TLP Week in Review, 11/26-12/2
TLP Week in Review, 11/26-12/2
Your weekly summary of what we've been up to here at The Liberal Patriot.
What We’re Reading (and Watching and Listening To…)
“‘Compensate The Losers?’ Economic Policy And Partisan Realignment In The US”: Essential reading for understanding the evolution of the Democratic Party since the 1970s on economics and the consequent realignment of working class voters toward the GOP. This paper by economists Ilyana Kuziemko, Nicolas Longuet-Marx and Suresh Naidu is technical but worth the slog. For the short course, see this summary of the basic argument by Peter Coy in the New York Times.
“How do we restart the Middle East peace process?”: A gaggle of experts at the Middle East Institute (including TLP’s Brian Katulis) weigh options to revive the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process when the current war in Gaza comes to an end. They sketch out “what a final peace settlement should look like and how to get there so that the right actors and elements are in place when a brief window for talks opens up.”
“Advanced Nuclear Energy Is In Trouble”: Breakthrough Institute directors Adam Stein and Ted Nordhaus warn that the recent cancellation of a major advanced nuclear power project and other “recent developments suggest that efforts to commercialize a new generation of advanced nuclear reactors are simply not on track.” High interest rates and commodity prices along with constrained supply chains and regulatory red tape, among other problems, have all conspired to inhibit commercialization of otherwise promising advanced nuclear reactors.
“Remember When America Loved Mussolini?”: Bulwark writer Charlie Sykes reminds us that millions of Americans on both left and right fell hard for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his Fascist government in the 1920s. “But most of all,” Sykes writes, “his fans admired Mussolini’s style. Whatever they might have thought of ‘fascism,’ they were attracted by his strutting man-of-action persona, his promise of discipline, and even his thrilling embrace of violence.”
Emperor of Rome: Cambridge classicist Mary Beard is back with another cracking look at Ancient Rome, this time examining the period of one-man rule from Julius Caesar to Alexander Severus in 235 AD. The prose, storytelling, and pictures all make for engaging reading that separates facts from tall tales and paints as clear a picture as possible about what exactly it was like to live and rule in the Roman empire. Come for the crazy imperial dinners and water arrangements; stay for the palace intrigue, assassinations, and political ploys.
Welcome to the O.C.: Alan Sepinwall’s oral history of The O.C., a short-lived, bright-burning dramedy set in southern California, will induce extreme nostalgia for those elder Millennials who grew up in the early 2000s. It’s also an entertaining reminder of what TV and the entertainment industry were like before the creative dominance of HBO and the advent of streaming services—to say nothing of social media.
What We’ve Posted
“Don’t Lose Focus on U.S. Hostages in Gaza” by former senior Congressional foreign policy advisor Daniel Silverberg.
“The Democratic Position on Crime Is a (Political) Crime” by TLP politics editor Ruy Teixeira.
“The Rural Challenge for Democrats” by new TLP contributor Justin Vassallo.
“The Return of the Indecent Left” by TLP senior managing editor Peter Juul.
“With Winter Comes Extreme Cold, but Does Climate Change Make it Worse?” by the Breakthrough Institute’s Patrick T. Brown.
“Legacy Media and Political Polarization” by TLP executive editor John Halpin.
Ruy’s Science-Fiction Pulp Cover of the Week
Just one more thing…
Meet Rutt, the wayward moose who has garnered an enthusiastic online following as local residents track his journey from the farm fields of southwestern Minnesota back to more typical moose stomping grounds along the border with Canada.
