The Great Fear

 The years of the Biden presidency have in many ways been a tale of a widening gulf between public perceptions and reality. People are outraged about the state of the economy—yet, the economy has only grown in recent years; the much-dreaded recession never materialized; and, by comparison with what most other countries have been through since the pandemic, our economy has been the envy of the world. 

Likewise with crime. The national statistics on crime show that rates of victimization have fallen since the pandemic. Yet, Americans are more afraid of crime than ever. So too with immigration. Federal Reserve officials and countless economic reports have shown that increased immigration and asylum-seeking saved the U.S. economy and helped slow inflation over the past year. Yet Americans are outraged about it. 

Rowdies

 Over the past days, since the student protests began to make national news, I've noticed a strange disconnect in the media coverage. The campus protest movement is often described as "antiwar" and motivated by concern over the civilian death toll in Gaza. And if this is all these protests stood for, I could certainly get on board. I too want to condition U.S. aid and push both parties toward a ceasefire. 

But then you actually see what the protesters have painted on their signs, and you realize that this is all about something quite different. A friend of mine was walking through the Berkeley campus the other day, and spotted one of the encampments. I asked him what messages they had written on the entrance. The first sign he saw, as he reported, read: "Glory to the Martyrs." A Hamas slogan. 

The Unseen Environment

 The campus protests that have roiled the country for the past week-plus have posed something of a political and electoral mystery: why do young voters—many of whom were scarcely aware of the Israel-Palestine conflict a year ago—suddenly care so much about this issue? And why do they seem to pin the blame entirely on the current Democratic administration, in spite of evidence to the contrary?

Of course, many will retort that this is no mystery at all: the war has been horrific, and it makes sense that people would have a strong emotional reaction to the stories of civilian death and famine coming from Gaza. And I would agree with this, up to a point. But it also has to be said that the war has been horrific on both sides of the conflict, and it's not clear why only one has received the attention of the young. 

A Free Press

 A recent essay by an NPR editor, accusing public radio of a liberal political slant, has generated another round of predictable backlash from Republicans. In reality, NPR is no more liberal now than it's ever been, and nothing it is accused of doing in the essay departs from what all the other major players in journalism were doing in the same era. But every few years, it would seem, conservatives need to have a renewed outbreak of partisan furor about this—"your tax payments are going to fund liberal news!"

The truth, of course, is that public subsidies make up a tiny fraction of the funds that actually keep public media afloat. Their real business model relies on donations. But this hasn't stopped Republicans from making hay out of the image of complacent left-wing journalists fattening on the public purse. Nor does it prevent them from inferring a conscious or unconscious political bias from their business model. Because they receive public funds, the argument goes, they will inevitably support "big government." 

Coalition Politics

 There is a great deal of attention being paid right now to the difficulties Biden faces in pulling together the increasingly fractious Democratic coalition. The New York Times's "On Politics" newsletter yesterday dealt with the challenges Biden may face from the current round of campus protests over the Israel-Hamas conflict. 

The problem, as they rightly point out, is that the Democratic coalition not only includes people with different views on this issue—it includes people whose views of the conflict are diametrically opposed to one another. As a result, many analysts are looking with great trepidation at the upcoming August Democratic Convention, when protesters are likely to pour into Chicago en masse to challenge Biden's response to the war. 

Why is Apuleius Still So Entertaining?

 Almost two millennia after it was written, The Golden Ass is still a rollicking good read. I recognize that this may in part be thanks to the translator (I was reading the Kenney version in the Penguin Classics edition); but I think it is also attributable to the book's mastery of the fundamentals of narrative construction. To study it, therefore, is to gain some insight into the basic elements of effective storytelling. I propose to offer such a structuralist reading here. 

I would challenge anyone to pick up the novel (the only full-length work of its kind in Latin to survive from classical antiquity) and not be drawn in. What first wins one over to the book is the author's confiding tone. He introduces us to a hapless but fundamentally plucky narrator (who shares more than one trait in common with his creator, including a career as an advocate). And from the first paragraph of the book on, the author/narrator promises us a good time, including lots of juicy gossip. 

Wizards

 I mentioned in a recent blog that, after Trump was hit with the civil fraud judgment in the New York Attorney General's civil case against his businesses, I briefly felt sorry for him. I couldn't help it. As much as I loathe Trump, the size of this liability struck too close to the heart of my own worst financial nightmares for me not to feel a twinge of anxiety on his behalf. The judgment, after all, was close to half a billion dollars in total. And even without any legal analysis of whether it was deserved or not, I felt like this was a fee I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. 

No doubt this was "the wrong kind of pity"—the politically sterile and misdirected kind—as a central character in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh would call it. "Pity the monsters," to quote Robert Lowell—and here, if anywhere, was a case of monster-pitying. But I couldn't see how anyone could be hit with a civil judgment that size and survive it. I was still thinking, you see, in terms of normal people and their finances. I was thinking about it rationally, and asking the kinds of questions I would have to ask if I were in his position: is he going to lose his home? Will he have to sleep in his car?