Texas teacher charged for alleged sexual assault of underaged former student: police
What are election betting odds? Expert explains why Trump is current favorite
Trump has over 58% chance of winning election, according to average of betting markets.
nypost.com
10 best places to celebrate Halloween in the US, with spooky spots ranked
A new report ranked the best Halloween towns in the U.S. ahead of the spooky holiday. WalletHub analysts compared 100 cities to create a list of cities with the best celebrations.
foxnews.com
Surfer dies after being stabbed by swordfish: "Died doing what she loved"
Giulia Manfrini was surfing in the Mentawai islands when a swordfish "suddenly jumped and struck her in the chest," officials said.
cbsnews.com
Carville warns journalists will be locked up if Trump wins election: 'He's gonna arrest all of ya'
Veteran Democratic Party strategist James Carville warned that commentators are fixated on polling numbers rather than warning about Trump's potential future policies.
foxnews.com
Can the tire industry be sustainable? Guayule farmers say yes.
Guayule, a small shrub grown in the Southwest, may be the answer tire manufacturers need to become more sustainable and environmentally friendly
washingtonpost.com
Thereās something off about this yearās āfall vibesā
This is what came out when I prompted Canvaās AI tool to create a āview from cafe in autumn, quaint street, foliage, coffee, aesthetic, small town.ā Interesting how it placed said foliage indoors! | Image generated byĀ RebeccaĀ Jennings using Canva A rain-soaked street at dusk, pictured through the window of a coffee shop. String lights hang between old brick buildings, a church steeple in the distance. In the foreground, a candlelit table with mugs of coffee, tea, and ā¦ a corked glass jug of beige liquid? Next to a floating hunk of sourdough? And also the table is covered in water? This is the platonic ideal of āautumn,ā according to one photo thatās gone viral both on X, where itās been seen almost 12 million times, and Pinterest, where itās the very first picture that comes up when you search āfall inspo.ā At first glance, youād be forgiven for thinking itās a tiny street in Edinburgh or the part of Boston that looks like Gilmore Girls. But like so many other viral autumnal vibes photos this year, the image, with its nonsensical details and uncanny aura,Ā appears to be AI-generated.Ā AI āautumn vibesā imagery makes up a ton of the most popular fall photos on Pinterest right now, from a moody outdoor book display on yet another rain-soaked street to a sunlit farmerās market to several instances of coffee cups perched on tousled bedspreads. All of them appear normal until you zoom in and realize the books donāt contain actual letters and the pillows are actually made of bath mat material.Ā Dreaming of a wet table with three types of bread and a broccoli latte āŗļø?? https://t.co/uIqRCRlqcCā mj slenderman (@othermiike) September 25, 2024 Itās not just limited to Pinterest or āvibesā: AI-generated content is now infiltrating social media in ways that have a meaningful impact on peopleās lives. Knitters and crocheters hoping to craft fall sweaters are being inundated with nonsensical AI patterns and inspo images on Reddit. An entirely fake restaurant has gained 75,000 followers on Instagram by claiming to be ānumber one in Austinā and posting over-the-top seasonal food items like a croissant shaped like Moo Deng. Meanwhile, folks hoping to curl up with a cozy fantasy novel or a bedtime story for their kids are confronted with a library of Chat GPT-generated nonsense āwrittenā by nonexistent authors on the Kindle bookstore, while their YouTube algorithms serve them bot-generated fall ambiance videos. Autumn, it seems, is being eaten by AI.Ā Not everyone is ā and please excuse the following pun ā falling for it. When the fake cafĆ© photo went viral on X, it caused a deluge of quote-tweets asking why the hell anyone needed to use AI when you could just as easily post one of the many actual photos taken in real cities that do, in fact, look like this.Ā The crux of the issue now is the sheer scale of it: Scammers and spammers can unleash a barrage of text and images with the click of a button Colloquially, all this garbage is widely considered āslop,ā a term for the spammy AI-generated images, text, and videos that clog up internet platforms and make it more difficult and unpleasant than ever to be online. In reality, this moment of peak slop is the natural culmination of platforms that incentivize virality and engagement at all costs ā no matter how low-quality the content happens to be. But the crux of the issue now is the sheer scale of it: Scammers and spammers can unleash a barrage of text and images with the click of a button, so that searches for legitimate information or a casual scroll through social media require even more time and effort to bypass the junk. Misinformation about crucial news events and election coverage is spreading on platforms. Academic and literary publications are being spammed with low-quality submissions, making it harder to suss out genuine creative or scholarly work.Ā Of course, there are more urgent concerns regarding the rise of generative AI: its enormous energy consumption, for one, or the rampant creation of deepfake porn used to harass and abuse women. Considering all that, itās easy to look at cute AI-generated fall pictures on Pinterest as a relative non-issue, a side effect of a technology that could (arguably) greatly benefit humanity.Ā But as Jason Koebler, co-founder of 404 Media, a publication covering tech, explains, these images normalize AI slop and desensitize our ability to discern whatās real and whatās fake. āThe clogging of feeds and of search results is not just a side effect, but a main effect of all of this,ā he told me. āItās harder for a journalist writing an article to break through, or an artist painting a picture, or a musician making a song when theyāre competing with not just a bunch of other humans making stuff, but humans who are using this automatic creation machine to make things at a scale that is impossible otherwise.ā The problem is so bad that tools used to track the human usage of certain words online are no longer effective due to the prevalence of large-language models.Ā AI slop typically comes from people trying to make money by going viral on social media. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok all have programs that pay creators directly based on how much engagement their content receives, and AI makes it easier than ever to produce and test that content. Thatās led to an entire cottage industry of people all over the world who teach paid courses on how to produce highly engaging AI slop, sharing information on the best prompts to generate the most attention-getting posts. On Facebook, AI posters say they make around $100 per 1,000 likes, and some TikTokers are making $5,000 per month at their side hustles. Itās a decent amount for anyone but especially lucrative in countries where many AI content hustlers are based, such as India, Vietnam, and the Philippines. One Kenya-based creator told New York magazine that his process involves asking ChatGPT something like, āWRITE ME 10 PROMPT picture OF JESUS WHICH WILLING BRING HIGH ENGAGEMENT ON FACEBOOKā and then plugging those prompts into an image generator like Leonardo.ai and Midjourney.Ā Rather than being worried about their platforms being overrun with low-quality engagement bait, Meta and X seem entirely unconcerned and even supportive of it. āThere seems to be very little interest from any platform in taking action about this stuff,ā says Koebler. āThey are actively, in some cases, generating it themselves, and being like, āLook how cool this technology is!āāĀ Both Meta and X have invested heavily in AI, offering tools for users to add to the ever-increasing deluge of slop on their platforms. Metaās official account even posted an AI photo of the northern lights over San Francisco on Threads ā its top reply is a NASA engineer explaining why images like this spread false information and āmuddy the waters of reality.ā AI slop will continue to exist as long as people are finding ways to make money from it, just like any practice on social media, from the merely irksome to the actually dangerous. Koebler guesses that AI spam got so popular because some of the platforms cracked down on content stolen from real creators, making AI the second-easiest option for spammers.Ā āPeople are just posting whatever theyāre getting out of these AI generator machines, regardless of the level of quality,ā he says, ābecause of the ways that virality and social media algorithms work, even if you have the worldās greatest piece of content, it might not go viral, whereas something that is not very good might, just because you won the luck of the draw.ā Thereās a particular irony with AI-generated images of fall vibes, considering fall is disappearing from many parts of the US and AI emissions have become a major contributor to climate change.Ā And itās not as if the internet is starving for aesthetically pleasing fall inspo: Every September, social media is flooded with images of pumpkin-strewn stoops, cozy blankets on comfy sofas, or small towns covered in yellow and orange leaves. For the past few years, weāve christened these mini-moments online with names: Meg Ryan fall, which had its own outfitĀ and playlist recommendations, or Christian girl autumn, where people unleashed their inner white woman by putting on wide-brimmed hats and knee-high boots to grab pumpkin spice lattes. (This year, it seems like the Gilmoresā fictional Connecticut town of Stars Hollow is providing much of the inspiration.)Ā Itās all very cutesy and wholesome, but even this type of human-made content is increasingly little more than a plot to get viewers to click on affiliate links to Amazon storefronts or ultra-cheap TikTok Shop junk. In this way, theyāre not all that dissimilar from AI slop: Platforms are encouraging their users to be professional salespeople, whether theyāre hawking unethically made clothing and home goods or spamming audiences with AI-generated inspo photos. Both are low-quality, quick-to-produce types of content that drive engagement and, therefore, revenue, even when regular users say they hate it.Ā Part of the joy in scrolling through fall photos, after all, is knowing that these places exist and that you could theoretically visit them, that the world fundamentally changes in autumn, and that thereās only a small window of time to marvel at how beautiful it all is. An AI-generated image represents the precise opposite: Itās just one of the infinite possible arrangements of pixels for machines to keep churning out indefinitely.Ā
vox.com
Inside the Nestor Cortes domino effect for the Yankeesā World Series plans
A few thoughts as one New York baseball season ended and the other continued into the World Series.
nypost.com
These Nets are ready for a yearās worth of pain
The Nets have a front office trying to tank, a coach trying to build a winning culture and players with something to prove.
nypost.com
2024-2025 NBA season preview, predictions: Sleeper team, overachievers and finals matchup
The Postās Stefan Bondy, Brian Lewis and Mike Vaccaro answer the most pressing questions as NBA tips off.
nypost.com
A New Zealand Airport Has Imposed a Three-Minute Goodbye Hug Limit
Emotional farewells at Dunedin airport's drop-off area had been causing traffic jams before authorities took action.
time.com
Early in the season, the Pierre-Luc Dubois line is buzzing for the Caps
Through the first four games, the Washington Capitals are 3-1-0 and the Dubois line has 12 points.
washingtonpost.com
As we get older, increasing loss is the lay of the land. But at 75, I made a surprising gain
I was heartbroken when I lost my ability to play the violin after breaking my wrist. But when an old friend suggested I try the cello, I found magic.
latimes.com
Early Voting Grows Among Republicans, and a Lithium Trove in Arkansas
Plus, the booming Halloween economy.
nytimes.com
Parents sue elite private school for expelling fifth-grader over squirt-gun emoji, rap lyrics
A lawsuit says a boy was expelled over emails to another boy; one said, "You dead yet" with squirt guns. The pair went to a school fair together the next day.
latimes.com
Letters to the Editor: No articles on Kamala Harris' felonies and insurrection? So unfair of the L.A. Times
Why aren't newspapers printing articles about Kamala Harris' civil and criminal trials and efforts to steal the presidency? It's not bias.
latimes.com
At 15, he confessed to a murder that the D.A. now says he didn't commit. Will he be freed?
Lombardo Palacios was 15 when he confessed to murder following hours of police interrogation that employed pressure tactics many experts now say are unreliable. Seventeen years later, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George GascĆ³n will ask a court to set Palacios and his co-defendant free.
latimes.com
Pregnancy through the eyes of Jenny Slate, shocking bodily revelations and all
'It Ends With Us' and 'Marcel the Shell With Shoes On' actor Jenny Slate chats with The Times about her book 'Lifeform,' motherhood and why she's one Hollywood actor who does not want to direct.
latimes.com
DNA shed light on 1977 cold cases. Now, suspected serial strangler will stand trial in Ventura
A man suspected of strangling three woman to death in Ventura County in 1977 heads to court after new DNA technology shed light on the slayings.
latimes.com
Education gets short shrift from Trump and Harris on the presidential campaign trail
The nation will only get the education it demands from its presidential candidates, and right now, the demands are too low.
latimes.com
'Red-baiting' accusations fly between congressional campaigns in competitive Orange County race
In a tight Orange County congressional race, mailers sent by GOP Rep. Michelle Steel link Democrat Derek Tran to Mao Zedong and socialism, while Tran's ads say Steel can't be trusted to "stand up to China"
latimes.com
Harold Perrineau's 'secret plan' to bring back 'The Best Man' one last time
25 years after the original film's premiere, the actor reflects on his career and 'The Best Man' franchise ā and reveals the cast's strategy for keeping it alive.
latimes.com
Homey yet sophisticated, Santa Ynez is the rural paradise you've never heard of
As you walk past the shops on Sagunto Street, youād be forgiven for thinking you hear your spurs jangling.
latimes.com
Letters to the Editor: Israel's defeat of Hamas and Hezbollah can bring peace to the region
Israel has fought multiple wars for the sake of bringing peace to the region. It's doing it again against Hamas and Hezbollah.
latimes.com
Bruce Eric Kaplan just wanted to make his dream TV show. He ended up with a book instead
Bruce Eric Kaplan has turned his struggles getting a dream TV project off the ground during the pandemic into a comic primer about Hollywood called 'They Went Another Way'
latimes.com
President Vance? Brace yourself for it. Trump is already deteriorating
When we were worried about Biden's age and capacity, we at least knew a stable vice president was standing by. Republicans don't have that.
latimes.com
Here's why the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris looks so impossibly close
This election reflects the fact that Republicans and Democrats have both become minority parties relying on base voters instead of a decisive electoral majority.
latimes.com
Beyond Varsity Blues: In pursuit of donations, USC admitted affluent kids as walk-on athletes
Internal records show how USC admitted children of the wealthy and well-connected through an alternate path with an acceptance rate of up to 90%.
latimes.com
From penis size to french fries, Trump gives MAGA base what it wants
In the final days of the presidential campaign, Donald Trump is doubling down on his MAGA persona, apparently hoping division and chaos will lead to victory.
latimes.com
Who's available? Loss in Arizona shows Chargers' Justin Herbert needs another receiver
After the Chargers offense had to settle for five field goals in a loss to Arizona, it became clear Justin Herbert needs receiver help as trade deadline nears.
latimes.com
California's first carbon capture project gets OK from Kern County
Kern County has signed off an oil companyās plan to permanently store greenhouse gas emissions underground in a depleted oil field, marking California's first foray into carbon storage and a potential new role for oil and gas companies.
latimes.com
How did H5N1 bird flu get introduced to California's dairy industry?
Dairy industry experts say the virus entered California after local cows were shipped to another state and then returned to California.
latimes.com
Inside the abortion case that prompted a federal judge to call Florida officials 'stupid'
Florida Gov. DeSantis and his quack health commissioner threatened to jail people for running a pro-abortion commercial, until a judge called them 'stupid.'
latimes.com
Letters to the Editor: Readers express anger over scheduled release of a convicted rapist
The rape of an unconcious person technically qualifies as a nonviolent offense. Reader express shock that this means an offender may serve 50% of his term.
latimes.com
Make your way through the Santa Ynez Valley, 20 years after it all went 'Sideways'
Plan your escape to place where you can learn to play polo from a master, the shops are all hygge and the wine flows like water at countless estates.
latimes.com
Letters to the Editor: What should we do with the L.A. River? Look to Valencia, Spain
The Turia River in Valencia, Spain, was diverted for flood-control purposes. Now, the city has miles of parkland on the old riverbed. L.A. could do something similar.
latimes.com
'One Tree Hill' star Bethany Joy Lenz has finally come to terms with her cult past
In denial no longer, 'One Tree Hill' star Bethany Joy Lenz wrote 'Dinner for Vampires,' her memoir about her cult past
latimes.com
Letters to the Editor: Trump's racist ideas on criminality go back to America's founding
Trump's obsession with 'bad genes' echoes the 15th century Doctrine of Discovery, which paved the way for the brutal colonization of this continent.
latimes.com
Horses, vineyards and a charming petrol museum: 13 reasons why Buellton is worth a stop
Says Colin McNany of MarBeso Wine: āBuellton is the bellybutton of California. Itās centrally located, slightly awkward and highly necessary.ā
latimes.com
How the wealthy are redrawing the world map
The vault at the Union of Swiss Banks building in Zurich. | Pierre Vauthey/Sygma via Getty Images There are holes in the map of the world we all know. The globe may be divided into 193 or so units we call countries, but they donāt tell the full story. Headlines around the world make that obvious. Countries like Italy are sending migrants to developing countries like Albania to process their asylum claims. Russia is using āflags of convenienceā from countries like Gabon to ship oil around the world, defying international sanctions. From Gaza to Taiwan, unresolved territorial status are at the heart of some of the worldās most dangerous conflicts.Ā The worldās gray areas are journalist Atossa Araxia Abrahamianās specialty. Her first book, The Cosmopolites, explored the global market for citizenship and passports. Her latest, the newly released The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World, documents the myriad ways special zones and territorial ambiguity enableĀ global capitalism.Ā Abrahamian charts the evolution of Switzerland, the country where she grew up, from a pioneer of mercenary warfare to the invention of modern tax havens and secret bank accounts. She looks at the role that āfree portsā ā hidden facilities that made a high-profile appearance in Christopher Nolanās time travel movie Tenet ā play in the global high-end art market. She reveals the surprisingly prominent role Luxembourg is playing in the commercialization of outer space.Ā And Abrahamian examines the growth of ācharter citiesā ā a dream embraced by Silicon Valley billionaires who want to create Hong Kong-inspired special zones throughout the world with their own laws and regulations, outside the direct control of the countries where theyāre based. PrĆ³spera in Honduras is the best known of these, and the ideaās influence can be seen in Donald Trumpās pledge to build futuristic āfreedom citiesā if elected. Abrahamian doesnāt share the politics of charter citiesā most ardent backers, but she doesnāt entirely dismiss them either; she sees potential for the concept in a world with more and more closed borders.Ā Abrahamian recently sat down with Vox over Zoom to discuss her new book, how growing up in an international enclave like Geneva helped shape her approach to journalism, and what the world can learn from a sparsely populated archipelago in the Arctic.Ā This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Ā Joshua Keating One thing that I thought I understood about national governments, generally speaking, is that they tend not to surrender territory, or surrender their sovereignty, without a fight. More than a few wars have been fought over that! So, a big question I had while reading your book was why so many countries have decided to trade away bits of their sovereignty.Ā Atossa Araxia Abrahamian They would contend that they havenāt signed away pieces of their sovereignty, and I think thatās correct. At the end of the day, national governments have the power to control everything that happens in special economic zones or in free ports.Ā When youāre talking about some of these slightly more ambiguous territories like Boten [a Chinese-dominated special economic zone] on the border of Laos and China, the question is less ādoes the government have control?ā and more āwhich government has control?ā But, in a heartbeat, governments could intervene and shut these things down.Ā The thing is, itās not in their interest to do that a lot of the time, or they donāt perceive it to be in their interest because of the economic promises that come with these types of jurisdictions. Sometimes those promises are true. Sometimes the economic benefits are not particularly clear. I think that the vast majority of export processing zones or special economic zones help the corporations that are working in them for a few years because they get a tax break. But beyond that, itās not entirely clear that they have a massive benefit for the countries that host them.Ā But the question of sovereignty is an interesting one. Itās not a complete capitulation. Itās more that there are degrees of sovereignty, and different types of sovereignty, and different areas in which the state wields power, and sometimes they choose selectively not to. Joshua Keating A lot of the book was surprisingly personal. How do you think growing up in Switzerland influenced your views on this topic? Atossa Araxia Abrahamian I did grow up in Switzerland, in Geneva. But I never really felt like I was in Switzerland proper because I was living in an enclave full of international people and expats. I never felt fully Swiss. Thatās partly because of school; we didnāt really learn much about Switzerland. But itās also part of the way that these communities are structured. When people are moving every few years for their jobs, whether theyāre a Procter & Gamble lawyer or a World Bank person or a WHO official, there isnāt really a sense of permanence and rootedness in the community. Joshua Keating When it comes to charter cities like PrĆ³spera, it seems like peopleās views on them map pretty neatly onto their overall politics. Theyāre either these neocolonial impositions or the cities of the future. But it seems like your views on them are a little more nuanced.Ā Atossa Araxia Abrahamian I think these special economic zones are going to eventually evolve to be used in ways that arenāt just factories or economic incentives for companies. They have the potential to be places for people to live who canāt live in the country ā refugees and migrants, essentially. Thatās born out of some pretty ugly impulses: not wanting to let people in, having much stronger borders. I think it would be great to have a more permissive immigration regime, but in the absence of the political will to make that happen, I think thereās something to the idea of thinking about establishing places where anyone can just live, where anyone can show up and have a safe place to live and have a job.Ā What I realized when I was reporting this book is that there isnāt anywhere in the world where someone can just show up and live without having to have permits and visas. That was kind of shocking. There just arenāt any free zones for people. If the charter city concept is deployed in that way, as a halfway place for people to go when theyāre being bombed or when theyāre trying to escape a disease or famine or what have you, there might be something to that.Ā Ā Itās not a perfect solution, and Iām really ambivalent because I prefer to see more welcoming, inclusive policies at the national level. But I guess over the years, Iāve become a little bit cynical and hopeless about that ever actually happening. Joshua Keating One of the people you interview in the book is Patri Friedman, the grandson of Milton Friedman and a big booster of seasteading and charter cities. And heās obviously a libertarian, but I was reminded of something he once told me in an interview that thereās no reason only libertarians have to live in these places. Thereās no reason there couldnāt be a socialist charter city or an anarchist charter city or whatever.Ā Atossa Araxia Abrahamian Yeah, a morally consistent and intellectually honest libertarian would say that. Now they also get very upset when you criticize PrĆ³spera, and dismiss criticism as socialist, leftist, totalitarian. But yes, I agree, in theory, there should be room for other types of politics.Ā I was really agonizing over how to write about this. How can I acknowledge that there might be something in an idea without endorsing the way that itās been happening? I talked to Paul Romer [the American economist who developed and popularized the idea of charter cities but has since distanced himself from projects like PrĆ³spera] about this. It was his idea at first. And I was surprised at how much I agreed with him. Joshua Keating Romerās comments were interesting because he basically said it had never occurred to him that people would see charter cities as a neocolonialist project. Thatās surprising when theyāre explicitly talking about replicating places like Hong Kong and Puerto Rico.Ā A lot of advocates for special economic zones also point to Shenzhen, the city in southern China where such a region was established in the 1980s when the Chinese government was experimenting with capitalism and free enterprise. Or at least, thatās the story you hear. You see the story as a little more complicated than that.Ā Atossa Araxia Abrahamian Yeah, I started noticing when I was reading about places like Dubai, like Shenzhen, like Singapore, that thereās a really consistent narrative you hear: Itās that this used to be a fishing village ā always a fishing village for some reasonĀ ā and then a great, strong man leader comes in and brings capitalism to its shores, and all of a sudden, through the magic of low taxes and pro-business policies and minimal red tape, it transforms into a glittering metropolis.Ā If you look at pictures of Singapore and Dubai and Shenzhen, 100 years apart, yes, thereās a really marked transformation in the way that these places look. But these policies are not just top down. In the case of Shenzhen, it was always a border city. It was always a place where there were smugglers and people crossing over to Hong Kong and coming back. So this idea that it was just a top-down decision by the government that āwe will have more industryā is wrong because it was also a bottom up. Local leaders were inspired by the local practices. These places tend to be a lot more rich and complex and anthropologically interesting than the narrative that we hear from the boosters. Joshua Keating When it comes to outer space, this is really a new area for governance. In the book, you talk about how Luxembourg, of all places, has emerged as a leading jurisdiction for the chartering of new space ventures. How do you see the governance of space and the debate over space governance evolving as orbital space gets more crowded and things like asteroid mining get more realistic? Are we just going to see existing nation-states on Earth planting flags in space, or will companies and private entities be taking the lead?Ā Atossa Araxia Abrahamian NASA has really gone full in on the public-private partnerships model. Itās really keen on bringing in private actors, and there is a growing number of space startups that are doing everything from rocket launches to moon rovers that collect samples and run experiments. Space exploration is facilitated by the public sector, but on the micro level, itās managed by individual companies, sometimes very small ones.Ā I donāt think that the state is going to go away in space. Government space agencies are still the ones with the capacity to really get things off the ground, no pun intended, and cooperate with each other. There was recently the Artemis Accords, which is this framework for doing research and conducting operations on the moon. So I think thereāll be a bit of both. Governments on Earth are the ones that will ultimately recognize companiesā property claims. Joshua Keating You end the book in Svalbard, an archipelago in the Arctic thatās sort of part of Norway, but sort of not. What was it about Svalbard that sort of seemed to give you some hope about the world? Atossa Araxia Abrahamian Sort of. Svalbard is a place thatās a part of Norway, but is governed by some 100-year-old treaties that stipulate anyone can live there and anyone can open a business there. So it is, in a sense, this free market dream: open borders, open business. Thereās a lot of natural beauty, and itās also got a ton of environmental regulations, so itās not lawless by any means. Itās not a free exploitation zone or free trade zone, but it is a rare place that allows anyone to live there.Ā Initially, I assumed that this must have been a byproduct of warm and fuzzy interwar internationalism. And boy, was I wrong. I went through the archives of John Munro Longyear, who was a big man about town in Svalbard in the early 20th century. Looking through the archives, I realized that the reason that Svalbard got this way, the reason that it has this strange provision, is less that the countries of the world wanted the Arctic to be for everyone, and more that this CEO/entrepreneur was concerned about his property rights. Until the Treaty of Versailles, Svalbard was terra nullius; it was unclaimed. After the war, it was given to Norway. And while this handover was happening, John Munro Longyear was really worried that everything that heād built there, all these coal mines, would be taken away by pesky Norwegian socialists. So it was actually him and his lawyers who were lobbying for a much freer and more open system, and almost by accident, we ended up with this.Ā Is that replicable? I donāt know. But what it tells me, in a more hopeful way, is that sometimes you end up with these jurisdictional arrangements that came out of some maybe cynical or self-interested lobbying but wind up being pretty good.Ā Maybe we should be looking for those cracks and trying to break those types of possibilities open. It is really hard to start new countries. Seasteading and space countries are great thought experiments, but probably not happening. So, if we want to do something in our lifetime that creates more space for more types of people to live in more types of places, maybe thatās the way to go. I donāt think itās the only solution, but itās definitely something to consider.
vox.com
Md. senate race sees flood of TV ads in final stretch before election
So far, Democrats have spent about $25.2 million on television ads supporting Alsobrooks. Republicans have spent about $34.9 million booking ad time in support of Hogan.
washingtonpost.com
Leon Rose has a lot riding on these remade Knicks
The Knicks were a trademark Tom Thibodeau team the last two seasons. They had an identity. And now they have to make a new one.
nypost.com
Biden to highlight health care cost achievements with New Hampshire visit
President Biden is visiting New Hampshire Tuesday to tout his health care achievements and put focus on his policy legacy.
cbsnews.com
NYCās Gen Z Jews have a sexy new pick-up scene: āmillennial rabbiā shabbat with sushi, wine and a DJ
āEveryone's very attractive. Three different guys got my number!ā said Jade Shenker of Soul X events hosted by "millennial rabbi" Daniel Bortz.
nypost.com
Why Do Black People Vote for Democrats?
Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket CastsWhen it comes to Americaās two political parties, we may be in the midst of another great realignment. Not until Election Day will we learn how various demographic groups will vote for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, but trends suggest that education polarization and racial depolarization will continue. More and more college-educated voters are sorting into the Democratic Party, as many Hispanic and some Black voters shift toward the Republican Party.Perhaps the most famous realignment is the shift of Black voters to becoming a reliably Democratic voting base in the mid-20th century. In his research on the phenomenon, the Georgetown University professor Hans Noel studied this change and put pundits at the heart of the causal story.Noel created a dataset of political thinkers writing in magazines and newspapers to show that their published arguments predated congressional voting patterns by at least 20 years. Ideology matters! In the mid-20th century, Democrats moved left on race not simply because it was strategic, but because an argumentative edifice was built by the chattering class to push them leftward on race. In fact, partisan adherence to ideology can even run counter to the strategic goal of winning elections.āOne example that I like to think about a lot is the development of the Affordable Care Act,ā Noel explains. āThe Affordable Care Actāitās pretty clearly the kind of thing that Democrats would have liked to have done. They talked about trying to reform health policy for a long, long time. And it certainly has an electoral incentive, right? Iām going to do this thing, and people are going to vote for it. But actually, after the Affordable Care Act went through, a lot of Democrats lost their seats. And they lost their seats, in part, because of a backlash to the Affordable Care Act. You can start to piece this apart. And thereās some evidence that if you were from a close district and you took this risk, it cost you.āThe following is a transcript of the episode:[Music]Jerusalem Demsas: The political parties are changing. Democrats are increasingly winning college-educated voters, and Republicans are performing better with Latino and Black voters. I think itās the most important electoral trend of our time, and some people are already calling it another āgreat realignment.āLast week on this show, we talked about how the parties had shifted their views on trade policy. And this week, weāre going to talk about why parties shift on ideology at allāand why the coalitions that make up the parties shift, as well.The most-often cited example of one of these changes has to do with civil rights. The Republican Party had been founded in 1854 as antislavery party and had been seen as the party of racial liberalism through the 19th and early 20th centuries. But by 1964, it was Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson who signed the Civil Rights Act into law and his opponent, Republican Barry Goldwater, who opposed it.In order to understand what might be happening now, I wanted to talk with Georgetown University political scientist Hans Noel. Hans has written a book that has been very influential to my thinking. Published in 2013, Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America explores why Democrats and Republicans seemingly flipped sides during the 20th century.[Music]My nameās Jerusalem Demsas. Iām a staff writer here at The Atlantic. And this is Good on Paper, a policy show that questions what we really know about popular narratives.The racial realignment of the parties is most often seen as a question of strategy. Democrats were seeking Black votes in the North and made a tactical decision to switch their views on race in order to win elections. This is a popular model for understanding politicians. After all, look at how Donald Trump easily disavows positions he held on the Affordable Care Act and Social Security, or how Kamala Harris has tried to shed all of her most left-wing positions taken in 2019. But Hans thinks this model is incomplete.Hans, welcome to the show.Hans Noel: Thanks for having me.Demsas: So weāre here about a book that you wrote and a paper you wrote a long time ago, but I think it has lasting relevance, particularly in this moment where weāre seeing a change in the party composition yet again happen and real, large ideological shifts happening within both parties.But I want to start where you started, which is in the realignment in the 20th century over racial issues. Iām hoping you can lay some historical groundwork for us. What actually happened with the Democratic and Republican Parties on race over the course of the 20th century? Before we get into the why, what literally changed?Noel: Sure. This is whatās sometimes referred to as the great reversal or big reversal, which is maybe a little bit overstating exactly what happened. But at the time of the Civil Warāthe Civil War was a partisan conflict. The North was largely represented by Republicans. Lincoln was a Republican. And the people who were most opposed to the campaign that was underlying the Civil War to either abolish or, at least, limit slavery, were Democrats.And so, of course, that doesnāt line up very much with how we think about things now. And so there was this broad and general transformation on exactly that. But for a long time after the Civil War, the Democratic Party was the party of the Confederate flag, and they would claim that the North was being aggressive, and theyāre the ones who talked about the lost cause and the war of northern aggression and all the rest of it.And then there was a shift. And the shift was, you could easily just say, Okay. Well, itās a shift where, somehow, eventually the liberals on race moved from the Republican Party into the Democratic Party and vice versa. Itās not literally wrong, but a more nuanced way to say it is that the southern coalition included people who were pretty comfortable with government intervention on behalf of the less well-off, as long as those less-well-off people were white. The Southern Democrats were in favor of and preferred to continue the legacy of segregation that comes back roaring after the end of Reconstruction.And then, meanwhile, also in the Democratic Party now, especially in the North, both as African Americans move to the Northāand so thereās a lot of Black voters that are in the North who are thinking about these things and having a different kind of influence on politics because theyāre in northern citiesāyou have a lot of people who are in favor of government intervention for the less well-off, including people who are not white and maybe especially including concerns about race.And so you had this tension within the Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party, the New Deal coalition that we talk a lot aboutāwhat was the keystone of Franklin Rooseveltās presidencyāwas this combination of northern desegregationists and southern segregationists.And they found common ground on a lot of things, particularly when it comes to resources being spent on building schools and infrastructure or whatever like that. But also, they had this big, long trade-off, which they had built in, which is that the North wanted, among other things, stronger labor unions and the like. And the South, maybe a little skeptical of things like labor unions, was like, Okay. Weāll go along with that as long as you donāt extend it to racial desegregation. And so that was the key setup of the New Deal coalition, but thatās not a position thatās very long-term stable, for reasons I get into in the book.But what eventually happens is that, you know, thereās this conflict within the Democratic Party over which side we should take on the civil-rights question, mostly forced by civil-rights activists that are actually making it a big thing, and so you have to take a side. And eventually, the northern pro-civil-rights movement part of the party wins and effectively kicks the Southern Democrats out. It takes them a while to fully move into the other party that eventually welcomes them, and it becomes a keystone of what the Republican Party has been like and what itās been about since then. And so in 1950, 1960, you probably had the strongest people who were both for desegregation and for continuing segregation both in the Democratic Party.The Republican Party was people who maybe didnāt care as much about it at all. To where we are now, where the successors to the people who are most concerned about ending segregation are all in the Democratic Party, and the successors to the people who are concerned about preserving it are in the Republican Party. Of course, the policies have changed, but the kind of impulse and whoās in your coalition and whoās not has not changed.Demsas: So I think thatās a story that many people are familiar with, but I think that the why is something that most people donāt really spend a lot of time thinking about. I tried to pretend I hadnāt read your work and think back on what I believed before, and I think it was probably something that started with the Great Migration, right?So Great Migration happens. Six million Black people move from the South to the North, Midwest, West from 1910 to 1970. And thereās a political scientist, Keneshia Grant, who has this really interesting work where she looks at Detroit, New York, and Chicago, and her research shows that Democratic Party leaders were forced to respond to the influx of new voters by realigning, and also that Black elected officials in northern cities forced the issue of race onto the table. That builds on a lot of other peopleās work and this analysis of the party shift as being strategic.Clark CliffordāI think this is a very seminal example of thisāis a Democratic consultant, and heās an advisor to multiple presidents, and he writes this memo to Truman in 1948, arguing that losing Southern Democrats was less important than gaining in the North. I pulled up that memo, and itās pretty frank. This is not the kind of memo I think people would write in public these days, but he writes, āThe basic premise of this memorandumāthat the Democratic Party is an unhappy alliance of Southern conservatives, Western progressives and Big City laborāis very trite, but it is also very true. And it is equally true that the success or failure of the Democratic leadership can be precisely measured by its ability to lead enough members of these three misfit groups to the polls on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, 1948.āIt goes onto argue that āthe northern Negro voter today holds the balance of power in the Presidential elections for the simple arithmetical reason that the Negroes not only vote in a bloc, but are geographically concentrated in the pivotal, large and closely contested electoral states such as New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.āSo this storyāthat argument there is just a strategic view of what happens here. Itās that these leaders in the Democratic Party are like, We would like to win elections. We enjoy winning. We like power. We like Harry Truman. We want him to be president. And that there are people who are just party loyalists outside of ideology is the kind of idea. And so they shift because they see this bloc of voters become available to them, and they see it as more valuable. So whatās wrong with that story?Noel: Well, as far as it goes, I donāt think thereās anything wrong with the story. And, in fact, I really like Keneshia Grantās book that you just mentioned. Itās a really great story about why politicians in northern cities were motivated to do the strategy that they did. Cliffordās memo is notāitās real. It happened. And people did listen to it, and they responded to it.But, of course, thereās all kinds of strategic arguments for why to do certain things, and there are strategic arguments to try something else, as well, right? Thereās a strategic argument that people were making also at that time that the Democratic Party doesnāt want to lose that solid bloc of the South, right? Thereās this apocryphal story, probably, that [President Lyndon] Johnson declares, on signing the Civil Rights Act, that heās given away the South Republican Party for a generation. And whether he literally said that or not, that was a concern that a lot of people had, that the cost of this would be too great.And meanwhile, of course, itās not just about strategic behavior on part of any particular politician. Youāve got all of these people who are embedded in the Democratic Party in the South. They donāt want to give up their connections to that, and so itās going to be a struggle. And so part of the question is, Well, why does the struggle play out the way that it does? Why does one side win and not the other? And while I donāt think it all comes down to the thoughts of pundits and comments that people have to say, I do think that it somewhat matters that the current of the way to be liberal on the things that we care about should extend to and include the civil-rights movement is a compelling argument that a lot of people started to believe. And it started to have some sort of grounding in who they were.Itās hard to trace that sort of thing, so what I tried to do in the book is to find where you can see these alliances. And because it takes place over such a long timeframe, I look at these slices in 1930 and 1950 and 1970 and so on. And a lot of itās happening in between. And thereās a lot of more subtle shifts, and you can only pick up the big, drawn, block picture. But what you see is that, in the conversation that people are having, the idea that support for the civil-rights movement and support for, say, labor unionsāthose are pretty well tied together among liberals, even as Clifford is making his memo saying, These are the things that we should strategically be doing.So there was already a set of people who really believed fairly strongly that these things ought to go together, even before the strategic action to seize on it. And so I think that part is kind of importantāthe degree to which people believed that thereās a particular vision of what, sort of in the American sense of the word, liberalism means, that itās not just about economic inequality, but itās about all kinds of inequality.Demsas: Can you walk us through your paper? What did you actually do?Noel: What I was interested in is whether or not the way issues are organized among pundits was different and maybe influenced the way it was among politicians. Easy to see how politicians organize things, because thatās whatās happening in Congress, say. And so I developed a way to look at the publicly taken positions of these pundits in magazines and newspapers and did something that was parallel to that. And then you can see the change and evolution of those attitudes there a little bit sooner than you see it among politicians.Demsas: When I read your work, itās almost oversimplified. Itās a very chicken-and-the-egg kind of debate, right? Itās this question of what is actually moving first. And itās this question of: Is it the case that these pundits, these writers, these public intellectuals, their arguments about what it means to be liberal and what it should mean to be liberal, especially on racial issuesāis that driving people to think differently about the coalition to then create within the Democratic Party? Or is it just that those sorts of things are just rationalizations of strategy, right? These are two very, I think, different conceptions. Many people think of these parties as essentially just trying to get votes, and then after that, kind of ad hoc putting politics and ideas on top of that to rationalize their decisions to get power. And so can you help me understand or just draw out for us exactly what your thesis is there and how you came to it?Noel: I think a little bit of this comes from just, Why is it that people believe the things that they believe? And the standard political-science answer for why an ordinary voter believes the bundle of things that they believe is that they hear messages from friendly speakersāpeople who they agree withāand they say, I think we should do X, Y, and Z. And then, for whatever reason, they like X. And so then they start to like Y and Z, and then they agree with that sort of thing.And this is the dynamic John Zallerās book Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion lays out pretty clearly. But I think we understand, Where do peopleās opinions come from? Theyāre not all just waking up one day with opinions. They receive messages, and they move in that direction. But then if you say, Okay. Well, so then why do politicians choose the policies that theyāre doing? You get a story thatās this strategic behavior. Iām going to figure out where the voters are, and Iām going to say what I think the voters want.Well, but something has got to be more than that, right? Thereās got to be some other friction thatās happening. Now, it could be just big demographic changes that cause changes in the constituencies that politicians have to pay attention to. And I think thatās probably part of it. And thatās the Keneshia Grant story, which I think has a lot of truth to it. I think itās not wrong. But also, thereās something about, Hereās a voter who thinks about these things, and what are the things that they care about? And the things that they care aboutātheyāre not just getting it from politicians. Theyāre getting it from other sources, too. And theyāre getting it from political thinkers. Theyāre getting it from people who maybe even barely qualify as political thinkers but who are advocating for things.Demsas: (Laughs.)TikTok stars.Noel: Exactly. Right. Well, and you think about the importance of someone like a Rush Limbaugh or, today, the other talk-radio figures, right? They are, in a lot of ways, just trying to justify a coalition that exists, but they lay out things that matter, and they say, I really care about this. And eventually, they talk about immigration enough that a politician canāt ignore immigration as an issue that they want to engage with. And so that processāit probably doesnāt reach most ordinary voters. Most ordinary voters arenāt ideological at all. Well, one wouldnāt suggest they donāt have considered opinions, but theyāre everywhere because theyāre just not as structured. Theyāre not engaged with political questions.But people who are politically engaged do. And those are the folks who are the labor force for politics. Theyāre the ones who are the people who are volunteering for someoneās presidential campaign, for someoneās presidential primary campaign. And you need to excite those people. And you excite them by saying, Look. These are these issues that I know you like and I also like, and you get them together there. And so thereās this large dialogue.And in the book, in order to be clean about it, I focus on the contribution of the nonpolitical, independent actors. But, obviously, lots of peopleāincluding people who are in the dataset in the bookāare elected officials, and theyāre moving back and forth and the like. And some of them are just trying to steer public opinion in a direction that will help them get elected. Iām sure thatās part of it. And I think if we start to extend this to whatās going on today, a lot of itās also very clearly that, too.But there is also a big part of just peopleātheyāre trying to think, This is the position that I believe in. This is what I think is right. And I want to persuade people to that. And you start to get a collection of people, of ideas that are bound together by that, partly led by intellectuals but also led by activists and people who just care a lot about politics and people who are trying to build alliances. And they find a somewhat sympathetic partner. And then they start talking to each other, and then their ideas start to blend together and the like. In reality, of course, itās much more complicated and multifaceted, multidirectional stuff. But what I try to do in the book is lay out that there at least is evidence that thereās a path that comes from the intellectual conversation to the party-coalition conversation that is hard to imagine is going the other direction.Demsas: I guess, then, the mechanism here is really interesting to me, because a bunch of people start writing about why liberals should care about Black people and that they should care about racial justice and include that in their thinking on redistribution and helping the poor. Why does anyone care what theyāre saying? How does this small group of peopleāwho, you even say, likely are not being read by the masses who are votingāhow do they actually impact whether politicians are worried or not worried about their own political careers?Noel: Thatās right. Itās not a direct path, either to politicians or to voters. But it starts to be that thereās this set of ideas that have some resonance. And they have resonance maybe in the classroom, and they have some resonance in other conversations about policy ideas and so forth, and behind the scenes people are activists and the like.Thereās an interesting dynamic that you can see unfolding in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, where thereās this attitude about, What is race? Like, discussion: Is this a fundamentally different thing? Or should we think about it as a social construct and how to deal with all of this? And that conversation mostly takes place in an academic setting. And that conversationāthereās a winner in that conversation, that we ought to do when we think about race is not that thereās some kind of fundamental difference, and certainly not anything that has to do with fundamental superiority or inferiority, which was part of academic conversation on the topic towards the endāDemsas: Yeah. Here at The Atlantic, published a lot of eugenics propaganda.Noel: Yes. Thatās right. Ton of that stuff. And first, academics start to reject, and then it takes a while for it to track in there. But the people that it has traction withāI mean, there are people today who would still be comfortable with those views. But the people who that has traction with are the same people who are saying, We ought to be thinking about the relative bargaining power of management and labor. And how does the unregulated labor market lead us to whatever outcomes that we want to have?And there may be some sort of philosophical principles that are similar, like the idea of whether or not weāre just going to let the system go and do its own thing or not. But I think, more than anything, itās just recognizing that these different interests ought to be seen together. And I, at least, donāt think thereās anything inherent in saying these have to be seen together. You can imagineāand, in fact, we can seeālots of cases where they are not.But if you start to think of it that way, then you start to construct policies that are inclusive of all of the interests that are in your coalition. This is why I talk about coalition merchants, that what theyāre selling isnāt so much the idea that segregation is a problem or that we ought to have better labor regulations but, rather, that the people who care about those two things ought to be friends.Demsas: Yeah. I think this is something thatās really weird once you step back, and you realize thereās no reason why certain ideologies ended up getting together.Like, why environmentalism is not a conservative idea, when its roots are very much in small-c conservative ideas and could very easily fit well with the Republican Party but happens now to be in the Democratic Party. This is somewhat like an accident of history or, at least, it was created by people who intentionally wanted that to happen.I think one thing, too, thatās interesting is this idea that liberals and conservatives mapping onto these parties is a relatively recent phenomenon, which is something you talk about in your book. Is ideology as a driver of this, of partisanship, a new phenomenon? Why wasnāt it happening before? Why is it a new invention, then, in the 20th century that liberals coalesced into one party and Democrats and conservatives in another? Why donāt we see it happening earlier?Noel: Itās a good question. Certainly, if you were to go back and talk to people in the earlier periodsāand thereās a good thread of political-science scholarship that would take this position, as wellāthere is something like a Republican ideology and a Democratic ideology early on. Itās just that a lot of itās really messy earlier. And so the ideology of the Democratic Party in the late 1800s, thereās some things that it agrees with, but the North and the Southāto the extent that you have different regions that are appealing to the Democratic Partyāthey have different thoughts on what it means.The Republican Party is this weird pastiche of people who care a lot about what kind of metal we use for our currency and concerned about tariffs and concerned about Reconstruction and trying to continue that process. All of those things donāt have to go together, and they kind of do because itās part of the Republican coalition. But you can see in voting patterns that concerns about bimetallism and silver, that really matters in the West because thatās where the silver is being mined.And they donāt really care as much about Reconstruction. And similarly, southern Republicans who care a lot about Reconstruction, theyāre fine with silver but mostly on the grounds that theyāre going to be trading votes. So itās a long-term log roll that is there. And the people are aware of it, and probably a lot of voters who say, Oh, I just care about Republicanism. Maybe to some extent theyāre like, Oh, yeah. Both of those are things that weāre going to support. But it doesnāt have that kind of glue that modern ideology has.If anything, ideology todayāhowever you want to think about itāhas more glue, in some ways, than the party does, which is why you can have people who are like, Iām a conservative, but Iām not a Republican. And that glueāit just didnāt seem to be as clearly there, or to the extent that it did exist in the past. And I think that itās not that there was nothing there. It was both less pervasiveābecause the voters were not as engaged with all the political issuesāand less encompassing. There were fewer issues that were soaked into it, whereas increasingly everything, even what kind of car you drive, gets soaked into this.Demsas: One question I can imagine someone having is, Why does this matter? Why would it matter if ideology is coming first? Why is that important to understand?Noel: Well, I think one thing thatās important is: We tend to think if you take the opposite position and say, Partiesātheyāre just trying to win votes, and they donāt stand for anything, and theyāve come up with a menu of options just so that they can win your vote over, then when they tell you these are the things that they stand for, why do I believe that they care about them? Why is it important? Theyāre just going to say whatever they think matters that will get them reelected. And frankly, from a democratic standpoint, thatās fine, because theyāre responding to voters, and so thatās good.But thereās still a degree to which there is: Which voters are they responding to? and how youāre putting your coalition together and everything else. Itās a different story if you say, Look. Hereās a set of principles. This is a set of governing principles of how society ought to be organized. And the conservative set of principles is that we should rely less on government, and we should rely more on social structures, particularly religious and traditional social structures, and thatāll protect things. And if youāre struggling to get by, the problem is that thereās not enough faith and faith institutions in your life. And we should encourage that. As opposed to a different philosophy that is: Society has lots of different directions that people want to go. And what we ought to do is use government to try to make it possible for people to succeed in lots of different paths, even paths that some people donāt like. And the consequence of that is going to be that sometimes, if traditional ways are less popular in some places, they are going to fade away.Those are two different visions about how the direction of things should be going. And itās actually pretty useful as a voter to say, Which one of those visions makes more sense to you? And it also tells you something that, when the politicians are in power doing what theyāre doing, you can get a feel for the things that theyāre going to do and the attitudes theyāre going to take, even outside on new issues that you donāt know where theyāre going. And so, if you know that, Okay. These people care aboutātheyāre mostly interested in trying to address structures that are unfair and try to find ways to help the less well-off to be more successful, and then thereās a new less well-off that emergesālike, say, transgender rights or somethingāthen youāre like, Okay. Thatās the side that theyāre going to be on. And itās not an issue now, but I know what I think about it, and I can figure out where Iām going to slot into it.One example that I like to think about a lot is the development of the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Actāitās pretty clearly the kind of thing that Democrats would have liked to have done. They talked about trying to reform health policy for a long, long time. And it certainly has an electoral incentive, right? Iām going to do this thing, and people are going to vote for it.But actually, after the Affordable Care Act went through, a lot of Democrats lost their seats. And they lost their seats, in part, because of a backlash to the Affordable Care Act. You can start to piece this apart. And thereās some evidence that if you were from a close district and you took this risk, it cost you. I think they knew that it was going to cost them or, at least, that there was a risk there. But they cared about the issue, right? The policyāDemsas: Yeah. Tom Perriello ran for governor in Virginia after having lost his seat explicitly in order to vote for the Affordable Care Act.Noel: Exactly. Exactly. And so doing that, making that decisionāitās because they believed in this set of principles. Itās not just, Iām going to choose whatever, because if all you do is whatever will get you reelected, then you donāt take that stand. So itās a different picture about what politics is about and about what the role politicians are in that, at least in my mind, casts them in a little bit more principled place.And for that reason, I think that it matters a little bit. Thereās an actual substance to the difference between the Democrat and Republican Party. They change, and it evolves, and youāve got to keep up with it. But when youāre voting for one or the other, itās not just who managed to come up with the best package. But there are different visions or, at least, different coalitions, and you, as a voter, should be able to figure out which of those two coalitions you belong in.[Music]Demsas: After the break, what all this means for the modern-day Republican and Democratic coalitions.[Break]Demsas: One thing I want to ask you about is: How do regular peopleās beliefs fit into your model here, right? Because as you said, if you read interviews with regular voters, they often donāt seem to map onto the parties very well, or they seem largely nonideological, or sometimes theyāre articulating very competing viewpoints in the same sentence even, on times. Thereās one world in which their inputs into elite ideologyābecause even elites trying to shift policy one direction understand the constraints that regular people who are voting are putting on their own ideas.Thereās another in which lead argumentation is trickling down and moving people and sorting them eventually. So you donāt think a lot about politics, but you trust, I donāt know, like, Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow, or you trust Rush Limbaugh or whoever it is, and therefore youāre just following what theyāre saying, and saying, This is what people who generally have my values are thinking. But are they just then experiencing it? Are they also inputs? How do they fit into this?Noel: Yeah. I think this is a place where the idea of a coalition really matters a lot. Itās definitely true: Most voters are not very ideological. Kalmoe and Kinder have this nice book on the degree to which voters are āinnocent of ideology,ā is the phrase that they use.Demsas: Or guilty.Noel: Or guilty. (Laughs.) But they donāt know about it. And thatās not a factor for what affects them, for most voters. But most voters do know some idea of what groups in society they are closer to and which groups in society are not. People have an idea of what their own identity is.And so if you can figure out the things that matter to you, which party those mapped you toāif youāre a fundamentalist traditional conservative in the rural South, itās not hard to figure out which party thinks what you do and what you care about are really important, and which party thinks itās not so importantāand thatās all you need to care about. You donāt need to know about anything else.And then the people who are doing the work on the ideologyātheyāre including that. Theyāre saying, Well, part of what shapes my conservative view is that this stuff should be important, and also some other stuff that needs to be important and everything else. And so if all of those voters suddenly started caring about something else, then the intellectuals and the party-coalition builders and everyone else would have to say, Iām going to respond to that change that those folks have.Of course, people donāt have sudden changes too often. They have slow changes, and you can track it. But actually, abortion politics is a pretty good example of this, where it just wasnāt on anyoneās radar. And then Roe comes down, and this large group of people says, Wait a minute. I didnāt realize this was a political question. And then, all of a sudden, thereās this fire up for that. And that shaped and changed what it means to be conservative in that way. And so at the same time that the parties are shifting their ideological context, all the pieces are moving, but thatās responsive to some voters.So I think some ordinary voters, ordinary citizens have influence, but itās mostly through the identities and interests that they care about. And you get to choose, of course, because everyone has lots of things that they care about, but you find the things that matter the most to you, and then those shape how you connect to politics. And the bundling of the whole coalition is something that maybe not a very many people see, but a lot of people do. And then whatās trickling down isnāt just what attitude you want to take but which coalition you should be part of. And sometimes that can beāitās a shortcut, right? So it can be messy.Demsas: I think itās also interesting to think about the way that elites are also disciplined by mass publicās tolerance for different views, right? Because I think about this with immigration a lot. Immigration is a place where you do end up getting kind of a bipartisan consensus that, Itās good for growth. We donāt expect this to affect native-born wages. Weāre going to have a quiet, sort of hush-hushāwe get that people really donāt like it at the ground, but we need to do it.Trump really breaks this. Heās like, I actually noticed that a lot of people on the groundādespite the elite attempts to make this and pass it by the populationāare not okay with immigration, and Iām going to ride that to victory in the White House.And so my question for you then is: In what way are elites beholden, then, still? Because it seems for a long period of time, people were able to ignore the fact that a lot of people didnāt like it. It just wasnāt a voting issue enough to push a party to denounce this ideological belief that they had. But then it broke. And so are there some other limits to what can happen here? Is it not just that the grassroots is taking in the coalition signals from the coalition merchantsāthey are also forcing on the coalition merchants some sorts of constraints?Noel: Yeah. Thereās a good question about exactly on that issue: Whoās the first mover there? And I think itād be wrong to sayāyou can definitely find lots of intellectuals making the case against immigration and making the case that the Republican Party ought to be more of a working-class party. But by working class, we mean, working-class Americans who are here alreadyāDemsas: Native-born. Yeah.Noel: And maybe especially white, but particularly, at least, people who are still here already and will protect that. And so thereās a number of conservative scholars who are making that argument over the past couple of decades, that thereās that sort of way of thinking about the direction. And so you could argueāI wouldnāt argue this, but you could argueāthat, Oh, well. Trump is just picking up on this thing that was already being shaped in that direction. I think itās a little bit more than that. I think that Trump himself just believes that this is whateverāTrump seems often to bounce around. He doesnāt have a clear set of policy beliefs on lots of domainsāDemsas: Not immigration.Noel: But one area that heās very clear that he really cares about is things about immigration and trade and the U.S. position in the world this way. And so he pushes on it. And there was this group of people who were untapped that could be led in that direction.The interesting question would be: Letās say Trump loses in 2016. Or letās say, after 2020, he decides to go away. Would that new Republican coalition that cares more about immigration and maybe a little bit less about the traditional attitudes about classāalthough itās still a little complicated there because the new Republican attitude toward the working class isnāt, Stronger labor unions and more benefits. Itās, The way to help this group is to fight immigration, and so forth. But will this thing dominate? Will J. D. Vance be the future of the Republican Party if and when Trump is no longer a figure? And, of course, the longer heās a player, the more that this becomes the stable part, so the counterfactual: What happens if he werenāt there? Would they have snapped back to something else?Demsas: But also maybe he was there because there would always have been someone to take advantage of this.Noel: Exactly. Yeah. And I think that that is probably more likely, that there was this growing tension within the Republican Party and within the conservative movement between people who wereāthis is the Republican autopsy after 2012. You know, We should be more inclusive, including on immigration. And thatās why Romney lost. And thatās what we need to address, versus the other, No. This is a group of people, maybe like southern whites in the middle of the last century, that you can afford to lose to get the benefits of all these white, working-class, northern, midwestern, rural voters.And thatās a fine trade-off to make. And theyāre like, Will they go? Will they go? And the fact that thereās this argument thatās tying it together probably helps. But how much of that argument do we want to give credit to Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat and the folks who have made that argument, and how much is it just, Well, Trump capitalized on this thing, and so now itās turning?I do think that the fact that the working-class appeal of the current Republican Party is built around things like immigration, as opposed to built around concrete benefits to working-class folks, like government benefitsāitās a stress point, a testing point. How much does this really appeal to working-class voters? Or is it really about defining the working class as people who donāt have a college education but might be economically just fine?But thereās a thing there thatāto get back to the original questionāthere is a thing there that is constraining the politicians of how much they can do. I do think that thereās an intellectual conversation thatās shaping it, but itās not driving it all by itself, certainly not.Demsas: I think thatās something weāve been hinting at a lot in this conversation is that thereās this realignment that appears to be happening right now in both parties, at least since 2016: Racial depolarization, I think, is something that people have started to hear about a lot more.I donāt want to overstate thisāBlack voters, for instance, still are solidly Democratic votersābut Democrats are now at their weakest with nonwhite voters since the 1960s. Thatās pretty dramatic. I think that thatās not what people were expecting when Obama was running for office. There was all this talk about this unbeatable coalition that would come about once you had racial minorities as a majority of the voting base, in general.And so, obviously, this is something that requires a lot of study. Weāre all debating a lot here. But do you have a theory about whether there are preexisting coalition merchants that have been pushing this? And maybe not specific people, but are there specific arguments that you see as having led to getting more racial minorities willing to vote for Republicans? Particularly with what you mentioned with Black voters, whoāI mean, it has been a source of deep American identity that Black voters are Democrats.Noel: Yeah. I think part of it is just: The degree to which that identity is there erodes as you get further and further away from the civil-rights movement. When the politicians that youāre voting for and that youāre imagining and centering are people like John Lewis, then, of course, that is the center. And there was the fight that he did, and, Iām going to continue that.And now that thereās some distance, and the voters donāt remember this, because theyāre younger, then the connection to that particular alignmentāand now theyāre like, Thereās some other things that might matter. And thereās more Black role models, to stick to that example, who are in the Republican Party, and it might be something to look at.So part of the way in which that was reinforced is fading into the distance. But I think itās more about the degree to which, for many liberals and Democrats, the connection between the appeal to Black voters and the appeal working-class voters is to assume that theyāre the same thing. And so, If youāre Black, of course you have to vote for the Democratic Party. But itās not the same. This was a thing that came up in 2016, when sometimes the language coming out of both Bernie Sanders and the rest of his campaign sometimes talked about race in that way, where he would move smoothly into talking about class. And the opposition, to him, within the party was like, No. Itās not just about class.Demsas: Yeah. What was the Hillary line? Breaking up the banks doesnāt end racism, or something like that.Noel: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And then this idea of like, What are you going to do for Black Americans? And youād start talking about labor unions. And thereās a break there. And bottom line is thereās a ton of Black voters who identify and think as conservatives, except for on some small set of racial issues, and even then, maybe not always. And so once you can break the connection for them that theyāre supposed to vote for this party, then the actual party that is more ideologically consistent with them might be the Republican Party.In order for that to really play out, I think you really do need the Republican Party to back off of some of the more extreme racist elements of the discourse. Like, the conversation about Springfield is a barely hidden conversation about, These people are not part of our community, even though theyāre legal immigrants, because of stuff thatāitās hard to get past that. But once you move from thatāand to make it more about, Well, itās about national origin. And itās about investment in the communityāand you separate that, you can see where thereād be a different kind of conversation.Demsas: We saw that in Chicago when there was a lot of anger about how badly the migrant resettlement was handled there, and you saw folks who were having to sleep on the floor of police stations, and it caused a lot of disorder in the city. And a lot of Black Chicagoans were very angry, and they were like, Why are resources being spent on these people rather than us? And it was a different sort of coalition you could see emerging there thatās not the traditional Democratic one.Noel: Thatās right. This is why itās not obvious that itād be the coalitions that weāre used to, that things can be organized in lots of different ways. And the argument for why you can make an appeal to working-class whites on the grounds that, The real enemy is not your bosses or the rich peopleāitās the immigrants. That same logic can apply very easily to working-class Black voters, and say, The real enemy is not white voters, and itās not the power structures. Itās these people who are coming in who are changing things around. And thatās a completely coherent argument.I think that the way that you hear this in play in politics doesnāt always carefully avoid shifting intoāpeople are revealing their true beliefs that maybe thereās something more than just, Itās not just illegal immigration. Itās any immigration. Thereās a little bit of that thatās still present. But both as message discipline gets better, but also as people who care, really, only about immigration and are not actually motivated by the fear of the changing demographics, per seāthose people start to be the ones who are talkingāyou can see the Republican coalition changing in the way that it structures itself.Demsas: And at the core of a lot of your arguments is that ideas matter, right? The arguments youāre making in public matter. Rationalizations matter. Fact-checks matter. And all of these go into forming a sort of coherent worldview. And thatās really oppositional to a dominant cynical view, which is: None of this stuff is important. Everything is, really, just the material and demographic economic shifts that are going on, and that determines everything downstream of that. And youāre not rejecting that those things are important, but youāre finding this kind of role for ideas.And do you view centering ideas as the central purpose of your work? Do you see trying to get people to care more about the arguments youāre making in public and take that seriously?Noel: To some degree, yeah. Caring more about ideas, but also caring aboutāitās an argument that ideas matter, but at least this argument is a particular way in which ideas matter, right? Itās not an argument that says, You make a compelling case for why immigration should be encouraged, thatās then going to affect people. I think that may actually be true that if you make such a compelling case, that would be influential.But the argument in the book is: If you make a compelling case that we should be increasing immigration and that the United States becomes stronger because of a multiethnic background, etcetera, etcetera, and you link that to the other liberal positions that you had beforeāabout why itās important to have reproductive rights and rights for women, and why itās important to have economic protections for working-class citizensāand that those things all go together, and that theyāre related. They donāt have to go together. We were just talking about how they might not. But you make this case that those go togetherāand maybe even donāt explain why they go together, although I think people do, but just the same people saying both thingsāeventually, people start, Okay. Thatās part of what it means to be a Democrat. Thatās part of what it means to be a liberal. And so I care about those things. And Iām going to fight for them all together. And I can fight for just the ones that I care about, but I know that if I care about the other thingsāor I just do a little bit to help along those other thingsāthatās a really good signal for my coalition that thereās progress there.So in some ways, I definitely think itās true that Iām trying to argue that ideas matter. But I think Iām also trying to argue that coalitions matter, and that the people who are on your team matter a lot. I always like to say: If youāre, say, a pro-life person, and a politician walks into the room, and the only thing that they tell you is that they are pro-choice, but youāre pro-life, and also, youāre a Democrat and everything the other way, this personāthe only thing theyāve told you is that they disagree with you on something that matters. But actually, thatās who you should vote for, because youāre a Democrat, and probably theyāre a Democrat because of all that.So knowing how those coalitions are held together is meaningful, I think. Politics really is a team sport, and whoās on your team matters. What ideology does that is really interesting is it makes those teams stand for something in a way that NFL teams donāt stand for something, even though itās also a team.Demsas: Itās funny. The way in which I feel like so much of this has affected my own thinking about politics is around noble lies, right? Itās, like, this idea that thereās a good kind of lie you should do to either pacify the population, or if youāre trying to make sureāa lot of people view Trump as a threat to democracy beyond the normal right-left thingāand so the idea that you should just say whatever needs to be said in order to make sure that he does not end up in office, whether or not you believe thatās true or not true.And itās almost like people will justify this behavior as, like, Everyone knows what weāre doing. Weāre just trying to win. Weāre trying to get elected, and donāt really think through the long-run implications of inculcating sorts of ideas and coalitions together. And you see a lot of backlash from people who do view that, right?I think this is really clear withārecently, Kamala Harris had Liz Cheney at an event with her. And sheās obviously worried about the perception that sheās too liberal and progressive. Sheās trying to inoculate herself against attacks that sheās taken on very far-left positions from 2019. So she is doing these events with Republicans and bringing them in. And you see people who were very opposed to what Liz Cheney represents, just this kind of centrist Republican, but also this praise to her father, Dick Cheney, who they see as someone who is a warmonger, very antithetical to Democratic positions.And setting aside whether or not the strategic decision here makes sense or not, I think thereās a lot of people who often underrate the long-term impact of saying, Actually, we are in a coalition with Liz Cheney, something like thatāwhether or not you think thatās good, whether or not that will be impactful beyond just getting you elected this cycle. I donāt know how you think about that.Noel: Yeah. I think thatās exactly the dynamics playing out right now. Itās very relevant to all of this. And I think one of the things thatās interestingāI happened to be in Chicago for the DNC. And so I was actually there listening to the speeches, so it wasnāt just on in the backgroundāand they had a lot of Republicans come and speak at the convention, and then, people like Liz Cheney speaking now.One of the things that a lot of them say when they speak is, I donāt agree with all of you in this room. Iām not a Democrat. Iām not going to vote for the Democrat, but Iām going to do this. And I think thatās really important for both sides of the story. Itās important for the appeal of Republicans to say, Look. Voting for Kamala Harris doesnāt make you a Democrat. As a part of that message, reaching out to those folks, itās important in that direction.But itās also important for the Democrats to say, Weāre not just welcoming all these people into our coalition, and then theyāre going to have a stake, right? They know that they are joining and backing Harris because they care about this bigger-picture thing, and theyāre going to go back to being out of our coalition and perhaps fighting against us in the next round of things. Because you could have the opposite problem, where you invite people into the coalition, and then they change what the coalition stands for, which is exactly what I think people are worried about. And thatās the long-term, dangerous thing.The story that I think of that fits this really well is actually a story from Canadian politics. During the height of the Tea Party in the United States, there was also a Tea Party, if you will, in Alberta, in Canadaāthe Wildrose Party. And it was this much more extreme, conservative party. And Alberta is the Texas of Canada, so this is driven by oil money. It was all very, very similar.And part of the reason why that party emerged is that the sort of center-right party that existed was being infiltrated by all of these liberals, because it was the only party that could win. Just like the Republican Party is the only party that could win in Texas, the conservative party was the only party that could win in Alberta. And so all these liberals or centrists coming from the left would join that party because thatās the only way to get elected. But then, as a consequence, they were pulling the center of gravity of that party towards the center, and then all these people defected.And so you donāt want that, especially if youāre on the farther end.Demsas: Yeah.Noel: So if youāre more ideologically liberal, you donāt want the Democratic Party to move towards Liz Cheney. Youāll take her vote, but you donāt want to move this direction. And itās hard to do that. All that nuanceāI donāt know how long I was just rambling thereābut a lot of nuance there to communicate quickly: These people are going to vote in our coalition this one time only. And we donāt expect them to stick around. They donāt expect to stick around. And weāll go back to having our principal disagreements after we save democracy, so to speak.Demsas: I just donāt think that itās real. Honestly, I look at the Never Trumpers, and I think they are more pro-Democrat than many Democrats, you know what I mean? People like Bill Kristol, where youāre just like, This was a voice that I thought was very similar to the Liz Cheney voice right now, where heās like, Iām for the Democrats. But now itās like he is all on Team Blue. And, again, I think it depends from what vantage point you think whether thatās positive or negative. A lot of people think thatās a positive development. You want to get more people in, but if youāre on the far left, that feels very scary because youāre like, Where is this power coming from?And I think one thing that is interesting is how much of this story or this model you have is constrained to a specific time period when media functioned in the sort of gatekeepery way. And now it seems very, very hard to even get to stable coalition equilibriums, because anyone can become a coalition merchant. And really quickly, the speed with which there are individuals who become influencers in public and are affecting how people think about whoās on their team and whoās not, itās remarkable. Over the course of a year, thereās, like, five or six names that will come in and out that will be really important for a moment and then go away in terms of how people think about politics. And so I wonder how you think about your model shifting in the social media age.Noel: Yeah. Thereās a reason why I finished the book and ended when I did and didnāt extend things in further. And part of itās justāit would be very difficult. Itās much less tractable when you canāt say, Here are the publications weāre going to focus on, and thatāll be a good representation. And now youāve got to look at everything.In some ways, it might be easier. Like, if you can tap into the Twitter firehose and somehow filter it, which some people do. But itās a lot, just a different dynamic. And you donāt have a good sense of how influential is somebody on Twitter? How many followers they have is one thing, but thatās not the same as: How much are their followers paying attention to their particular positions? Or is it because of the other cat pictures that they post or whatever else?I do think thereās a change there. I think that, in many ways, it probably makes the role of this conversation bigger, because more people are paying attention to it, and more people can participate in it. But what it also means is that the poles of the conversation are more complicated and harderālike, sort of, Well, thereās just a left and a right.Youāve got this sort of, like, āwoke Bill Kristolā conversation. And I think he and a lot of Never Trumpers are moving all the way over, and theyāre in this place. And that is going to just change. Thatās going to be a realignment, eventually. Theyāre not comfortable identifying as Democrats, in the same way that Southern Democrats werenāt comfortable identifying as Republicans in the mid-20th century. But eventually, they got over it. And this may happen here, too, and then that may mean a change.I think the big difference is that so much of what defined the Never Trumpersā attitudes about politics before Trump was some pretty conservative stuff that the Democratic Party isnāt going to champion. They might be a little more tolerant ofāor they might not push as farābut theyāre really not going to embrace that, which is to say: Bill Kristol has changed his attitude about a lot of stuff. He appears to care more about racial and gender inequality than he would have done 15 years ago.Demsas: Yeah.Noel: One thing that it does touch on that perhaps is really significant is that itās more obvious just how many different clusters there are, as opposed to just a Democratic and Republican cluster. I think thereās always been the potential for multiparty democracy in the United States. Thereās always been multiple coalitions that are at play. Middle of the 20th century, when we have this tension within the Democratic Party, the easiest solution would have been just to split the Democratic Party and have three parties.And, in fact, sometimes thatās what it looks like is going on in Congress. But that pressure is here, and a lot of people are talking about it. And so I could easily see a fracturing of the parties, especially if we have some institutional changes that accommodate that better. And the social media environment makes that potential clear in a way that it might not have been clear before.Demsas: People often say, We have just as many diverse opinions as other countries. But all of that organization is happeningāitās just happening within the Democratic Party. There is a green faction.Noel: Yes. Exactly.Demsas: There is a far-left socialist faction. Theyāre just all organizing
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Which Actor Played Dr. Philip Chandler on the TV Series St. Elsewhere?
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Harris and Trump See Economic Policies as Best Chance to Win Latino Voters
Both campaigns are jockeying for an edge with the diverse electorate. But their approaches are very different.
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