Catherine Abel
via:

In Praise of Shadows

What incredible pains the fancier of traditional architecture must take when he sets out to build a house in pure Japanese style, striving somehow to make electric wires, gas pipes, and water lines harmonize with the austerity of Japanese rooms—even someone who has never built a house for himself must sense this when he visits a teahouse, a restaurant, or an inn. For the solitary eccentric it is another matter, he can ignore the blessings of scientific civilization and retreat to some forsaken corner of the countryside; but a man who has a familiy and lives I the city cannot turn his back on the necessities of modern life—heating, electric lights, sanitary facilities— merely for the sake of doing things the Japanese way. The purist may rack his brain over the placement of a single telephone, hiding it behind the staircase or in a corner of the hallway, wherever he thinks it will least offend the eye. He may bury the wires rather than hang them in the garden, hide the switches in a closet or cupboard, run the cords behind a folding screen. Yet for all his ingenuity, his efforts often impress us as nervous, fussy, excessively contrived. For so accustomed are we to electric lights that the sight of a naked bulb beneath an ordinary mild glass shade seems simpler and more natural than any gratuitous attempt to hide it. Seen at dusk as one gazes out upon the countryside from the window of a train, the lonely light of a bulb under an old-fashioned shade, shining dimly from behind the white paper shoji of a thatch-roofed farmhouse, can seem positively elegant. [...]

Whenever I sit with a bowl of soup before me, listening to the murmur that penetrates like the faroff shrill of an insect, lost in contemplation of flavors to come, I feel as if I were being drawn into a trance. The experience must be something like that of the tea master who, at the sound of the kettle, is taken from himself as if upon the sigh of the wind in the legendary pines of Onoe. 

It has been said of Japanese food that it is a cuisine to be looked at rather than eaten. I would go further and say that it is to be meditated upon, a kind of silent music evoked by the combination of lacquerware and the light of a candle flickering in the dark. Natsume Sōseki, in Pillow of Grass, praises the color of the confection yōkan; it is not indeed a color to call forth meditation? The cloudly translucence, like that of jade; the faint, dreamlike glow that suffuses it, as if it had drunk into its very depths the light of the sun; the complexity and profundity of the color— nothing of the sort is to be found in Western candies. How simple and insignificant cream-filled chocolates seem by comparison. And when yōkan is served in a lacquer dish within whose dark recesses its color is scarcely distinguishable, then it is most certainly an object for meditation. You take its cool, smooth substance into your mouth, and it is as if the very darkness of the room were melting on your tongue; even undistinguished yōkan can then take on a mysteriously intriguing flavor. 

In the cuisine of any country efforts no doubt are made to have the food harmonize with the tableware and the walls; but with Japanese food, a brightly lighted room and shining tableware cut the appetite in half. The dark miso soup that we eat every morning is one dish from the dimly lit houses of the past. I was once invited to a tea ceremony where miso was served; and when I saw the muddy, claylike color, quiet in a black lacquer bowl beneath the faint light of a candle, this soup that I usually take without a second thought seemed somehow to acquire a real depth, and to become infinitely more appetizing as well. Much the same may be said of soy sauce. In the Kyoto-Osaka region a particularly thick variety of soy is served with raw fish, pickles, and greens; and how rich in shadows is the viscous sheen of the liquid, how beautifully it blends with the darkness. White foods too—white miso, bean curn, fish cake, the white meat of fish—lose much of their beauty in a bright room. And above all there is rice. A glistening black lacquer rice cask set off in a dark corner is both beautiful to behold and a powerful stimulus to the appetite. Then the lid is briskly lifted, and this pure white freshly boiled food, heaped in its black container, each and every grain gleaming like a pearl, sends forth billows of warm steam—here is a sight no Japanese can fail to be moved by. Our cooking depends upon shadows and is inseparable from darkness. 

I possess no specialized knowledge of architecture, but I understand that in the Gothic cathedral of the West, the roof is thrust up and up so as to place its pinnacle as high in the heavens as possible—and that herein is thought to lie its special beauty. In the temples of Japan, on the other hand, a roof of heavy tiles is first laid out, and in the deep, spacious shadows creates by the eaves the rest of the structure is built. Nor is this true only of temples; in the palaces of the nobility and the houses of the common people, what first strikes the eye is the massive roof of tile or thatch and the heavy darkness that hangs beneath the eaves. Even at midday cavernous darkness spreads over all beneath the roof’s edge, making entryway, doors, walls, and pillars all but invisible. The grand temples of Kyoto—Chion’in, Honganji—and the farmhouses of the remote countryside are alike in this respect: like most buildings of the past their roofs give the impression of possessing far greater weight, height, and surface than all that stands beneath the eaves. 

In making for ourselves a place to live, we first spread a parasol to throw a shadow on the earth, and in the pale light of the shadow we put together a house. There are of course roofs on Western houses too, but they are less to keep off the sun than to keep off the wind and the dew; even from without it is apparent that they are built to create as few shadows as possible and to expose the interior to as much light as possible. If the roof of a Japanese house is a parasol, the roof of a Western house is no more than a cap, with as small a visor as possible so as to allow the sunlight to penetrate directly beneath the eaves. There are no doubt all sorts of reasons—climate, building materials—for the deep Japanese eaves. The fact that we did not use glass, concrete, and bricks, for instance, made a low roof necessary to keep off the driving wind and rain. A light room would no doubt have been more convenient for us, too, than a dark room. The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends. 

And so it has come to be that the beauty of a Japanese room depends on a variation of shadows, heavy shadows against light shadows—it has nothing else. Westerners are amazed at the simplicity of Japanese rooms, perceiving in them no more than ashen walls bereft of ornament. Their reaction is understandable, but it betrays a failure to comprehend the mystery of shadows. Out beyond the sitting room, which the rays of the sun can at best but barely reach, we extend the eaves or build on a veranda, putting the sunlight at still greater a remove. The light from the garden steals in but dimly through paper-paneled doors, and it is precisely this indirect light that makes for us the charm of a room. We do our walls in neutral colors so that the sad, fragile, dying rays can sink into absolute repose. The storehouse, kitchen, hallways, and such may have a glossy finish, but the walls of the sitting room will almost always be of clay textured with fine sand. A luster here would destroy the soft fragile beauty of the feeble light. We delight in the mere sight of the delicate glow of fading rays clinging to the surface of a dusky wall, there to live out what little life remains to them. We never tire of the sight, for to us this pale glow and these dim shadows far surpass any ornament. And so, as we must if we are not to disturb the glow, we finish the walls with sand in a single neutral color. The hue may differ from room to room, but the degree of difference in color as in shade, a difference that will seem to exist only in the mood of the viewer. And from these delicate differences in the hue of the walls, the shadows in each room take on a tinge particularly their own. 

Of course the Japanese room does have its picture alcove, and in it a hanging scroll and a flower arrangement. But the scroll and the flowers serve not as ornament but rather to give depth to the shadows. We value a scroll above all for the way it blends with the walls of the alcove, and thus we consider the mounting quite as important as the calligraphy or painting. Even if the greatest masterpiece will lose its worth as a scroll if it fails to blend with the alcove, while a work of no particular distinction may blend beautifully with the room and set off to unexpected advantage both itself and its surroundings. Wherein lies the power of otherwise ordinary work to produce such an effect? Most often the paper, the ink, the fabric of the mounting will possess a certain look of antiquity, and this look of antiquity will strike just the right balance with the darkness of the alcove and room. 

We have all had the experience, on a visit to one of the great temples of Kyoto or Nara, of being shown a scroll, one of the temple’s treasures, hanging in a large, deeply recessed alcove. So dark are these alcoves, even in bright daylight, that we can hardly discern the outlines of the work; all we can do is listen to the explanation of the guide, follow as best we can the all-but-invisible brush strokes, and tell ourselves how magnificent a painting it must be. Yet the combination of that blurred old painting and the dark alcove is one of absolute harmony. The lack of clarity, far from disturbing us, seems rather to suit the painting perfectly. For the painting here is nothing more than another delicate surface upon which the faint, frail light can play; it performs precisely the same function as the sand-textured wall. This is why we attach such importance to age and patina. A new painting, even one done in ink monochrome or subtle pastels, can quite destroy the shadows of an alcove, unless it is selected with the greatest care. 

A Japanese room might be likened to an inkwash painting, the paper-paneled shoji being the expanse where the ink is thinnest, and the alcove where it is the darkest. Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway. The “mysterious Orient” of which Westerners speak probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places. And even we as children would feel an inexpressible chill as we peered into the depths of an alcove to which the sunlight had never penetrated. Where lies the key to this mystery? Ultimately it is the magic of shadows. Were the shadows to be banished from its corners, the alcove would in that instant revert to mere void. 

This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament. The technique seems simple, but was by no means so simply achieved. We can imagine with little difficulty what extraordinary pains were taken with each invisible detail—the placement of the window in the shelving recess, the depth of the crossbeam, the height of the threshold. But for me the most exquisite touch is the pale white glow of the shoji in the sturdy bay; I need only pause before it and I forget the passage of time. 

The sturdy bay, as the name suggests, was originally a projecting window built to provide a place for reading. Over the years it came to be regarded as no more than a source of light for the alcove; but most often it serves not so much to illuminate the alcove as to soften the sidelong rays from without, to filter them through paper panels. There is a cold and desolate tinge to the light by the time it reaches these panels. The little sunlight from the garden that manages to make its way beneath the eaves and through the corridors has by then lost its power to illuminate, seems drained of the complexion of life. It can do no more than accentuate the whiteness of the paper. I sometimes linger before these panels and study the surface of the paper, bright, but giving no impression of brilliance. 

In temple architecture the main room stands at a considerable distance from the garden; so dilute is the light there that no matter what the season, on fair days or cloudy, morning, midday, or evening, the pale, white glow scarcely varies. And the shadows at the interstices of the ribs seem strangely immobile, as if dust collected in the corners had become a part of the paper itself. I blink in uncertainty at this dreamlike luminescence, feeling as though some misty film were blunting my vision. The light from the pale white paper, powerless to dispel the heavy darkness of the alcove, is instead repelled by the darkness, creating a world of confusion where dark and light are indistinguishable. Have not you yourselves sensed a difference in the light that suffuses such a room, a rare tranquility not found in ordinary light? Have you never felt a sort of fear in the face of the ageless, a fear that in that room you might lose all consciousness of the passage of time, that untold years might pass and upon emerging you should find you had grown old and gray?

by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, (Leete’s Island Books, 1977) |  Read more:

Image: Wikipedia

[ed. When I realized this famous Tanizaki essay was published in 1933, I thought surely it must be out of copyright by now. And here it is. From Wikipedia:]

***

In Praise of Shadows (陰翳礼讃, In'ei Raisan) is an essay by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki about Japanese aesthetics. Tanizaki's observations include cultural notes on customs and tradition, people, historical places and buildings, discussion of various materials and craft techniques, as well as food and even unusual recipes as seen through the author's metaphorical lens of light and shadow. [...]

The essay consists of 16 sections that discuss traditional Japanese aesthetics in contrast with change. Comparisons of light with darkness are used to contrast Western and Asian cultures. The West, in its striving for progress, is presented as continuously searching for light and clarity, while the subtle and subdued forms of East Asian art and literature are seen by Tanizaki to represent an appreciation of shadow and subtlety, closely relating to the traditional Japanese concept of sabi. In addition to contrasting light and dark, Tanizaki further considers the layered tones of various kinds of shadows and their power to reflect low sheen materials like gold embroidery, patina and cloudy crystals. In addition, he distinguishes between the values of gleam and shine.

The text presents personal reflections on topics as diverse as architecture and its fittings, traditional crafts, finishes, jade, food, cosmetics and mono no aware (the art of impermanence). Tanizaki explores in close description the use of space in buildings, lacquerware by candlelight, monastery toilets and women in the dark of a brothel. The essay acts as "a classic description of the collision between the shadows of traditional Japanese interiors and the dazzling light of the modern age".

Bridesmaid Boxes - the Influencer-ification of the Bridal Party

Bachelorette parties and bridesmaid proposal boxes look increasingly like brand trips and PR mailers.

It had started with four words — “Will you marry me?” — which led Alaina to make a proposal of her own. About three months after her fiancé got down on one knee, a “complete surprise on an otherwise regular Sunday afternoon,” holding an elongated cushion-cut diamond, Alaina posed a question of her own. Five words this time, and six gift bags.

Each bag was tied together with a personalized silk ribbon that read each bridesmaid-to-be’s name and was filled with custom-monogrammed makeup, toiletries, travel perfumes (Kilian Paris’s Love, Don’t Be Shy), and other goodies you’d find stocked at Sephora — and some you wouldn’t, like mini-shooters and Crate & Barrel glasses. Inside, a note on beautiful cardstock made the same request, verbalized to her lifelong friends: “Will you be my bridesmaid?”

They had taken her only about three hours to complete. And about $345 — per box.

For Alaina, it was a reasonable price “given that these women have been with me for my whole life, and they’ll be spending a similar amount to attend the wedding festivities,” the 28-year-old says. Her inspiration for these ceremonial boxes, and what to include inside, was “Instagram, of course.”

The internet is awash with these so-called bridesmaid proposal boxes, a now-ceremonial way of asking the person who loved you through every season of life, through every bad ex and bad haircut, to stand beside you on your big day — wrapped in tissue paper or embossed with a custom monogram. Each bag is seeded with photogenic products like full-size Nécessaire bodywashes, expensive lip oils, and silk pillowcases. Sometimes, during a scroll, you’ll even catch a box with Maison Margiela Replica candles ($72) that match the scent, or vibe, of the wedding each of the girls is enlisted to participate in.

It stretches beyond the proposal box, too, as bachelorette parties now have welcome bags and curated itineraries. It all feels like a sliver of influencer culture unsurprisingly encroaching on the wedding universe: These moments are looking more sponsored than bridal.

Charissa, a 36-year-old New York–based bride-to-be, says that’s exactly the point: for these gift bags to feel like a brand present or mailer. Charissa gave her six bridesmaids Moët & Chandon and handwritten notes (done by an Etsy calligrapher for $30 per note, wax seal and all) during such pre-wedding events because she wanted the experience to feel elevated, like something you’d get at a luxury hotel. Like something you’d see brides doing for their girls on Instagram.

“I never felt like I had to do it — I wanted to,” she says, adding that if her friends are spending money to celebrate her, she wants to spoil them in return with a curated experience.

For some brides, the bridesmaid proposal box is simply the first installment in a fully branded wedding universe, one that begins long before invitations go out. What starts with a proposal to join the bride at the altar often extends into the destination bachelorette party, where trips come with themes (“Palms and Prosecco,” “Million-Dollar Cowgirl”) because it’s no longer enough to just go to Palm Springs or Jackson Hole. You now have to play into the larger concept, too.

That often means a chunk of the cost quietly falls to the bridesmaids. Sometimes it’s buying entirely new outfits to dress for the theme; other times it’s funding it outright. “There’s, like, a fully cohesive aesthetic rollout before a trip even begins,” says Mallory, 28, a Chicago-based attendee of four weddings this year — three of which she’s in. As a result, she’s become “deeply” familiar with personalization sites like Minted and Zazzle, where bridesmaids create custom branding for the weekend. “Custom logos are printed on everything: Champagne bottles, menus, posters, itineraries,” she says, which can sometimes total anywhere from $250 to $300 for a bride who is all in. “And the other times when the brides pay for it, we’re still expected to match the theme.”

Kate, 31, says she had “already shelled out thousands for the bride’s plane ticket to St. Pete for her bachelorette, plus meals and a chartered boat,” but what really sent her over the edge was the “$80 Venmo request from the maid of honor for matching ‘Bride Tribe’ sunglasses, T-shirts, and palm-tree earrings.” She adds that she never agreed to the Amazon and Shein orders but was charged anyway.

At least the bride is expected to reward such falling in line. At a bachelorette party’s rented Airbnb, you can expect balloons and matching PJs she’s laid on the bed for her girls; L.L.Bean totes stuffed with costly lip balm or eye masks. Mason Pearson brushes are in the bathroom — or, if the budget doesn’t stretch that far, Wet Brushes will do. An embroidered cowboy hat for their arrival in Aspen; matching Alo sets for a group workout no one particularly asked for. “That’s $397.90 per girl,” one TikTok commenter points out in a video of one of these tote bags with similar-style products. [...]

If you can’t charter a private plane to St. Barts like influencer Danielle Pheloung, better known as @acquiredstyle, for her “Acquired a Husband” bachelorette, the very least you can do, according to TikTok, is DM brands for freebies. This usually looks like brides or bridesmaids directly messaging businesses or PR contacts on Instagram with a quick pitch (“We’re planning a bachelorette trip — would love to try your product”) in hopes of getting gifted items in exchange for tags or social posts. “I reached out to 425 companies to ask for PR,” says @endo.adeno.girlie in one of many viral videos explaining how to do it, telling her followers which specific brands will send free products. Videos like hers follow a simple logic: The more products you can get for free, the less likely anyone is to get hit with a moan-inducing post-bachelorette Venmo request. Michelle, 29, calls herself a “failed maid of honor” because her group didn’t cold-email enough brands for freebies after watching TikToks that explained how to score sponsored Liquid IV packets and hangover kits in exchange for social-media exposure. [...]

Lindsay, 28, a Michigan-based bride who is getting married in August, says she “understands” how it’s easy to get carried away; when you’re freshly engaged, you want every moment to feel as big as the proposal or the wedding. “I don’t regret it, no,” she says, looking back at the Dutch chocolates and silk pillowcases that she gifted to each bridesmaid. The bridesmaid proposal is something she will remember forever, because she was able to present the boxes at a girls’ lunch, with a table reserved for the most important people in her life. “But it does add up fast. And now, with hindsight, I realize I could’ve maybe budgeted it differently.”

by Morgan Sullivan, The Cut |  Read more:

Image: The Cut/Getty

[ed. Influencer-ification. How to take a nice ceremony and turn it into a (more) stress-filled nightmare.]

How Everthing Became Left or Right “Coded”

In America today, there are conservative and liberal jeans (Levi Strauss versus Wrangler), beer (Heineken versus Coors), and footwear (Birkenstocks versus cowboy boots). The MAGA movement itself is seen as tied to Kid Rock and eating steak.

In an era when partisan division is so febrile that acceptance of political violence has grown and violent political attacks are on the rise — the Charlie Kirk assassination being the latest of great note — it is hard to remember that it wasn’t always so.

As recently as the 1950s, Americans were politically calm — so calm that a committee of the American Political Science Association urged the two parties to accentuate their differences, to provide a “true choice.” In 1964, Barry Goldwater campaigned for president as the Republican who would provide “a choice, not an echo” and was badly defeated for his pains. Some political scientists applauded the political apathy of the era as both a sign of popular satisfaction and a shock absorber for the system. Four generations on, there seems to be too much party difference and too little political apathy.

Why have we gotten to a place where even open-toed sandals are left-wing?

Simple answers might point to combative politicians, President Donald Trump above all, to aggressive social movements like the Tea Party and Black Lives Matter, or to changes in the media such as the rise of cable television and then online feeds like Facebook and TikTok. But the key dynamic, many researchers have found, is the increasing proportion of Americans for whom political affiliation is central to their identities — to what they think, to what they feel, to who they feel they are.

I need to stop right here: This assertion does not directly apply to most Americans. In 2024, only 30 percent of Americans described themselves as “strong” Democrats or Republicans (only about half even claimed a political party). The largest chunk of Americans are not partisans. About politics, they care little, talk little, consume little, and know little — and they vote little (although when they vote they determine who holds power, the partisans being evenly divided).

Still, the politicization of so many Americans matters even for the apolitical. The latter are the audience for the political theater — which Americans find “exhausting” — and when they do vote, usually only every four years, they are presented with polarized options. For the nation as a whole, it means less constructive cooperation and more animosity and anger. 

Still, the politicization of so many Americans matters even for the apolitical. The latter are the audience for the political theater — which Americans find “exhausting” — and when they do vote, usually only every four years, they are presented with polarized options. For the nation as a whole, it means less constructive cooperation and more animosity and anger. [...]

A different story of political polarization

But politicization entails much more than the parties dividing on policies. Politicization has now gone beyond shaping many Americans’ stances on issues or even their cultural tastes, to shaping who they are — whom they date (and marry and befriend), what communities they join, what religious faiths they profess, what life-and-death choices they make.

In the last several decades or so, more Americans have sorted or changed their views on many disparate policies — for instance, on immigration, abortion, war, climate, gender, and crime — to better fit with their identities as Democrats or Republicans. Views on abortion, so deeply tied to one’s moral intuitions, provide a dramatic example. In the early 1970s, Republicans were about as likely as Democrats to agree in the NORC/University of Chicago General Social Survey that it should be possible for “a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if she is married and does not want any more children.” Fifty years later, overall American opinion had not changed, but Republican support for such abortions had dropped by about 20 percentage points and Democratic support had increased by about 15 points; abortion had become a defining party issue. Similarly, in 1997 members of the two parties had, as recorded by a Gallup poll, the same level of concern about whether the effects of global warming had begun; by 2021, there was a 53-point gap between increasingly worried Democrats and increasingly sanguine Republicans.

One way this polarization could happen is that people switched parties to fit their evolving views on subjects such as abortion or the climate. Some of that surely happened. But much research shows that people as or more often switched their views to fit their political identity. This shows up in studies that follow people over several years and find that people often change their positions on a substantive topic after they first change their political affiliation, having adopted the new affiliation perhaps because of political events unrelated to that topic or because of new personal circumstances such as a marriage, a new job, or a new neighborhood. In other words, to follow the abortion example, many became Republicans (perhaps because of racial beliefs or new friends) and then became pro-life.

Increasingly, even survey respondents’ reports of what is real, such as whether the economy is getting better or worse or whether inequality is growing, vary by party. Party has become so important that opinions on how much racial discrimination exists now differ more between Democrats and Republicans than between Black people and white people; views of income inequality differ more by party than by individuals’ incomes.

Political position has come, for more Americans, to connect with all sorts of tastes far beyond government policy— e.g., listening to Kid Rock or Beyoncé, going to museums or playing golf, watching Curb Your Enthusiasm or Antiques Roadshow. Consumption as political signaling — for example, coffee branded by political affiliation — has been vividly demonstrated in (my own) Berkeley, California: First, high rates of Tesla ownership displaying climate liberalism (as well as displaying a healthy bank account), and then high rates of protests against Tesla, displaying DOGE-fighting liberalism.

Some of this politicization might be dismissed as simply posturing, owning the libs, or what pollsters call “expressive responding.” But the politicization goes deeper than that.

Party affiliation seems to increasingly determine, and not just reflect, Americans’ important personal decisions. Much of the discussion about “affective polarization” — that more Democrats and Republicans nowadays actually hate the other side — started with a study reporting that more Americans were displeased in 2010 than were in 1960 with the prospect of gaining a son- or daughter-in-law of a different party. Years later, many single Americans rule out dating someone with differing political views.

A 2020 survey found that about half of both Democrats and Republicans have intimate social networks made up exclusively of people who share their politics. Survey respondents often see more agreement with the people in their lives than actually exists, but nonetheless, this homogeneity is substantial and has increased. (Social homogeneity, in turn, encourages partisanship and hostility.)

Such political homogeneity results in part from who individuals choose to spend time with and who they choose to avoid. Strong partisans prefer to be with the like-minded and to avoid conversations with the unlike-minded. And they tend to drop friends (not so much family) who disagree with them politically. By one estimate, 15 percent of Americans “have ended a friendship over politics.” Political homogeneity also results in part from the influence of family, friends, and neighbors to conform to their views.

Political identity affects people in less explicit ways, too. Americans have increasingly segregated themselves geographically — not primarily because they are seeking neighbors who are fellow party members, although some of that is going on, but because the reasons people move — or decide not to move — increasingly connect with party. Those, for example, who like large houses and big yards tend to end up in red neighborhoods, while those who like to walk to local amenities tend to end up in blue neighborhoods. Both ways, party and neighborhood have become more linked. A 2021 study concluded that many “voters live with virtually no [local] exposure to voters from the other party.”

Yet more striking, Americans have increasingly lined up what they profess religiously to fit what they profess politically. Religion and politics have long been entangled in the United States — in 19th-century fights over alcohol prohibition, Sunday postal service, and which version of the Bible should be read in public schools, for instance; this was Americans’ faith driving their politics. For about 30 years now, politics have been joining with religion and, importantly, political identity is driving expressions of faith.

It first became clear in the 2000s that those identifying as Democrats, liberals, and moderates were leaving organized religion and describing themselves as having no religion (as “nones”) in great part as a reaction against what they saw as the conservative politicization of the church, especially on lifestyle issues.

Then, evidence in the last decade or so accumulated that more conservatives were starting to profess faith, especially evangelical faith, probably for mirror-image reasons: to reject the secularism associated with liberal positions such as supporting gender transition. Ryan Burge, the dynamo researcher of Graphs about Religion, suggested to me that the recent leveling off of the growth of “nones” might be explained by conservatives’ view that non-affiliation had “become so linked to left-wing politics.” These conservatives “are functionally non-religious… but they still can’t bear to not ID as Christian on a survey.” That political affiliation has come to alter a significant number of Americans’ religious identities is profound testimony to the politicization of many Americans’ lives.

And then there is politics’ connection to life-and-death decisions. As might be expected, left and right differ on many health-related matters — childhood vaccines, cancer preventatives, and the dangers of tackle football, for example. But left and right also differ in health behavior, from diet, such as how much meat people eat, to exercise. One result is that residents of red counties more often tend to be obese than residents of blue counties, even taking into account race, poverty, and education.

The most tragic example was the Covid-19 pandemic. People in red states, where the vaccines were most resisted, died at higher rates than those in blue states; individual Republicans died at higher rates than individual Democrats. Hundreds of thousands of deaths can likely be attributed to political identity.

So what happened?

Seventy years ago, gender, race, and region determined Americans’ lifestyles, fortunes, and identities more than they do now; educational attainment and, increasingly, politics have become the key answer for many people to who they are.

by Claude S. Fischer, Vox | Read more:
Image: NurPhoto via Getty Images

Jagannath Paul
via:

Mick Jagger

It’s easier for guitarists to be mysterious. They don’t have to open their mouths, pontificate in rhyming couplets or risk ridicule in the attempt to make us keep looking at them. Perhaps that explains why Keith Richards continues to receive a smoother critical ride than Mick Jagger. Neither have enjoyed great success as solo artists. Keith can’t sing, his occasional attempts to write lyrics are rubbish and his Wingless Angels reggae experiment failed to yield a single memorable song. Mick hasn’t fared much better, but I retain some fondness for 1993’s Wandering Spirit – an album I probably would have never heard were I not asked to write about it by then Melody Maker review editor Andrew Mueller. To my surprise, Mick's third solo album exceeded my expectations. Rick Rubin was manning the console and it must have been nice for Mick to have Rick encouraging to leave his comfort zone – unlike Keef, who appears not to have listened to any new music since 1973. Don’t get me wrong – Wandering Spirit is no masterpiece, but the band is cooking and, right at the top, we get what might have been Mick’s last ever falsetto funk turn with Sweet Thing. Occasionally I play it “out” or drop it into my Soho Radio show without pre-announcing it. You don’t need to know who it is until you realise you need it in your life. As for the Melody Maker review, my prevailing memory of that experience is handing the floppy disc containing my work to Andrew Mueller and, approximately three minutes later, hearing Andrew loudly announce to the entire office that I had given Mick’s effort a positive critical notice, thus encouraging all my jaded seniors to rain derision upon me. Like Mick, I had also risked ridicule by opening my mouth. In that moment, I had never felt closer to him.  ~ Pete Paphides on Sweet Thing

[ed. Never heard this one before.]

Introducing Peace 1.0™

“President Trump said he hoped the war with Iran would soon be in the ‘rearview mirror’ on Tuesday, even as the terms of a cease-fire he signed remained secret and Vice President JD Vance acknowledged that it was ‘a very general document’ with few details.” – New York Times

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After several profitable quarters from our line of War Mongering products, which include blowing up water facilities and a school, as well as temporarily disrupting one-fifth of the world’s oil shipments, we’re excited to announce the rollout of our new product: Peace 1.0™.

Peace 1.0™ is a revolutionary conflict-reduction platform that leverages diplomacy, reduced bombing, and reopened shipping lanes to create value for shareholders, with potential benefits for people living throughout the region.

We’re starting with a regional rollout in Iran, but early testing suggests that customers respond positively to features like the absence of active warfare, longer lifespans, and a fragile sense of security.

FAQ

What is included in Peace 1.0™?
Peace 1.0™ includes a one-page memorandum, several unresolved technical questions, and a loose promise to figure out what the agreement actually means at a later date.

How is Peace 1.0™different from previous versions of peace?
Unlike legacy peace, Peace 1.0™ improves on the original by providing many of the same benefits while adding exciting new features, including higher oil prices, increased regional instability, damaged infrastructure, and a sense that war might break out again at any moment.

Is Peace 1.0™ a fully developed product?
Following startup best practices and to get our product to market faster, we’re releasing a minimum viable product that removes nearly all of the details customers typically associate with a peace agreement.

Why are the contents of Peace 1.0™ a secret?
New products always have a few technical glitches, like a lack of specifics on how the product actually works, and we don’t want customers to delay adoption until Peace 2.0.

What metrics will determine whether Peace 1.0™ is a success?
We’ll be tracking key performance indicators such as the number of missile launches (single digits are ideal), lower insurance premiums for cargo ships, and whether peace feels slightly less certain than it did before.

Are you planning on rolling out Peace 1.0™ to other parts of the world?
Our War Mongering division is working tirelessly to identify potential growth markets. Until then, we’ll be holding off on a global launch.

Are you discontinuing your War Mongering line of products?
Absolutely not. War Mongering products, combined with Peace 1.0™, work symbiotically to drive fast-growing revenue. In fact, every successful rollout of Peace creates exciting new opportunities for future wars, while every war creates additional demand for Peace. We’re so confident in this business model that our long-term goal is to become the world’s leading provider of both.

by Kate Chrisman, McSweeny's |  Read more:

Image: via

[ed. See also: The Art of the Nuclear Deal (McSweeny's).]

Students Are Using a ‘Backdoor’ to Attend Their Dream Schools

Justin Helman didn’t get his dream acceptance from the University of Florida. But that isn’t stopping him from pursuing the classic college experience there.

The recent high-school graduate from Park Ridge, N.J., is set to move into a private apartment right by campus. He is enrolling in a UF online program for the first few semesters and paying an extra fee package to access services like the campus gym and student-section football-game tickets. He plans to study at the library, join clubs and might rush a fraternity.

“I’m going to get almost the entire same experience, and the only thing I’m really missing is going into class and dorming,” he said. “To me, it was just almost a no-brainer.”

More students like Helman are discovering there is another way into their dream schools.

Students who don’t get into major public flagships the traditional way are still participating in the social life of these campuses. The small-but-mighty group is moving to college towns, enrolling in online programs or nearby community colleges, living in private housing, joining Greek life, and attending game-day tailgates. The approach is sanctioned by the universities, which are expanding alternative-enrollment programs. [...]

Helman’s UF offer was to the school’s Pathway to Campus Enrollment program, which requires students to start online before transitioning to full in-person status. The program has exploded from about 250 students in 2015 to nearly 3,000 in fall 2024, according to the school’s website.

Helman will share a Gainesville, Fla., apartment with three other PaCE students who are moving from out-of-state, and said he has spoken to many others planning to relocate. He chose the program over traditional acceptances, some with scholarships and honors, including at the University of South Carolina, Seton Hall and University of Tennessee.

“This was his dream school,” said his mother, Maria Debowska-Helman. She added that his tuition would be cheaper than a traditional UF student’s. The optional fee package will cost around $550 for a semester, depending on the number of course credits. [...]

It is also controversial. Some students view these alternative pathways as “a cheat code,” Kraemer said. Some consultants agree, at times pointing to limited major-transfer options and instead pushing students to traditional paths.

by Roshan Fernandez, Wall Street Journal | Read more:
Image: Maria Debowska-Helman

What Women See in Men and Vice Versa: Estimates Based on Sex Ratios and Marriage Patterns

Abstract 

Much of what looks like changing marriage preferences over the twentieth century is actually demographics. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in sex ratios across U.S. birth cohorts (1870, 1930, 1950), we jointly identify preferences, match quality dynamics, and the costs of marriage and divorce. Demographics alone explain two-thirds of cross-cohort differences. Women’s premium for older husbands collapsed across cohorts; men’s preferences barely changed. Love that survives its early years becomes permanent, but the odds of surviving fell from 97% to 44%. Divorce costs fell six-fold and depend on life stage. A horse race across behavioral channels shows that the match quality process—not mate-age preferences—is the primary dimension of generational change. Declining divorce costs and fragile match quality are substitutes: either alone fits the data, but together they reveal two independent dimensions of social change. The model validates out of sample on the 1910 and 1970 cohorts.

Introduction 

Much of what looks like changing marriage preferences over the twentieth century is actually demographics. Variation in sex ratios and mortality across U.S. birth cohorts—driven by immigration and differential longevity gains—accounts for two-thirds of the cross-cohort differences in marriage and divorce behavior, with no change in behavioral parameters at all. This paper provides the first joint identification of marriage preferences, match quality dynamics, and the costs of marriage and divorce in a unified equilibrium framework, exploiting the large demographic variation across the 1870, 1930, and 1950 birth cohorts.

The variation we exploit is plausibly exogenous to marriage preferences. The sex ratio at marriageable ages fell from 1.056 men per woman (1870 cohort) to 0.942 (1950 cohort)—a swing from male surplus to female surplus driven by the closing of the frontier, declining male immigration, and faster female mortality improvements. These forces operate through the population’s age and sex structure, not through tastes over partners. They change who is scarce and who must compete in the marriage market, so that equilibrium marriage and divorce patterns shift even if no one’s preferences change. We estimate a dynamic general equilibrium model of marriage and divorce, matching 84 moments of marriage and divorce behavior across the three cohorts. Beyond the aggregate role of demographics, the estimates reveal sharp findings about what people value and how relationships work:

• Women’s preferences changed; men’s did not. Women in the 1870 cohort placed a premium on older over younger husbands large enough to delay marriage by several years relative to a world with symmetric preferences (Figure 3). By 1950 this premium had collapsed to near zero. Men’s preferences over partner age are essentially constant across all three cohorts. The marriage age gap is driven not by men preferring younger (more fecund) women, as Siow (1998) suggests, but by women’s preference for older, more established men—a preference that erodes as women gain economic independence. 

• Love that survives becomes permanent—but surviving got harder. A good match, once achieved, is permanent: the implied duration exceeds the remaining lifetime. But in the 1870 cohort a new marriage had a 97% probability of reaching the good state; by 1950, this had fallen to 44%. The 1950 cohort uniquely allowed recovery from bad matches with 16% chances, generating dynamics that resemble cohabitation. 

• Divorce costs depend on life stage. The middle-age group (“young” in our model) faces the 2 Throughout we consider only opposite-sex couples, reflecting the historical period studied. For historical mortality rates, see Haines (1998) and Arias (2012); for historical patterns of gender-biased immigration to the U.S., see Donato and Gabaccia (2015). 2 highest effective divorce cost—roughly six times the utility value of a standard-deviation match shock—substantially above both adolescents and the old. This generates the age-declining divorce rate profile observed in every cohort. The base cost declined six-fold across cohorts, with a structural break between 1910 and 1930 coinciding with the liberalization of divorce laws and the entry of women into the labor force. 

• Divorce costs and match quality are substitutes. Cohort-specific match quality process alone— without any cohort variation in divorce costs—achieves the same fit as the Baseline specification. Both channels govern marital dissolution, one through the price of exit, the other through the probability of wanting to exit. Combining both yields a further 14% improvement, revealing two independent dimensions of social change: the liberalization of exit and the increasing uncertainty of relationships. 

How can these mechanisms be separately identified? The key is that different moments respond to different parameters, and the three cohorts provide 84 moments under very different demographic conditions. Marriage rates by age for male and female reveal how each sex values partners of different maturities: when the sex ratio shifts from male surplus to female surplus, the scarce sex becomes pickier and marriage patterns change in ways that depend on the preference parameters. Divorce rates and their age profile reveal the cost of exit: the pervasive pattern that divorce declines with age identifies the age-dependent component of divorce costs, because without it the model would predict flat or rising divorce with age. The fraction never married by age 50 disciplines marriage frictions: a high never-married fraction signals that substantial frictions prevent matches from forming. The persistence of marriages—how quickly divorce rates fall with duration—reveals match quality dynamics: if good matches are permanent but medium matches are fragile, divorce concentrates in the early years. The cross-cohort variation in these moments overdetermines the parameter vector. [...]

This paper contributes to the literature on marriage and matching in three ways. First, it provides a framework to separate demographic forces from behavioral responses in equilibrium matching markets. Second, it identifies the dynamics of match quality and the role of divorce costs using variation that is orthogonal to preferences. Third, it shows that much of the long-run change in marriage and divorce patterns can be understood as the consequence of demographic shifts rather than changes in tastes.

by Jose-Victor Rios-Rull; Shannon Seitz; Satoshi Tanaka, PIER/University of Pennsylvania |  Read more (pdf):

The One Surprising Mistake Everyone Makes With Pancakes

The secret to consistently perfect pancakes lies in a few simple but crucial moves. And sometimes the biggest mistakes are not the things you did, but the things you didn’t do. Here is a primary culprit, with a few others to consider:

You’re not resting your batter

You know the old chestnut that the first pancake you fry is for the dog? That’s because if you haven’t let the batter rest, those first few pancakes will turn out too thin, with the batter running all over the pan. Letting the batter rest fixes this, giving the flour time to hydrate and the batter a chance to thicken. It also lets the leaveners (baking soda and baking powder) fully dissolve and disperse, so you get an even rise.

Pancakes made with a batter that has been rested for 10 minutes

The sweet spot is 10 to 30 minutes on the counter, but the batter will keep in the fridge for up to 48 hours. A longer rest actually deepens the flavor: The buttermilk has more time to work on the flour, yielding something slightly more complex. Pancakes made from an overnight batter won’t rise as much. If you know you’re going to keep the batter overnight, you can wait to add the leavener until just before frying, which helps with the rise. (The batter will be very thick by morning — that’s fine, don’t thin it out — and need a touch more time in the pan to cook through.)

One more thing to note: Lumps are not only OK; they’re expected. The goal when mixing is to combine the wet and dry ingredients until there are no streaks of dry flour — that’s it. A lumpy batter is a properly mixed batter. Those lumps will hydrate and smooth out as the batter rests. Overmixed batter, on the other hand, develops too much gluten, and the result is a flat, dense, rubbery pancake that no amount of syrup can save.

More common mistakes

If your batter is rested but still isn’t yielding a fluffy result, you may want to consider these popular pitfalls:

You’re not using an acid (like buttermilk)

A great pancake batter is a chemistry equation: Acid (buttermilk, lemon juice or vinegar) plus a base (baking soda) equals lift. When baking soda comes into contact with an acidic ingredient, it produces carbon dioxide bubbles. Those bubbles are what make your pancakes light and fluffy. Without acid in the batter, the baking soda is inert, and you’re left wondering why your pancakes came out dense.

The best source of that acid is a liquid like buttermilk, which adds a gentle tang and the right texture to make a nicely pourable batter. If buttermilk isn’t in your fridge, you have more options. Plain yogurt, sour cream or kefir also contain the right acidity — just thin them with regular milk or water so the batter stays pourable. Or use this classic trick: Stir a tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar into a cup of whole milk, let it sit for five minutes, and you’ve got a reasonable stand-in.

If you have any buttermilk left over, freeze it. It will lose a little potency over time, but it still works fine for your next batch.

And yes, you can make pancakes with water instead of milk. But don’t. The fat and protein in milk (and also, the butter and the eggs) is part of what makes a pancake a pancake. If you’re cooking for someone who can’t have dairy or eggs, use a dedicated vegan pancake recipe rather than trying to substitute your way through a conventional one.

Your baking soda and baking powder are old

Most pancake recipes call for baking soda and baking powder: Each does something specific. Baking soda is the more powerful of the two, reacting with the buttermilk to produce a fast, vigorous rise and give pancakes their deep golden brown color. Baking powder has the acid already built in, activating on its own once when the liquid hits it, and again when exposed to heat (this is what “double acting” means). Together, baking soda and powder give you pancakes that are well risen, nicely bronzed and tender.

Baking powder and soda do go stale, so be sure to check the expiration date. If you’re unsure, test them to see if they’re still active. For baking soda, drop a pinch into a small amount of vinegar or lemon juice — it should bubble vigorously. For baking powder, stir a teaspoon into hot water, which should cause it to fizz. If nothing happens, consider toast and eggs for breakfast instead.

Your pan is too hot or too cold

Pan temperature is another important variable in pancake cooking, and one that doesn’t get enough attention. Cook on a heat that’s too low, and your pancakes will be pale and doughy; too high, and the outside will scorch before the inside has a chance to set.

Start by heating your pan over medium-high heat for two to three minutes — longer if you’re using cast iron, which takes time to come up to an even temperature. Hold off on adding fat until the pan is hot enough. Here’s how to tell: Flick in a few drops of water. If they sizzle and evaporate on contact, you’re in the right range. If the drops skitter and dance around the surface, the pan is too hot. Pull it off the heat for 30 seconds before proceeding.

Once the temperature feels right, add your fat. A mix of butter and a neutral oil works best. Butter contributes flavor and browning, while oil raises the smoke point so that the butter won’t burn. For the crispiest edges, don’t be stingy. You want enough fat to swirl if you tilt the pan, not just a thin sheen. Then reduce the heat to medium and give the fat a moment to get hot before you pour in the batter.

Your first pancake is a test run. It will tell you whether your heat is right, whether your batter is the right consistency and whether you need more fat. If it comes out great, you’re a pancake master. If it doesn’t, eat it in the kitchen and adjust the heat. Be sure to add more fat between batches. And if the butter starts to blacken and smell burned, wipe out the pan with a paper towel before continuing.

Pan choice also has an impact. Cast iron, carbon steel and stainless steel all produce pancakes with crispy edges and caramelized bottoms. Nonstick is more forgiving and makes flipping easier, but the color will be paler and the edges not quite as crunchy.

You’re making them too big

The instinct is to fry big, diner-style pancakes, the kind you’d see people waiting in line for on social media. But smaller pancakes are almost always better pancakes. A smaller pancake has more surface area relative to its interior, which means it has crispier edges and is easier to flip. Use a ⅓-cup dry measure or a large ice cream scoop to portion your batter. Be sure to space the pancakes a couple of inches apart, since they’ll spread a bit.

by Melissa Clark, NY Times |  Read more:

Images: Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini.

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Trump Does Not Understand the War He Lost

Donald Trump arrived in France yesterday for this morning’s G7 summit and promptly confirmed America’s capitulation to Iran. Instead of merely repeating the outlines of what looks to be a terrible peace deal, however, Trump made a series of statements so bizarre, even by his usual standards, that they raise the question of whether the president still understands the words that come out of his own mouth.

The president began with a classic Trumpian move, daring his listeners to forget today what they knew yesterday. Just this winter, Trump had promised the Iranian people that the tyrants who ruled them would be gone. But now? “I never cared about regime change,” he told reporters, waving away his failure to achieve a primary strategic goal by denying that it had ever been a goal at all.

Things got a little weirder, however, when he described the Iranians who have stepped in to replace the regime leaders killed in U.S. strikes: “We’re dealing with people that I think are very rational people. And they were nice to deal with.”

“They were strong people, smart people,” he added. And then he dropped this remarkable claim: “They’re not radicalized, and they’re, you know, looking to help their country.”

This definitely not-radicalized group that Trump seems to like includes the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei (whose father, wife, and son were killed by U.S. strikes), and the still-standing Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, all of whom have shown no compunction about lashing out in any direction during Trump’s “cease-fire,” the make-believe pause in the war during which no one actually ceased firing.

Trump’s description of the current regime in Tehran as a bunch of swell guys was brewed in a heavy-duty vat of wishful thinking. It’s an extreme version of Trump’s tendency, when he’s been outplayed by powerful enemies, to describe his opponents as basically reasonable people. (He has done the same over the years with dictators and autocrats in North Korea, Russia, and China, among other countries.) This is his way of assuring the public that he did not get taken to the cleaners—because, of course, his affable partners would never do that.

Trump fared no better talking about the Iranian nuclear program. Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium exists largely because Trump unilaterally called off U.S. participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 agreement that was meant to prevent Iran from enriching uranium beyond minimal levels for civilian uses. After the U.S. and Israeli attacks last year, and yet more pounding during Operation Epic Fury, that uranium remains underground, either hidden in storage or buried beneath tons of rubble; some of it can likely be recovered and enriched for military uses. Trump has said, repeatedly, that Iran must hand it over.

Until today.

“I call it the nuclear dust, their enriched material, right?” Trump said. (Why he calls it this remains a mystery.) Does America still insist on its removal from Iran? Well, maybe.

“The whole mountain has collapsed on top. We have cameras on it,” Trump said. “You could make the case ‘Why are you even bothering?’ ’cause it’s not really valuable. It’s, you know, it’s probably half a million dollars’ worth. It’s not very valuable stuff, but I think psychologically we wanna get it.”

The United States and Israel ostensibly went to war with Iran last summer over the prospect of the Tehran regime developing a bomb, and that same threat has supposedly been at the center of America’s largest military operation in decades—but now the highly enriched uranium isn’t very valuable? The president wants it for “psychological” reasons? (This is reminiscent of his comment that America should seize Greenland because it was “psychologically” important to him.) Does the commander in chief understand what he’s saying? More important, will Iran keep tons of highly enriched uranium under this new deal or not?

“The biggest thing,” Trump said today, is that “Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.” That’s fine, except that it didn’t have one before, either, and now it has an even greater incentive to get one. But nuclear issues are very complex and technical, so let’s move on to Trump’s comments about something less complicated: Middle Eastern politics.

Once again, the president seemed unable to comprehend either the situation or his own words. No one outside of the Trump administration has yet seen the final memorandum of understanding that Trump and the Iranians have signed, least of all, according to some reports, the Israelis. If the outlines of the deal are in line with the administration’s own talking points, it’s bound to cause serious agita in Jerusalem: The terms reportedly require a cessation of Israeli hostilities with Hezbollah in Lebanon, a tricky condition considering that Israel was not a party to the negotiations. This is probably why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced yesterday that Israel would maintain its presence in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria for “as long as necessary.”

Trump, in other words, is trying to deal away Israel’s right to defend itself, treating it less as a sovereign country and more as a kind of 51st U.S. state run by an annoying governor who needs to get with the program. But what if Iran’s proxy Hezbollah attacks Israel? According to the president, the Israelis need to calm down, and he minimized Hezbollah as “a little pinprick out there that constantly rears its head.” [...]

Trump has never shown very much concern about the conduct of Israeli military operations anywhere (including the war in Gaza, which he viewed primarily as a public-relations problem). But now that he needs to rein in Jerusalem at Tehran’s behest, he has taken the position that the Israelis are causing too much damage in Lebanon. And in a stunning reminder that alliances for Trump are only expedients, he pivoted to praising al-Sharaa and criticizing Israel, saying that if Israel “can’t do the job without killing everyone else, he’ll do the job.”

This kind of flip-flop illustrates Trump’s view of global politics: States are just a bunch of playing cards that he can rearrange at will, which makes watching him talk about foreign policy this way like watching someone cheating at solitaire. Even now, after many years as president, he is constantly frustrated to find out how little leverage he has when other nations refuse to abandon their own interests and do as he commands.

Trump’s comments about the Middle East may not make any sense, but one thing that has emerged in 4K clarity is that the only world leader who got pantsed worse than Trump in all of this was Netanyahu. No one should pity Israel’s prime minister: He brought this situation upon himself and his nation. Netanyahu, along with the Iran-war hawks in the United States, somehow thought that he could be smart or flattering or persuasive enough to avoid the inevitable burn that comes from trusting Donald Trump. Netanyahu refused to see that Trump, when it comes to self-interest, is as predictable as a sunrise: When something he’s involved with goes bad, he walks away and lets others suffer the chaos he’s created. [...]

None of this makes any sense, except as desperate rationalizations from a man who cannot face facts and admit defeat. Trump has always had a tenuous relationship with the truth, but evidence is mounting that on the most important questions of war and peace, the president of the United States seems to be losing his grip on reality itself.

by Tom Nichols, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: via

[ed. No coherent foreign policy other than flaunting American military power and trying to make Trump appear 'strong' (even if it's just taking out a few fishing boats). It really is that simple (minded). See also: Introducing Peace 1.0™ (McSweeny's).]

Sarah Evans, Hyde Hill

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Guo Jinsheng

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The Birthday Party No One Wants

Why Americans aren't celebrating the semiquincentennial

Throughout our history, Americans of all stripes have crafted and recrafted the country’s origin story, fervently recommitting themselves to our nationalist mythology—and using it for their own purposes. Anniversaries have long been natural showcases for these narratives of continuity: at the centennial in 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant traveled to Philadelphia to celebrate the past but used the event to unveil the futuristic new steam engine; that same year, suffragists revised their Declaration of Sentiments, a radical document advocating women’s rights that was also an homage to the country’s foundational text.

And so it should be astonishing, even to the most jaded or irate Americans, that so many are sitting out our 250th birthday party this July, rejecting both the obligatory ritual and the occasion for devotion or reclamation that the anniversary has represented in the past. In 2026, in the era of Donald Trump, it now seems that the tradition of consecrating our origins is a spent force.

This is in stark contrast with the bicentennial—the country’s last major birthday. 1976 was not an obvious time for patriotic celebration. Richard Nixon’s executive malfeasance and the failed militarism of the Vietnam War were fresh in memory. The generational revolt that dominated the sixties had ebbed, and the country was stuck in an interregnum—between the end of the New Deal order and the start of the neoliberal era. Yet back then, nostalgia seemed capable of meeting the moment: Americans observing the 200th anniversary turned enthusiastically to the founding. As the legal scholar Aziz Rana has noted, there was a “widespread public desire to close the book on the recent past and on critical interrogations of the actual national experience.” In 1976, celebrations of the deeper past were everywhere, from arts and educational programming to pure pageantry; virtually no American could have escaped them. And even many critics of the country seemed to share a hankering for an American consensus grounded in origins. In her censorious bicentennial address, the philosopher Hannah Arendt dwelled on the breakdown of recent years but implored Americans to live up to their “glorious beginnings two hundred years ago.”

Fifty years later, we are again facing chaos in the White House and a morass of global warfare. And we are again facing an interregnum: neoliberalism as we’ve known it has lost credibility, and there is no clear sense of what will replace it. But today’s mood is decisively different. The 250th anniversary falls during the ongoing perpetration and revelation of executive crimes and misdemeanors. Joe Biden did not turn out to be Gerald Ford: whatever bland tonic he offered the anxiety-ridden nation didn’t last (if it worked at all). Among the many ways that Trump has set himself apart from previous presidents is by adopting a nonchalant and shifting relation to the American past. Part of the reason may be that he is too palpably narcissistic to engage in ancestor worship: his interest in the 250th celebration seems to be as much about observing his own birthday, on June 14, as the country’s. He has put up statues of Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin in the Rose Garden, but he mentions the founders and framers far less regularly than his immediate predecessors in either party. (His praise for other presidents is all over the map: he lionizes Andrew Jackson and William McKinley while also lauding Franklin D. Roosevelt.) Strikingly, he is a nationalist with little romantic investment in those who first launched the nation; to the extent that he’s nostalgic, it seems to be for the 1950s or the 1890s—not the 1770s.

Trump has many detractors, but if anything, liberals seem even less interested in reclaiming the founding spirit than their great foe. During Trump’s first term, many critical commentators coalesced around “normcore”—a return to the normalcy of the status quo ante, and a form of restorationist nostalgia. But in 2026, liberals are barely rousing themselves for this year’s ceremony of origins. In part, this may be thanks to a greater awareness of how the conditions that preceded Trump also produced him; the consensus seems to be that the only way out of our interregnum is through it, to something else and something new. And at a practical level, liberals’ attention is consumed by more immediate crises. In this regard, the mood of 1976 seems almost calm: Ford’s pardon of Nixon caused an uproar, but it pales in comparison with Trump’s constantly proliferating outrages. During the age of print newspapers and nightly broadcasts, even bad news didn’t have the same effect. For Americans now, glued to their feeds and screens and siloed by our fragmented information landscape, there is not enough emotional claim or free time to linger in political nostalgia. Both the seventies and today are examples of what political scientists call a “disjunction”—the failure of a political regime—but unlike in 1976, when the New Deal order had given way, the endlessly roiling turmoil of our current era is experienced as the result of one man’s caprice, not of shadowy structural forces apparently beyond anyone’s control. [...]

Increasingly less enamored of the founding, liberals and progressives seem happy to let Trump have all the claims on its memory he wants, even if—or just because—he uses them as occasions for spectacle. And these spectacles, such as a UFC cage match on the White House lawn, confirm that the flaws in the American union are simply too great to pretend that mindlessly ratifying the country’s original principles and promises will do the trick. Our need is not for restoration but for transformation.

For all the uncertainty of the 1970s, there was enough agreement across partisan lines to reform government. Republicans joined Democrats to oust Nixon, and responses to failed wars and presidential hijinks came from both sides of the aisle, with new arrangements intended to keep either from repeating themselves: the Ethics in Government Act, the Inspector General Act, and the Federal Election Campaign Act were established for politics at home; the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the War Powers Resolution, and the prohibition of political assassination were meant to address malfeasance abroad. All have been eroded since, and no comparable legislation has been adopted in our time. In our present state of gridlock, it’s hard to imagine it will be.

The end of an interregnum can be identified only in retrospect. In 1976, the age of Reagan was already underway, ushering in a decisively new era. Now the country is once again trapped in an agonizing disjunction, and no party or politician has been programmatic or visionary enough to transcend it. American political regimes work in cycles. Partisan realignment or presidential leadership can set up new political orders, which last until their disintegration or entropy leads to a new shift. Our current interregnum has so far thwarted Trump’s own addled attempt to refound the country; he lacks enough popular support or a credible enough plan to do so. But the same is true, so far, of his bitterest enemies.

There is one glint of promise in the abstention from this summer’s anniversary. Watching Trump turn the country’s already hollowing rituals into truly empty gestures, Americans across the partisan spectrum see more clearly and in greater numbers the defunct religion in which so many have lost faith. And they see that nostalgia is not a strategy. Unlike in 1976, the emotional and intellectual plausibility of the American national mythology isn’t likely to survive the Trumpian pageantry this summer. The agonizing limitations of backward-looking resistance to Trump have already driven his enemies to invest less in that mythology in the first place. America, poised on the brink of something, knows it cannot go back to the future.

by Samuel Moyn, The Yale Review |  Read more:

Image: Getty

[ed. See also: The Story Wars: The Conflict Between Red and Blue America is a Clash of National Mythologies (Yale Review):]

***

There is no modern nation-state, after all, whose history is not rife with social injustice; with oppression based on race, class, and sex; with the violence of unjust wars. Our history is a dark and bloody ground in which slavery shares space with freedom, dispossession with progress, hatred with heritage. If there is anything admirable about America, it is not its supposed exception to these historical patterns but the persistence with which its people have struggled to amend injustice, relieve oppression, limit the exercise of state violence, and realize an extraordinarily broad and inclusive concept of nationality. If the dark side of U.S. history is the exploitation of land and labor by rampant capitalism and the rise of corporate oligarchy, its counterpart is the struggle for workers’ rights and environmental conservation and our determined efforts to strike a just and constructive balance between individual rights, corporate power, and the public good. It is because of that willingness to struggle, as much as for our achievements, that America has been the desired destination of immigrants from every country and culture on earth.