Zeit online: Postfaktische Pillen. Ein Kommentar von Dagny Lüdemann.
“”Keine nachgewiesene Wirksamkeit”. Ein Hinweis dieser Art muss in den USA künftig auf homöopathischen Mitteln stehen. Sehr gut! Denn alles andere täuscht Verbraucher.”
Hauptstadt
I went to Berlin for a seminar yesterday and today. Last night I met friends for dinner, then went for a walk to the Brandenburg Gate. Although it’s been 27 years since the Berlin wall fell, it still chokes me up to actually be able to walk through the gate.
Politics in the US
dangerousmeta: A little election math, for those afraid of their fellow citizens. And a rant.
“[S]top mouthing off on social media, get serious, get organized. Stop posting sh-t after a 30-second read finds you an echo-chamber article that gives you an ideological orgasm. Fomenting hate just makes things worse. Find a cause and volunteer. Defend what you love, don’t sit and bitch on Facebook – it’s the precise definition of impotence. As effective as putting ‘daring’ bumper stickers on your g-d car.”
Well said, Garret.
FLOTUS
Vogue: Michelle Obama: A Candid Conversation With America’s Champion and Mother in Chief.
“On the eve of her departure from the White House, First Lady Michelle Obama has never been a more inspiring ï¬gure—America’s conscience, role model, and mother in chief.”
By Jonathan van Meter, photographs by Annie Leibovitz. Published on November 11, 2016.
Maybe a little hindsight will help in the future?
Inquiring Minds Podcast Episode 154: Changing Political Minds – The Deep Story With Arlie Hochschild and Reckonings. (Podcast, 1hr 18min 40s)
“We team up with Stephanie Lepp from the Reckonings podcast and talk to sociologist Arlie Hochschild about whether or not this election is causing more people than usual to change their minds about politics. We then hear from two voters who did in fact make some kind of transformation during this election season – one young voter who was voting in his second presidential election and one long-time voter and political insider who has been voting for 40 years.”
This podcats aired six days ago, a few days before the election. Still, the interviews with the two voters and especially the insights of Arlie Hochschild gave me a lot of insight into how many Americans think about politics and how they decided who to vote for. Recommended!
About Arlie Hochschild, quote from Wikipedia:
“Her latest book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, is based on five years of immersion among Louisiana supporters of the Tea Party. It explores the role of emotion in politics by first posing a paradox. Why, she asks, do residents of the nation’s poorest state vote for candidates who resist federal help? Why in a highly polluted state, do they vote for candidates who resist regulating polluting industry? Her search for answers leads her to what she calls their “deep story,” a metaphorical expression of the emotions they live by. The people she studied may not be voting for their economic self-interest, she found, but they are voting for their emotional self-interest as members of a group which feels marginalized, scorned by coastal liberals, and left behind.”