I would be interested to know to what extent those two cross-cutting attitudes map onto one another. Anecdotally it seems to me that there's some pretty significant correlation
Sometimes this can have paradoxically good effects, like getting Never Trump conservatives to start taking voting rights seriously!
Sometimes it can make everything stupid(er)
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if it's just "people you are interested in writing things," then substack is a reasonable replacement. if there's some kind of signaling function of running something in The New York Times, then this is a different question.
but that would be easier to address if NYT (or any other paper) knew what exactly it was trying to signal. and that's before we get to editorial boards which are a whole other kettle of fish
it is genuinely fascinating how quickly this view has become accepted wisdom. in 2016 it was incredibly rare to see someone making this argument. post-2020 I see it all the time
Most of all what I feel right now is just a sense of ... loss
For the 400,000 dead, but also for everyone who hasn't been able to see their family or was hurt or sick or couldn't get help, and for the four years that could have been spent working toward something more worthwhile. The worst of it may be over, but that time is not coming back
None of this had to happen. There was no point to any of it.
Every writer is doing "here's my take on Trump" threads so I'm gonna do one too. Of all the pieces I wrote on Trump, this one, from September, best captures how I feel about this cultural moment and what Trump has done to the country's intellectual life. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Trumpian politics—constant new, repetitive outrages—succeeded in getting lots of new people engaged in politics but also made it impossible to stay focused on things that matter and build power and institutions (or ideas) over time
A lot of Biden's pitch is that he's boring—hence all the "catch up on sleep," "read new books" etc jokes. But rather than making everyone go Back To Brunch, the extra space created by a less all-consuming presidency could help people focus on longer-term questions and problems
this essay is thoughtful, but i'm puzzled by this argument. Trump's presidency has been a lesson in how much the man can get away with both during and after his presidency. Prosecuting him for pre-presidential criminal conduct would send a message that he can't get off scot-free
on the other hand, choosing NOT to prosecute if he did indeed commit crimes pre-presidency would strengthen the perception that the presidency is a get-out-of-jail-free card: all you need to do is get elected, and then you're golden! nytimes.com/2020/12/03/opi…
I'm not sure how useful it is to keep arguing about a hypothetical investigation/prosecution in the absence of further facts. Whether or not Trump should be prosecuted, imo, depends on whether he committed crimes and what magnitude of crimes they were, and we don't know that yet