2020
Statistics and Tears
“In fact, the more who die, sometimes the less we care,” [Paul] Slovic said in an interview. In greater numbers, death becomes impersonal, and people feel increasingly hopeless that their actions can have any effect.
“Statistics are human beings with tears dried off,” Slovic said. “And that’s dangerous because we need tears to motivate us.”
– William Wan and Brittany Shammas (Washington Post)
Leadership and Trust
Trust is fundamental, reciprocal and, ideally, pervasive. If it is present, anything is possible. If it is absent, nothing is possible. The best leaders trust their followers with the truth, and you know what happens as a result? Their followers trust them back. With that bond, they can do big, hard things together…
George P. Schultz (Washington Post)
Children Watching
“The Children Were Watching,” dir. Robert Drew and Richard Leacock, USA 1961, 25 min. – This documentary doesn’t feel as old to me as I wish it did. In part that’s because I watched it in Trump’s America during an especially difficult year, but something deeper is at play. The film’s ongoing relevance represents an ambiguous answer to its directors' main question: What were the children of a New Orleans neighborhood learning as they watched their parents during the conflicts surrounding school integration in November 1960?
Depression in Two Senses of the Word
Shot in Haddon Heights, New Jersey, in 1934. Source: Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2013647257.
Looking forward to a more productive week in quarantine now that martial law and the end of our democracy appear to be off the table for the time being.
Curfew
The disturbing emergency alert sound from my phone (for DC’s 4th curfew night) makes me think of an air raid siren. The blaring is an apt metaphor for this presidency.
Riots
Minnesota Governor Walz’s assertion that ongoing riots are no longer about George Floyd ring true in a way. But were they ever about one man? Floyd’s death was certainly no one-off. The protests—and the participation of so many young people—should give pause to those leaders who would gloss over this society’s brutal injustices and disparities.
'Mr Smith Goes to Washington'
I watched "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) last night. Despite the many differences to today's world and the oversimplification of the state political machine, the politics in the film strike me as relevant to our own time. Thing is, though, it would probably resonate with Americans regardless of ideological or party orientation. Anti-Trump people could take its anti-corruption and pro-democracy message to heart. Pro-Trump people could embrace how the Washington outsider triumphs, and credulous pro-Trumpers could go for the anti-corruption, pro-democracy stuff too. Finally, the rough-and-tumble quality of the political game would resonate across the political spectrum.
Alpharetta, Georgia
[A] great American experiment got underway in a place promising “the luxury of the modern South” with none of the death.
'The Public Health' (1840)
Via JSTOR Daily, which describes an 1840 pamphlet advocating "a four-pronged approach to public healthcare that sounds remarkably like our own."
Two Faces of America
To stand in Mann’s study today, with editions of Goethe and Schiller on the shelves, is to feel pride in the country that took him in and shame for the country that drove him out—not two Americas but one. In this room, the erstwhile “Greatest Living Man of Letters” fell prey to the clammy fear of the hunted. Was the year 1933 about to repeat itself? Would he be detained, interrogated, even imprisoned? In 1952, Mann took a final walk through his house and made his exit. He died in Zurich, in 1955—no longer an émigré German but an American in exile.
Alex Ross (The New Yorker)
The Sod
Leveling hummocks in dust bowl, thirty miles north of Dalhart, Texas. Farmer: "Every dime I got is tied up right here. If I don't get it out, I've got to drive off and leave it. Where would I go and what would I do? I know what the land did once for me, maybe it will do it again." Son: "It would be better if the sod had never been broke. My father's broke plenty of it. Could I get a job in California?"
Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration, June 1938, via New York Public Library.
Social Cognition
“Naomi [who denounces ‘climate alarmism’] said her political activism was sparked a few years ago when she began asking questions in school about Germany’s liberal immigration policies. She said the backlash from teachers and other students hardened her skepticism about mainstream German thinking.”
Desmond Butler and Juliet Eilperin (Washington Post)
Yes, our cognition is bound up in our social existence, as Ludwik Fleck noted in 1935.
Migrant Girl in the Dust Bowl
"Migrant worker looking through back window of automobile near Prague, Oklahoma. Lincoln County, Oklahoma," 1939. Repository: The New York Public Library.
Happening Here
WPA Federal Art Project in New York City, ca. 1936/37. The play was based on a novel about fascism happening here.
Repository: Library of Congress.
'Authoritarian Style'
“Trump’s authoritarian style is remaking America” by Ishaan Tharoor at the Washington Post
'Emigration—Detailing the Progress and Vicissitudes of an Emigrant' (1833)
Here is a 15-panel satire by C.J. Grant, perhaps meant for working-class Britons. In it, British emigrants could get away from taxes, but expect frightening exotic animals, cannibals, isolation, poverty, and homesickness. Read the panels in high definition at the Library of Congress, and check out Matthew Crowther's blog post about the artist at Yesterday's Papers for some publishing context.
Saco River
Saco River in Conway, NH, just upstream from the covered bridges on the afternoon of December 25, 2019. Photo by author.
