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Clinton's double-digit lead among minority voters stemmed from a huge edge, better than 3 to 1, among African American voters. Her black support will play a critical role in the campaign's next contest, the South Carolina primary on Saturday, as well as in the large number of Southern and Midwestern states that vote in the first half of March.

Beyond gender and ethnicity, the other big division in the Nevada vote pitted experience and electability against empathy and trust. That tension has defined the Democratic race throughout the campaign, and it continued Saturday.

And he racked up a huge margin among the quarter of voters who said the biggest thing was a candidate who is "honest and trustworthy."

About 7 in 10 caucus voters called themselves liberal. In 2008, the last time the state had contested Democratic caucuses, about 45% of voters chose that label.

But about 4 in 10 voters said they wanted the country to move to a more liberal path than Obama's. Sanders won by better than 3 to 1 among them

That issue almost certainly will be prominent in the South Carolina primary, where black voters, who overwhelmingly back Obama, make up a majority of the likely electorate.

In fact, campus-carry supporters maintain that the law will keep the peace, enabling students and faculty to defend themselves effectively, and deter would-be shooters.

It turns out, for example, there were armed students at Umpqua Community College in Oregon on the day of its shooting last fall. Their presence did not deter the attack, nor did they halt it; the students wisely decided not to jump into the fray for fear it would compound the mayhem.

Stand Your Ground laws protect citizens from prosecution in cases where they feel threatened in public, and fire their weapons.

It’s unclear whether campus carry does and will in fact undermine the freedom of expression, but if there’s one place in society where the citizenry must not tolerate such threats, it’s the college classroom.

Few young adults have put significant thought into these kinds of issues; they must experiment with them to understand them properly and deeply, and to develop mature and critical views.

Will guns encourage speech and invite people to discussion and debate in the classroom?

In short, they argued that guns in the classroom pose an intolerable threat to free speech.

Gun owners have shot and killed unarmed citizens—and sought Stand Your Ground protections—in cases in which they misjudged or overestimated the threats before them.

In 2014, a Montana man invoked Stand Your Ground after he shot and killed an unarmed German exchange student trespassing in his garage.

One University of Houston professor, Maria Gonzalez, expressed her concerns over campus carry in the context of her own classes, which cover Marxist and Queer Theory.

Expansions of civil rights are almost always deeply unpopular at first; this was the case in the fight for women’s rights, suffrage for African Americans, and marriage equality for gays and lesbians.

I fear that campus carry will make students and faculty less inclined to engage in the critical intellectual work that must take place in the classroom, the courageous inquiry and experimentation American democracy requires.

It’s impossible to measure the cost of campus carry. But I wager that the cost will be evidenced in the mounting silence on college campuses, and the trepidation, timidity, and lack of creativity among new generations of voters. American democracy will be the poorer for it.

But four years after the support of women re-elected Barack Obama, the general electorate may be different

Women voters, who are, as a whole, slightly less likely to pick Republicans in a presidential election, could be motivated to turn out for Hillary Clinton, particularly if they are women of color, the backbone of the Democratic party.

Trump’s sexist remarks, compounded with his demands for Obama’s birth certificate and desire to build a wall between Mexico and the United States, could be motivation enough. 

Though national polls only give a limited picture in a country that doesn’t elect presidents by a popular vote, recent surveys that pit Clinton against Trump show a marked gender gap

Trump’s pronouncements make Akin look like a diplomat. But the very audacity and vulgarity that seems to delight Republican voters could disgust in a national race.

Conversely, Trump’s conditional support of Planned Parenthood – which he has repeatedly said is good for women but should not get federal funding because its affiliates also provide abortions – may be an attempt to reach those same general election female voters

Planned Parenthood, whose PAC has endorsed Hillary Clinton, has flatly resisted Trump’s advances. 

“Women would lose access to birth control, could be charged more than men for health insurance, could have domestic violence and pregnancy disqualify them from health insurance coverage, would no longer be able to turn to Planned Parenthood for care, and would be banned from accessing abortion safely or legally,

The officials said that it was meant primarily as a re-examination of how the military positions itself for future counterterrorism missions, but that the growing concern about a metastasizing Islamic State threat has lent new urgency to the discussions.

The plan has met with some resistance from State Department officials concerned about a more permanent military presence across Africa and the Middle East, according to American officials familiar with the discussion.

Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups — including possible attacks against American embassies, like the assault on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

“You can’t just leave this on cruise control,”

“hubs” — including expanding existing bases in Djibouti and Afghanistan — and smaller “spokes,” or more basic installations, in countries that could include Niger and Cameroon, where the United States now carries out unarmed surveillance drone missions, or will soon.

The military already has much of the basing in place to carry out an expansion. Over the past dozen years, the Pentagon has turned what was once a decrepit French Foreign Legion base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, into a sprawling headquarters housing 2,000 American troops for military operations in East Africa and Yemen.

“Because we cannot predict the future, these regional nodes — from Morón, Spain, to Jalalabad, Afghanistan — will provide forward presence to respond to a range of crises, terrorist and other kinds,”

He said that the Islamic State’s inclusion of Boko Haram and other militant groups into its fold was part of a “global dynamic.”

“completely subsumed” into the Islamic State.

They are flying the Islamic State flag, he said, “in an attempt to elevate their cause.”

ISIS had killed or displaced nearly all the inhabitants, most of whom belonged to Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority.

A lone man with a rifle seemed to know where he was going. We hurried to catch up with him.

hat June, ISIS captured Mosul—the second-largest city in the country, eighty miles to the east—yet most residents still felt safe. But when ISIS moved into Sinjar the peshmerga withdrew. Hundreds of civilians were killed.

living in tents with little food or water, waiting for the day when they could return to their

A crowd had assembled around the entrance to the house.

a group of Iraqi police officers appeared. The mayor hailed them.

That night, we camped in the mountains. Early the next morning, as we navigated the ninety-three hairpin turns that led down to the town, it was easy to appreciate Sinjar’s strategic importance:

There were villages out there, too: vague compounds, water tanks, radio towers.

An explosion erupted nearby, and then gunfire. Soldiers grabbed weapons and ran into a dense collection of buildings behind us.

“He still has a gun!” someone yelled. “He’s still alive!” “Get out of there! He might blow himself up!”

“What will you do now?” I asked. Azad looked around. It was getting dark. “Go back up the mountain,” he said. He turned and walked away.

“Still alive.”

No one seemed to hear.

But Iraq’s northern front has remained relatively static. Tens of thousands of Kurdish troops man fixed positions along six hundred miles of trenches connecting Syria to Iran

When I visited the peshmerga unit on the ridge, its operations officer told me that they could easily take the town below, Bashiqa. But Mosul lies only ten miles farther, and there are numerous villages in between.

U.S. disbanded the Iraqi Army and eradicated the Baath Party, it became famous for producing skilled insurgents. Iraq’s Prime Minister at the time of the American withdrawal, in 2011

Atheel al-Nujaifi, a former governor of Nineveh Province, which includes Mosul and Sinjar, told me last spring.

A few weeks later, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, emerged for the first time in years and delivered a speech—videotaped and published online—from the Great Mosque of al-Nuri. ISIS had proclaimed the establishment of a caliphate

n, Barzani’s chief of staff. “There is one thing that everybody knows,” he told me.

However, the Taliban, who are divided by factional infighting, did not attend that session.

Peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban collapsed last year, after news emerged that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had in fact died in 2013.

In December, the militant group launched an attack on the strategic district of Sangin. It later seized and blew up the police headquarters and governor's compound.

And in September, the Taliban briefly overran the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, in one of their biggest victories since 2001.

In a review of 148 independent studies on loneliness, covering more than 300,000 participants, Julianne Holt-Lunstad of Brigham Young University and colleagues found that greater social connection was associated with a 50% lower risk of early death.

Research suggests that those who are isolated are at an increased risk of depression, cognitive decline and dementia, and that social relationships influence their blood pressure and immune functioning, as well as whether people take their medications.

the forces that take hold late in life often compound it. Retirement shrivels social networks formed through work. Hearing loss and worsening mobility impede talking face-to-face and participating in group activities.

The baby boomers prized individuality and generally had fewer children and ended marriages in greater numbers than previous generations. More than one in four boomers is divorced or never married, census figures show. About one in six lives alone

Along with financial issues including high debt and declining pensions, social factors such as loneliness are another reason boomers are experiencing more difficult retirement years than previous generations.

As Watts puts the point, the principal purpose of his book is to allow “readers to better appreciate the serious problems that result both from politicians who breach a republic’s political norms and from citizens who choose not to punish them for doing so.

In Watts’s telling of the Roman Republic’s agonizing death, slow-moving structural transformations gradually sowed the seeds of demise.

As the population exploded and the economy became ever more sophisticated, the growing share of poor citizens started to demand redress. But since the institutions of the republic were dominated by patricians who had much to lose from measures like land reform, they never fully addressed the grievances of ordinary Romans.

With popular rage against increasingly dysfunctional institutions swelling, ambitious patricians, determined to outflank their competitors, began to build a fervent base of support by making outsize promises. It was these populares — populists like Tiberius Gracchus and his younger brother Gaius — who, in their bid for power, first broke some of the republic’s most longstanding norms.

The transformation of Rome’s army compounded the challenge of growing inequality. In the early days of the republic, soldiers thought of their participation in military service as a civic duty. Commanders hoped to win great honors and perhaps to attain higher office

But by the late second century B.C., the army had essentially been privatized. Commanders knew that the plunder of new lands could garner them vast riches. Their soldiers signed up for the ride in the hope of gaining a generous allotment of land on which to start a farm.

It took a long time for these tensions to build. But once they reached a critical point, Rome’s descent into chaos and dysfunction was astonishingly swift.

During the century and a half between the days of Pyrrhus and the rise of Tiberius Gracchus, there had not been a single outbreak of large-scale political violence. Then Tiberius pushed through land reforms in defiance of the Senate’s veto. In the ensuing fracas, he and hundreds of his followers were murdered. The taboo on naked power politics had been broken, never to recover

“Within a generation of the first political assassination in Rome, politicians had begun to arm their supporters and use the threat of violence to influence the votes of assemblies and the election of magistrates. Within two generations, Rome fell into civil war.”

If we are to avoid the fate that ultimately befell Rome, Watts cautions, it is “vital for all of us to understand how Rome’s republic worked, what it achieved and why, after nearly five centuries, its citizens ultimately turned away from it and toward the autocracy of Augustus.”

the sheer repetitiveness of the calamities that befell Rome only serves to underline the book’s most urgent message.

Like the original populist, Trump was propelled to power by the all-too-real failures of a political system that is unable to curb growing inequality or to mobilize its most eminent citizens around a shared conception of the common good.

And like Gracchus, Trump believes that, because he is acting in the name of the dispossessed, he is perfectly justified in shredding the Republic’s traditions.

Far from single-handedly destroying our political system, he is the transitional figure whose election demonstrates the extent to which the failings of our democracy are finally starting to take their toll

The bad news is that the coming decades are unlikely to afford us many moments of calm and tranquillity.

If the central analogy that animates “Mortal Republic” is correct, the current challenge to America’s political system is likely to persist long after its present occupant has left the White House.

Serious psychological distress and suicide-related thoughts or actions also rose by 70 percent in young adults, from 7.7 percent to 13.1 percent

The percentages for older adults remained stable over the same period, indicating that whatever is driving the changes is disproportionately affecting those who are young

“cultural trends in the last 10 years may have had a larger effect on mood disorders and suicide-related outcomes among younger people

found the greatest upticks in young people who were wealthier and female.

they occurred during a period of economic expansion and at a time when drug and alcohol use among young people has been unchanged or decreasing.

the increases may be linked to increased time spent on social media and electronic communication, along with a decrease in the sleep young people are getting

“Social media has moved from being something that about half of teens were using every day to something almost all teens are doing every day,”

“It used to be an optional thing, and now, especially among girls, it’s virtually mandatory,”

she called social media “the perfect place to be verbally aggressive,” which can contribute to depression and low self-esteem.

Jared Roseman, 20, a German and linguistics major at Georgetown, who described himself as “a generally kind of anxious person,” said constantly viewing the curated images of friends’ lives can skew one’s sense of self. “It creates a false sense of reality so that many people start to doubt themselves.”

Social media plays into an innate human and animal preoccupation with hierarchy, said Joshua Coleman, a psychologist in Oakland, Calif., and a senior fellow at the Council on Contemporary Families. “It offers almost a minute-to-minute update on your social status,” he said. “Every interaction you have is rated, and that’s basically what life is like for young people these days.

“the message being transmitted by parents is that the world is a dangerous place.”

“Children aren’t really being allowed to be exposed to the idea that you can survive stress . . . so all of this could be affecting children’s ability to feel resilient and be resilient to everyday stressors,”

The increase in adolescent depression was higher among wealthier people, rising 79 percent between 2010 and 2017 in the highest income bracket, to 14.1 percent, while increasing 55 percent, to 15.3 percent, in the lowest income group during the same period.

“Maintaining your parents’ standard of living is harder than it was 20 years ago,” she said. “They feel, ‘I have to get into that top university that my parents attended, and if I don’t, I have no life, I will be left behind, I won’t be able to support myself.’ ”

Lydia Turnage, 23, who graduated from Georgetown last year and is now a law student at Columbia University, said among her peers a bachelor’s degree is so common these days that getting one feels less momentous than it might have a generation or two back.

“All this work to try to get to this place, and then it feels like you’re just checking a box; it doesn’t really get you anything meaningful,” she said. “It’s caused a feeling — I don’t want to say hopelessness, but cynicism.”

That feeling is compounded by the pressure to already have a job lined up after college, she said. “It’s definitely a conversation that students are having a lot more.

Despite the increase in distress indicators, he said, the overall percentages are still low.

I’m not willing to say that we have a widespread problem on our hands when it’s only 13 percent of the population.”

“We are living at a time of massive inequality, where the key to social mobility in our country is higher education, but access to higher education has not expanded,” he said. “Kids sense that their futures are very uncertain, and that’s also anxiety-producing.”

Turnage said she wishes there were a better solution to stress than “just Band-Aid fixes.”

“A lot of students feel like that’s not really helpful at the end of the day, like figuring out a way to stop it from happening is more important than trying to do something about it as it’s happening,”

One solution she came up with for herself was quitting Instagram a couple of months ago. “I just felt like every time I went on it, it just made me unhappy,” she said. “I just took it off my phone. And I can tell there’s a big difference in just day-to-day mood. It really does make a difference.”

exacerbated by what the tariffs symbolize for Mr. Trump’s agenda and the broader global economy.

By following his nationalist instincts Mr. Trump has broken with the pro-business factions in his administration and his party whose policy priorities have been critical to the upswing in business and investor sentiment since he was elected. By willingly hurting U.S. allies over a problem of overcapacity that is mainly China’s doing, he’s cast further uncertainty over the U.S. role as global leader.

With investors already on edge about Federal Reserve interest rate increases, the steel tariffs at the margin compound inflation pressure. That effect is so far too small to alter the Fed’s calculus, but a tit-for-tat cycle of retaliation could lead to even more inflation and rate increases than investors or the Fed have anticipated.

Protectionism shrinks markets, raises costs, and reduces how fast a country can grow without generating inflation. U.S. steel and aluminum companies can meet the demand previously filled by imports, but with unemployment at a 17-year low that may require hiring workers away from other industries, putting upward pressure on wages.

This is good news in the short run for workers, but bad news for any consumer who must now pay more for cars or beer cans.

nvestors speculated that the angry reaction of American allies, in particular the European Union, showed U.S. global leadership is fading and with it the dollar’s appeal as a reserve currency.

China may move more quickly to curb its overcapacity, the root of the import surge and price pressure that is hurting U.S. producers. Yet the decision has generated conflict within his own administration, his party and with key U.S. allies that, at least at the margin, counteracts the boost from the rest of his agenda.

Trump’s administration has suggested that it sees nuclear weapons as useful against “non-nuclear strategic attacks” on U.S. infrastructure, perhaps including cyber or terrorist attacks.

It proposes two new nuclear-capable systems.

Neither weapon is needed to deter potential adversaries, and would instead raise the risk of the use of a nuclear weapon—whether because an adversary thinks it is being attacked or whether a U.S. president thinks he has to order an attack. As it stands, the Pentagon and the Department of Energy, the institutions that would handle the warhead changes, will struggle to find the funding or the manpower to meet existing modernization requirements. New programs would only compound this uncertainty and endanger core nuclear-modernization priorities. Moreover, developing new warheads creates an unpalatable choice: They will either be deployed without a test or with a test. Both options are bad. Lastly, the draft NPR asserts that its program proposals are affordable, but avoids making fiscal trade-offs between different military priorities. Yet Congress will have to ask whether new nuclear weapons programs are really worth the money, given that there is still no plan to pay the $1.2-trillion bill for nuclear weapons over the next 30 years.

Even as the Trump administration is proposing expanding U.S. nuclear capabilities, it is subverting traditional mechanisms for controlling them.

Today, an astonishing 58 percent of Americans lack confidence in the president’s judgment with the nuclear arsenal. It is difficult to believe that Congress or the American public will quietly acquiesce to a major expansion of U.S. nuclear capabilities and missions. Yet, without concerted pressure, the Trump Nuclear Posture Review will abandon U.S. leadership to reduce nuclear risks and instead follow our adversaries into a world where nuclear competition is commonplace.

the Two Sicilies were happier under Charles than they had been for many a long century

he reversed his predecessor’s policy of neutrality and involved Spain in two expensive wars against Britain, for which she was ill-prepared; and he committed the country’s pride and strength to a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to recover Gibraltar

Born in Madrid in 1716, the son of Spain’s first Bourbon King, Philip V, and of his second wife, Isabella Farnese, he enjoyed in some respects a happy and normal childhood

to bend the foreign policy of Spain solely for the purpose of providing kingdoms for her offspring

I would like to deserve to be called Charles the Wise

Philip V inherited the melancholy, the longing for seclusion that at times overcame all reason

the King had become so deranged that he had to abdicate in favour of Louis

In October 1731 he set off for Italy to take over the Duchies of Parma and Piacenza, and to garrison Tuscany, an inheritance arranged for him by Isabella

the Austrians had to withdraw and Naples was ensured a separate existence under the Bourbons. Charles returned to his regime of hunting, building and reform.

Taking advantage of Austria’s preoccupations elsewhere in the war of the Polish Succession, Isabella decided to attack in Italy. The aim was to recover for Spain the provinces of the Two Sicilies which had been Spanish for two centuries until 1713 when they had been handed over to Austria under the Treaty of Utrecht. Spain declared war on Austria in December 1733, and Charles was made titular commander-in-chief of the 30,000 Spanish troops that landed at Leghorn

Austria withdrew without a fight and in 1734 Charles became King of the Two Sicilies, a territory now independent for the first time. But as part of the general settlement he had to give up his rights in the Duchies; and a commitment was made, which for him cast a shadow before, that the crowns of Spain and of the Two Sicilies would never be united

As in Spain later, Charles challenged and reduced the powers and privileges of the aristocracy and clergy. He reformed the archaic legal and economic systems. His aim was ‘to sweep away feudalism’,

Naples before him had been without industry or trade

Naples rose and flourished, a European capital of the arts

he astounded the aristocracy of Madrid by the purity of his life

His mother was once again meddling in Italian affairs, trying this time to exploit Vienna’s preoccupation with the war of the Austrian Succession to recover the central Italian duchies for Philip, her second surviving son. Charles was forced to send troops north to support his brother’s Spaniards who had landed under the Duke of Montemar

he nourished a grievance against Britain

he helped to defeat the Austrian troops at Velletri. He showed courage and leadership in the battle, having survived an attempt at capture

identify government not only with order and tradition, but with reform, and thereby helped to avert revolution.

This routine was shattered in 1759 by the death of his childless half-brother Ferdinand VI who had been King of Spain since 1746; a King who, true to family tradition, had gone mad

For months the kingdom of Spain languished under this rule

From the moment of his arrival in Madrid in December 1759, Charles showed that he was not prepared to follow in Ferdinand’s easy-going footsteps. Government was a serious business, and would be conducted by himself in the interests of the people

Italian influence came in with him like a tidal wave, sweeping over muph of Spanish life

But it was in administrative reform that the sharpest note of change was stock. The economy of the country was sagging, yet Charles badly needed more money—among other things to pay off his father’s debts, and to strengthen the almost non-existent defences of Spain and the Indies. A flow of decrees poured forth regulating commerce and providing for the collection of revenue.

cleaning as was done was carried out by private enterprise, by troops of sweepers

Charles set about a radical clean-up

Since reaching Madrid, Charles had been under pressure from both sides to join in the war between Britain and Prussia on the one hand, and France and Austria on the other, which had broken out in 1756

Ferdinand VI had managed to stay neutral and Maria Amalia had been a strong influence for peace, but after her death, Charles changed his policy

life-long grudge against the British for having taken Gibraltar from his father—a feeling compounded by Commodore Martin’s insult

if he joined the French alliance, might help him to recover Minorca and Gibraltar. So in August 1761 he agreed to the Family Compact with Louis XV which brought him into war against Britain

Spain was heavily defeated by the British fleet which captured Havana and Manila

British power had greatly increased, partly at the expense of Spain

The country was exhausted, and there was much resentment against the French. Charles personally would have liked to have shaken himself out of the family straight-jacket

But Louis XV dismissed Choiseul and wrote to Charles in his own hand: ‘My minister would have war, but I will not

Charles had no alternative but to capitulate to the British

the Madrid mutiny of 1766

The favour he had shown early on towards the bourgeoisie, his concern for the poor, and the reforming zeal of his Ministers had all helped to generate distrust amongst the nobility and clergy

the discontent did not stop with the rich

There was widespread public unrest caused by the effects of the war, prolonged drought and high prices. Far from assuaging this, Charles had aggravated it, particularly in Madrid

public indignation

Squillace was the main target of public wrath

Within a week the King capitulated and agreed to everything

the Jesuits the scapegoat for the mutiny. In 1767 they were expelled from Spain with ruthless efficiency

our elite debate has become far less focused on individual issues as such, and the complicated variety of positions, left, right and center, any thinking individual can take. It has become rather an elaborate and sophisticated version of “Which side are you on?”

An analysis of American National Election Studies data from 1964 to 2012 shows that education is related to decreases in interethnic/interracial prejudice, but also to increases in ideological (liberal vs. conservative) prejudice

But even this doesn’t capture the emotional intensity of it all, or the way it compounds over time

In their 2015 paper, “Losing Hurts: The Happiness Impact of Partisan Electoral Loss,” the authors found that the grief of Republican partisans after their party lost the presidential election in 2012 was twice that of “respondents with children” immediately after “the Newtown shootings” and “respondents living in Boston” after “the Boston Marathon bombings.”

That’s an intense emotion, and it’s that intensity, it seems to me, that is corroding the norms of liberal democracy

I find myself instinctually siding with the independent artist in these cases, perhaps because I’ve had to fight for my own individuality apart from my own various identities, most of my life. It wasn’t easy being the first openly gay editor of anything in Washington when I was in my 20s. But it was harder still to be someone not defined entirely by my group, to be a dissident within it, a pariah to many, even an oxymoron, because of my politics or my faith.

Friendly dissidents are no longer interesting or quirky; as the stakes appear to rise, they come to seem dangerous, even contagious

And before we even know it, we live in an atmosphere closer and closer to that of The Crucible, where politics merges into a new kind of religious warfare, dissent becomes heresy, and the response to a blasphemer among us is a righteous, metaphorical burning at the stake

I think that’s the real context for understanding why magazines and newspapers and websites of opinion are increasingly resistant to ideological diversity within their own universes

The dynamic here is deeply tribal. It’s an atmosphere in which the individual is always subordinate to the group, in which the “I” is allowed only when licensed by the “we.

Hence the somewhat hysterical reaction, for example, to Kanye West’s recent rhetorical antics. I’m not here to defend West. He may be a musical genius (I’m in no way qualified to judge) but he is certainly a jackass, and saying something like “slavery was a choice” is so foul and absurd it’s self-negating

And yet. There was something about the reaction that just didn’t sit right with me, something too easy, too dismissive of an individual artist’s right to say whatever he wants, to be accountable to no one but himself. It had a smack of raw tribalism to it, of collective disciplining, of the group owning the individual, and exacting its revenge for difference.

It has been made far, far worse by this president, a figure whose election was both a symptom and a cause of this collective emotional unraveling, where the frontal cortex is so flooded by tribal signals that compromise feels like treason, opponents feel like enemies, and demagogues feel like saviors

I’m not whining about this experience, just explaining why I tend to side reflexively with the individual when he is told he isn’t legit by the group. In that intimidating atmosphere, I’m with the dissenter, the loner, and the outlier.

I believed in an identity politics that would aim to leave identity behind, to achieve a citizenship without qualification.

I never believed that the gay rights movement was about liberating people to be gay; I believed it was about liberating people to be themselves, in all their complexity and uniqueness.

I bristle because, of course, Coates is not merely subjecting West to “expectation and scrutiny” which should apply to anyone and to which no one should object; he is subjecting West to anathematization, to expulsion from the ranks.

Just as a Puritan would suddenly exclaim that a heretic has been taken over by the Devil and must be expelled, so Coates denounces West for seeking something called “white freedom”: … freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next; a Stand Your Ground freedom, freedom without responsibility, without hard memory; a Monticello without slavery, a Confederate freedom, the freedom of John C. Calhoun, not the freedom of Harriet Tubman, which calls you to risk your own; not the freedom of Nat Turner, which calls you to give even more, but a conqueror’s freedom, freedom of the strong built on antipathy or indifference to the weak, the freedom of rape buttons, pussy grabbers, and fuck you anyway, bitch; freedom of oil and invisible wars, the freedom of suburbs drawn with red lines, the white freedom of Calabasas.

Leave aside the fact that the passage above essentializes and generalizes “whiteness” as close to evil, a sentiment that applied to any other ethnicity would be immediately recognizable as raw bigotry.

Leave aside its emotional authenticity and rhetorical dazzle.

Notice rather that the surrender of the individual to the we is absolute.

That “we” he writes of doesn’t merely influence or inform or shape the individual artist; it “dictates” to him.

it’s at that point that I’d want to draw the line. Because it’s an important line, and without it, a liberal society is close to impossible.

I understand that the freedom enjoyed by a member of an unreflective majority is easier than the freedom of someone in a small minority, and nowhere in America is that truer than in the world of black and white.

But that my own freedom was harder to achieve doesn’t make it any less precious, or sacrosanct. I’d argue it actually makes it more vivid, more real, than it might be for someone who never questioned it.

And I am never going to concede it to “straightness,” the way Coates does to “whiteness.”

As an individual, I seek my own freedom, period. Being gay is integral to who I am, but it doesn’t define who I am. There is no gay freedom or straight freedom, no black freedom or white freedom; merely freedom, a common dream, a universalizing, individual experience.

“Liberation from the dictates of the we” is everyone’s birthright in America, and it is particularly so for anyone in the creative fields of music or writing.

A free artist owes nothing to anyone, especially his own tribe. And if you take the space away from him to be exactly what he wants to be, in all his contradictions and complexity, you are eradicating something critical to a free and healthy society.

Freedom, in this worldview, does not and cannot unite Americans of all races; neither can music. Because there is no category of simply human freedom possible in America, now or ever. There is only tribe. And the struggle against the other tribe. And this will never end.

And that, of course, is one of the most dangerous aspects of our elite political polarization: It maps onto the even-deeper tribalism of race, in an age when racial diversity is radically increasing, and when the racial balance of power is shifting under our feet.

That makes political tribalism even less resolvable and even more combustible.

It makes a liberal politics that rests on a common good close to impossible. It makes a liberal discourse not only unachievable but increasingly, in the hearts and minds of our very elites, immoral.

The promise of Obama — the integrating, reasoned, moderate promise of incremental progress — has become the depraved and toxic zero-sum culture of Trump.

while casting aspersions on his uncle’s illegitimate birth, often to his face, Carlos must at times have envied Don Juan’s bastard lineage and sound health

Don Juan of Austria

Another promising candidate was the widowed Mary Stuart, who escaped only to marry the despicable Darnley

Due to the possibility of armed insurrection in the north, Philip decided to visit his rebellious provinces in person

He now became openly vindictive, unstable and sullen, given to insults and unprovoked attacks on imaginary enemies

The threat of a divided royal house, with a maleficent Carlos rallying rebel support to his cause, was totally unacceptable to Philip

his father obviously had every intention of supplanting his rancorous heir-apparent should God give him another son

he intended to leave for Germany and the Netherlands, with or without his father’s permission

he stumbled down a decrepit flight of stairs in the dark, fracturing his skull

The strained relationship between Philip and his only son continued to deteriorate, but despite disturbing signs of the young man’s mental instability, the King remained phlegmatic

The King’s extended absences gave Carlos considerable latitude to prepare his escape

His inability to hold his tongue proved to be Philip’s salvation though at dreadful cost

Carlos rashly confided to Don Juan of Austria that he intended to leave Spain within the next few days. After some initial hesitation, Don Juan rode out to the Escorial on Christmas Day and informed Philip of the Prince’s decision

Meanwhile, Philip had returned to Madrid and was kept fully informed of his son’s designs; incredibly, he still hesitated to act

King Philip and five members of the Council of State made their way to the Prince’s bedchamber. The ingenious system of bolts and locks, which could be operated from his bed, had secretly been dismantled; and the startled Carlos was quickly disarmed. He guiltily assumed they had come to assassinate him, especially when his father seized a document listing the Prince’s enemies, with the King’s name at the head

The King was soon inured to suffering and private tragedies, and came to regard the unfounded attacks of his enemies as part of the burden he had been called upon to bear

Carlos’ mental equilibrium had always been precarious; and now he began to experience hallucinations. No visitors were allowed, and the Prince was kept under close surveillance, though the conditions of his detention were not too onerous

His fragile health was unable to withstand such sustained abuse, and an early death soon became inevitable. Philip resigned himself to his loss, and found spiritual comfort in blessing his dying

The death of the successor to the throne under such mysterious circumstances naturally gave rise to the wildest conjecture

Reasons of state were hinted at, which were assumed to involve a far-flung conspiracy of the son against his obdurate father

Ferdinand’s upbringing was similar to that of the ill-fated Carlos. Born on October 14th, 1784 at the Escorial, the young prince received scant affection from his parents, Charles IV and Maria Luisa, who finally ascended the throne in 1788 after a frustrating wait of twenty-three years

his suspicious nature and resentment towards his parents being evident from an early age

did not deter the calculating priest from further poisoning his charge’s distrustful mind. Ferdinand’s hatred was especially directed against his mother, Queen Maria Luisa

Ferdinand’s fears were not imaginary. In 1795, at the conclusion of an unsuccessful war against revolutionary France, Godoy - the monarchs’ ‘querido Manuel’ - had incredibly been granted the vainglorious title of ‘Prince of the Peace’

Ferdinand justifiably suspected that some machination on the part of his mother and Godoy might prevent his succession to the throne. By late 1807 his situation had become desperate

If the men who surround (Charles IV) here would let him know the character of Your Majesty as I know it, with what desire would not my father seek to tighten the bonds which should unite our two nations

Having already removed Charles’ brother from the throne of Naples, the French Emperor watched the unseemly squabbling among the Spanish Bourbons with a calculating eye to the future

unilateral commitment to refuse to marry ‘whoever she may be, without the consent of Your Majesty from whom alone I await the selection of my bride

Ferdinand’s enthusiasm at being related to the French Emperor was such that Beauharnais suggested that the Prince approach Napoleon directly in writing. Not only is it incredible that the heir-apparent would dare to discuss marriage plans with a foreign head of state; but equally so is the abject tone of the letter

The state in which I have found myself for some time, and which could not be hidden from the great penetration of Your Majesty

But full of hope in finding in Your Majesty’s magnanimity the most powerful protection

persistent rumours that he might appoint himself Regent on the King’s death, spurred the Prince of Asturias to frantic measures

august

The subsequent crisis, though outwardly similar to the events of 1568, was wider in scope and more tragic in its consequences. King Philip, criticized by many for his dispassionate attitude, never forfeited the esteem or the sympathy of the nation. In 1807 the position was the exact reverse; Charles IV at best was pitied as a dupe, while Maria Luisa and her paramour were held responsible for reducing Spain to the role of Napoleon’s subservient ally

Did Napoleon instigate the scheme to sow further dissension within the Spanish royal family, or did Beauharnais initiate it on his own account

Napoleon was delighted to receive Ferdinand’s letter and immediately grasped its mischief-making potential

Charles IV discovered his son’s treasonous correspondence

Godoy whose spies were everywhere

The ensuing scenes are reminiscent of those of 1568. The King angrily entered his son’s room, and was soon in possession not only of the damaging correspondence - apparently the Prince’s terrified gaze betrayed its hiding place - but also of the cipher needed to transcribe the coded letters

The Queen was distraught that Godoy was ill with a fever in Madrid at such a critical moment

The following day Ferdinand was formally placed under arrest with a guard of twenty-four elite soldiers

warning him of Godoy’s boundless ambitions and greed, enumerating his supposed crimes, his abuse of power and the royal confidence, his corruption and immorality

The most damning assertion was that Godoy had besmirched the King’s name and delivered Spain to her enemies

patriots anxious to ensure the orderly succession to the throne in the event of the King’s death

who imagined they had come to deliver their beloved prince from the pernicious influence of the royal favourite

Godoy pointed out to the King that a family reconciliation was imperative to prevent Napoleon from dividing the Spanish royal family. The King stubbornly refused to pardon his son, but finally agreed to let Godoy act as intermediary

Godoy saw his opportunity, and easily prevailed upon the terrified Prince to pen contrite letters to his parents, fully admitting his guilt

The King, moved by paternal compassion, granted his son a royal pardon, but insisted nevertheless that the other ‘conspirators’ be brought to trial and a full enquiry be convened

As Godoy had foreseen, Ferdinand’s immense popularity throughout the nation and the patriotic motives of the accused could only work to the detriment of the Santa Trinidad, as the reigning monarchs and the favourite were caustically referred to by the common people

On January 25th, 1808, to the acclaim of the public and the barely contained fury of the royal couple, the defendants were declared innocent

From the outset Godoy had been opposed to the trial; but this was one of the rare occasions on which both monarchs disregarded his counsel. To compound the initial error

Ferdinand’s defence, based on his right of legitimate succession to the throne, is persuasive as offered by Escoiquiz and the others at their trial. But whatever the provocation and dangers -real or imagined-one cannot forgive Ferdinand’s clandestine appeal to the French Emperor at such a critical moment, when Spain was threatened from outside

Being a King, you know how sacred are the rights of the throne; any approach of an heir apparent to a foreign sovereign is criminal

Napoleon assumed that the conduct and moral fibre of the Spanish royal family was representative of the entire nation

On his first day in his new post, Mr. Grenell, 52 years old, sparked outrage in Germany with a tweet demanding German companies wind down their operations in Iran. The acrimony was compounded by his call in a Breitbart News interview for empowering conservatives across Europ

A senior member of a governing party compared Mr. Grenell to a far-right colonial officer

opposition politicians

called for the U.S. ambassador to be expelled.

Mr. Trump has often privately praised Mr. Grenell’s TV appearances and his social media presence—peppered alternately with criticism of German policy and pictures of his dog, Lola—and described the ambassador as someone who “gets it.”

Mr. Grenell “understands what his mission is—his mission is what my father gives him,” Donald Trump Jr.

Thanks to his direct access to the president, Mr. Grenell has extended his remit beyond Germany, holding meetings with conservative leaders such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. The president views Mr. Grenell “not just as his man in Germany, but his man in Europe,

Moody’s Investors Service, a major credit ratings agency, has already said that it wants to take climate into account when weighing the financial health of companies and municipalities.

t says that “water- and vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever will likely be the largest direct effect of changes in human health and the associated productivity loss.”

The hardest-hit economies will be some of the fastest-growing ones — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the report says.

report also forecasts lower oil and natural gas demand, dealing a blow to oil-exporting countries, especially in the Middle East. It forecasts that Saudi GDP will drop more than 10 percent by 2048; the kingdom would be the country harmed the most by climate change, hurting government revenue

Of the 12 largest economies, India will be the worst hit, the report says, with GDP growing 2.5 percentage points more slowly than it would without the effects of climate change

The country’s service industry will be hit by heat stress, agricultural productivity will fall, and health-care costs will climb

the scenarios only go through 2048. The Moody’s report says “the distress compounds over time and is far more severe in the second half of the century.”

He added: “Most of the models go out 30 years, but, really, the damage to the economy is in the next half-century, and we haven’t developed the tools to look out that far.”

That’s why it is so hard to get people focused on this issue and get a comprehensive policy response,” Zandi said. “Business is focused on the next year, or five years out.”

Chubb, one of the biggest insurance firms in the United States, on Monday said it would no longer sell insurance to new coal-fired power plants or sell new policies to companies that derive more than 30 percent of their revenue from the mining of coal used in power plants.

Hammond said that the company still needs to stop insuring new coal mines and the oil sands, or tar sands, in northern Alberta.

“new coal projects cannot be built without insurance, and Chubb just dealt a blow to the dozens of companies that are still betting on the expansion of coal globally.”

the chief economist of Equinor, the Norwegian oil company previously known as Statoil, has written a report that looks at three scenarios for climate change and its impact on global economies, especially on energy. Only one of those, the report said, would lead to a sustainable path, but that path comes with enormous challenges. To reach that set of targets by 2050, “almost all use of coal must be eradicated

oil demand would need to be halved, and natural gas demand trimmed by more than 10 percent.

more than half of new cars would have to be electric vehicles by 2030

Electricity demand will double, yet wind and solar would equal the entire current electricity output, a leap from current levels

Waerness also said that the company currently assumes a carbon price of $55 a ton when considering whether to finance new energy projects

These superheroes are at risk partly because we sometimes send them into battle without adequate personal protective equipment, or P.P.E. This should be a national scandal, and now hospitals are compounding the outrage by punishing staff members who speak up or simply try to keep themselves safe.

It’s baffling that the richest country in the history of the world fails so abysmally at protecting its health workers, especially when it had two months’ lead time. And for hospitals now to retaliate against health workers who try to protect themselves — ousting them just when they are most needed — is both unconscionable and idiotic.

On websites like allnurses.com, nurses wonder aloud whether they can refuse to work because of inadequate P.P.E. or even whether they should quit the profession.

The doctors, nurses, technicians and cleaning staff members on the front of this pandemic deserve our eternal gratitude. Instead, we’re betraying them: They have our back, but we don’t have theirs.