The Curse of Reading and Forgetting : The New Yorker

For those of you who visit our blog (The Policy ThinkShop) regularly, you must have noticed that we often promote articles from the New Yorker magazine.  Recently a well written article caught the eye of one of our researchers which was written by a young man (IAN CROUCH) about the pleasures and vagaries of reading.  We thought it interesting because the writing seems mature and well thought out and greatly belies the relatively young age of the author.  This juxtaposition of age and naiveté against the well written ideas and use of language by this otherwise young and relatively inexperienced fellow calls into question the veracity of the magazine as a source of reliable information, wit and wisdom for the more discerning reader.

Are we being naive ourselves because this article and its author’s product hint at entertainment and literary skill? They seem to do so without the import and weight that time and wisdom bring to the often important weekly topics that are assigned to young writes today.  These are seemingly hurried assignments by magazine Execs that have to be creative and prolific at a rate only made possible by perhaps young and creative kids passing as the wise and testy intellectuals of yesterday’s paper media.

Read the article below and come back to the Policy ThinkShop

and tell us what you think…

“Part of my suspicion of rereading may come from a false sense of reading as conquest. As we polish off some classic text, we may pause a moment to think of ourselves, spear aloft, standing with one foot up on the flank of the slain beast. Another monster bagged. It would be somehow less heroic, as it were, to bend over and check the thing’s pulse. But that, of course, is the stuff of reading—the going back, the poring over, the act of committing something from the experience, whether it be mood or fact, to memory. It is in the postmortem where we learn how a book …”

More via The Curse of Reading and Forgetting : The New Yorker.

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Everything You’ve Been Told About Radicalization Is Wrong – From: Rolling Stone Magazine

Imagine that you live in a bubble and there is only one radio in that bubble which filters all the news and distributes it in the bubble via many mediums and makes it look and sound like many truths–necessary untruths.  Rolling Stone magazine has a very interesting take on the recent media frenzy over American raised terror.

As far back as the times of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane (Timur), ruthless conquerors have struck fear in the hearts of their conquest targets and their progeny.  Much of what passes for news analysis these days is well anointed by ideological and psychological overtones that not be grounded in fact or circumstance. The Policy ThinkShop team invites you to visit the following link to explore a sobering argument addressing recent media handling of the Boston Marathon tragedy and the reasons behind the bombing perpetrators …

Everything You’ve Been Told About Radicalization Is Wrong | Politics News | Rolling Stone.

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The American Dream Hangs in the Balance as Our Sense of Security and Peace is Shattered: Most Expect ‘Occasional Acts of Terrorism’ in the Future | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

A national study released this week tracks American public opinion, documenting our feelings and fears about violence and terrorism.  We do not feel safe and we are trusting one another less.  Symbolically and physically we want to close the borders.  We can choose to believe that we must all feel this way or we can redefine who we are in a way that makes us stronger.  It depends who “we” are.

“Last week’s bombings at the Boston Marathon attracted broad public interest: 63% of Americans say they followed the story very closely, among the highest interest in any news story in the past decade.” The Pew Foundation study reflects the sad truth that our collective American perception of civil society is changing.  Perhaps this time we are not only changing but morphing.   If we learn to accept and assimilate what is different then we can become a new America.  But who is doing the learning and who is becoming remains to be seen in an America that seems to be digressing to Michael’s Harrington’t bifurcated America.  Without a positive vision  of the future there cannot be a collective “we” to embrace it nor a collective image of an America we can all love and want to preserve.

If we are going to survive as a nation some of us will have to loosen our grip on the past so that we can all collectively embrace the future.  But today’s media events and philanthropic facts are not hopeful.

The study sounds an eerie warning that we are fundamentally changing. We seem to be resigned to constant fear and violence.  ”We” seem  to be unable to take refuge in “our” symbolic “community psychological blanket” because we have become afraid of one another.  But who is this “we” and who is “the other”? There are so many of us “perceiving” from so many directions and backgrounds that a vision of a common America now seems more distant than ever.  Public opinion seems to be increasingly shaped not by what we see but what we believe.

Who are we?  Who are we becoming?  Who have we been?   What have we become?

How do we take stock of all that is happening around us and start a sensible conversation about what is wrong and how to fix it?  Social media has made a global conversation more possible but, perhaps ironically, local communion now seems more difficult and a sense of “we” or community seems increasingly vapid, vacuous and devoid of anima–tasteless, unintelligible and dispirited.  The roaring 20s, rocking 50s and the tumultuous 60s seem distant now …  We seem to be drifting into this millennium without  a compass.

American identity is changing and the center or the “typical” or “average” America seems to have disappeared.  Not only is our political discourse moved to the extremes, but our American identity seems to have morphed into fragments–dispersed among a cacophony of interests, groups and pervasive xenophobia which feed public reaction and drown out reason.  Immigration, good health and guns strangle our ability to form a consensus and find our way into this new millennium.

America is drifting but no one seems to know the direction which we are moving towards.  The collective and cumulative acts of public violence and the thousands of young Americans coming back from violent, and confusing, foreign wars does not bode well for our present or future…

The baby boom babies are now trading in their infancy diapers and lack of patience for yet another bout of rebelliousness that depends on their increasingly irrelevant 60s ideology undergirded by optimism that is now increasingly undermined by myopia and their incontinent mortality.  The ultimate victory for this now passing generation may be the imminent legalization of marijuana as a palliative reward to sustain their now eminent twilight.  Event in their collective final curtain call they can find solace in their seemingly Pyrrhic victory to medicate once again when confronted with the oncoming abyss we have for generations now called modernity and social change.

The Great Generation of past “moral” wars has left us and the Baby Boomers are now in the drivers seat.  But where are they taking us? They were the flower children and the great protesting worriers who tore down all the sacred cows and left us in a pragmatic and hedonistic middle without manners, caution or respect … Our cultural fabric seems incapable of tying together the many immigrant currents that now makeup the American mosaic.  We are the world  and the newcomers seem as desperate and dislocated as the rural kids who seemingly grow up in happy, stable, homogenous America only to turn against it in our theaters, our elementary schools and our federal buildings.

The middle is gone and shows little evidence of returning…  The 1% seem to have somehow held on to a greater percent of the nation’s wealth, while an increasing number of American families struggle with uncertainty and economic stagnation or, worse, slip back.   This recession, the ongoing local and internationally motivated terrorist and gun violence is also shaking our very foundations.

Civil liberties, political movements, and the American sense of who we are, how well we are doing and where we are going all seem increasingly clouded by an ongoing malaise.   We get nervous by what we see and need to look closer and more often to calm our nerves.  We are afraid at home and seem to need to go oversees to die in wars that have a quiet beginning and seemingly no end.  We cannot get the public spectacle out of our mind’s eye. A malaise that seems to be the product of public violence and media competition.   We live under a perpetual tempest in a proverbial psychological tea pot of public attention cannibalism in an ever hurried frenzy over delivering pictures and impressions.  The relatively few hold onto control of the public megaphone and preach to an increasingly disappearing no longer hegemonic nor numerous “majority”.  With moral certitude and  economic hubris they wield a shiny and expensive, now digital and omnipresent, printing press that constantly showers us with a practical if simply public truth.  They create, perpetuate and feed the seemingly insatiable public consumption we all have for news we need to calm our curiosity and nerves…  The world has become so complex that we need to  be numbed but the glare of the media industry will not let us rest.  The price we pay seems to be pessimism. America is ceasing to be optimistic and welcoming… It is unsettled, perhaps worried and content to close the door on our no longer widely shared dreams of exceptionalism, manifest destiny and international policeman.  Are we trading in our moral courage for a veneer of contentment?

At last we may look to the facts and find refuge in Pew’s enlightenment through facts and figures that may light the way…  What else can we do?  That depends on who we really are …  and who we are is up to all of us to define…  We must confront the ugly facts but we can confront them while grasping a larger and more unifying truth.  What that truth is remains to be seen.  In the meantime, let’s keep on working on it together.

Keep learning and thinking together here at the Policy ThinkShop ….

The Pew article and a link follow:

“Last week’s bombings at the Boston Marathon attracted broad public interest: 63% of Americans say they followed the story very closely, among the highest interest in any news story in the past decade. And the bombings drew far more public attention than any terrorist event since Sept. 11, 2001, which 78% reported following very closely in mid-October of that year.”

“While the Boston bombings riveted most Americans, the incident appeared to confirm the public’s long-held belief that occasional terrorist acts are to be expected. Over the past decade, majorities have consistently said that “occasional acts of terrorism in the U.S. will be part of life in the future.” This sentiment has spiked to 75% in the wake of the Boston bombings from 64% a year ago and now matches the previous high of 74% in 2003.”

via Most Expect ‘Occasional Acts of Terrorism’ in the Future | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

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Most Muslims in Region Reject Violence Against Civilians – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

The Pew Forum on Religion continues to bring us facts and figures to enlighten our view of the religious world which is often clouded by a sensationalist media and the rose colored lenses of young ambitious journalists trying to move up the career ladder or older ones stuck in yesterday’s phobias and mired in a short and myopic view of a changing modern world where the acts of the few motivate and move the masses through the loud megaphone that is our entertainment driven media establishment…. Read the Pew article and tell us what you think…

“A new Pew Research Center survey report finds high levels of concern about religious extremism among Muslims in the North Caucasus area of Russia and the neighboring Central Asian countries of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The survey also finds that few Muslims across the region support the use of violence against civilians in the name of Islam, though there is somewhat more support for suicide bombing and similar violence among Muslims in Kyrgyzstan than in Russia or Kazakhstan.”

via Most Muslims in Region Reject Violence Against Civilians – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

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Equating Islam with terrorism – chicagotribune.com

When the media feeds xenophobia, sensationalism, ethnocentrism and religious bigotry, the crazies and the extremists win.  The crazies and the extremists are such a minute minority but their acts are so big and their intentions are to cloud our judgement and make us crazy.  The media’s handling of these acts magnifies them and makes these pitiful bigots super heroes, if evil ones.  They become larger than life and feed our need to catch and conquer the proverbial boogyman.  Read the following article by a Chicago journalist for some clarity and what is happening to us every time we over state the role of religion in violent acts that are perpetrated by people who in the end are not very religious at all…

“Before we knew anything about the dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, we knew that he “recently became a devout Muslim who prayed five times a day.” This piece of information was placed in the lead of an Associated Press article published as the police were still on the hunt for Tsarnaev’s younger brother and alleged accomplice, Dzhokhar.

As the day went on with increasing panic and an intensifying sense of terror emanating from television and computer screens across America, and news outlets scrambled to release sound bites and tweetable articles with any information they could scrounge up on …”

More via Equating Islam with terrorism – chicagotribune.com.

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Malden woman attacked by man accusing Muslims of Marathon bombings – Metro – The Boston Globe

No one ever talks about it.  It is taboo.  Or perhaps, it is not important in our mostly Western European culture.

As we have developed a culture of fear, xenophobia, and antipathy towards foreigners, we have begun to kill our American Dream.  We dislike people who look poorly dressed, “dark,” or otherwise not like “us.”  We forget, or perhaps our history books don’t explain and our grandparents did not share, that most people who came through Elis Island came here with few  belongings, lived in very modest quarters and felt as isolated and alienated as today’s monolingual and “lost in America” recent immigrant population.

Mexicans, Haitians, Pakistanis, Egyptians, Puerto Ricans, many, many, groups are portrayed as “less than American” and continue to be seen as different from the mainstream ideal.  An ideal that may now be shattered after the savages who attacked innocent people in Boston.  The facts are developing at this time.  But the monsters in the two FBI photos are nothing like the “dark guy” ridiculously and irresponsibly described by CNN’s John King with Wolf Blitzer supporting.

“I want to be very careful about this, because people get very sensitive when you say these things,” King said Wednesday. “I was told by one of these sources who is a law enforcement official that this is a dark-skinned male.”

America is now more diverse than ever.  It’s mainstream leadership is woefully out of touch with the silent growing segment of the population that is destined to inherit our tomorrow.

The Boston Globe reported a story that confirms the damage mainstream media does to our fabric when they echo the fears and phobias suffered by less educated Americans…  By less educated we don’t mean did not go to College–we mean people who were raised and educated by parents and schools that failed.  Some of these people have high degrees and are millionaires who lead our nightly broadcasts…

“Every day, Heba Abolaban of Malden checks on her family in war-strafed Syria, where water, bread and electricity are in short supply. She was far more worried about them than about herself on Wednesday morning when she put her baby daughter in a stroller and headed into the sunshine to a play group with a friend.But as they strolled down Commercial Street, an angry-faced man charged toward the petite woman, his hand balled into a fist. He punched her hard in the shoulder and screamed curses inches from her face. Then he pointed at her and …”

More via Malden woman attacked by man accusing Muslims of Marathon bombings – Metro – The Boston Globe.

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Rubio and the Zombies – NYTimes.com The Policy ThinkShop comments: Marco loco, Marco, loco, Marco loco… In search of a rising star to peddle tired Republican ideas…

In a sad game of hide and seek, hide economic reason and seek Latino votes, Marc Rubio is being paraded out of the Republican political stables to get the attention of Latino voters …  It’s not working…

“In case you’re wondering, a zombie idea is a proposition that has been thoroughly refuted by analysis and evidence, and should be dead — but won’t stay dead because it serves a political purpose, appeals to prejudices, or both.”

via Rubio and the Zombies – NYTimes.com.

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State of the Union 2013 and Public Opinion | Pew Research Center The President to the Republicans: Boogie oogie oogie!

The Pew Foundation’s research arm did a nice job on a survey on “the State of the State of the Union Address.”  It appears that President Obama is riding a tremendous popularity and approval wave into a second term that is already characterized by a buoyed economy with clear skies ahead.  The President’s victory on the fiscal cliff seems to have sealed the deal, as the President enters his second term with the Republicans in shambles and, perhaps more importantly, with Americans believing in this two term President the opposition tried to paint as a boogyman.  The President seems to be smiling on, like the baby boomer that he is, saying: “Boogie oogie oogie!”

“President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address to the nation on Tues., Feb. 12. A survey released ahead of his speech found that 43% of the public views the president’s address as about as important as past years’ addresses, and a third (32%) say Obama’s speech will be more important than those in past years.

Here’s a roundup of Pew Research findings across 10 of the biggest public policy issues:

The Economy

The economy and jobs remain the public’s top two priorities for the White House and Congress.

57% of Americans (and 74% of Republicans) say that President Obama won the battle over the “fiscal cliff.”

Americans took a dim view of the fiscal cliff deal, saying it would hurt: the economy (46%), people like themselves (52%), efforts to curb the deficit (44%).

Read more about Pew Research findings on the economy

Debt and Deficit

72% of Americans now say reducing the deficit is a top priority, up from 53% in Jan. 2009, including 84% of Republicans, 67% of Democrats and 71% of independents.

Majorities of Americans oppose most deficit reduction measures, including reducing funding for education (77% disapprove), reducing transportation funding (67%) and reducing funding to help low-income people (58%).

There are wide partisan gaps on many debt reduction proposals, including reducing military defense spending (+35 points Democrats) and reducing funding to help low-income people (+29 points Republicans).

74% say a combination of program cuts and tax increases is the best way to reduce the deficit.

Read more about Pew Research findings on the debt and deficit

The Middle Class

The median income for a middle-income, three-person household fell to $69,487 in 2010 from $72,956 in 2000 (in 2011 dollars.) Median net worth among the middle-income tier fell 28% to $93,150 in 2010 from $129,582 in 2000.

85% of those in the middle class say it is more difficult today than a decade ago to maintain their standard of living.

The middle class blamed their difficulties on: Congress (62%), banks and financial institutions (54%) and large corporations (47%).

Middle-class adults say they are: Democrats (34%), Republicans (25%) and independents (35%); conservative (39%), moderate (35%) and liberal (22%).

Read more about Pew Research findings on the middle class

Gun Control

51% of Americans say it is more important to control gun ownership, while 45% say it is more important to protect gun rights.

47% say mass shootings reflect broader societal problems, 44% call them isolated acts of troubled individuals.

There is broad public support for background checks for private and gun show sales (85%) and laws preventing the mentally ill from purchasing guns (80%).

There are large partisan divides on creating a federal database to track gun sales (35-point gap, Democrats favor), implementing a ban on assault-style weapons (25-point gap, Democrats favor) or having more teachers and school officials with guns in schools (33-point gap, Republicans favor).

Read more about Pew Research findings on gun control

U.S. Foreign Policy

83% of Americans say that “we should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home,” up 10 points since 2002.

40% say the U.S. relies on military strength too much to achieve its foreign policy goals, 44% say about the right amount and 10% say too little.

63% say the U.S. should be less involved in Middle East leadership changes.

Americans largely approve of the use of drones to target extremists, unlike most other nations surveyed.

71% say defending the nation from terrorism is a top priority.

60% support withdrawing troops from Afghanistan “as soon as possible.”

Read more about Pew Research findings on foreign policy

via State of the Union 2013 and Public Opinion | Pew Research Center.

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The C.I.A After Petraeus : The New Yorker

The New Yorker looks at “the agency” with attitude and point of view… must reading for the intelligentsia interested in American intelligence…

“The office of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency sits on the seventh floor of the old …”

More via The C.I.A After Petraeus : The New Yorker.

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Latino Voters in the 2012 Election | Pew Hispanic Center

The Republican and Democrat parties are focusing on everything else but the role of the Latino vote in the 2012 election.  This is in part due to the fact that either party lacks an internal capacity to develop an intelligent conversation on the role that the vote has played.  Even the Democratic machine, at the national level, which supposedly had the upper hand on voter micro data and demographics, has not come out with an intelligent discussion on the role of the Latino vote.  The Pew Foundation has shared some resources that could enlighten such a discussion….  The Policy ThinkShop provides this link for those who are looking at this issue towards making the current administration accountable to the Latino vote and in making sure the Latino vote continues to come in and count once it has its impact going forward…

Feel free to post your comments on how this material is useful to you, your organization and to developing policy that addresses Latino community needs and interests…

“Latinos voted for President Barack Obama over Republican Mitt Romney by 71% to 27%, according to an analysis of exit polls by the Pew Hispanic Center, a Project of the Pew Research Center.1

Obama’s national vote share among Hispanic voters is the highest seen by a Democratic candidate since 1996, when President Bill Clinton won 72% of the Hispanic vote.

The Center’s analysis finds that Latinos made up 10% of the electorate, as indicated by the national exit poll, up from 9% in 2008 and 8% in 2004.2 The analysis also shows that as a group, non-white voters made up 28% of the nation’s electorate, up from 26% in 2008.3″

More via Latino Voters in the 2012 Election | Pew Hispanic Center.

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President Obama’s Success – NYTimes.com

NYTs weighs in on how the Country has spoken demanding

• jobs, spreading the tax burden and rejecting politics of deceit

“President Obama’s dramatic re-election victory was not a sign that a fractured nation had finally come together on Election Day. But it was a strong endorsement of …”

via President Obama’s Success – NYTimes.com.

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Storm Roils Campaign as Obama Cancels Florida Appearance – NYTimes.com

NYTs reports that President Obama has stopped his camping to take the Presidential post to see us through Hurricane Sandy …  The day has seen the media torn between covering the Hurricane and getting vital information out to people in the eye of the storm and the impending political election now days away.

The President rightly sets the tone and gets the country focused on mother nature’s fury and the need for a bipartisan response to the emergency.

 

“President Obama greeted his motorcade at Andrews Air Force Base on Monday in Washington. Mr. Obama canceled his campaign plans on Monday to be at the White House as Hurricane …”

via Storm Roils Campaign as Obama Cancels Florida Appearance – NYTimes.com.

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