creeper! Get away from me,” one woman imagined thinking.On to a dissent, a reader pushes back on me invoking a graph showing how Covid in 2020 didn’t really affect the respiratory mortality for teens age 13-18 but their deaths from alcohol and drugs nearly doubled:Your interpretation misses two key nuances:1) Lockdowns prevented further spread of the virus, especially when it was most dangerous at its onset, in the pre-vaccine world of 2020. The number of youth dying from the virus would have probably been higher without them.2) Drug and alcohol deaths among teens would have probably risen regardless of policy, as a result of a (let’s hope) once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. Countries that had more lenient restrictions still suffered vast reductions in movement and economic activity. At least some of the uptick in youth suffering and deaths was sadly inevitable.Almost two years later, and with much better treatments (including vaccines), it is easy to go full-on “Captain Hindsight” on lockdown policy in 2020. It is legitimate to talk about trade-offs, and less restrictive school policies are probably right. But choosing “let it rip” as a result of intellectually dishonest analysis of the past is neither sound nor prudent.Boris Johnson has many major flaws, but at least he’s the only world leader to regularly make South Park references:Speaking of Boris, a reader enjoyed our episode with Dominic Cummings:While I do agree with the other Dishheads that you were a bit too gentle with him, my dissent centres on his misunderstanding of anti-establishment politics. In Cummings’ view, his grand political project — which to him has many policy virtues and wide public appeal — is sabotaged by Boris Johnson, the unserious, “useless” character leading the charge. To Cummings, it’s just rotten luck that the face of the revolution is such a dope incapable of wrestling with big problems. For someone so obviously intelligent and canny, I’m struck by Cummings’ failure to consider that for many of Boris’ supporters, his manifest unfitness for high office might be the feature, not the bug.Personally, I approve of the economic-left/sociocultural-right agenda; I think it has many virtues and would be politically popular. (It’s also true but unsaid by Cummings that making a general election about Brexit was enormously geographically advantageous, far more so than Brexit’s actual popularity.) But Boris ran against a number of Leaver candidates with similar positions for the Tory leadership. He came out ahead not because of his grasp of these crucial policies, but because he’s unlike any other politician — a theatrical buffoon who satisfies his voters’ anger at the system and tribal desire to spite educated London elites.I think much of the same analysis applies to Trump — I’ve read plenty of commentary lamenting that if only he weren’t so lazy/ignorant/cruel/selfish, then his broader political agenda would be unbeatable. But I think there’s good reason to believe that for some — not all, but a sizable minority, without whom Trumpism would survive — his despicable personal characteristics are entirely the point of supporting him. These voters aren’t crying out for a serious, well-read, honest, responsible politician — they’re pissed off, in some ways understandably so, and an upstanding politician with the same policies just can’t scratch that itch.Politically, I’m all for shaking things up a little — our institutions can certainly use some refreshing and reform. But an anti-establishment agenda based on “blowing up” a “rotten system” is so fundamentally utopian and impractical in a generally well-functioning society like Britain that it simply has to appeal to the alienated and the angry through pure emotion. This is why anti-establishment politics are inextricably linked to charlatans and demagogues, and charlatans and demagogues are generally not serious, thoughtful leaders offering alternative solutions to intractable social and economic problems.Thanks for letting me rant. Long live the Dish.You can always send your rants to dish@andrewsullivan.com. Here’s a reader on the perceived parallels between Johnson and Trump:I found your August 2020 piece “Burning the GOP to the Ground?” interesting. Personally, I’m not sure whether it would be better for the GOP to fade into history or be reformed. The last two decades haven’t really made the case for its existence, if it had, you wouldn’t have needed to write about how it could be reformed. What bothered me though is your Boris blindness, as it has in your columns for NYMag.You talk about people who have taken their party “from the wilderness to something saner.” You then list Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton, Blair, Cameron and Boris as examples. One of these is not like the others and it’s Boris Johnson. All the others started leading their parties in opposition. Blair made the Labour party look less like radical socialists and more centre ground. Cameron cleaned up the Conservatives’ image, making them less like “the nasty party.” They moved their parties to the centre and pushed the radical elements to the fringes. That is what you are arguing a future GOP leader should do, but it is not what Johnson did.Johnson took over from an unpopular incumbent, who faced an even less popular opposition leader in Corbyn. He campaigned on a single issue, Brexit, by promising to get it done. That message was popular, everyone in Britain was (and is) sick of Brexit. But, like Trump in 2016, his win was more down to the electoral system than a popular mandate. The Conservatives had 43.6% of the vote, an improvement of just 1.2% from May’s 2017 roasting. Meanwhile, Labour lost 7.8% of the share. The 80-seat gain isn’t reflective of the change in popular vote but an increasingly unwelcome quirk of FPTP.Johnson’s record in government hasn’t been an exemplar of the values you are advocating. The UK, and England in particular, has not handled the Covid crisis well. The ONS has shown that we Brits had the highest excess death rate in Europe. Despite these exceptional circumstances, the government hasn’t asked for an extension on an already tight schedule for trade talks with the EU. It’s why new opposition leader, Keir Starmer, has gained in popularity at a time when people would be expected to (and for a time, did) rally around the government. Johnson has seemed distant and uninterested in the detail of governing. To his critics, and certainly to me, Johnson has far more in common with Trump than with any of the people you listed.Dismissing an 80-seat majority in the Commons, and bringing into the party legions of working class Labour voters, as merely a feature of an electoral system that is the same as it always has been, seems myopic to me. And my reader’s claims rest on the assumption of a static electorate. As Brexit showed, the political elite completely misread where most Brits were; by championing them, Boris stabilized the system, co-opting and neutralizing the far right, without completely surrendering to them. He then implemented Brexit — which his fellows in the elite tried to stymie. His party base loved him — but unlike Trump, as I explain today, not without conditions.There are parallels, obviously. But this is not like Thatcher-Reagan or Blair-Clinton. That’s my point. I stand by it. The next few weeks may well demonstrate the deep distinction between Boris and the Tories and Trump and the Republicans. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

John Mearsheimer On Handling Russia And China

The question of how to deal with a resurgent Russia and a new super-power in China is now an urgent one to think through. At the Dishcast, we’re going to air various views over the coming months. But I couldn’t think of a better person to kick off this debate than John Mearsheimer, a titan in the field of international relations, and the most eloquent defender of realism in foreign policy I know. We talked yesterday about Putin, Xi, the errors of the post-Cold War triumphalists, and what the hell we should do now. I was riveted. John is never boring, and always clear.For those new to him: Prof. Mearsheimer has taught political science at the University of Chicago since 1982, and before that he served five years in the Air Force as a West Point grad. His latest book is The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Read the full transcript here. For two clips of our conversation — on what the US should do about Putin’s pressure in Ukraine, and how the US accidentally created its greatest rival, China — head over to our YouTube page. That page contains clips from every episode of the Dishcast, including last week’s with Roosevelt Montás:A reader loved the episode:Thank you for the wonderful conversation with Professor Montás. It reawakened the same spirit I had 28 years ago when I walked on the campus of Columbia University as a freshman. I remember being bored by the Iliad, stymied by The Republic, infuriated by Hobbes, and feeling overmatched by Nietzsche and Freud. I often hated the workload and the two-year campaign that asked me to read, think, engage, and discuss with my professors and classmates. But I could never deny that it asked me to do something important and novel: wrestle with the ideas of others. I was not permitted to dismiss them out of hand or avoid the hard work by pointing to false controversy. I had to grapple with difficult ideas and develop the analytical skill and tools of language to explain why an idea did or did not make sense. And the value of that struggle has never left me. Since then, during the two tech-focused decades we have experienced, it’s been easy to forget about ancient wisdom. I have fallen victim to the ever-growing pressure to look to circuits and microchips for new solutions to the problems of life. That effort is futile. In my calmer moments, when I sit in a quiet room, I remember what I learned with those great books, and how to find peace in the effort of seeking truth with the words of those who fought the same battle many centuries and even millennia ago.The episode made me feel like a 19-year-old student again, and that was glorious. In fact, I stopped at a bookstore to buy Augustine’s Confessions before the episode was even over.Excellent. Another reader gently prods me:I so enjoy the Dishcast, largely because of your openness and honesty to share your ideas and opinions that have been informed by rather rough-hewn life experiences and a robust library of worldly books. You are indeed a good friend to humanity. Would it be possible to give a wider breadth to your guests to finish their thoughts, uninterrupted? We get to know you well over the weeks and months of listening to the podcast but we only hear your guests once, usually.  I know. I definitely try to keep out the way — but I also think of these podcasts as conversations rather than interviews, which, sadly, might mean more of me than you want at times. When you’re not in the same room, and there’s a slight gap between your words and your interlocutor’s, it can also be hard to judge when a person has said all they want to. And I also need to keep the chat moving. Another reader looks to our recent episode with Chris Rufo:I’m just now listening to your conversation, but I think there is an unarticulated and very important point yet to be made. Rufo doesn’t seem to realize the extent to which he is himself a poster child for precisely the kind of education that embraces conflicting perspectives. The whole reason why he is so well spoken on issues of CRT is because of the intellectual diversity of his past and the fact he dug so deeply into CRT and modern-day versions of it in K-12 curricula. How could he possibly have become this successful if he hadn’t become a de facto expert on current curriculum trends (with which he disagreed)? Rufo asked in the episode, “What’s wrong with California teaching one thing and Texas teaching another?” The America he imagines is one where half of the country learns one thing, the other half of the country learns another — with little common understanding. Far from leading to productive pluralism, this will instead lead to ideological segregation and a total inability to articulate (and thus engage with) contrary or conflicting positions. This is already happening. For the United States to function well, people need to learn to critically think, engage in productive debate, and not shut out surprising or confronting ideas as “dangerous.” Rufo’s analysis of our current state of affairs is cogent and well worth hearing, but his solution is dead wrong.On my column last week centered on Biden and the Dems’ first year, a reader dissents:You wrote:And how many more columns in the MSM do I have to read by people who believe the next election will be our last if the Republicans win? I remember when Norm Ornstein and Ron Brownstein, for example, were solid pillars of centrist conventional wisdom. Now, they both appear to believe it’s 1933 in Weimar, and without a federal takeover of elections, our democracy is over. Our democracy isn’t over. It’s our liberal democracy that’s under threat, and this kind of morally pure Manicheanism is one reason why.In May 2016, you wrote that the election of Donald Trump would represent an “extinction-level event” for liberal democracy. A few hours after he won office that year, with 47% of the vote (the same percentage Mitt Romney got four years earlier), you wrote that the American people had effectively “repealed” our republic. I think your characterizations of 2016 were right — proven right by a four-year desecration of our institutions culminating in a violent attempt to preserve Trump’s power — but they were, you must admit, breathless characterizations at the time. It is rather churlish of you now to accuse other writers of hyperventilating about 2024, particularly since you must know that they are not worried about just any GOP victory but the prospect that Trump — not, say, Glenn Youngkin or Nikki Haley — will steal the office for real if he gets a second chance. You must know, like them, that this time Trump gave us a good idea of how catastrophic and criminal another Trump administration would be. Indeed you must know that Ornstein, Brownstein, et al., are, like you, writing about Trumpism’s threat to American liberal democracy. What other stripe of democracy could they be talking about?I hate to see that you’ve fallen in line with the MSM’s predictable first-year retro-feeding on the inevitable failures of a new administration. They do this every time: a moist honeymoon in the spring, followed by the sobering shortfalls of daily governance in the fall, followed by dark and wintry wondering at how it all went so wrong in just a year. How many more of those boilerplate columns do we have to endure? This has become such a tired ritual that a new president might get worried if he isn’t showered with correctional clichés from Chuck Todd and Eugene Robinson on his paper anniversary.We ought to remember what Joe Biden ran on and was elected to do: evict Donald Trump from the White House. Pussy Grabber is not president anymore. For now, that is plenty good enough for me. Every Trumpian thing Biden does not do — no more simpering alongside Vladimir Putin in a foreign capital or obstructing justice in plain sight or abusing his office to prop up his tacky insolvent hotels — amounts to a banal success compared to the relentless obscenities of the reality-presidency. We really ought to enjoy this while it lasts.I have never regarded voting access as central to the future of liberal democracy for the simple reason I think it’s way overblown. On Trump, I completely agree, but most of my criticism of Biden has been designed to fend off a Trump revival. Another Biden booster:I’m a big fan of Joe Biden and have been cheering him on during his first difficult year as president. My news is also skewed toward MSNBC and the Washington Post. That’s exactly why I read the Dish, even though most of the time it makes steam come out of my ears. I trust you to give me the other side of the argument, even if it pisses me off, because I know I need to hear it.Having said that, I have a couple of comments on your take on Biden’s press conference. You seem to dismiss a little too cavalierly what’s going on with voter suppression/nullification in this country. You’re correct in pointing out that the nullification part is a much more serious problem, but I disagree that simply reforming the Electoral Count Act will fix the problem. The Republicans have figured out that in order to stack the deck in their favor, they need to replace local non-partisan election officials with people who believe the Big Lie and are willing to give their state legislatures the power to overrule voters. I don’t see how this can be contained without a national statute that sets some kind of minimal standards for how votes are counted. I think that’s what Biden was referring to when he made reference to the legitimacy of future elections — though I agree that this was a mistake, in that it simply made him sound like Trump.I may be wrong. But if anything has changed in elections recently, it’s the mass expansion of the vote and record turnouts that seem more pertinent than voter suppression. And the redistricting process has turned out to be a bit of a wash by most accounts. Another reader suspects Biden is being more canny than conventional wisdom tells us:Joe Biden is a longstanding legislator, with an intuitive understanding of political reality and winning votes. He must recognize that the majority of influential Dems and the majority of his congressional colleagues are considerably to his left. He obviously knows that he cannot pass legislation without either unanimity of Senate Dems or a bipartisan coalition — extraordinarily difficult to achieve in this era. So I suggest that Biden has concluded he is only going to get that unanimity if he begins each legislative goal with an over-the-top package designed to appeal to the Sanders/Warren crowd. The consequent objective failure, each time, then provides him with a brief window during which he can get the left wing of his party to agree to the kind of “consolation prize” that he may have actually wanted in the first place. If I’m correct, his uber-progressive rhetoric is mainly designed to hide his true intent.The benefit of this analysis is that we can test it in this coming year. Another reader expands on one of the main dissents in this week’s issue — that the Democrats’ hands are tied when it comes to smaller pieces of legislation:Manchin is correct that enacting a few permanent programs is preferable to passing a large number that will expire at a time when in all probability the GOP will control at least one and probably both houses of Congress. At that point, they wouldn’t even have to act to kill the programs — just let them expire. In hindsight it’s clear that Biden should have called Manchin’s bluff and accepted his $1.8-trillion-dollar offer on Build Back Better. Then we would have seen if he was bargaining in good faith. It is interesting to note that Manchin has since almost entirely backtracked on this. Two other points: the left did not try to ram through their wish list. They compromised much more than either Manchin or Sinema did. But my main issue with your lambasting of Biden is your casual dismissal of the role of GOP obstructionism. Biden and the Dems entire approach is framed as a response to the playbook McConnell established in 2009. If you remember on healthcare reform, even with a filibuster-proof majority, Senator Baucus (D-Montana) worked for months with Grassley, Snowe, and Enzi only to have them pull the rug out from under him and completely renege. This time, Democrats were not going to be fooled by this running-out-the-clock strategy. This left reconciliation as the only path open to them. The Democrats are very limited and cannot cut BBB into many little pieces if they expect any of it to pass, as this would need 10 Republican votes. You say work with Romney on childcare assistance. I ask you: how many Republican politicians have come out in favor of his proposal? Imagine how many more would sign on if it had Biden’s support. Answer again: 0. Manchin, himself, offered his own version of a much narrower voting rights bill. Stacey Abrams supported this. How many Republicans did? One — Murkowski. By my count, that’s nine short. So, tell me again how Biden is supposed to reach out to these people when they have never shown any inclination to seriously engage on any of these issues. McConnell did allow 13 Republican senators, himself included, to vote for the infrastructure bill, but that seems to have been a ploy to decrease the moderate Democrats’ support for the second, bigger package — and to convince Manchin and the public that bipartisanship is possible. Clearly, McConnell has succeeded. Since then, what has he or any other Republicans done on any individual portion of Build Back Better or voting rights to make you think there are 10 of them willing to join with Democrats for passage? Why are Biden and the Democrats chiefly to blame for this nihilism? Why should we accept that this is business as usual in the Senate when it clearly wasn’t prior to 2009?Yglesias puts a lot of blame at the feet of a craven Chuck Schumer. Let’s hear from a few nonpartisan readers who are wavering on Biden:I voted for Biden, but now I have regrets — not enough to vote for Trump, but maybe somebody else. I’m an independent voter, and the Democratic Party is completely off the rails. No reasonable party should be suggesting to stack the Supreme Court, remove the filibuster, suggest elections might be suspect, pursue McCarthy-style inquiries, attempt to control what people are allowed to say on social media, or let woke minorities alienate whole swaths of the electorate. I’m technically trans, and even I think they’re insane. (I like Dave Chappelle and JK Rowling, so maybe I’m an outlier.)Another writes:Interestingly, President Biden pops up in Reagan’s diaries, where the Gipper refers to him as “pure demagog[ue].” I was surprised when I first read this — lovable Uncle Joe as demagogue? But seeing how he has occasionally behaved as president, particularly in his voting rights speech, it seems Reagan may have been on to something. I’m sharing this more in sorrow than in anger, since I like Biden as a person and deeply want him to succeed as a moderate.Another dissent directed at me:The entire Republican Party continues to either openly support, or refuse to condemn, an attempted coup fomented by a sitting president and enabled by sitting members of Congress, and you’re worried about people saying “Latinx”? We just learned that Trump’s lawyer sent many slates of fake electors to election commissions to challenge the real electors’ legitimacy, and the Republican party isn’t even making pretend noises of outrage. Texas has deputized citizens to inform on their neighbors in the hope of receiving a bounty, and you’re concerned about “woke” language? School districts are making it a crime to teach verified historic facts if knowledge of such facts might make white people “uncomfortable.” Laws to censor the teaching of history that doesn’t comply with the party line (more than an echo of Stalinism) are being passed by Republican legislatures. And yes, the voting laws that are being passed in Republican states will absolutely allow governments to selectively make it harder to vote and selectively easier to reject votes from specific precincts that are likely to vote against the Republican candidate. And you can’t possibly believe they weren’t written to do exactly that! But you diminish the systemic damage these laws will do to the legitimacy of our fragile democracy.I’ve often disagreed with you, but your arguments always felt to me like they came from a place of dispassionate reasoning and an absolute fealty to the classical notions of liberal democracy. But your current attacks on Biden and the Democrats as ideologically far left, coupled with your dismissiveness about the wildly anti-democratic, insurrectionist, obstructionist and just insane conspiracy-theory fueled GOP, doesn’t seem like the result of dispassionate observation and a love of classical notions of liberal democracy. The idea that Biden — a classic Roosevelt Democrat — is the one being pulled too far by an irrational base is just ludicrous.I get my reader’s concerns. I’m agonized over getting the balance right — see my new column. But my reader is mischaracterizing some anti-CRT efforts, although, as I note today, this kind of populist revolt can so easily get out of hand. Another reader notes, “An example of how the Biden administration has moderated its stance on racial issues was Education Secretary Cardona abandoning CRT and the 1619 Project in a new grants program last summer.” Another reader looks across the Pond:It seems to me the simplest and most effective way to enshrine an anti-CRT law that allows full debate on all racial issues would be to craft state or local laws that mirror the directives of Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary in the UK. As laid out here, Zahawi warns UK teachers they should not teach “white privilege” as “established fact.” They can discuss it, but they have to remain neutral in their presentations on the subject.Lastly, a reader looks to the future and how Biden might be able to lead us there:As a center-left independent who voted for Biden and — like you — want him to succeed, it is dismaying to see his multiple failures of omission (capitulation to the far left on nearly all social and policy issues, absenteeism from the bully pulpit) and commission (blowing it on Covid testing, messy Afghanistan exit, hyperbolic voting rights speech in GA, not taking Manchin’s BBB deal). To be fair, his first year featured a number of successes (efficient vaccine rollout, infrastructure bill, actually leaving Afghanistan, fully assisting Congress in the Jan 6 inquiry, prolifically appointing lower court judges).But let’s be honest: if Biden doesn’t massively course correct, not only will the Dems lose the House and possibly the Senate this November, but the country will flounder and fail. We elected Biden to do a job. He is seriously underperforming in this job.Your prescriptions for the actions he should take are spot on. I agree with them all.  But let me offer another, one that overarches everything: Biden needs to formulate a plan to lead us out of the Covid crisis — and then actually lead us out of it. Biden and his team need to develop and clearly message the timetable and milestones to lead us to endemic normalcy. This is within our grasp.Lockdowns, masks, social distancing, flattening the curve to help out the medical system, etc. were logical and essential in 2020. They no longer are. (I say this as a person who believes in science, who is vaxxed and boosted, and has high confidence in Dr. Fauci.) With vaccines, oral drugs, monoclonal antibodies and other treatments, we have the tools to resume normal life. We also have the obligation to demand a resumption of normal life. For those of us who believe in the vaccines — and the evidence proving their efficacy is overwhelming — avoiding public places and masking everywhere is both unnecessary and irrational.  Biden needs to make “return to normalcy” his sole focus in 2022. Trumpers and anti-vaxxers aren’t going to change their minds, so stop whining about their resistance.  Public health experts have only one lens — public health — so don’t let them control all policy decisions. Biden needs to be out front — boldly leading and cheerleading us along the Covid off-ramp. If he doesn’t, Republican politicians will rightly criticize him and the Dems for keeping the country paralyzed in a state of perpetual fear. (This cautionary warning applies to blue-state governors also — looking at you Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Kathy Hochul and Jay Inslee.)Getting from pandemic to endemic is the single most important key to bringing down inflation, rationalizing supply chains, achieving equilibrium in the job market and boosting consumer confidence. We cannot hope to achieve normal on these metrics unless and until everyday life looks and feels normal.Agreed on all counts. I was particularly heartened that after I urged Biden to go to New York City and talk crime with the new mayor, the White House announced just that. Coincidence in all likelihood. But good news nonetheless. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Roosevelt Montás On Saving The Humanities

Montás, who led the humanities-rich Core Curriculum at Columbia for a decade and still teaches there, has a new book out, Rescuing Socrates. We talk of Augustine and Socrates and Freud and Gandhi and the timelessness of the great texts. His book is a kind of response to the notion that these ideas and texts are somehow blighted by “whiteness” — a topic the Dish tackled last year. I loved this conversation — and the relief it gave from contemporary political and cultural obsessions.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Read the full transcript here.  For two clips my conversation with Roosevelt — on why the humanities are in crisis, and on whether the bodily desires of humans make them less free — head over to our YouTube page. Meanwhile, a flood of emails came in over last week’s episode with Chris Rufo, and many of them are below. But first, here’s a suggestion on the difficult question of trans women in sports:Thanks for saying what needs to be said on the trans movement. Yes to critical and compassionate review without demonization!Regarding trans athletes, has anyone suggested setting up a kind weight-class system based on testosterone exposure, a kind of T-Weight? It would use a scientific score of sorts based on a formula developed by a consensus of medical professionals, factoring both current testosterone levels as well as lifetime exposure (or whatever factors are deemed most relevant to athletic performance).Then sports organizations could create T-Weight classes and allow participation universally regardless of gender. Maybe only three classes would really be needed: Heavy, Middle and Light, where Heavy would be dominated by lifetime biological males, light by lifetime females, and medium by a mix. And athletes in lighter classes would also be free to compete in heavier classes.The beauty of this approach is how it’s potentially both inclusive and fair. In fact, one can imagine all kinds of competitions that have been traditionally sorted by gender now including a cavalcade of new participants from across the gender spectrum, opening the door to achievement (and the accompanying rewards) to individuals who would have otherwise not had good opportunities to test and showcase their abilities.Here’s Mara Keisling debating the question with me on the Dishcast last year:This next reader believes we should “consider transgender competition categories”:One of my three daughters transitioned three years ago as a young adult. To this day, her path remains only for the strong of heart and strong of will. That said, she is comfortable that her personhood is now in the proper alignment. I have read with interest your columns on transgender issues and I offer the following observations:1) I am glad our daughter did not begin a discussion of transition until she was in her early 20s. She was fortunate to be in a community where medical, psychological, and social support were available. While my wife and I participated in her decision process, the ultimate decisions were hers and funded by her. Our transition from son to daughter was not easy, but I shudder to consider how much more difficult it would have been if we were shepherding the decision of a teen or pre-teen. These intense dramas should be supported, not inspected. They are not political, they are personal.2) It is time society accepted transgender for itself. Numerous cultures have recognized a third gender or third sex. It has been with us since the dawn of time, just like homosexuality, and it is time we accommodate the genders. Recognizing the transitioning of female to male seems a more recent phenomenon, surely we can accommodate both. If sport is such an issue, consider transgender competition categories … and perhaps it is time we begin thinking about competitions that can be pan-gender.3) You have no idea how incredibly difficult the transition journey is — even for those supported, and many are not. Getting to the other side is only the beginning. Learning to live is a daily challenge. Cis culture seeks to hive you off. Gay culture questions your inclusion. Your own culture is fraught with conflicting definitions.Rather than creating another category of “others,” we need to blend this bright thread into the weave that is us.This next reader, though, argues that exclusion is simply the nature of competitive sports:On the playing field, there are only X number of spots. Someone is always going to be excluded. That might be for a traditional reason (such as not being good enough to be on that particular team) or a novel reason (such as not enjoying an unfair biological advantage). So yes, the “fairness side” is not inclusive in this respect, but for nearly all of us, that’s merely a consequence of applying common sense to the context of sports rather than a projection of bias.Another parent writes, “To the people who think your criticism of wokeness in public school education is alarmist, I offer this example”:I have a 14 year old who currently identifies as non-binary — along with about a third of her 8th grade classmates. I was helping them study for their biology test, going through a series of flashcards with definitions of genetic terms. Two of those flashcards included “AFAB” and “AMAB.” For those uninitiated into the language of trans correctness, these mean “assigned female at birth” and “assigned male at birth.”I’ll leave aside the implications of these labels — that every human being is the victim of cis/patriarchal aggression within hours of being born by being arbitrarily “assigned” a sex. What boggles my mind is the matter-of-factness of these terms being taught in a science class. I could understand a debate about gender and whether it differs from sex. But this class required the students to memorize these terms and tested them on their definitions without discussion or debate or a single shred of scientific evidence to indicate that sex is anything other than a genetically determined trait. (So far as I know, there was no suggestion that having brown eyes or being able to roll your tongue is a social construct … but maybe that’s coming.)Yes, I live in a New England liberal enclave, but I can’t imagine that this isn’t going on in many places and that it isn’t spreading. I also can’t imagine that the eventual backlash to it won’t set back trans acceptance for a long time.Another reason why curriculum transparency matters. The educational elites regard critical race/queer/gender theory as simple reality. They are teaching its precepts as fact. The cost for a single teacher of resisting this kind of ideological indoctrination is severe. Which brings us to the teaching of race in schools and the Rufo episode. Here’s the first of many readers:I was glad to hear you push back a bit against Christopher Rufo and some of his ideas and biases. But I hoped you would push harder, and I was disappointed to hear you say that he might have swayed you a bit.I’m no fan of woke teachers. Back in 2019, I got into a discussion with a teacher in Brooklyn after my 10-year-old daughter had some strange takeaways from school. After a unit on activism (i.e. social justice), she came home thinking that the police had murdered Eric Garner deliberately, randomly, and in cold blood. As her parents, we had been trying to teach her that if she ever got separated from us in the city, she should ask a police officer for help. But if the police are murderers, that makes as much sense as asking a school shooter for a hall pass.My daughter also learned in her class that the Constitution was racist and sexist. She hadn’t, however, learned the purpose of a constitution, nor the significance of the US one in particular. She didn’t know that our Constitution represented the first real attempt at establishing a democracy anywhere in the world in about two millennia. So she didn’t quite understand why the people of the 18th century felt they had to document their racism and sexism like that.So sure, I’m aware that there’s a problem here. But the solution is not to ban specific ideas from being taught. (When has that ever worked?) Because the problem is not CRT. It’s activist teachers, teaching kids what to think, rather than how to think (to use your own words). And I don’t want kids indoctrinated with Rufo’s ideas any more than I want them blindly believing in Robin DiAngelo’s.Rufo even gives you an example of a bad idea he wants kids to learn: that socialism has been proven not to work. I am not a socialist, but it is ridiculous not to allow for the possibility that socialism (not communism) has made a huge, positive contribution in liberal democracies around the world. Countries that out-perform the US on a long list of metrics — public health, education, social mobility, etc. — likely have socialists to thank for that. Places as different as Scandinavia, Israel, India, Brazil and South Africa would arguably have been far worse off without (democratic) socialism in the mix. You don’t have to agree, but don’t ban the idea — not least because most of the really major (and many of the minor) problems of the 20th century seem to arise when you start banning ideas, and when you no longer give people the opportunity to choose between different ideas and try them on. The solution is not to drive ideas underground, to make their proponents iconic, to make their books irresistible to curious rebellious teens. Instead, let’s use school to teach and model the kind of pluralistic, intellectual life we want. We need to make sure that school presents more perspectives and more facts and more opinions — always more opinions. And, importantly, more questions. Mandate that! The trouble is: we can’t mandate that. And Rufo is not suggesting we ban ideas as such. We’re taking about the curriculum in public schools — which is inevitably a question for democratic deliberation. If the education establishment has decided to use public schools for a program of mass indoctrination into neo-Marxian ideology, parents have every right to resist — and to ban that kind of teaching, as they would ban a teacher from instructing students that a particular religion is the sole repository go truth. Another reader argues:CRT has gained a foothold through culture, and culture is going to be the best way to fight it. The idea that it should be fought through government, politics, and bills is misguided, shortsighted, and fundamentally radical and illiberal.  I agree generally. But public schools are already political, their curriculum shaped by public officials subject to democratic accountability. When an illiberal, ideological faction captures the teachers’ unions, the educational establishment, and an entire political party, we have no option but to fight back. Another reader who enjoyed the episode:Rufo’s perspective is one I don’t I listen to often, and I found it interesting — until the discussion called for introspection on his part. The adjective “Marxist,” along with “socialist” and “communist,” has been neutered due to overuse by the American right for decades (the same goes for the label “racist” by the left). If everything proposed by Democrats — the Build Back Better plan, Obamacare, and even the State Children’s Health Insurance Program — is communism, then people can be forgiven for ignoring the word when it's employed correctly. It’s been overused by the American right for so long that it’s lost all impact.Also, I appreciated you trying to get Rufo to see why, despite the overreaches of the American far left, you cannot support the current GOP due to its devotion to Donald Trump. It was disappointing to not hear him express any understanding of that viewpoint. Agreed. The Chris Rufo in the podcast does not seem to be the Chris Rufo of Twitter — but then, that’s arguably a function of Twitter, not Rufo. This next reader is disappointed in me:I tried to give Rufo an objective listen — I really did. But there was nothing he said that wasn’t more of the same anecdotal, breathless hyperbole disguising his desire for a nationwide K-through-college curriculum that the reactionary right approves of and which soothes their feelings, instead of whatever exists in scope and variety now. The easy target of CRT is just the way in.That’s why I very much appreciated this op-ed by a Brooklyn high school student for giving a clear-eyed and honest depiction of her brief engagement with actual CRT — to positive results, no less, and no apparent danger of brainwashing. She makes you and Rufo look like hysterical, ignorant, and enthralled purveyors at the Moral Panic Fair — something you had the presence of mind to wonder aloud at one point during the podcast. In the end, the conversation left out so much and challenged Rufo on so little that it will do nothing but give comfort to those who are passing yet more laws banning whatever they conceive CRT to be — laws you seemed to be against previously, but by your own admission are now open to entertaining. It feels like a shame and a loss.In principle, I don’t want politics to interfere with the classroom. But the other side of this debate has already put politics in the classroom. Another reader worries about a vicious cycle of outrage:I appreciate that you asked Rufo about his (and your) potential role in over-hyping the backlash to CRT, but I wish you pressed him further, especially on moderate lefties: How does he expect to build consensus using polarized language? What do we need to do to make these people feel heard in a democracy that’s as much theirs as his — and then convince them they’re wrong? If he continues to catalogue every example of CRT in curricula, doesn’t he expect people to catalogue every example of Republican over-reach, book banning, speech stifling, et cetera? Where does that gamesmanship end?Your instincts historically have veered toward citizenry rather than activism, to which I say bravo. To repurpose one of Sam Harris’ refrains about the scientific process, when confronted with a breakdown of liberal democracy, we don’t need to abandon it, we need more of it. Now is the time, more than ever, to double down on what your friend Jonathan Rauch’s Constitution of Knowledge. The answers lie in his pages, not in Rufo’s.Jon Rauch and Pete Wehner have an excellent op-ed this week on the illiberal dangers on the left and the right, but they insist, “What’s Happening on the Left Is No Excuse for What’s Happening on the Right.” I agree with them. But they also recognize the scale of the attempt to indoctrinate a generation in new-Marxian ideas:The progressive movement, then, is increasingly under the sway of a totalistic, unfalsifiable and revolutionary ideology that rejects fundamental liberal values like pluralism and free inquiry. And conservatives aren’t hallucinating about its influence.Are liberals and conservatives supposed to just let this happen? From a soon-to-be parent in Tennessee:I’m not particularly fond of figures like Robin DiAngelo and others, and I find their influence to be more than a little frustrating, and the historical distortions of the 1619 Project were troubling. At the same time, I found Rufo’s account of the way that “they” are pushing CRT to be little more than a conspiracy theory, and at times, he seemed to be lumping all diversity efforts in with some vague and nefarious cultural Marxist plot.I live in Nashville, and my partner and I are about to have a baby. She’s black, and I’m white. In my state, there are groups that are actively using an anti-CRT law to stop students from learning about Ruby Bridges and the March on Washington. I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that if my daughter is going to learn about the history of civil rights, she may to have to learn it at home. It’s not the end of the world (and it may not go down that way), but it’s deeply troubling, and in light of this state’s history, a bit scary. Moreover, if the worst thing that happens is they don’t teach much of the history of civil rights in school, what will it say to students who see themselves represented in that history?Rufo seems to want the equivalent of CRT coming from the right rather than genuine liberal education. His claims that the state is already involved in educational decisions are no doubt true, but when these decisions are wrested away from professionals, you end up with bills than mandate the teaching of the Abraham Lincoln-Frederick (that is, not Stephen) Douglas debates (as we saw in Virginia recently). It’s also bound up with a politics that situates whites as victims that’s also troubling. Rufo may have a point now and again, but his claims should also be seen in the context of Steve Bannon’s declarations that the path back to power leads through the school boards. I can’t help but wonder if Rufo’s dubious ideas about a conspiracy to push CRT is playing into to far right’s will-to-power and is even more illiberal than his presentation would suggest.I’d be lying if I weren’t concerned about this. Kmele is worried as well. Let’s hear from a more conservative reader:Your conversation with Rufo left out the most important reason that upper-class liberal readers of the NYT passively choose to follow CRT. It’s because the NYT and other prestige publications have spent the past 20 years telling their readers that conservatives/Republicans are selfish moral monsters, and the only reasons anyone could be a conservative is because he is 1) selfish, 2) stupid, 3) crazy. Those readers have spent so long imbibing the notion that conservatives are monsters that they cannot countenance being on the same side of what they believe is a moral issue. As such, those liberals are left with two choices: believe in the CRT rhetoric (primarily by not inquiring too closely on specifics), or complain quietly among themselves but outwardly express support for CRT and deride those opposed as bigots. I’ll give you quick example from my family. My wife’s parents fall squarely into the NYT demographic. When the Brearley letter came out last year, we had a conversation with a family friend who had graduated from Brearley and was about to send her daughter there. She was hesitating over the CRT influence there. When I mentioned that if the classical liberals would ally with the conservatives at the school, they could add their numbers to the significant groups that conservatives had built on the issue and likely reverse the CRT trend. My family’s reaction was shocking. Because racism is considered a moral issue, those at the table would rather not change anything than be seen on the same side as conservatives. The idea of common cause, even when there is agreement on the appropriate ends, is considered beyond the pale. Until the blanket moral superiority between the parties is broken, common sense and majority opinion can’t win out in policy.Very well put. Polarization helps the extremes control the two sides. Liberalism disappears in the middle. What many on the left miss, in my opinion, is that democracy is not at stake in America. Liberal democracy is. Another reader recommends a podcast episode with a great liberal figure:I happened to listen to your conservation with Rufo right after this episode of Pod Save America, which comes from the very progressive Crooked Media and Jon Favreau, Obama’s former speechwriter. But the conversation is anything but what you’d expect. The story of the show’s guest, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is one that I hadn’t heard before. She was basically lambasted on social media by two of her former students as supporting murder of trans women for saying that “trans women are trans women.” She wrote an essay about the experience, and how awful it was for years afterwards. Favreau went at the issue as gently as possible (as one would expect from a progressive point of view), but they hit all the points you’ve been making for a while about the coded language, the unforgiving nature of the righteous left, the inability to debate or think, etc. It gave me great hope to hear this type of discussion in that forum, given who the likely audience is, and given Adichie’s self proclaimed feminism and obvious commitment to thinking, writing, and storytelling, which is not possible when everything is doctrinaire.Anyway, like many of your readers I often get sick of your continued harping on the CRT stuff from the left, but that’s partially because I’m dumb enough to follow you on Twitter. Given your history, you’re probably ahead of the curve on how truly dangerous all of this is for a liberal society. We need the Dems to not get co-opted by their illiberal crazies the way the Republicans did. Otherwise there’s really no hope for most of us who don’t fall into either extreme.From a teacher in New Hampshire who sides with Rufo:As someone who rejects the Kendi/DeAngelo/Crenshaw/NHJ etc. approach to race,  I have found the whole thing to be incredibly alarming and frustrating. We do need these laws in place, and I would like to explain why.As you brilliantly wrote a few months ago, focusing on the term “critical race theory” is a mistake. It allows the purveyors of the race-focused ideology to deny what they are trying to do by accurately claiming that arcane law school theory is not being taught in middle school. What is more accurate is your analogy comparing what is happening to going to a Catholic school. As someone who spent the first 16 years of my education in Catholic schools, it is true that we did not debate transubstantiation in elementary school — but the nuns made damned sure that we understood a “right” way to live and a “wrong” way to live.I wholeheartedly agree with you that we do not want to hinder in any way a true “liberal education.” But that is not what many of my public school colleagues are interested in. They want to teach these racial ideas as facts — not theories. That’s the crux of the issue. For many of them — products of elite educational institutions and/or teacher colleges — these things are not theories, they are obvious matters of fact. The United States is a fundamentally racist country founded on racism. White people all have unjust privileges of which they must be constantly aware and atone for. Everything (a la Kendi) is connected to race in some way. And on and on.So the wailing and gnashing of teeth over these “CRT laws” here in New Hampshire by the usual suspects rings hollow to me. Frankly, they lie about it.  They claim that proponents of these laws want to block an “honest discussion” of history and race. That is 100% false. The reason they are upset is that they are being told to teach not preach.One thing I would have asked Rufo about is the money angle as it relates to CRT/DEI. A massive (and very profitable) industry around selling “training” materials and consulting has blossomed, and these laws are cutting off the gravy train.I’m with this reader, I have to say. The right did not create this crisis in education; they are reacting to it. Lastly, a reader highlights a group trying to find a middle ground:I agree with much of what you say, but in the conversation with Rufo I think you both make a fundamental mistake. He says states should be able to teach CRT or a patriotic emphasis, depending on the popular will of each state. You say teach both, to get students to think critically. I agree that critical thinking is important, but so is getting elementary/secondary students to attach to and willing to support democratic principles and practices. So every state should present the story and history and importance of these values. To that end, a broad group of Californian educators has formed Californians for Civic Learning to advocate for the inclusion of more robust civic education while avoiding the extremes of left and right. Read about the group here and here. Educators who wish to teach civics and controversial issues in these turbulent times need support.Worth a read. And a huge thanks to all the readers who wrote in. The pod page has become more of an op-ed page, curated and edited by Chris Bodenner. Send us your arguments, links and stories and we will do our best to feature them: dish@andrewsullivan.com. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.