The Good Word
Maximum mutual distrust. That sounds exactly right, doesn’t it? We see mutual distrust at work in the partisan politics people like Ben Sasse are taking a stand against and it’s transforming special places like Watertown, N.Y.
Mutual distrust is also at the heart of debates around representation that keep flaring up around movies like Captain Marvel and even our disintegrating relationship with Big Tech.
How can we minimize this mutual distrust? I’m convinced it’ll start with listening but also taking a risk—the risk of trust. Building trust takes work; it starts with listening (or reading) and continues by bringing our questions to conversations.
Photo by Bernard Hermant
A Moynihan of the Right? – Commonweal
Ben Sasse is a U.S. Senator from Nebraska and regularly bemoans the sins (and sloth) of Congress and the Senate. This piece from Commonweal positions him as someone worth listening to, even if you can't get behind his politics.
Why? Because he's "leading with ideas, rather than tribal signaling, and [...] doing the work required to situate his own ideas in a coherent worldview that transcends current hot-button political debates."
Captain Marvel and the Importance of Telling Female Hero Stories – Christ & Pop Culture
K.B. Hoyle exploring the truth and goodness of stories is, as usual, excellent.
The power in the story is in the inspiration to be heroic, whatever heroism looks like for each individual situation.
Girls get this sort of inspiration from books and other sorts of stories, but there is a special power in seeing oneself on the screen. They must believe they can grow up to be heroes in this world. They must know they can be agents of change—that their voices are as loud and as true, their strength and dedication just as valued and valuable, as their male counterparts.
The Least Politically Prejudiced Place in America – The Atlantic
This is a long but fascinating read about Watertown, N.Y., which explores the complex, and sometimes very simple, efforts required to live with those you just can't agree with.
“I have opinions,” she says, “but somebody else might also. I could learn from that person, and that person could learn from me.” She smiles as she says this and then waits for the next question. Her statement sounds so reasonable that I start to feel self-conscious for having asked her to explain herself. Why couldn’t an anti-abortion activist be lifelong friends with an abortion-rights supporter? Who was the weirdo here, anyway?
Elizabeth Warren proposes breaking up Amazon, Google, and Facebook – Ars Technica
I can't say I'm a great fan of Elizabeth Warren but if I were an American voter, breaking and regulating Big Tech would be among my top issues for 2020.
Essentially, her plan would be to prevent huge companies from running a platform and benefitting from that platform in non-competitive ways.
This part of Warren's plan would require Amazon Basics—a line of products made by Amazon—to be separated from the Amazon Marketplace. Google's ad exchange and Google Search would also have to be split apart.
Warren also advocates for splitting up non-competitive mergers, like Mark Zuckerberg's terrifying social trifecta of Facebook-Instagram-WhatsApp. The goal here is to encourage more meaningful competition, which should result in these companies having to work harder to win users' affections.
More than words
Poetry is like magic; it also makes me feel stupid. I can’t parse a poem quickly and file it away. Instead, poetry forces me to slow down because sometimes there is just more to words than words. Give it a try.
(Future newsletters may contain cat photos for the same effect).
Poem from The Poetry Foundation.
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