Before we begin…
As your state heads into a primary election or you’re sitting here wondering how you’ll sort through all of the politicking over the next several months or you want to control your consumption of political news during this midterm season, we wanted you to know we’ve got you. Right now, we’re running a midterm special for the newsletter at 50 percent off an annual subscription for one year. For 25 dollars (4 lattes?), you’ll get our weekly midterms coverage, plus all of our regular content. Your patronage means a lot to us and fuels this work.
If you’ve thought about becoming a paid subscriber before, now is the time!
Wear is the Love, Episode 21
This week we discuss the primaries on May 17th — who won, who didn’t, what surprised us and what didn’t. We also discuss Lis Smith’s op-ed in WaPo on the Dobbs abortion case, “This is not the time to change how we talk about abortion.” And finally, we discuss Matthew B Crawford’s article on liberalism, which is number 1 in the Top 5 below.
The Top 5 articles for your week
“Covid was liberalism’s end game” (UnHerd)
Because “The pandemic brought liberalism’s deeper contradictions into plain view. On the one hand, it accelerated what had previously been a slow-motion desertion of liberal principles of government. On the other hand, Covid culture has brought to the surface the usually subterranean core of the liberal project, which is not merely political but anthropological: to remake man. That project can come to fruition, it seems, only with a highly illiberal form of government, paradoxically enough. If we can understand this, it might explain why our embrace of illiberal politics has met with so little resistance.”
“An unintended consequence of mindfulness” (Washington Post)
Because “Mindfulness meditation is clearly effective at calming uncomfortable feelings, but some uncomfortable emotions are useful. Guilt can motivate us to apologize when we have hurt someone or to take action to undo some of the damage we’ve done. If meditation reduces that emotion, it could prevent us from doing the right thing.”
“Globalization Isn’t Dead, It’s Just Not American Anymore” (Bloomberg)
Because “Around the world, governments are paying more attention to how globalization can threaten national security, citizens’ interests and the environment. To mitigate these risks and make globalization more palatable, many are shifting away from Washington-style laissez-faire policies to a more hands-on approach of ‘managed globalization.’”
“Dislodged” (The Missouri Review)
Because “Any chances are hard enough to come by these days, I think. And everything these past couple of years has felt like a last chance. Just leaving my house to scrounge picked-over store shelves for toilet paper felt like a kind of last-chance endeavor. And truly, I am tired of thinking about last chances. What if the last time I saw my parents was my last chance to have seen them? What if the last time I stepped foot in the classroom was the last chance I had to do so? What about that last time I went to a concert and screamed in revelatory joy? Or the last time I sat inside a coffee shop? Or the last time I went anywhere without a mask? The last time I saw my students in the classroom, in spring of 2020, I told them that we might have a week or two of online classes, then would be back in the classroom for the end of the semester. That was right before spring break. My parting, in-person words were, “Have a great spring break—see you back here in a couple of weeks!” Now, I would really like to have had a chance to say, “I care about all of you; please be safe. Stay with your families or check in on them as much as you can. Love them.” We were not given any last chances to do these things until, suddenly, we had no chances for a while.”
“DeafBlind Communities May Be Creating a New Language of Touch” (New Yorker)
Because a new language is being created right now! How fascinating!
BONUS: “Our Braided Bread” (Longreads)
Because this is simply a lovely essay from a writer in Iowa who bakes challah weekly, more often than he used to, and he’s trying to understand why.
Episode 21: Primary recap in PA, NC and other states set the table for November