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Public-Health Officials Should Have Been Talking About Their Sex Parties the Whole Time

theatlantic.com

In conversations caught on hidden camera, New York City’s former COVID czar said that he’d organized a pair of sex parties in the second half of 2020, as New Yorkers coped with peak pandemic social isolation. “The only way I could do this job for the city was if I had some way to blow off steam every now and then,” Jay Varma told an undercover reporter with whom he thought he was on a date. In a video compiled from several recordings taken this summer, the onetime senior public-health adviser to city hall describes the two events that took place in August and November of 2020. He also talked about his work promoting vaccination in the city by making it “very uncomfortable” for those who wanted to avoid the shots.“I stand by my efforts to get New Yorkers vaccinated against COVID-19, and I reject dangerous extremist efforts to undermine the public’s confidence in the need for and effectiveness of vaccines,” Varma said in a statement to The Atlantic. He acknowledged having participated in “two private gatherings” during his time in government, and said he takes responsibility “for not using the best judgment at the time.” The statement also notes that the taped conversations were “secretly recorded, spliced, diced, and taken out of context.”It’s not clear whether Varma personally violated any COVID rules. The sex parties involved, by the account he gave to the podcaster Steven Crowder in a companion video, “like, 10 people.” At the time, New York’s guidelines—which Varma was promoting far and wide—limited gatherings to 10 people or less in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. Separate city guidance on “Safer Sex and COVID-19” discouraged—but did not forbid—group sex. (“Limit the size of your guest list. Keep it intimate,” the guidance said.) Varma explained that he’d sex-partied responsibly, noting, “Everybody got tests and things like that.” He also said that he’d attended a dance party with hundreds of others in June 2021, after he’d left government (but while he was still consulting for the city on COVID policies).Still, you might think that a public-health official would do better to skip out on all of these events while other city residents were encouraged to minimize their social interactions. Even if Varma did not personally buck official guidance, others in his family may have crossed the line. He says in the videos that his family traveled to Seattle for Christmas in 2020, and that he didn’t join because the mayor was concerned about the optics: Public-health officials were actively encouraging people to avoid traveling for the holidays to avoid a winter surge. The following January, the U.S. reported a then-record number of COVID deaths.In June 2021, around the time that he attended the dance party with hundreds of others, Varma wrote an article for The Atlantic about the tricky calculus behind vaccine mandates and related COVID policies. “Many academic public-health experts favor more stringent restrictions than public-sector practitioners, including me, believe are realistic,” he wrote. He argued instead for what he called “a more targeted approach—one that neither requires universal sacrifice nor relieves everyone of all inconvenience.”Perhaps it would have helped if he’d shared his own struggles with that tension at the time. Social-science research tells us that public-health messaging wins trust most effectively when it leads with empathy—when leaders show that they understand how people feel and what they want, rather than barraging them with rules and facts. Clearly Varma struggled in the way that many others did as he tried to navigate the crushing isolation of the pandemic. In preparation for the holidays, his family was faced with tough, familiar choices, which resulted in his being separated from his loved ones.The end result may seem hypocritical, but it’s also relatable. (Well, maybe not entirely relatable, but in principle.) “We know that transparency can increase public trust in public health and medical experts,” Matt Motta, who studies vaccine hesitancy at the Boston University School of Public Health, told me. What if Varma had been forthright with the public from the start, even on the subject of his sex parties? Perhaps he could have shown that he understood the need to get together with your friends as safely as you can, in whatever ways make you happy. Even now, his description of that moment strikes a chord. “It wasn’t so much sex,” he told the woman who was trying to embarrass him. “It was just like, I need to get this energy out of me.” So did the rest of us.

Mark Robinson Is a Poster

12 h

theatlantic.com

Mark Robinson is many things: the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, the Republican nominee for governor, and a bigot. But the key to understanding him is that he is a poster.The poster is an internet creature—the sort of person who just can’t resist the urge to shoot off his mouth on Facebook or Twitter or in some other online forum. (For example, the message boards on the porn site Nude Africa.) These posts tend to be unfiltered and not well thought out. Sometimes they’re trolling. Sometimes they’re a window into the soul. The imperative is just to post.Robinson is a particular flavor of poster familiar to almost anyone who is Facebook friends with an extremely online, right-wing Baby Boomer, a curmudgeon who is upset about new cultural currents and airs his conservative and sometimes conspiratorial views for anyone to hear—or, more likely, to simply scroll over and ignore. (And it’s always Facebook.) This type of Boomer poster is common. What’s unusual is for someone like this to make the jump from Facebook oddball to gubernatorial nominee.[David A. Graham: The GOP should have drawn its Mark Robinson line long ago]As I explained in a May profile of Robinson, he made that jump in what must be record time. In 2018, he gave an impromptu speech to the city council in Greensboro, North Carolina, defending gun rights. A video of the remarks went viral, and two years later he was elected lieutenant governor in his first run for office.Robinson’s hopes at becoming governor of North Carolina dimmed yesterday with a CNN report about his truly disturbing posts on Nude Africa. He called himself a “black NAZI” and said he wished for slavery to come back. He also wrote about relishing transgender porn, although he has railed against transgender people as a politician. Robinson was already trailing the Democratic nominee, Josh Stein, in polls, partly because of a long trail of offensive comments prior to this.In an interview with CNN, Robinson denied that he’d made the posts, and suggested they were an AI hoax. “This is not us. These are not our words. And this is not anything that is characteristic of me,” he said. The problem is that they sound exactly like him: Intentionally provocative remarks about race, anti-Semitism, and attacks on Martin Luther King are all in his record. (That’s not to mention characteristic phrases like “gag a maggot” and “I don’t give a frogs ass.”)[David A. Graham: Mark Robinson is testing the bounds of GOP extremism]Even if Robinson genuinely made the comments, the things he says in them seem dubious. (Robinson is a huge fan of professional wrestling, which is premised on exaggerated tales and made-up backstories.) Consider some of the most lurid material. Robinson recounts finding a way to peep on women in showers when he was in high school. “I came to a spot that was a dead end but had two big vent covers over it! It just so happened it overlooked the showers!” he wrote. “I sat there for about an hour and watched as several girls came in and showered.”Perhaps this really happened, but it sounds more fantasy than reality. This is the sort of thing that happens mostly in teen-sex comedies and Gay Talese books. (I emailed Wayne Campbell, a high-school friend of Robinson’s, to ask if he knew anything about the alleged incident. “CNN is pushing garbage about my great friend, Mark Robinsonn,” he wrote. “The stories are completely false. Any intelligent person can see this is simply mudslinging and character assassination.”)Robinson also writes in several excruciating posts about supposed sexual encounters with his sister-in-law. I have no insight into Robinson’s marriage, though Politico reported yesterday that his email address was registered on Ashley Madison, a site for people seeking extramarital liaisons. But fantasies about sisters-in-law are apparently common, and the writing in the anecdotes is, well, not convincing. It reads like a randy teenager trying to replicate the tone of Penthouse “I can’t believe it happened to me” letters, but updated for the coarseness of a porn message board.[David A. Graham: Mark Robinson is already making new promises to veterans]Earlier this year, I read through Robinson’s Facebook history, going back years. (For whatever reason, Robinson never deleted his old posts and left them public, providing a jackpot for opposition researchers.) Occasionally, his Facebook friends would try to argue with him; more occasionally, they’d agree. But mostly they seemed to respond with affectionate eye-rolling: There goes Mark again. Reading the porn-forum posts reminded me of that. There goes Mark again, indulging his fantasies.Robinson’s sexual life is his own business, and he’s welcome to it. The problem is that Robinson doesn’t take the same approach to others. He is a hardliner on abortion, having long called for a complete ban. He’s also been outspokenly critical of LGBT people, deriding transgender rights and calling homosexuality “filth.”Robinson’s racism, anti-Semitism, and Holocaust denialism, among other things, can’t be so easily excused as personal sexual predilections. But they would have remained hateful comments by some random guy if Robinson hadn’t decided to run for office so he could establish his own views as government policy. He’s just a poster on the internet, and he should have stayed there.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Solution for Springfield

13 h

theatlantic.com

It didn’t take long for someone to bring up the cats.Only minutes into Vivek Ramaswamy’s town hall last night in Springfield, Ohio, a man who identified himself as Kevin raised his hand. He felt awful seeing news clips of children in Haiti with “flies in their eyes,” he said. But what about the people here in Ohio? And what about “the motherless kittens in the alleys of Springfield. Where are the mothers?”Kevin was referring, of course, to the pets—the cats and dogs and birds—that some Springfield residents allege have been eaten by Haitian immigrants in town. There is zero evidence that this is occurring, as city officials have repeatedly stressed. Still, the rumor persists—as one woman told me ominously, “You don’t see as many geese and ducks” in the park these days. And Ramaswamy—the failed Republican-primary candidate turned Donald Trump surrogate, who stood in the center of it all wearing a dark suit, his hair combed into a demi-bouffant—was not exactly there to fact-check.He’d come, he said, as a unifier. “My hope is that, through open conversations, through actually speaking without fear, we actually not only solve the problems of this country but, dare I say, unite this country as well,” he told his audience. Yet Ramaswamy’s purported unity play felt more like a Festivus-style airing of grievances: a “community reconciliation” event that reconciled nothing, and from which nobody was going to benefit—other than, of course, Ramaswamy. Even as Trump and his running mate, J. D. Vance, have seized on the Springfield pet rumor to attack Democrats on immigration policy, the falsehood has also become a handy vehicle for this hungry young Republican to audition for political promotion. And with Trump promising to make his own appearance in Springfield, last night’s “conversation” attained the status of a warm-up act.It takes a potent blend of chutzpah and political ambition to run toward a fire set by your own political allies, and declare yourself the hero who will put it out. Ramaswamy, a native Ohioan, had announced himself the man for the job over the weekend. “I live less than an hour from here,” he told the crowd. “I don’t actually blame any of the 70,000 people in Springfield” for the problems in town, he said. “I blame the federal policies.” Last night, he promised an “open, unfiltered conversation”—although he encouraged people to be respectful, he asked them not to censor themselves.They heard him. Some 300 people, mostly white, squeezed into a hot basement meeting hall—plus an overflow room—at the Bushnell Event Center downtown. Roughly half of the attendees wore MAGA gear. Earlier, I’d seen a man carrying an AR-15-style rifle who’d posted himself outside the venue, lending the proceedings a deeply sinister vibe.Ramaswamy had met with a few leaders in the Haitian community beforehand, he said, and he’d invited them all to his town hall. But no Haitian immigrants spoke up at the event, and I saw none. (“I think I saw one in the back,” Ramaswamy told me afterward.)That the community of Springfield faces challenges is not in dispute. According to estimates from city officials, some 15,000 Haitian immigrants have come to this once economically depressed town in recent years, welcomed by employers looking for workers. Primary-care facilities have been overloaded. Schools are struggling to handle the influx of students for whom English is a second language. Traffic has gotten worse.But these were not the problems that Trump referenced during the presidential debate when he declared, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs!”—thus aiming a 10,000-watt spotlight on this small city west of Columbus, and causing a string of frightening threats, school closures, and canceled community events.Ramaswamy, whose Indian-born parents were the beneficiaries of U.S. immigration policy, last night refused to directly address the accounts repeated by Trump and Vance. “I’m not here to talk about the issues that the media has really loved to obsess over,” he told me and a handful of other journalists before the town hall. I could virtually hear my fellow reporters’ eyeballs rolling.Instead, as he explained, Ramaswamy was determined to engage in a more noble effort: promoting harmony in Springfield—though, if that sentiment was in good faith, he was soon disabused of the notion. “I was a little concerned about the topic of this conversation, the vow for unity,” one man told Ramaswamy. “One thing we should be united on is there simply are too many mass migrants in this town.”The town hall’s moderator was a MAGA celebrity in her own right: Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of the conservative group Moms for Liberty. But her only job during the event appeared to be passing the mic around, and reining in unruly speakers with a gentle pat on the shoulder. One after another, locals stood to share their concerns—about skyrocketing rent, bad Haitian drivers, and the new Amazon facility, which would bring only more newcomers to town. One woman said a 22-year-old Haitian man was in her daughter’s high-school class; another claimed that her daughter had been chased by a Haitian man wielding a machete.Springfieldians are tired of being called racist, speakers said. They’re not angry at the Haitians for wanting a better life, but the community doesn’t have the infrastructure to support them. Most Haitian immigrants in Springfield came legally; still, the audience cheered when Ramaswamy suggested that a second Trump administration would bring about historically large deportations of undocumented immigrants. “Git ’em gone!” a man wearing a cowboy hat said, from a row behind me. “If it was up to me,” another man said, “we’d send them away and start all over.” One of the few Black people in the audience, a woman named Chrissy, took the mic to say she understood that the Haitians were struggling in their home country, but there really were too many here: “The biggest problem is they don’t know how to drive!” she said.At one point, a man named Bruce Willmann, who is affiliated with a religious nonprofit called the Nehemiah Foundation, made a pitch to Ramaswamy: Would he donate to the group’s new program to teach English to Haitian immigrants? The crowd erupted in boos. “Those are lies!” someone shouted. An angry-looking woman grabbed the mic after Willmann. Organizations like his “have contributed” to bringing in immigrants, she said. “When does it stop?” To Ramaswamy, she pleaded, “You’re here, Vivek. What do we do when you’re not here anymore?”“When will you come back?” attendees asked Ramaswamy over and over again—during the event, and in the hallway afterward. Some of the people I spoke with had expected specifics. “It was a step in a direction. I don’t know if it was the right one,” Brock Engi, a 28-year-old biracial Springfield native, told me. “I think it may get worse in the city before it gets better.”The only solution Ramaswamy urged was Trump. Joe Biden’s administration caused the problems in Springfield, he told the crowd, which murmured its agreement. “You don’t always have a chance to change things, but this time, in about 50 days, you actually do,” he said.Ramaswamy didn’t commit to donating to Willmann’s organization, but he did pledge to donate $100,000 to a local nonprofit. After that, Ramaswamy said, “I don’t know what comes next for me.” But he seems to have a pretty good idea. Ramaswamy has been angling for a status upgrade, telling reporters that he’s interested in a “substantial” administration role if Trump wins the election in November. He’s also open to filling Vance’s seat for Ohio in the Senate. “I think there’s a role for Vivek to do anything he wants,” Justice, his Moms for Liberty co-host, told me.I found Willmann, the director of Nehemiah, outside looking frazzled. There are two “legitimate” discussions to be had about the problems in Springfield, he said. One is about immigration rules and limits. “On the flip side, there are 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants in our city, and they’re here, and they have needs,” he said. “What are we going to do about them?” Wellman’s organization has set up free English classes with child care so that Haitian parents can attend with their children. As a result, he has received threats on social media, and someone on X doxxed his wife.I asked Willmann whether the town hall would have been more productive if some members of the Haitian community had shown up. He shrugged and said, “I wouldn’t come here if I was a Haitian.”After the event, I walked with Ramaswamy through the kitchen of the event hall, surrounded by beefy security guards. How did it go? I asked. “I feel like it went well,” he said. “I thought it was productive.” When we emerged from the back entrance, a throng of attendees was waiting, snapping photos and screaming praise for Ramaswamy, who waved and smiled like a starlet on the red carpet. “We need you!” people begged. “Run for governor!” “I love you guys,” he told them, before ducking into a waiting black car.The town hall may not have been a success for Springfield, but it was certainly a win for its instigator.

I Survived Hamas Captivity, but I’m Not Yet Free

17 h

theatlantic.com

The last time I saw my husband, Keith, was on November 26. He was lying on a filthy mattress on the floor of a darkened room and could barely look at me. We had spent 51 days together as Hamas’s hostages after being violently abducted from our home on October 7. I had been told earlier that day that my name was on the list; I was to be released and sent back home to Israel. Keith was to be left behind.My long journey out of Gaza was filled with fear and sadness. I was sure our son had been murdered on October 7 in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where we lived. The Hamas terrorists had been telling us throughout our captivity that Israel had been destroyed; I didn’t know what I would find. When I finally arrived at the border, I was told that all four of my children were waiting for me in the hospital. The attack on Kfar Aza had killed 64 people, and another 19 had been taken hostage, but my son had miraculously survived. I looked up and saw the moon for the first time in 51 days and screamed with joy and relief that he was alive and I was free.I spent my first night of freedom in the hospital with my three daughters. I slept for perhaps an hour—I was in shock, and adrenaline was coursing through my body. I had lost 20 pounds and was weak and sick. I could not get my head around the fact that I had been separated from Keith, my husband of 43 years and my constant companion. Every day since—for nearly 300 days—I have been fighting for his release with every ounce of my being.[Franklin Foer: Hamas’s devastating murder of Hersh Goldberg-Polin]I think about Keith all the time, but I feel a particular pang whenever I drink water, when I take a shower, when I eat something delicious. As a hostage in Gaza, these are not things I could do. The most frustrating part is that I don’t know anything about Keith’s condition: Is he alone? (I’d love for someone to tell me that he’s not.) Is he sad, or crying? Is he in a tunnel with no oxygen? Is he sick or being tortured? Has he eaten any food at all today? Is he alive?Keith is an American citizen. He was born and raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina—also the hometown of James Taylor, his favorite singer. In his early 20s, he moved to Israel, where we met and started a life together. I was a nursery-school teacher, working with the children of the kibbutz, and Keith was an occupational therapist who was working for a pharmaceutical company. Our entire lives centered on supporting each other and our community, nourishing the next generation with family time and instilling the values of respect, integrity, and acceptance of the other in our four children and five grandchildren.Keith is the kindest, most gentle man you could ever meet. He makes friends wherever he goes and is universally loved by people and animals. Thirty years ago, Keith learned Arabic so that he could talk with the Palestinian workers on the kibbutz, whom he swiftly befriended. A lifelong vegetarian, he held fast to his values in captivity. He wouldn’t even eat a few tiny morsels of chicken when the terrorists gave us more than our standard daily rations of half a pita or a few bites of plain rice.We are both lifelong peacemakers and activists. That’s one reason what happened to us and to our community was so shocking.On the morning of October 7, when the alarms sounded, we locked ourselves in our safe room. There were terrifying explosions and screams, and then suddenly 15 gun-wielding terrorists walked into our home, through a door we’d thought was locked. Keith put his head on his knees and covered his head with his arms; they fired a bullet through his hand and blood was everywhere. I screamed with a force I had never known before. Soon, the terrorists dragged us to Keith’s car. All around us were scenes of fire, violence, and death. I couldn’t stop thinking about my son, who lived just a few minutes away. How could he survive this?We arrived in Gaza and found people celebrating everywhere. We were bleeding and in shock. I couldn’t believe anyone could be happy to see two people in their 60s in such a state. The terrorists led us to a tunnel shaft, and we climbed down a rickety ladder into one of the scariest places I’d ever seen. It was damp and we could hardly breathe. There were electric lights on the path, which was a relief, because I’m scared of the dark. Keith’s ribs were broken and his hand was still bleeding. Within a few hours, they moved us aboveground to a room in an apartment with three yoga mats on the floor. The window was covered and we were not allowed to move. It was absolutely filthy.Keith and I were moved 13 times while I was in Gaza, from darkened rooms in private homes to terrifying tunnels without oxygen, light, or sanitation. We were treated with pure brutality, and knew we could die at any moment. We were not seen as human beings. We were starved while our captors ate. We were beaten, humiliated, and kept in disgusting conditions with no way to take care of our basic hygiene or survival needs. We depended on terrorists for every sip of water as they guarded us with their guns and threatened to kill us if we spoke or moved around. There were times I wanted to die.And there were many times I thought I would die. The buildings shook and walls crumbled with the launch of every missile. It seemed like the terrorists were firing them from our building. Many times a day, we heard the bell of a mosque and then, a moment later, the launch of a missile from the same direction. And, of course, we heard the Israel Defense Forces bombing close by. Between the missiles, the bombs, and the constant threat of being shot or beaten, it’s a miracle I survived.Keith and I were always held along with at least one other hostage, and sometimes up to three others. All of them were young women. All of the girls we were held with are still stuck in Gaza today. Each of them was sexually abused. The terrorists forced them to undress, and gave them children’s clothes to wear that were far too small. They watched them shower and touched them however and whenever they felt like it. I wanted to scream, but I had to stay quiet. I wasn’t allowed to feel or cry. I was not allowed to console the girls. They could have been my kids. And each of these girls has a family who can’t sleep at night, after almost a year, as they worry about bringing them home.For those who deny that any sexual assaults have taken place: I wish you were right. But I’ve seen it myself. I’ll never forget their faces. I will never stop fighting for these girls’ freedom.Since returning to Israel, I have worked to rebuild my physical strength. I could barely walk for the first few days. It took six weeks for me to be able to eat a normal meal. Nearly 300 days later, my body is still not the same as it was before I was kidnapped. As I’m getting stronger physically, I’m also working tirelessly to maintain some stability for my kids and grandchildren, who are exhausted and devastated from this endless struggle. We all need to keep it together as we engage in the most important fight of our lives.I’m not ready to go back to my home in Kfar Aza. Instead, I’ve moved between my children’s houses in different parts of the country. I haven’t had time to grieve the 64 people from my community who were slaughtered. I’m singularly focused on getting Keith and the rest of the hostages out of Gaza, the only way I know how. I spend hours every day speaking with the media, delegations, politicians, heads of state, religious groups, and other organizations. Keeping the hostage issue at the top of people’s minds is the only thing I can do. This week I’m in the U.S., and will speak before Congress and at the United Nations. I understand that I am one of the few people able to communicate the experience of being held hostage, and the urgency of bringing the remaining hostages home. I take this role very seriously.I’m not alone in this fight. Many of the hostages who were released during the November deal left Gaza with loved ones still in captivity. We are all unable to heal fully until everyone is home safely.The international community, with its promises of solidarity and support, does not fully grasp the personal tragedy of those who are left waiting. We are not just statistics or stories. We are real people with real families, struggling with with the most intense sadness, exhaustion, and frustration. Keith’s captivity is not just a political issue or a humanitarian tragedy. It is a deeply painful and personal wound.Today, we know more than ever about the extreme conditions and violence Keith and the other hostages are living in. A few weeks ago six hostages—Ori Danino, Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alex Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Eden Yerushalmi—were executed in the tunnels after surviving 332 days in hellish conditions. Those six families could have been reunited with the people they have been fighting to free for almost a year. Instead, they buried them.We need a deal to bring Keith and the other hostages home, now. I was there. I know what they’re going through. If your family or friends were there, you would do everything in your power to get them out.Every moment since my release, I’ve been fully consumed with freeing Keith and the other hostages out of that hell. There isn’t a head of state, member of parliament, news network, tech leader, or global organization that my family and I haven’t reached out to over the past months with a simple message: Get them out now, or they’ll be murdered.But now, as I wait for news of Keith, I feel helpless. I am at the mercy of negotiations, of political strategies, and of decisions made far from the emotional core of this situation. I have learned that hope is a double-edged sword, at once a source of strength, pushing me through each day, and a terrifying reminder of what is at stake. My daughters tell me, whenever a deal is on the table, not to dare to hope, or my heart will shatter again.[David Brooks: How do the families of the Hamas hostages endure the agony?]In moments of quiet, I think of the other families that are caught in the crossfire of this awful war, at the mercy of decisions made by politicians. The price we all pay is immeasurable; the assurances of a future peace ring hollow when it is your family being torn apart.My plea is simple: I don’t want any more innocent people to die. I want this war to end so the hostages can return to their families and the good people in Gaza can rebuild their lives. I am asking the global community to help us bring the hostages home, to release them from Hamas’s torture and allow people to heal.The hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 came from 24 different countries; they were Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist. They were daughters, fathers, grandfathers, babies. I’m asking the United States government not to give up on them. I’m asking Israel’s leaders to bring our hostages home. Don’t abandon them. Don’t let them kill our loved ones.The last time I saw my husband was on November 26. I told our captors that I was not going to leave him. “Either he comes or I stay,” I said. They pointed their guns at me and forced me through the door. Keith promised that he would stay strong, for me and our family, and that he would be home soon.I cannot wait any longer.

‘Americans Will End Up Paying the Tariffs’

2 d

theatlantic.com

One day after the Federal Reserve Board announced its long-awaited cut in interest rates, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen declared during an interview this morning at The Atlantic Festival that the economy has reached a “soft landing” of low inflation and steady job growth.“When we spoke two years ago, what I said was, I believed that there was a path to bring inflation down in the context of a strong job market,” she said, referring to her previous appearance at the festival, in 2022. “And if the Fed and the administration’s policies could succeed in accomplishing that, we’d call that a soft landing. And I believe that’s exactly what we’re seeing in the economy.”Without commenting on specific proposals by the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, Yellen also argued that sweeping tariffs on foreign goods and the mass deportation of undocumented migrant workers—two ideas that Trump has insisted would be priorities of a second White House term—could significantly disrupt the economy and reverse progress in reducing inflation.“I think it would be devastating to simply remove” that many undocumented workers from the economy, Yellen said, predicting that it would revive inflation. And although Trump has argued that foreign countries would pay the cost of the sweeping tariffs he says he will impose as president, Yellen echoed almost all mainstream economists when she said: “Americans, if we have tariffs, will end up paying the tariffs and seeing higher prices for goods that they purchase.”Yellen has operated at the highest level of national economic-policy making for the past 30 years. An economist by profession, she was appointed a Federal Reserve Board governor by President Bill Clinton in 1994, and later served as the chair of his Council of Economic Advisers. Later, President Barack Obama appointed her as chair of the Federal Reserve Board, the first woman to hold the position. When President Joe Biden named her as Treasury secretary, she became the first person to complete the trifecta of holding that job as well as having held those of the CEA chair and Fed chair.This morning, Yellen sat down with me at The Atlantic Festival to discuss the state of the economy, the thorny U.S. economic relationship with China, and how changes in tax, trade, and immigration policy might affect American families.The transcript of our conversation has been edited for clarity.Ronald Brownstein: You are also, in addition to your current role, a former chair of the Fed. The Fed yesterday made its long-awaited decision to cut interest rates. What did you make of what they did? Did they go far enough?Janet Yellen: Well, I’m not going to comment on the details of their decision, but let me just say, I see this as a very positive sign for where the U.S. economy is. It reflects confidence on the part of the Fed that inflation has come way down and is on a path back to the 2 percent target. At the same time, we have a job market that remains strong. Monetary policy has been tight, and readjusting the stance of monetary policy to preserve the strength of the labor market when inflation has come down is what I think this decision signifies.Brownstein: Does that imply that this should be the first of several cuts?Yellen: I think the stance of monetary policy remains restrictive. Federal Reserve Board Chair Jay Powell said yesterday that the expectation is that interest rates will come down further. But it’s, of course, necessary to watch incoming data, and there can always be surprises.Brownstein: Last time we were on this stage, in 2022, there was a great deal of apprehension about the economy, about the Biden administration’s management of the economy. Here we are now, two years later: Unemployment is at 4.2 percent; inflation is under 3 percent. The Fed is finally cutting interest rates. Taylor Swift has been in the news a lot lately—so let me ask you: “Are we out of the woods yet?”Yellen: There are always risks to the economy, so you want to avoid being overconfident. But when we spoke two years ago, what I said was, I believed that there was a path to bring inflation down in the context of a strong job market. And if the Fed and the administration’s policies could succeed in accomplishing that, we’d call that a soft landing. And I believe that’s exactly what we’re seeing in the economy.Brownstein: So just buttoning up this point, you think we have achieved the soft landing, and we will not see unemployment rise unacceptably?Yellen: I do believe the job market remains strong. The unemployment rate has moved up meaningfully, but from historically low levels—and it’s rare to have, in the United States, an unemployment rate with four as the first digit.Wages are going up at a good pace faster than inflation. So workers are getting ahead in real terms. But what we’re seeing is a normal, healthy labor market. We still have positive job growth in the economy. And I believe it’s possible to stay on this course.Brownstein: Let me ask you about two immediate events in the news. One, how big a disruption to the economy would it be if the government shuts down at the end of this month?Yellen: It would be very undesirable for the government to shut down. It would cause disruption in the lives of many people. And it’s utterly unnecessary, so I truly hope that that is not something that is going to happen.Brownstein: I know it’s handled at the Office of Management and Budget and the White House, but do you see a pathway to keeping the government open?Yellen: It’s an easy pathway to keeping the government open: We need a continuing resolution. We’ve achieved that in the past, and I certainly hope it’s something that we will achieve again.Brownstein: President Biden has pretty clearly signaled his opposition to Nippon Steel’s acquisition of U.S. Steel, citing national-security concerns. You chair the committee that reviews these kinds of international economic deals. This administration has talked about “friendshoring” from the beginning, trying to integrate our supply chains more tightly with allied countries. Why would Japan, of all places, be a national-security risk to own a major American company?Yellen: I’m not able to talk about the specifics of this or any transaction under very strict confidentiality rules that govern the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. But let me say: I do believe that trade and foreign direct investment are very beneficial for the U.S. economy. You’re right that we have focused on trying to deepen our ties with trade and investment with a range of countries who are our friends to diversify our supply chains, and in particular to reduce our dependence on China for a number of key inputs in goods.It’s critically important to have an open and welcoming environment, encouraging foreign direct investment in the United States. But the committee’s job is to identify if there are any national-security concerns, and that is always the focus, both in the law and in the process that the Committee on Foreign Investment engages in.Brownstein: I know you can’t talk about specific policies or individual candidates in the presidential race; I want to ask you about the debate about tariffs and this fundamental question about tariffs. Who pays the tariff? Is it a foreign country that is really paying the tariff? Or if tariffs are raised, is it American consumers who ultimately pay the bill?Yellen: There’s been a great deal of economic research on this topic, and almost all of it suggests that the purchasers of the goods—in this case Americans, if we have tariffs—will end up paying the tariffs and seeing higher prices for the goods that they purchase.Brownstein: There was a study the other day that calculated that undocumented migrants account for 22 percent of agricultural workers, 15 percent of construction workers, 8 percent of manufacturing workers, and 8 percent of service workers, including child-care workers. In your view, what would be the impact of removing all or most of them from the economy in a short time through a program of mass deportation?Yellen: I believe that immigrants have always made, and continue to make, a positive contribution to the U.S. economy. We have an aging population, and between 2010 and 2018, immigrants made up, I believe, 60 percent of all additions to the labor force. They obviously contribute to the dynamism of the U.S. economy.We need, I believe, an orderly immigration system. And there’s obviously work to do for Congress to work with the administration to accomplish that. But I think it would be devastating to simply remove this number of immigrants.Brownstein: What would that mean, in your view, for inflation?Yellen: I think it would raise inflation. These workers have contributed to America’s ability to produce more goods, including agricultural goods.Brownstein: The biggest fiscal-policy decision facing the next president is that, at the end of next year, the Trump tax cuts passed in 2017 expire. Let’s walk through the different scenarios in your view. What would be the impact of extending the entire tax cut, as it was passed in 2017?Yellen: If the entire tax cut is just extended and nothing is allowed to expire, I believe the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that over 10 years, that would be almost a $5 trillion blow to the overall budget deficit. Honestly, I believe that is something the United States can’t afford. We need to be on a sustainable fiscal path. If we extend any of the tax cuts—and President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have suggested extending the tax cuts that benefited middle-class families, families making under $400,000, increasing the child tax credit—ways absolutely have to be found to pay for that. In addition, we need to lower deficits to stay on a fiscally sustainable path.Brownstein: Given the pressure on deficits that the Congressional Budget Office shows, and given what you said before about an aging society, what’s the case against just letting the whole thing expire?Yellen: President Biden and Vice President Harris are really concerned about the ability of middle-class families to make ends meet. And [these people] really face a variety of stresses due to the high cost of living, particularly in areas like child care, health care, housing. And the president and vice president believe it’s the right thing to have middle-income families not see their taxes increase. On top of that, there are ways to pay for investments that make our economy function better, more productive, and address the high cost of living that is of such concern to Americans.Brownstein: And you believe that if you look at the costs of the investment agenda—what the administration wants to do for the care economy, as well as the cost of an aging society—that all of that can be funded primarily by raising taxes on people at the very top? Is it really plausible to do all the things that Democrats want to do in the long run solely by raising taxes on the very top 5 percent or so?Yellen: I believe it actually is.The wealthiest individuals, much of their income comes from capital gains, which, until they’re realized, are never taxed and often escape taxation entirely through step-up basis when people die. And the impact is that some of the wealthiest Americans, the highest-income Americans, are paying average taxes that are under 10 percent. And something like 60 percent of those people pay 2 percent or less, which is less than a schoolteacher or police officer pays on their income.Brownstein: Let’s turn to another issue that has occupied a lot of your time: China. This summer, President Biden issued an executive order limiting U.S. investment in Chinese technology companies. Last week, the administration finalized a series of tariffs on Chinese imports of electric vehicles, EV batteries, solar panels, critical minerals, steel, and aluminum. Are you concerned about the direction of the economic relationship between these two giant economies, particularly when the U.S. is so dependent on, so intertwined, with China?Yellen: We have an extensive trade and investment relationship with China, and I believe most of it is beneficial both to the United States and also to China—and uncontroversial: It doesn’t raise national-security issues and doesn’t raise profound issues of unfair trade. I’ve worked to develop a relationship with China in which that kind of trade and investment can continue to thrive.That said, we do have concerns. We have controlled the exports of goods that we think can boost China’s military in ways that will be damaging to U.S. national security. In addition, we have extreme supply-chain dependence—and, I would say, overdependence in many areas—on China.In some cases, these are areas in which China has heavily engaged in building capacity through enormous subsidies to their industry. And those are areas where we do have concerns. We feel trade should be on a level playing field. And we want to make sure that we have resilient and diverse supply chains.The tariffs that you mentioned that we put on electric vehicles and on battery components, aluminum, and steel, these are areas in which China has enormous excess capacity. We’ve made a conscious decision that in the area of clean energy, we want to develop this as an industry in the United States. That’s not to say we want to do everything entirely ourselves. We believe in friendshoring; we have built deepened ties with many countries that—in Latin America, in Asia—can be part of those supply chains. But we really want to reduce our dependence on China.Brownstein: It isn’t just the supply chain, though, right? As you point out, the administration has put enormous effort into accelerating the development of the clean-energy industries in the United States. Are you concerned that, without these tariffs, Chinese imports would simply overwhelm those nascent industries that we are trying to develop in the U.S.? Is this fundamentally about protecting the new clean-energy industries?Yellen: That is an issue that is an important motive. At the moment, in areas like solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, electric batteries, China’s prices and costs are extremely low. All of these are areas in which China has engaged in enormous investment over the last decade. And in many cases, there is just utter overcapacity in China: China’s production of solar panels exceeds total global demand. The Chinese government at all levels has been throwing money at developing these industries.So, yes, I would say that without some protection, our industry is not going to get off the ground. And this is a conscious decision that, while we’re certainly willing to engage in trade in clean energy with friends, we do want to have some presence in the United States in these industries of the future that are important in supplying jobs, good jobs, especially to people who don’t have a college education.Brownstein: You served in the Clinton administration as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. In the Clinton era, certainly he believed that integrating China into the global economy was a way not only of providing economic opportunity for the developed world, but also of moderating its behavior. I would say that if there’s one area of convergence among Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, J. D. Vance, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, it is the rejection of that view.Has the pendulum swung too far in the other direction? Are we missing an opportunity as countries around the world become more focused on nurturing these domestic industries and building barriers to more economic integration?Yellen: Regarding some of the hopes and aspirations we had for the development of democracy in China, along with economic development, we’ve been disappointed that that hasn’t come to pass. The impact of China—our burgeoning trade with China in the aftermath of China joining the World Trade Organization—really imposed, along with other factors, harm, especially on workers in America who lacked a college education. We experienced something that’s referred to as the China shock: We saw several million manufacturing jobs eliminated in parts of the country that truly needed these jobs. They disappeared.Trade is good, and it can enhance overall the welfare of a country. But if the gains are not sufficiently widespread, it’s something that is not sustainable over the longer run. I think we saw that while there may have been gains, there were a significant group of Americans that were losers.This is not to say that we should shut down trade and investment with China. We gain from much of it. But I think the attitude about what impact it has on the United States has become more realistic over time.Brownstein: This shift in temperature toward China: Do you see it reversing anytime soon, or is this now the new policy consensus in the U.S. that’s going to endure?Yellen: There does seem to be bipartisan agreement. And I understand the rationale for it, and agree with it. But I do think that we have a deep trade and investment relationship with China, and much of it is beneficial to America. It supports our export industries. We gain new technology from it. And I would not want to see this backlash proceed to the point where we really interfere with those benefits.

Attacking the President, Attacking the Nation

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theatlantic.com

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.The word assassination summons a universal dread in most Americans. We are not ruled by hereditary monarchs, whose life and death we might witness as mere subjects or bystanders. Instead, in a democracy, we know that “assassination” generally means that someone in our society has killed an elected leader, a fellow citizen we chose through our votes. It’s not part of the normal torrent of politics. It’s not an abstraction. It’s personal. It’s a death in the family—and both the victim and the killer were one of us.This week, we learned of a possible second attempt to kill former President Donald Trump. Fortunately, the ambush was discovered by the Secret Service, and Trump is unharmed. But the sad truth of American history is that threats against public leaders—and especially against the president, as a symbol of the nation—are common. Some of these threats materialize into actual attacks, and four of them, each taking place in public view, have succeeded in killing the commander in chief.Writers in The Atlantic have tried throughout our history to make sense of each of these terrible moments. Our archives reflect some of the ways these assassinations have left their scars on the nation.In 1865, only eight years after The Atlantic was established, Abraham Lincoln was killed in the first successful assassination of an American president since the founding of the republic. (It wasn’t the first attempt on a president’s life: 30 years earlier, an unemployed house painter named Richard Lawrence had taken two shots at Andrew Jackson inside the Capitol, missed both times, and become the first person ever charged in the United States with the attempted assassination of a president.)The Atlantic was founded as an abolitionist publication, and three months after Lincoln died, the writer Charles Creighton Hazewell expressed cold fury as he peered into the conspiracy against the Union’s leaders. Hazewell (a Rhode Islander, I am now compelled to note as a transplant to the Ocean State) was also unwilling to limit the blame to the now-infamous John Wilkes Booth. “The real murderers of Mr. Lincoln are the men whose action brought about the civil war,” he wrote. “Booth’s deed was a logical proceeding, following strictly from the principles avowed by the Rebels, and in harmony with their course during the last five years.”Sixteen years would pass before another president was murdered. James Garfield was shot in July 1881, and lingered for weeks. As the wounded president lay on his deathbed, the journalist E. L. Godkin reflected on why the attack on Garfield seemed somehow worse than the killing of President Lincoln. He echoed Hazewell, agreeing that Lincoln’s death seemed like a natural progression in the tragedy of the Civil War, but the shooting of Garfield seemed to come at a time when “the peaceful habit of mind was probably more widely diffused through the country than it had been since the foundation of the government.” (Garfield finally succumbed to his injuries on September 19, 1881—143 years ago today.)Some assassins believe they will be the movers of great events, but in a prescient comment about Lincoln’s murder, Hazewell noted how the Union’s government continued on after the president’s death: “Anarchy is not so easily brought about as persons of an anarchical turn of mind suppose.” Almost 20 years to the day after Garfield died, however, an anarchist shot President William McKinley after shaking his hand at the Buffalo World’s Fair. Atlantic writer Bliss Perry captured the feeling that would return to Americans during the terrible rash of assassinations in the 1960s, noting that McKinley’s death was the third such murder “within the memory of men who still feel themselves young.”But Perry’s anguish over McKinley’s murder was tempered by the most American of political emotions: patriotic optimism. “The assault upon democratic institutions has strengthened the popular loyalty to them,” he wrote. “A sane hope in the future of the United States was never more fully justified than at this hour.”We are an older nation now, and less prone to such faith and exuberance. (And that is to our shame.) Over the next half century, assassins would try to kill Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry Truman. For all the grief Perry expressed in 1901, however, Americans had yet to experience the shock of seeing John F. Kennedy slain in a car next to his wife, a video reel apparently destined to be played each November over and over for all time. In early 1964, the historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote a eulogy in The Atlantic for JFK. Morrison had known Kennedy, and his remembrance is a personal one. Perry said of McKinley that the “hour of a statesman’s death is never the day of judgment of his services to his country,” but Morison lauded Kennedy’s personality and achievements, perhaps as comfort to a grieving nation. “With his death,” Morison concluded, “something died in each one of us; yet something of him will live in us forever.”Public service in an open society should never be a risk, but the reality—especially now, in an age of treating politicians as celebrities—is that our national leaders must always be protected from those among us who are nursing grudges, harboring delusions, and indulging visions of grandeur. The history of assassinations, in America or anywhere else, shows that such attacks are difficult to stop. But rather than surrender to despair, we can return to these writers who tried to make sense of tragedy, and we can resolve, like them, that the bullets of would-be assassins will never kill our faith in the American idea.

Did Apple Just Stumble Into a Cure for Male Loneliness?

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theatlantic.com

Richard Einhorn first noticed that he was losing his hearing in a way that many others do—through a missed connection, when he couldn’t make out what a colleague was saying on a phone call. He was 38, which might seem early in life to need a hearing aid but in fact is common enough. His next step was common too. “I ignored it,” Einhorn, now 72, told me. “Hearing loss is something you associate with geezers. Of course I hid it.” He didn’t seek treatment for seven years.About 15 percent of Americans, or nearly 53 million people, have difficulty hearing, according to the CDC. Yet an AARP survey found that Americans older than 40 are more likely to get colonoscopies than hearing tests. Even though hearing starts to deteriorate in our 20s, many people think of hearing damage as a sign of old age, and the fear of being seen as old leads people to delay treatment. According to the Hearing Loss Association of America, people with hearing loss wait, on average, seven years to seek help, just as Einhorn did.When people ignore their hearing loss, they put themselves at a higher risk for social isolation, loneliness, and even dementia. One of the best things you can do to feel less old is, ironically, get a hearing aid. And in the past two years, these devices have become cheaper, more accessible, and arguably cooler than they’ve ever been, even before the FDA approved Apple’s bid last week to turn AirPods into starter hearing aids. This new technology is more of a first step than a complete solution—think of it as analogous to drugstore reading glasses rather than prescription lenses. That, more than anything about AirPods themselves, may be the key to softening the stigma around hearing aids. Creating an easier and earlier entry point into hearing assistance could help Americans absorb the idea that hearing loss is a spectrum, and that treatment need not be a rite of passage associated with old age.As it stands, one demographic that could especially benefit from destigmatized hearing aids is older men. “Men are at a greater risk for hearing loss early on because they have typically had more noise exposure than women,” says Steven Rauch, who specializes in hearing and balance disorders at Harvard Medical School. But men are also less likely to go to the doctor. (Several men I interviewed spoke about being prodded by their wives to go to an audiologist.) Instead, many hide their hearing loss by nodding along in conversation, by hanging back at social gatherings, by staying home.Faking it makes the situation worse. Without treatment, hearing can decline, and people become socially isolated. “When you’re sitting in a room and people are talking and you can’t participate, you feel stupid,” says Toni Iacolucci, a communication-access advocate who waited a dozen years before she got a hearing aid. “The amount of energy you put into the facade that you can hear is just exhausting.”Compensating for untreated hearing loss is so taxing, in fact, that it can have a meaningful impact on the brain. “Hearing loss is arguably the single largest risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia,” says Frank Lin, the director of the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Lin and his colleagues have found that mild hearing loss doubles the risk of dementia, and moderate loss triples it. In this context, a hearing aid can look almost like a miracle device for slowing aging: In that same study, Lin also found that among older adults at increased risk for cognitive decline, participants who wore a hearing aid for three years experienced about 50 percent less cognitive loss than the control group.Lin hypothesizes that the difference is because of cognitive load. “Anybody’s brain can buffer against the pathology of dementia,” he told me. “But if you have hearing loss, too, a lot of that buffer is having to be used up to deal with hearing loss.”In many cases, the gap between onset and treatment means years of missed conversations and declining social connection; hearing loss is associated with both loneliness and isolation. For Einhorn, who worked as a composer and a classical-record producer, his declining hearing meant maintaining a constant effort to keep up appearances. He remembers going to restaurants and tilting his head entirely to the left to favor his better ear while denying to his friends that he had any issue with his hearing; he started to avoid going to parties and to the movies. “Phone calls became hellish,” he told me. He eventually had surgery on one ear and finally started wearing hearing aids in 2010, when he suddenly lost all of his hearing on one side. “When I lost my good ear, I fell into an abyss of silence and isolation,” he says. “It was an existential crisis: Either I figure out how to deal with this, or, given the isolation I was already experiencing, it was going to become really serious.” Only then did he realize that the devices were less visible than he’d imagined and that the integration into his world was worth the ding to his vanity. Like many who use the devices, he still struggles to hear at restaurants and parties (carpets and rooms without music help), but the hearing aids have made an enormous difference in his quality of life. He still regrets the years he spent posturing instead of listening. “When you get to 72, you realize you’ve done a lot of dumb things, and not getting treatment was probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he said.That anyone is straining this much when a fix exists is a testament to how powerful ageism and the pressure to project youth can be. As long as people see the choice as one between hearing well and looking young, many will opt for faking their ability to hear. Overcoming that association with age may be the last challenge of persuading people to try hearing aids out.Some of the barriers were, until recently, more basic. Hearing aids were available only with a prescription, which usually requires visits to an audiologist who calibrates the device. Prescription hearing aids also cost thousands of dollars and aren’t always covered by insurance. Pete Couste, for instance, did go to the doctor a couple of years after first noticing he was off pitch when playing in his band, but he decided not to get hearing aids because of the cost. Instead, he dropped out of the band and his church choir.But these barriers are getting lower. In 2022, the FDA approved the sale of hearing aids to adults without a prescription, opening the technology up to industry for the first time. Over-the-counter options have now hit the market, including from brands such as Sony and JLab. Apple’s hearing-aid feature, compatible with some AirPod Pros, is the first FDA-approved over-the-counter hearing-aid software device and will be available later this fall via a software update. EssilorLuxottica plans to release the first-ever hearing-aid eyeglasses later this year. Hearing about the over-the-counter options triggered Couste to address his hearing loss, and he ended up with prescription aids that have made a “tremendous difference” in his confidence, he told me. This year, he went to four weddings and a concert at Red Rocks; he’s even started to play saxophone again and plans to get back onstage within a year.None of that undoes hearing aids’ association with aging though. A selling point of the new AirPod technology is simply that “everybody wears AirPods,” Katherine Bouton, a hearing-loss advocate and the author of the memoir Shouting Won’t Help, told me. “The more you see people wearing something, the more normal it becomes.” At the same time, AirPods are typically a signal that someone’s listening to music or a podcast rather than engaging with the world around them: The AirPods might improve someone’s hearing, but they won’t necessarily make hearing loss less lonely. Even if Iacolucci’s hearing loss could be treated with AirPods, she doesn’t think they would fully address the loss’s impact: “I still have to deal with the internal stigma, which is a thousand times worse,” she told me.The real power of the Apple technology, then, might be that it’s targeted to users with mild to moderate hearing loss. Changing the stigma around hearing loss will take far more than gadgets: It’ll require a shift in our understanding of how hearing works. “Hearing loss implies that it’s binary, which couldn’t be further from the truth,” Lin said. Most people don’t lose their hearing overnight; instead, it starts to deteriorate (along with the rest of our body) almost as soon as we reach adulthood. Over time, we permanently damage our hearing through attending loud concerts, watching fireworks, and mowing the lawn, and the world is only getting louder. By 2060, the number of Americans ages 20 years and older with hearing loss is expected to increase by 67 percent, which means that nearly 30 million more people will need treatment. If devices we already use can help people transition more easily and at a younger age to using hearing assistance, that could make the shift in identity less stark, easing the way to normalizing hearing aids and changing the idea that they’re for geezers only.

How to Speak Truth Without Fear

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theatlantic.com

Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.What is your most controversial opinion—something you wouldn’t dare divulge publicly? Perhaps you are from a devout religious community and secretly don’t believe in the most sacred doctrine. Or perhaps you love your activist friends but think their views are based on pious nonsense. Maybe you don’t actually support the troops. Or you doubt that climate change is such a big problem.As a social scientist, I like to ask people about their most unspeakable view. I am genuinely unvexed by others’ opinions, including those that are orthogonal to my own. And I am really interested in what people keep bottled up. What I have found over the years is that nearly everyone has beliefs they feel they cannot share. Sometimes this is a way to survive under an authoritarian system (where you can’t say what you believe) or a totalitarian one (where you must say something you don’t believe). Such systems can be de jure, as is the case with tyrannical political regimes, or de facto, as with college campuses where dissent from political orthodoxy is liable to incur substantial punishment.Even under systems that are truly free, which at least nominally permit full and frank expression, you may still be reluctant to divulge certain secretly held beliefs for fear of being ostracized by those you care about. Such shunning is, for normal people, excruciatingly painful. This fear does not mean you are weak or a fraud. Good evolutionary reasons account for your harboring this caution. But if you feel a need to come clean—to say what you really think—you don’t have to be bound by that fear. Understanding how ostracism works, and how you can manage it, will set you free.[Arthur C. Brooks: Why you should trust your gut]For your ancestors, conformity meant survival. When humans clung to one another against the elements, predators, and warlike rival tribes, to go against the group was to risk being cast out and dying alone in the wilderness. We’ve come a long way since those primitive days, of course, and you know logically that you won’t literally be devoured by wild beasts, be clubbed by another clan, or freeze to death for openly disagreeing with a DEI statement or refusing to go to church. But your limbic brain has not caught up with this reality; it is still terrified of social rejection. Indeed, you have a piece of neurological hardware on board called the anterior cingulate cortex, which is dedicated to detecting rejection and making it acutely painful.Ostracism threatens at least four psychological needs: belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaning. If you are rejected by your friends or family, you lose the identity of belonging to a particular group and the meaning this brings to your life; you feel diminished by disapproval; and you lose control of your social situation. For example, I have talked with scientists who have spoken out against recent orthodoxies in the academy. They told me how they were attacked by opponents, isolated and undefended by their institutions, and shunned by valued colleagues.Disagreements among scholars are normal: sticks and stones, right? Think again: These academics disclosed to me the real harms that had ensued—how they fell into a depression, in some cases for the first time in their life, and even contemplated suicide.Some people truly don’t care about ostracism, of course. But before you envy them, note that psychologists believe such seeming immunity may actually be evidence of a pathology called antisocial personality disorder. Neuroscientists have found evidence that people with this disorder have reduced activity in certain parts of the brain, including our friend the anterior cingulate cortex. To envy someone who doesn’t care about rejection might be like envying someone with defective nerve endings who can’t feel anything when they touch a hot stove.None of this means you are doomed to a life of either silent moral compromise or terrifying isolation. Some people without compromised limbic systems are able to stand up for their beliefs even in the face of group disapproval. They possess a special virtue: moral courage.[Arthur C. Brooks: How to take—and give—criticism well]Moral courage, which involves acting in accord with one’s convictions despite a natural fear of retaliation or punishment, is not easy to muster. “It is curious,” Mark Twain wrote, “that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.” Fortunately, moral courage isn’t just a virtue; it is also a skill that can be developed. Here are four steps to help you do so:1. Make the threat real.Fear of ostracism is difficult to deal with because it is a form of worry—a focus on an uncertain but probably negative event. Research shows that our worries tend to be hazy because our brains tend not to process the most likely real outcomes: So we broadly imagine ostracism as really bad and something to be avoided. But when we make our fears specific, we can prepare ourselves and devise defenses. To help you do that, aim to answer the following questions as precisely as possible: • What do I believe that I’m not stating because I’m afraid?• Why exactly do I hold this controversial belief?• What good could it do if I spoke up?• Realistically, what would happen if I did? 2. Don’t go in hot.A lot of the time, people get in trouble for their opinions because they bottle them up and then finally explode with the truth at an inopportune moment or in a way that is especially disadvantageous. For example, if you don’t like how your sister-in-law treats your brother but have held it in, you might find yourself yelling about it in a hostile, unplanned way at the Thanksgiving table. Learn how to manage the best time and manner to share your concern by answering these questions: • When is it best to share this information with as little emotion as possible?• What is the most favorable venue for doing so?• To gain support, or to blunt opposition, who needs advance warning that this is going to happen?• What form of retribution can I anticipate and thus eliminate? (For example, you could consider canceling social-media accounts, if they might provide a means for online retaliation.) 3. Practice, practice, practice.An extraordinary facet of human intelligence is our ability to practice future scenarios we have never experienced in order to eliminate errors we have never made. Early in my professorial career, I delivered my economics lectures twice before ever getting in front of the class. I would imagine students getting confused about a hard point of theory, so I’d find different ways to explain it without getting flustered. Similarly, you can practice different ways of saying your hard truths, envision the reaction of the people concerned, and make adjustments. When you confess your contrary belief publicly, make it the tenth time you have heard yourself say the words.4. Tell it slant and with love.As you practice telling the truth in different ways, consider the advice that Emily Dickinson gave in her poem “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” In other words, find a way to divulge your belief subtly—indirectly or bit by bit. “The Truth must dazzle gradually,” she advises, “or every man be blind.” Maybe this involves standing up for someone else who holds a controversial view without stating it as your own or suggesting that an issue can be seen in more than one way. Perhaps you can own your view over a period of time rather than dramatically, all at once—like soaking and gently working at a Band-Aid, rather than ripping it right off. Above all, remember the admonition of Saint Paul to the Ephesians, to speak “the truth in love,” not with hate.[Listen: When fact-checks backfire]Perhaps after reading all this, you are wondering whether saying what you really think is worth the trouble. That is something you must decide for yourself. Moral courage does not come without risks, and the path of least resistance in our world may be to just swallow your views—or change them to agree with the masses.But you may feel that conformity comes at a price too. Consider Polonius’s famous words of advice to Laertes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.” That describes a peace you can gain only through personal integrity, a peace that requires honesty with yourself and others. It is not the easy path. But that’s the point.

A Campaign-Song Nightmare

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theatlantic.com

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket CastsAt the Democratic National Convention last month, Hillary Clinton walked offstage to her campaign anthem from 2016, “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten. It was meant, of course, as an uplifting moment. But a journalist friend I was watching with who had covered the Clinton campaign froze when he heard it, and said, “I’m triggered,” only half joking. Platten back then was having her first real taste of fame. She had loaned the song to the campaign out of a sisterly feminist feeling. But given the way history unfolded, the decision came to haunt her. “I felt bad for my song. I felt bad for me. I felt bad for all of us,” she says.Lately many musicians have objected to Donald Trump using their songs at his campaign rallies, sometimes because they disagree with his politics. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, we talk with Platten about what can go wrong even if you are sympathetic to a campaign. After eight years of processing her experience, she is both brutally honest and gracious.The following is a transcript of the episode:Hanna Rosin: Just a quick note: This episode contains some cursing that you may not usually hear on this show. Rosin: Tell me if this analogy is right, because I was thinking the metaphor is like: If you bought a dress that you loved, and then you wore this dress to a party, and then something unexpectedly terrible happened at the party, you weirdly would hate the dress. It’s not the dress’s fault. Rachel Platten: (Laughs.) Rosin: But you would be angry at the dress. Platten: (Laughs.) Rosin: I was wondering if that’s the reaction people had to the song when Hillary lost? Platten: I mean, that would be a pretty— Rosin: Fair or unfair? Platten: Well, I think it’s a little dumb to be mad at a dress. (Laughs.) Rosin: (Laughs.) Right. [“Fight Song,” by Rachel Platten]Rosin: This is Radio Atlantic. I’m Hanna Rosin.Every four years, the music world and the political world interact, and weird things happen.[“Turn Down for What,” by DJ Snake and Lil Jon]This election year, there’s been the DNC roll call featuring Lil Jon. There was also the rumor the Beyoncé was going to show up to the DNC, which she never did, “Kamala Harris is brat,” “Swifties for Kamala.”And then on the Republican side, a less-cute kind of relationship with the music world. Newscaster: A federal judge in Atlanta has ruled today that former President Donald Trump and his campaign needs to stop using the song, “Hold On, I’m Coming.” Newscaster: Swedish pop group ABBA is the latest musical group to object to the Trump campaign. Newscaster: Singer Celine Dion is criticizing former President Donald Trump’s campaign for playing her music at political rallies without her permission. Dion says the campaign has played “My Heart Will Go On” at these events since last year. Rosin: But even when a musician agrees with a politician—like, is wholeheartedly down with the mission of the campaign—there can be dangers. One musician has gone on this journey in the most crushing and public kind of way. Her name is Rachel Platten. Rosin: When did the term “fight song” occur to you? Do you even remember anymore? Platten: I do. I do. It was very clear. I was at a college football game. I’m kidding. Rosin: (Laughs.) Get out of here. Platten: (Laughs.) I’m fucking with you. Rosin: I was totally—I was like, This is not going to be this— Platten: Wouldn’t that be amazing? I was like, I was at Ohio State. It was loud. Rosin: It’s not going to be this literal. Rosin: Rachel is the artist behind “Fight Song.” Platten: It was a little bit more wordy when I wrote it. It was like, This is my fight song, time to take back my life song, time to prove I’m all right. Anyway— Rosin: “Fight Song” was also the song that—for better or worse—became synonymous with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton: Let’s stand up for the future that we want together! Thank you all so much! [“Fight Song” overlapping with crowd applause]Rosin: “Fight Song” played and played and played—over and over and over again at 10 million campaign rallies—until my friend and political reporter Olivia Nuzzi tweeted that summer: “I would rather be strapped to a chair and forced to listen to ‘Tiny Dancer’ on a loop for nine hours than hear ‘Fight Song’ one more time.”But here’s the first heartbreak: Initially, Rachel didn’t even want the Hillary campaign to use the song at all because Rachel was having her first real brush with fame and success after more than a decade of hustling in the music industry, and she didn’t want to risk it.So when the campaign first called, Rachel was like, No. Platten: No. No, no, no, no. I was afraid. Rosin: Ah, even then? Platten: I did not want that to happen, and I was trying to stall my answer. Rosin: Interesting. Platten: And I remember saying a gentle no. I did a respectful no for a couple months. Rosin: Why? Platten: Because if you go back to the me that was there and had just had everything come after 13 years and was trying to shift and bend and shape myself into someone that I thought could keep this, I did not want to do anything divisive. And I was scared to be on any side of anything. And the song was resonating deeply with kids in the hospital— Rosin: Yeah. I read that. Platten: —and with cancer patients and with sports teams and with people overcoming horrible things. And so to, all of a sudden, be asked to put my song as something that would stand for only one group was the opposite of what I believed. No matter what I personally believed, I didn’t want my music to do that when I saw how healing music could be. Rosin: Right. Just to enter into any kind of arena of— Platten: Divisiveness. Rosin: —one versus another. Platten: Yeah. That’s not what I stand for, and it’s not what I’m interested in or passionate about. Though I understand how important it is in every other aspect of life, for me, as an artist, it’s not what I’m here to do. Rosin: Mm-hmm. So how did that shift? Platten: Well, I think it got kind of hard to say no. I think it just didn’t make that much sense to say no. Rosin: Because? Platten: I was on Columbia Records. And I am married to a man that’s very interested in politics. And I have a family that’s very interested in—I had people around me very excited about the possibility and who didn’t understand this somewhat naive but tender artist heart that I had that was scared. Everyone was just like, What are you talking about? Who cares? I don’t care if you’re scared. This matters. Rosin: Oh. Platten:This fucking matters. You have to do this. And I felt that in my soul, too. I felt like, All right. Okay. I’m a girl’s girl. I’m a woman’s woman. I, as a woman, I have to allow this woman, who’s going to possibly be the first official nominee—I have to let her use it. I can’t say no. Who am I to say no? [“Fight Song”]Rosin: After the break—why Rachel maybe should’ve said no.[Break]Rosin: “Fight Song” was already a hit, but it cemented its status when a version premiered at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. A montage of celebrities sang along in front of bright, colorful backgrounds. The vibes were: We are hopeful. This is good.Also, we were still really into a capella back then, post-Pitch Perfect and all.[Rendition of "Fight Song"]Platten: The first time I heard it used in the context of her campaign was the DNC, and it was on TV. Elizabeth Banks: It’s night two. Who’s pumped up? Platten: And caught my husband being like, Dude, turn it on. He was in New York. And I remember, I was in my towel with wet hair, alone in a small, little bungalow in Venice, totally caught by surprise.[Rendition of "Fight Song"]Platten: I knew she was going to, but I think it hadn’t been officialized or something. We didn’t know if she’d actually use it for the DNC. For some reason—it might be dumb of me—but I didn’t know that I completely expected it.Rosin: Mm-hmm.Platten: And so hearing it was exciting. And it was beautiful. And I had tears in my eyes. And I was proud. And it was amazing. It was amazing.[Rendition of "Fight Song"]Rosin: That seems uncomplicated.Platten: Yeah. It was uncomplicated. Regardless of what I believed, it was a very special thing to hear a song that I wrote for myself. It was uncomplicated, and it made me really proud.Rosin: And did it remain that way?Platten: (Laughs.) No.Rosin: (Laughs.)Platten: No. You know what happened! I mean, no! It wasn’t just her losing. It was the political pundits—these poor people who had to hear it over and over and over, my God. Anything you hear over and over is so annoying.Rosin: (Laughs.)Platten: You hate the song that’s the most-played song. It’s so fucking annoying. And so of course “Fight Song” became annoying. And I felt bad for them. I felt bad for my song. I felt bad for me. I felt bad for all of us. It’s just like, I don’t want you to have to hear my song that much. And you don’t want to hear my song that much. John Oliver: I did not agree to appear in this. I was just told to wait here with these things on my ears. No one mentioned this is part of a weirdly earnest a capella song for Clinton. Awful! Again, I did not agree to be part of this. This song is going to irritate people. Platten: And it became complicated and hard because there was a lot of tweets making fun of me and personalizing it. Kevin, my husband, follows all of that, and so he was aware of what was happening and showing me. If it maybe had been up to me, I would have just tuned it out—or tried to—but he is obsessed with Twitter and the news cycle and, like, always updating. And so he was seeing all of it. And these people that he followed and admired and looked up to were making fun of his wife daily, and he was just like, That’s not good.And it didn’t feel good. It was confusing. And I felt misunderstood. And I was taking it personally when it was not personal at all. It wasn’t personal. There’s a naivety about the song if you don’t know the artist behind it, and there’s a simplicity about the song if you don’t know me and you don’t know my story and you don’t know what happened to me and why I wrote it. And maybe there’s a simplicity regardless.But to be made fun of was really—it sucked. It sucked.Rosin: Did it make you feel—I don’t know; I’m guessing here, but—ashamed of the more naive parts of you? Or what was the part—because sometimes you can say, Fuck you, Twitter. And sometimes it hurts, you know? I’ve been there myself.Platten: No. It did hurt. I could never—until now, until I turned 40, had kids, went through a severe mental-health crisis. Now I don’t give a shit. I understand what matters and who I really am. And I derive my sense of worth from my own heart and from my family and friends. But at the time—newly famous—I did not feel like, Fuck you, Twitter. I felt like, Oh my God. There must be something bad about me or my writing, or it must be dumb.And then it was conflicting because, at the same time, I was still getting thousands and thousands of messages from people telling me that it was healing them from cancer or their battle cry or the thing that saved their life. So I also felt protective of the people who were being moved by it, and so that was a confusing feeling.I kind of wanted to be like, I wish that all of you could see the person in the hospital. Or maybe it’s your mom, or your sister, or your brother. I wish you could see what I see and experience how this has healing power, too. And how anything massively popular—there’s going to be people’s positive reactions and negative reactions when it becomes so big. And I think that it was hard to stomach, and it was confusing.Rosin: Did it make you question any parts of yourself or the way that you were?Platten: Yeah. I think that my relentless positivity that I was promoting—because I thought that that’s what I was supposed to do, as the singer behind “Fight Song”—it wasn’t necessarily who I am. It was one part of me. Yes, I am a hopeful person to my core. But at the same time, I’m someone who has had trauma and faced pain and felt deep fear. And I didn’t think that that was who I was supposed to be in the public. I didn’t think that was who anyone wanted to see sing “Fight Song.”Rosin: Of course, we all know what happened next: Hillary lost. Clinton: Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans. This is not the outcome we wanted— Rosin: With Hillary’s loss, “Fight Song” took on a different kind of feeling. The annoyance about the overexposure and its relentless optimism curdled into something meaner. It was no longer the anthem of the first female presidential campaign. It was a reminder of its failure.In 2020, Matt Miller of Esquire wrote this: “Even four years later, it’s impossible to separate that mindless, cloying chorus with the crumbling of our nation’s pride.”Rosin: Do you remember when she lost? Were you at a party with your friends, like a lot of people?Platten: Oh. I was, unfortunately, in a fitting because I had the American Music Awards—I think I had a fitting. It was so stupid. I was in a gown. I was trying on gowns, and I was very frustrated because I remember feeling like, This is so dumb. I’ve made the wrong life choices, that I’m being stuffed into a shiny, sequined thing when this humongous thing is about to happen.And it was panicky. And we were all, like—someone was hemming the dress, and it was one of those classic movie moments where she pricked me, and I was like, Ah! None of us were feeling great, and all of us were anxious. And, yeah, it felt so stupid and superficial to be doing that. I remember looking around like, What am I doing?Rosin: And when she lost, then did something change around the song for you or for the song? Then what happened? Because that’s a whole other layer of meaning that you didn’t ask for.Platten: That’s interesting. It changed for people in the political spectrum—and I’m sure people in the public, if they didn’t know the song in any other context, I’m sure it changed in that way—but not for me, personally. No. I mean, I was still touring to 15,000, 20,000 people at a time who were screaming it back to me with tears in their eyes. And so it wasn’t really changing for me in that way unless I looked on my phone.And there it was changing. Whatever the news was saying, or whoever was interviewing me, and being told, Oh, your song is actually representing failure now, or being made fun of in a worse way, I was like, Okay, right. I understand that. And yet I’m touring, and this is what’s happening in my actual life. So what am I supposed to pay attention to?Rosin: So you’re headlining, and the people are responding to the song, and then the narrative somewhere out there is like—Platten: Somewhere out there are people that hate it and hate me and hate what it means, and—hate’s a strong word. That’s what I felt. That’s a young part of me that felt that way, so that’s probably why I said that. But there’s a whole other group of people that are collectively, maybe, rolling their eyes or frustrated or feeling whatever way they are feeling.And yet there is a massive amount of people that I’m seeing in front of me that are feeling quite differently, and also, people online that are also still sending me those messages, and the song is still number one. So it’s a little confusing, right?Rosin: Knowing what you know now, would you still let the Hillary campaign—or any campaign—use your song?Platten: (Laughs.) Did you see my post on X? I think Matthew Yglesias was like, All right, pop stars. Let’s go! Kamala’s running! Where are you? Taylor? Selena? And I posted a meme of Homer Simpson retreating into the bush.Rosin: (Laughs.) I was going to say, if another artist came to you and said, Hey! Kamala’s campaign wants to use my song, what would you say?Platten: I would say, I think I’m good. I think I’m good. I love you. Bless you. I think I’ve done my part in that way, and, I think, a kind hell no. (Laughs.)Rosin: (Laughs.) Would you advise anyone else to do it?Platten: I don’t know. I don’t know. On one hand, look—I had to go through all of that to be where I am today.Rosin: Interesting.Platten: I don’t regret it. I don’t look back and feel dumb or feel hurt anymore about it. I feel a sense of understanding and kindness towards the Rachel that in that moment made that decision. And I love her, and I wish I could put my arms around her and say, This is gonna suck. But what you’re going to learn from this experience is—whew—it’s so good. And I don’t want to rob you of that experience. So, girl—get your armor on. Get your big girl’s panties on. Let’s go![Music]Rosin: This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Jinae West. It was edited by Claudine Ebeid, fact-checked by Stef Hayes, and engineered by Rob Smierciak.Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.By the way, Rachel has a new album out. It’s called, I Am Rachel Platten.I’m Hanna Rosin. And thank you for listening.