Tag: inflection point
Why Britain Stinks – The Atlantic
Whenever I was in a bad mood as a child, my parents would toss me into the sea. It was the one thing, they said, that snapped me out of a temper. I grew up a 10-minute walk from the ocean in Wembury, a picture-postcard village in the southwest of England—an area popular for surfing, swimming, and rockpooling.
My father still lives in Wembury, and I still love to get in the water when I’m back home (I now
When Iran Says ‘Death to Israel,’ It Means It
In the days leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, distinguished journalists, analysts, and activists argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin was unlikely to green-light an assault that could go wrong in so many ways and instead might be bluffing. They employed a variety of political rationales to explain away the military buildup and escalating rhetoric. At the core of each explanation lay a troika of errors: denuding an adversary of agency, engaging in mirror-imaging, and, perhaps most of all,
Vaccinating Kids Has Never Been Easy
In September 1957—two years after church bells rang in celebration of the new polio vaccine, two years after people rejoiced in the streets, two years after Americans began lining up for their shots—the proportion of children fully vaccinated against polio remained at about 50 percent.
Supply was not the problem. Nor were doubts about the vaccine’s safety or efficacy, concluded a report from around that time by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now known as the March of Dimes,
Defending Democracy Is No Longer Popular Within the GOP
The next few weeks will likely answer the most crucial question that emerged from last year’s insurrection by supporters of Donald Trump: Can one political party defend American democracy on its own?
In the days after the January 6 attack, it appeared possible that many Republicans would join Democrats in a cross-party coalition to defend democracy against the autocratic threat. But instead, Trump has consolidated his control over the GOP, led a movement to purge Republican elected officials who
Ben Sasse on America’s Political Addiction Problem.
Ben Sasse is worried about midlife crises. Not just for himself, but for every working American who feels that their future in the face of technological disruption is not as secure as that of previous generations. “We’re the first people in human history that are really going to see the end of lifelong work,” the Republican senator from Nebraska told The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. “That unsettling of community and place raises lots of fundamental questions about