Recommended Reading: A Very Bad Weekend and a Defense of Foolishness

The Week's Recommended Reading on Substack: Chris Geidner, Jared Yates Sexton, Jonathan Katz, Pete Kurtz-Glovas, Parker Molloy, Virginia Heffernan, Jason Easley and Sarah Jones.

Nov 21, 2022

The Week's Recommended Reading on Substack:

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writes that “from our government institutions to our online infrastructure to the few truly queer spaces across our country, Saturday was a day of news about how they are all being attacked — often by those in charge and almost always to the detriment of the most vulnerable.”

Law Dork, with Chris Geidner

It's been a very bad weekend. We will support each other, though, and the work will continue.

From our government institutions to our online infrastructure to the few truly queer spaces across our country, Saturday was a day of news about how they are all being attacked — often by those in charge and almost always to the detriment of the most vulnerable…

2 years ago · 16 likes · 3 comments · Chris Geidner

Jared Yates Sexton

writes that “the answer to our problems, the solution to this crisis, relies on somehow, some way, managing to chance the possibility of being considered a fool and rebuilding a sense of hope that things might actually improve. It’s this hope, this faith even, that has made it possible before to change the world and carry out revolutions.”

Dispatches From A Collapsing State | Jared Yates Sexton

In Defense of Foolishness

This past Friday evening I had the distinct pleasure of delivering the keynote address for the 26th annual Parkland Institute Conference in Alberta, Canada. For those unfamiliar, the Parkland Institute is a body dedicated to strengthening democracy and bettering the lives of people through effective and generous programs, and the theme of their conferen…

2 years ago · 17 likes · 4 comments · Jared Yates Sexton

Jonathan M. Katz

writes that “the horror and pain experienced by everyone on that bus is unimaginable; I’m not even going to try to put myself in their shoes. But the wider community, on the UVA campus, and in Charlottesville more generally, experienced the shooting as something else: an event mediated by their phones.”

The Racket

Feeding frenzy

This week began with a mass shooting in the town where I live. It’s ending with the (possible? probable?) collapse of the website that for better or worse has been my and many other writers’ professional home for the last decade and change. In between, a critical election resolved in an at-once relieving and wholly unsatisfying way…

2 years ago · 13 likes · 1 comment · Jonathan M. Katz

Pete Kurtz-Glovas

writes that "there are men who feel a sense of grievance or victimhood. These men often feel that they can’t express themselves as men, or that they might face social consequences for behaving or presenting as “manly.” In her ethnography of the Proud Boys, Samantha Kutner paints a picture of men who feel a deep sense of victimhood and grievance towards a world that is changing."

Extremely Bad

Male Grievance, Victimhood, and the Misogynist Pipeline towards Extremism

If you spend any amount of time in far right chat rooms or observing the rhetoric that these groups use, one thing will become very clear very quickly: members of these groups that find themselves superior are manly constantly feel like they are being bullied, often by feminism and the environment it has created. Their members share a central feeling th…

2 years ago · 1 like · Pete Kurtz-Glovas

Parker Molloy

writes that a good "headline is one that makes clear what the stakes are: Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and then tried to find questionably legal (and often just outright illegal) loopholes he could use to retain power. That’s it. That’s the most important thing these headlines (and the articles, themselves) can have in them."

The Present Age

The Good, the Bad, and the WTF Headlines Covering Trump's Announcement

Hello! Parker here from The Present Age. Before we get started, a bit of housekeeping: with the state of Twitter in, uh… decline, I’m trying to get as many people signed up here at TPA as possible. Currently, Twitter is the largest source of social media-driven new subscribers, and I’m not sure how much longer that’ll last. So hey, if you like my work, …

2 years ago · 56 likes · 5 comments · Parker Molloy

Virginia Heffernan

asks "how did so many standard mild-mannered 'centrist' men—the kind you went to college with—end up making common cause with far-right freaks like Ron DeSantis and Tom Cotton? I ask myself this all the time. And especially today, now that Ron 'Don’t Say Gay' DeSantis is the big winner of the midterms." (Paid Subscribers)

Magic + Loss

Hating 'wokes' is a nice rebrand for hating women

Have you ever asked yourself this question: How did so many standard mild-mannered “centrist” men—the kind you went to college with—end up making common cause with far-right freaks like Ron DeSantis and Tom Cotton? I ask myself this all the time. And especially today, now that Ron “Don’t Say Gay” DeSantis is the big winner of the midterms…

2 years ago · 14 likes · 3 comments · Virginia Heffernan

Jason Easley and Sarah Jones

write that the "people jumping the Toxic Trump Titanic now are all people who were willing to set aside what they want us to believe are their core principles when it benefited them. Just as conservatives have shown that they are willing to break the public trust in the Presidency, Congress, and Court to get their way, they are also willing to break the public trust in their own word and work."