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As The New Yorker’s Jay Caspian Kang writes, elite colleges’ affirmative action programs seemed “designed for a racially binary America” and “never got meaningfully updated for today’s multiracial democracy.” He argues that much of the public debate about the court’s decision seems stuck in that binary, too.

As Roberts and Gorsuch observe, these categories are in some ways too broad and in other ways too narrow

Perhaps the fundamental problem with these schools’ policies is their limited conception of the capacious and fluid nature of racial identity.

at Harvard, U.N.C. and other colleges that use the common admissions application, applicants are asked to choose one or more options from a list “to explain ‘how you identify yourself.’ The available choices are American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African American; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; Hispanic or Latino; or White,” adding, “Applicants can write in further details if they choose.”

He’s right. As I followed the case, it was this outdatedness that stuck in my craw

I will note a couple of points to undercut the liberal justices’ worry: First, it’s worth remembering that the decision’s impact is limited — as the sociologists Richard Arum and Mitchell Stevens argued recently in The Times, affirmative action mattered most for only a small group of the most selective colleges

Where do these categories come from? Gorsuch puts it pithily: “Bureaucrats.

Another instance of confusion came during oral argument, when U.N.C.’s attorney was asked which box a person from Jordan, Iraq, Iran or Egypt should check. He said he didn’t know, which seemed a pretty revealing answer: If U.N.C. doesn’t know what race a person of Middle Eastern descent is, should it really be making decisions based on race?

according to the American government, there is a correct answer to this question: Although some Arab American groups have lobbied to change the designation, people of Middle Eastern descent are officially classified as white.

the records suggests that Harvard also treated racial categories quite like stereotypes: Applicants of Asian descent were more likely than members of other racial categories to be labeled “standard strong,” meaning that admissions personnel determined they were academically qualified but otherwise unremarkable

Asian Americans scored better than other groups on academic and extracurricular measures, but Harvard’s admissions officers consistently gave Asians lower “personal” ratings than members of other groups. Harvard’s use of such subjective criteria to curb the number of Asian students admitted smacked of its efforts a century ago to keep out Jewish applicants it deemed unworthy of its “character and fitness” standards.

In dissent, the three liberal justices argued persuasively that the court’s ruling might significantly reduce enrollment of Black and Hispanic students at elite colleges. I agree this is a serious concern

Ignore if you can the ugly stereotyping — how the perfect SAT score would have been more impressive if the student had been “brown,” how “of course” it was an Asian kid who did so well, even if “still” impressive — and note the racial confusion: According to the colleges’ own categories, Asian includes brown people from, or whose forebears hailed from, the Indian subcontinent. But apparently U.N.C.’s officers’ mental picture didn’t match their official racial boxes.

The ruling presents us with another opportunity, too: To think about race more realistically, with far more specificity and precision. The 2020 census showed that America is growing more multiracial and more ethnically and racially diverse. We are far more than six categories on a demographic form — we contain multitudes, and we should recognize them.

“The ruling provides America with an opportunity to redirect the conversation from a relatively small number of schools and instead direct urgently needed attention to the vast middle and lower tiers of postsecondary education,” they wrote.

Howe and his co-author William Strauss wrote two extremely impactful books – Generations (published in 1991) and The Fourth Turning (published in 1997).

Strauss and Howe theory considers the 4-stage cycle that repeats every 80-100 years (approximately the length of a human life, also referred to as a saeculum).

Their books suggest four turnings of history: 1. A High 2. An Awakening 3. An Unravelling 4. (Culminating in) A Crisis

What can be helpful to remember in these times is that no storm lasts forever, and this too shall pass

Additionally, one can consider four generational archetypes (a fancy word for patterns) of people born in the same era and coming of age shaped by the same historical events

The four archetypes Strauss and Howe use to describe generational cohorts are: Prophets, Nomads, Heroes, and Artists

So, for example, Millennials fall into the Hero archetype, while Gen Xers are Nomads, and Baby Boomers are Prophets. The generation born in or after 2005 are Artists.

As each archetypal generation reaches the end of its 80-year lifespan, the cycle repeats.

After 2003, Italy became one of the first countries in Europe to put in place a national plan to mitigate the impact of extreme heat, based on the guidelines from the World Health Organization.

“Older people with pre-existing illnesses are more vulnerable,” Andrea Ungar, the president of Italy’s Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics, said in a phone interview. “But poverty and isolation also play a crucial role.”

Europe’s hottest summer on record, in 2003, left more than 70,000 people dead, by some estimates, and since then Italy has only grown older. It has struggled to adapt.

Almost 30 percent of the 61,000 people estimated to have died last summer from extreme heat in Europe were Italians, with age playing a significant factor. The number of Italians over 80 is now about 4.5 million, almost double the number of 20 years ago.

The measures include an alert system to warn people to modify their behavior to safeguard their health

Days like Wednesday, when the heat wave peaked, are marked in red on the daily bulletin that Italy’s Health Ministry issues to warn residents. Television channels periodically broadcast the ministry’s guidelines, advising people to stay indoors during the hottest hours; to wear light clothes and sunscreen; to drink lots of water, eat fresh fruits and avoid coffee and alcoholic beverages; and to be particularly careful when going outside.

The hottest summer on record killed 15,000 in France, the majority of them older people, living alone in city apartments or retirement homes with no air conditioning

Last summer, when successive heat waves hit the country, more than 2,800 French people died, some 80 percent over the age of 75

Even those who don’t need medical aid, assistance remains crucial and, for many vulnerable people, associations like Caritas are still the most reliable weekly help. Ms. Antonelli, the social worker, carried two cases of slightly fizzy water up two flights of stairs for Francesca Azzarita, a 91-year-old who lives alone with nothing to cool herself but a piece of cardboard to use as a fan

Here’s the story you may have heard: In the late 1980s Japan experienced a monstrous stock and real estate bubble, which eventually burst. Even now, the Nikkei stock average is significantly below the peak it reached in 1989. When the bubble burst, it left behind troubled banks and an overhang of corporate debt, which led to a generation of economic stagnation.

There’s some truth to aspects of this story, but it misses the most important factor in Japan’s relative decline: demography. Thanks to low fertility and unwillingness to accept immigrants, Japan’s working-age population has been declining quite rapidly since the mid-1990s.

The only way Japan could have avoided a relative decline in the size of its economy would have been to achieve much faster growth in output per worker than other major economies, which it didn’t.

Adjusted for demography, Japan has achieved significant growth: It has seen a 45 percent rise in real income per relevant capita. The United States has done even better, but this hardly fits the narrative of Japanese stagnation.

there’s more. Managing an economy with a declining working-age population is difficult, because low population growth tends to lead to weak investment. This observation is at the heart of the secular stagnation hypothesis, which says that nations with weak population growth tend to have persistent difficulty in maintaining full employment.

Yet Japan has, in fact, managed to avoid mass unemployment, or indeed mass suffering of any kind. Here’s one indicator, the employed percentage of men in their prime working years:

This percentage has remained high in Japan; indeed, consistently higher than that of the United States.

What about young people? Japan did see a rise in youth unemployment (ages 15-24) in the 1990s, but that rise has since been reversed. Here, via the World Bank, are International Labor Organization estimates of youth unemployment in Japan and, since the subject is attracting attention, China:

So Japan’s economic performance since the days when everyone thought it would rule the world has actually been pretty good. It’s true that employment has been sustained in part through large deficit spending, and Japanese debt has shot up:

But people have been predicting a Japanese debt crisis for decades, and it hasn’t materialized. In some ways, Japan, rather than being a cautionary tale, is a kind of role model — an example of how to manage difficult demography while remaining prosperous and socially stable.

while this is hard to quantify, lots of people I’ve talked to say that Japanese society is far more dynamic and culturally creative than many outsiders realize. The economist and blogger Noah Smith, who knows the country well, says that Tokyo is the new Paris

having been taken around Tokyo by locals, I can confirm that the city has a lot of vitality.

True, that same language barrier means that Tokyo likely can’t play the same role in global culture that Paris once did. But the Japanese are clearly having great success with sophisticated urbanism; if you think of Japan as a tired, stagnant society, you’re getting it wrong.

Will China be the next Japan?

There are some obvious similarities between China now and Japan in 1990. China has a wildly unbalanced economy, with too little consumer demand, kept afloat only by a hypertrophied real estate sector, and its working-age population is declining

there are growing concerns that China may have fallen into the “middle-income trap” that seems to afflict many emerging economies, which grow rapidly but only up to a point, then stall out.

if China is headed for an economic slowdown, the interesting question is whether it can replicate Japan’s social cohesion — its ability to manage slower growth without mass suffering or social instability

is there any indication that China, especially under an erratic authoritarian regime, is capable of pulling this off? Note that China already has much higher youth unemployment than Japan ever did.

That small dip may reflect preoccupation with economic doldrums unleashed by covid-19

While that 50 percent could be higher, the issue has seen a 21-point shift, and the polling question asks if respondents want action on climate “even at the expense of economic growth.”

while 54 percent of young voters believed in 2010 that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, that’s up to 69 percent this year.

Demographer William Frey and his colleagues calculate that by the 2036 presidential race, Gen Z will represent 35 percent of eligible voters. “They’re growing up in a 21st century America that’s far more diverse, inclusive and globally connected than the 1950s and 1960s America of the GOP base,” Frey told me. “They’re going to shun the Republican Party as they get older.”

There are major caveats. President Biden’s approval among young people remains stubbornly low

There’s some evidence that the young voters who elected Barack Obama have become somewhat more conservative as they’ve aged, which could happen again

“Migration is a bigger divide for the European Union. And it could be a dissolving force for the European Union.” Despite establishing a shared common external border, “we have not been able until now to agree on a common migration policy”, he said.

he also acknowledged the harsh choices Europe faced in curbing migration by reaching deals with countries such as Tunisia, pointing out it was his duty to defend not just European values but at the same time European interests. “The life of the diplomat is full of uncomfortable choices … Foreign policy is working for the values and the interests of the European Union. And these require, in some cases, difficult choices trying all the time to respect international law and human rights.”

“The issue is that migration pressure has been increasing, mainly due to wars – not the war against Ukraine … It is the Syrian war, the Libyan war, the military coups in Sahel.

He said other countries, such as Spain, have a long history of accepting migrants. “The paradox is that Europe needs migrants because we have so low demographic growth. If we want to survive from a labour point of view, we need migrants.”

“We are herbivores in a world of carnivores. It is a power politics world, yet we still have in mind that through trade and preaching the rule of law we can have influence on the world. We must still preach the rule of law but we have to be aware there are some leaders that need to be dealt with in a different way.”

Borrell predicted the war in Ukraine, and the eventual outcome, would be one of the three driving forces creating a new world order, alongside competition between China and the US, and the rise of the global south.

“There is no clear hegemon in the world but instead a growing number of actors.” The paradox, he said, was that this growth in actors had not been accompanied by a stronger multilateralism.

“Look at all these countries, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, India – you cannot ignore this new reality. In 20 years, at the current trend, there will be three big countries in the world, China, India and the US. Each of these powers will be a $50tn economy, and the EU will be much less, about $30tn

“For Europe this represents a huge long-term challenge. Europeans have to be prepared to be part of the new world in which we will be a smaller part of the population, certainly, and also in proportion to the size of the world economy. It means that we have to look for political influence, technological capacity and unity. Unity is the key word. Europeans have to be more united.”

In an ideal epidemiological scenario, everyone would willingly deploy the full arsenal of COVID precautions, such as masking and forgoing crowded indoor activities, especially during waves. But that kind of all-out response no longer makes sense. “It’s probably not realistic to expect people to take precautions every time, perpetually, or even every winter or fall, unless there is a particularly concerning reason to do that,

when so few people feel that the potential benefit of dodging an infection is worth the inconvenience of precautions, what does it even mean to care about COVID?

people over 50 account for 93 percent of COVID-related deaths in the U.S., even though they represent just 35.7 percent of the population. As long as the death rate remains as high as it is, caring about COVID should mean orienting precautions to protect them.

Barring another Omicron-esque event, we thankfully won’t ever return to a moment where Americans obsess over COVID en masse. But this virus isn’t going away, so we can’t escape having a population that is split between the high-risk minority and the low-risk majority

Right now, Nuzzo told me, the language we use to describe one’s position on COVID is “black-and-white, absolutist—you either care or you don’t.” There is space between those extremes. At least for now, it’s the only way to compromise between the world we have and the world we want.

In other words: Conservatism and the Republican party have not changed because the elites changed. It has changed because this is what the voters (and consumers) of the tribe want it to be. The elites who were willing to change their ideas to conform with the preferences of the volk were permitted to remain in the movement. The elites who were not, were cast out.

maybe it’s half-right: Maybe living in a largely homogenous monoculture meant that those people didn’t have to be nervous about what classical liberalism could lead to and it was only diversity, demographic change, and the fracturing of the monoculture that awakened an openness to illiberalism.

No. The big question is: Did the people’s desires change? Or were they always like this—but the power of the Republican and conservative elites was able to keep most of their illiberal preferences underground?

know that for many Democrats, the answer is: The Republican base voters were always like this. “Small government” and “states rights” were just code words. None of this is new. That’s why we’re Democrats.

To me, the interesting question isn’t, “How much of the shift is because of the elites and how much is because of the people?”

Or maybe something fundamental really did change: The decline of religious practice opened people to treating politics like faith. The stagnation of the middle class made people desperate. Social stratification and decreased mobility created resentment.

Black mortality was 65 percent higher and Hispanic mortality 75 percent higher.

at least in Ohio and Florida, despite what seemed at the time to be almost unbridgeable divides over things like mask wearing and school closures, social distancing and lockdowns, the excess mortality gap between Republicans and Democrats in the pre-vaccine phase of the pandemic was relatively small, with Republican excess mortality only 22 percent higher than the death rate among Democrats.

The country clearly stumbled in 2020. And yet before vaccines were widely available, and when we tried to slow the spread of the disease through behavioral measures, the scale of the failure was relatively small compared with what followed in the years after.

In 2020, American death rates and excess mortality fell merely at the worse end of its peer countries — above Germany and barely France but below Britain, Italy and Spain, for instance

In the vaccine era of the pandemic, American performance has been much worse, with our death rates becoming much more conspicuous and dramatic outliers — enough to make the country by far the worst performing of its peers.

Overall — from the beginning of the pandemic until the arrival of Omicron — Republican excess mortality in Ohio and Florida was 76 percent higher than Democratic excess mortality.

only 62 percent of Republicans have completed their primary vaccinations, compared with 87 percent of Democrats.

income and education tell a similar story: Only 67 percent of Americans with household incomes below $40,000 have completed their primary vaccinations, compared with 85 percent with household incomes above $90,000

What does this all mean for the next pandemic fall and winter? Well, thankfully, the racial and ethnic gaps around vaccination have almost entirely closed, which is one major reason the mortality gap has, too: According to Kaiser, 74 percent of Black and Hispanic Americans have been vaccinated, compared with 77 percent of whites

The demographic gaps for boosters are slightly larger: 50 percent of white adults have been boosted, according to Kaiser, compared with 43 percent of Black adults and 40 percent of Hispanic adults. (Only 31 percent of Republicans have been boosted.)

while the news from Europe isn’t especially reassuring, it would probably take an Omicron-like curveball to deliver a new American peak like those we experienced each of the previous two winters, and there does not seem to be anything like that on the horizon.

But according to The Times’s global vaccination tracker, Americans are doing almost exactly as poorly with boosters as we did with the first round of vaccines, not worse. The country ranks 66th globally in the share of population that has completed a primary vaccination course. For a first booster, it ranks 71s

One set of answers is implied by the story of vaccination and mortality by race, and the way improvements on one measure changed the trajectory of the other: more first shots and more boosting. This is the central strategy offered by the Biden administration. But the vaccinated share of the country has barely grown in months, and the uptake of next generation bivalent boosters looks, in the early stages, quite abysmal.

yet Americans are still dying at an annualized rate above 100,000 — a rate that may well grow as we head deeper into the fall. What are we doing about that?

another possible set of responses suggests itself too, one that wouldn’t require a reversal of vaccination trends or a transformation of the pandemic culture war either: an approach to public health infrastructure, both literal and legal, that would reduce spread through background interventions without meaningfully burdening individual Americans at all.

in a perverse way the arrival of vaccines seemed to almost retire them from public discussion. They include better ventilation in public buildings, particularly schools

Testing could help, too, of course, though culturally it seems to have been dumped into a bucket with masks, as an individual tool and individual burden, rather than one with investments in ventilation improvements, as part of an invisible Covid-mitigating infrastructure

Over the last six months, an individual risk approach to Covid has predominated — both at the level of public health guidance and for most individuals navigating the new, quasi-endemic landscape

This argument is unhelpful, not just because it is needlessly toxic but also because the terms themselves are inadequate. One of the lessons of that early phase of the pandemic, and especially its racial disparities, is that mitigation is not strictly a matter of individual risk management. Spread matters, too, as do structural factors. We have tools to help both, without returning the country psychologically to the depths of Covid panic.

And although the partisan gap grew with the arrival of vaccines, it never grew as large as the racial gap had been in early 2020. In 2021, Republican excess mortality in those two states was at its highest, compared to Democratic levels: 153 percent. At the peak of racial disparity in the pandemic’s first wave, Black Americans were dying more than three times as much as white Americans.

structural factors — not only race but class and education, too — appear to loom just as large, complicating any intuitive model of what went wrong here that emphasizes the pandemic culture war above all else.

Especially in the initial phases of spread, it can be hard to disentangle the effects of policy and behavioral response from somewhat random drivers like where the virus arrived first, what sorts of places those were and what kinds of people populated them, and even what the weather was like

This dynamic changed almost on a dime with the introduction of vaccines, with an enormous gap opening up between Democrats and Republicans in 2021

the excess mortality data collected here suggests that however self-destructive red states and Republican individuals seemed to be, in 2020, the ultimate cost of that recklessness was less dramatic.

For Americans without college degrees, the number is also 67 percent, compared with 85 percent of college graduates. For uninsured adults under 65, it is just 60 percent

This transformation made Donald Trump’s presidency possible, and it is a grave mistake. Good character should never be optional in leaders, and strength of character is more important in difficult times.

As a wise retired federal judge once told me, when someone says “Yes, but” the only words that matter come after the “but.” The “yes” is appeasement; the “but” is belief.

We live in a time of partisan animosity so great that an October NBC News poll found that 80 percent of Democrats and Republicans “believe the political opposition poses a threat that, if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it.”

In those circumstances, the quest for character becomes a form of luxury belief. It’s what you cling to in safer, more secure times

That same poll found that “two-thirds of reliable Democratic and Republican voters say they’d still support their party’s political candidate, even if that person had a moral failing that wasn’t consistent with their own values.”

the position of white Evangelicals, in particular, has totally transformed on the matter. Between 2011 and 2016, white Evangelicals went from the American demographic least likely to agree that “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties” to the group most likely to agree with that statement.

Competence is quite often a key by-product of good character. Indeed, I’d say it’s an aspect of good character.

But it’s now wrong to simply assert that truth as self-evident. Millions of Americans disagree

Why are they wrong? The evidence is everywhere, if you know where to look. While bad policy can be extraordinarily consequential, our current political dysfunctions are mainly due to bad character.

Negative partisanship is now a central fact of American politics. Millions of Americans now support their political party not because they love its politicians or its policies, but because they hate and fear the other side.

Consider the challenge of mutual hatred

partisan Americans consistently misjudge their ideological adversaries. They rate them as far more extreme than they really are.

This is the political assertion that meets with perhaps the ultimate “yes, but” response. “Yes, but so does policy.” “Yes, but no one is perfect.” “Yes, but we need to fight fire with fire.”

Or consider the distrust of American institutions.

How many politicians raise money and gain power by stoking as much hatred as possible? How often are they exaggerating the threat of their opponents? How often are they engaged in outright lies?

Most of the Republicans in Congress followed suit

The instant a person becomes so convinced of their own excellence that they lose those qualities is the instant that their hubris can destroy their competence.

American institutions lose trust not just because they’re corrupt (an obvious sign of bad character), but also because they’re sloppy or inefficient, or just can’t accomplish the most necessary tasks.

Or think of the challenges to democracy itself.

The conspiracies that culminated in the violent attempted coup on January 6 were entirely the product of one of the most colossal character failures in the history of the United States. Donald Trump’s malicious lies and will to power were the obvious first causes of the riot

consider the cascading character failures that led to the attack.

Most of Trump’s staff folded

when they crack, all their policy ideas are but dust in the wind. On January 6, for example, America was only one more crack away—a Mike Pence “yes” to Trump’s scheme—from the worst constitutional crisis since 1861.

Almost the entire right-wing infotainment industry gave in

What ultimately stopped Trump? Character. It was the character of judges—including Federalist Society judges—who turned back dozens of election challenges

It was the character of members of Congress, including both Democratic and Republican leaders, who decided they would return to the House chamber and finish counting the electoral votes that would secure Joe Biden’s lawful electoral victory.

While I disagreed with Pence on countless occasions before January 6, he was at the eye of that hurricane, and he stood firm.

Bad character is a long-term threat. The smoking analogy is valid. But January 6 taught me that bad character can function as an immediate threat as well. Like a gun to the head.

the best lawyers, the best doctors, the best military officers, and the best corporate leaders combine a set of skills that include not just self-discipline and an inquisitive mind, but also an innate curiosity and openness that allows them to understand and absorb new information and competing ideas.

“The modern Republican Party is essentially a hostage crisis in which each wing could kill the party by bolting the coalition but only one wing is willing to do it and both sides know it.”

The MAGA wing will stay home if its demands aren’t met. The establishment, by contrast, dutifully marches to the polls, no matter who has the “R” by their name.

This has to change. It is not the case, for example, that a Republican Senate candidate is running “only” to be a vote, and not a leader. There is no such thing as “only” voting.

When you distrust or despise your enemy enough, character is often the first casualty of political combat. But if we kill character, we risk killing our country. We cannot survive the complete corruption of our political class.

, it’s the day to day violence that is most eroding the nation’s morale.  

Many of these new arrivals are economic migrants, willing to put in the hours and the effort that young westerners no longer are. Absenteeism levels hit record levels in Britain and France last year, with Monday and Friday the days when workers were most often not to be seen. As a consequence productivity in both countries is falling; in Britain’s case growth in output per hour worked is forecast to average 0.25 per cent a year over the next three years, down from 2 per cent in the first decade of the century. 

In his 2005 book, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation, the historian Bryan Ward-Perkins concluded with a warning for the West: ‘Romans before the fall were as certain as we are today that their world would continue for ever substantially unchanged. They were wrong. We would be wise not to repeat their complacency.’

As so many IRL organizing meetings are, the meeting was admirably focused on the here and now. There was little to complain about. But when a speaker closed by saying “All power to the people,” I winced. Because it was emblematic of that inescapable feeling that attends radical politics now - the feeling that it’s all kitsch, like a Googie-architecture portrayal of the space age.

The palpable sense that everyone is quietly aware that the whole thing is a type of pantomime, people going through the motions with no real sense of possibility, unwilling to entirely give up on the profound moral necessity of radical change but at this point entirely incapable of lying to themselves about the reality of what’s actually possible

you know what would be a much bigger symbol of radical progress than some killer whales attacking a couple dozen random small watercraft? A diverse working-class movement based on shared economic need, coming together across demographic distance and using their labor power to earn a better, more just world for all people, rallying under a banner of shared sacrifice and the universal brotherhood of all. But nobody, nobody believes that such a thing is possible. Not anymore

We are all of us at a lefty Renaissance festival, our hammer and sickles no more authentic than Ye Olde Meade Hall, feeling like parents trying to keep the myth of Santa Claus alive to a child that’s probably just too old to keep buying it

It’s easier to imagine whales delivering our salvation than it is to imagine us delivering it to ourselves.

Yes, enjoying orcas attacking some random boats is natural and funny, and rolling that into a metaphor of radical politics in a humorous way is fine. But that’s not all that’s been happening with this story, is it? I’m not just talking about a few random tweets, here. I’ve been following this story for days now, in various forums, and growing increasingly sad as people seem to invest more and more in this, emotionally. What’s going on here, exactly?

I was at an organizing meeting not too long ago, one put together by a good local lefty organizatio

Monday’s rampage in Illinois marked the 15th time this year that four or more people were killed in a shootin

Of the 90,498 gun deaths in 2020 and 2021, 38,796 were homicides. Nearly 21,000 of those victims were Black men.

In 2020, while the overall crime rate nationwide fell, “that was not true for shootings,” Cook said. That year, he said, there was an “unparalleled” surge in people killed by firearms compared with 2019.

Solving more shootings, particularly nonfatal ones, “would interrupt the cycle of retaliation,” Cook said, and might improve local trust in the police. “That would be a productive use of money,” he said.

Police nationwide in 2020 “cleared” about half of all homicides, according to the FBI, which usually means that someone was arrested and charged or the case was closed another way, including the death of the attacker.

But three decades of research has established that people with mental illness are responsible for just a small percentage of interpersonal and gun violence.

“Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge. Period,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said shortly after the Uvalde shooting in May.

It’s clear that many other factors are more closely associated with gun violence than mental illness. They include experiencing trauma and violence during childhood, being young and male, living in neighborhoods where violence is more prevalent, poor impulse control, poor anger control, and perhaps most of all, easy access to a firearm.

There is one major, well-established connection between mental illness and gun violence: suicide.

officials must help create environments where there is less trauma in the home, support families and strengthen services for children in schools.

In 1994, Duke University gun violence researcher Jeffrey W. Swanson calculated that if all active psychotic and mood disorders were eliminated overnight, interpersonal violence would be reduced by just 4 percent

“We don’t have gun control as much as we have people control,” he said. “We try to figure out the people who are so dangerous that we have to limit their access to guns.”

In many other countries, guns are tightly restricted, but the United States has taken a different route, he said.

people in Florida with serious mental illnesses, including some who were committed to a psychiatric facility involuntarily or for a short-term emergency hold, 0.9 percent were arrested for a violent crime involving a gun within seven years — about the same rate as the general population.

The 1998 MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study, which followed 951 people who had been released from three psychiatric facilities, found that 23 committed 67 acts of interpersonal gun violence — a rate of 2 percent — in the next year. Just 19 of those acts, committed by nine people, were against strangers.

The consistent invocations of mental health after massacres such as those in Buffalo, Uvalde and Highland Park are ways for officials to distance themselves from the horror of the event, to explain the unfathomable,

“It’s a tragedy that demands explanation, and the stigma of mental illness is something that fuels pseudo-explanations,” she said. “It’s a fake explanation. Why has this man done this terrible thing? The answer is because he’s mentally ill. How do you know he’s mentally ill? Because he’s done this terrible thing.”

Biden’s approval ratings are stubbornly low. In a recent ABC poll, only 30 percent of voters approve of his handling of the economy and only 23 percent approve of his handling of immigration at the southern border. Roughly three-quarters of American voters say that Biden, at 80, is too old to seek a second term. There have been a string of polls showing that large majorities in his own party don’t want him to run again. In one survey from 2022, an astounding 94 percent of Democrats under 30 said they wanted a different nominee.

I thought Biden’s favorability ratings would climb as economic growth has remained relatively strong and as inflation has come down. But it just hasn’t happened.

don’t find this passive fatalism compelling. The party’s elected officials are basically urging rank-and-file Democrats not to be anxious about a situation that is genuinely anxiety-inducing. Last month Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey told The Times, “This is only a matter of time until the broad party, and broadly speaking, Americans, converge with the opinions of folks like myself.” Really? Surely if there’s a lesson we should have learned from the last decade, it’s that we should all be listening harder to what the electorate is trying to say.

The Republicans who portray him as a doddering old man based on highly selective YouTube clips are wrong. In my interviews with him, he’s like a pitcher who used to throw 94 miles an hour who now throws 87. He is clearly still an effective pitcher.

People who work with him allow that he does tire more easily, but they say that he is very much the dynamic force driving this administration

In fact, I’ve noticed some improvements in his communication style as he’s aged. He used to try to cram every fact in the known universe into every answer; now he’s more disciplined. When he’s describing some national problem, he is more crisp and focused than he used to be, clearer on what is the essential point here — more confidence-inspiring, not less.

What about four or five years from now, at the end of a second term? Will he still be competent enough to lead? Biden is fit, does not smoke or drink alcohol, exercises frequently and has no serious health conditions, according to the White House

A study in The Journal on Active Aging of Biden’s and Trump’s health records from before the 2020 elections found that both men could qualify as “super-agers” — the demographic that maintains physical and mental functioning beyond age 80.

if the president I see in interviews and at speeches is out campaigning next year against an overweight man roughly his own age, then my guess is that public anxieties on this front will diminish.

To me, age isn’t Biden’s key weakness. Inflation is. I agree with what Michael Tomasky wrote in The New Republic: Biden’s domestic legislative accomplishments are as impressive as any other president’s in my adult life. Exactly as he should have, he has directed huge amounts of resources to the people and the places that have been left behind by the global economy. By one Treasury Department estimate, more than 80 percent of the investments sparked by the Inflation Reduction Act are going to counties with below-average college graduation rates and nearly 90 percent are being made in counties with below-average wages. That was the medicine a riven country needed.

it is also true that Biden’s team overlearned the lessons of the Obama years. If Barack Obama didn’t stimulate the economy enough during the Great Recession, Biden stimulated it too much, contributing to inflation and the sticker shock people are feeling.

Anger about inflation is ripping across the world, and has no doubt helped lower the approval ratings of leaders left, right and center. Biden’s 40 percent approval rating may look bad, but in Canada, Justin Trudeau’s approval rating is 36; in Germany Olaf Scholz is at 29; in Britain Rishi Sunak is at 28; in France Emmanuel Macron is at 23; and in Japan Fumio Kishida is also at 23. This is a global phenomenon

“Inflation is the reason Biden could not deliver on his core promise to return the country to normal and the main reason his poll numbers are bad.”

voters are looking back and retroactively elevating their opinion of Trump’s presidency. When he left office only 38 percent of Americans approved of his performance as president. Today, 48 percent do, his high-water mark.

Bitterness, cynicism and distrust pervade the body politic. People perceive reality through negative lenses, seeing everything as much worse than it is. At 3.8 percent, America’s unemployment rate is objectively low, but 57 percent of voters say that the unemployment rate is “not so good” or “poor.”

The nation’s bitter state of mind is a self-perpetuating negativity machine. Younger people feel dismissed; the older generations are hogging power. Faith in major institutions is nearing record lows. The country is hungry for some kind of change but is unclear about what that might look like. As the incumbent, Biden will be tasked with trying to tell a good news story of American revival, which is just a tough story to sell in this environment. And Biden is not out there selling it convincingly.

The bracing reality is that Trump’s cynicism and fury match the national mood more than Biden’s faithful optimism.

“They seem hell bent on nominating the one Democrat who would lose to Donald Trump,” Karl Rove told me recently. “They’ve got a lot of talent on their side, let’s not kid ourselves,” he continued, pointing to younger Democrats like Gretchen Whitmer, Mitch Landrieu, Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker.

A lot of the dump-Biden conversations are based on a false premise: that the Democratic Party brand and agenda are somehow strong and popular enough that any number of younger candidates could win the White House in 2024, and that if Biden were just to retire, all sorts of obstacles and troubles would go with him.

But Biden is not the sole or even primary problem here. To the extent that these things are separable, it’s the Democratic Party as a whole that’s ailing. The generic congressional ballot is a broad measure of the strength of the congressional party. Democrats are now behind. According to a Morning Consult poll, Americans rate the Democratic Party as a whole as the more ideologically extreme party by a nine-point margin.

When pollsters ask which party is best positioned to address your concerns, here too, Democrats are trailing. In a recent Gallup poll 53 percent of Americans say Republicans will do a better job of keeping America prosperous over the short term while only 39 percent thought that of the Democrats.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans said that the Republicans would do a better job keeping America safe, while only 35 percent favor the Democrats. These are historically high Republican advantages.

Here are the hard, unpleasant facts: The Republicans have a likely nominee who is facing 91 charges. The Republicans in Congress are so controlled by a group of performative narcissists, the whole House has been reduced to chaos. And yet they are still leading the Democrats in these sorts of polling measures

There is no other potential nominee who is so credibly steeped in knowing what life is like for working- and middle-class people, just as there was no other potential nominee in 2020. After watching him for a quarter-century, I think he is genuinely most comfortable when he is hanging around the kinds of people he grew up with. He doesn’t send out any off-putting faculty lounge vibes. On cultural matters he is most defined by what he doesn’t do — needlessly offend people with overly academic verbiage and virtue signaling. That is why I worry when he talks too stridently about people on the right, when he name-calls and denounces wide swaths of people as MAGA.

Over the last half-century, the Democrats have become increasingly the party of the well-educated metropolitan class.

This is about something deeper than Joe Biden’s age. More and more people are telling pollsters that the Republicans, not the Democrats, care about people like me.

But Democrats are losing something arguably more important than a reliable base of supporters. The party is in danger of letting go of an ethos, a heritage, a tradition. The working-class heart and soul the Democrats cultivated through the Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy years rooted Democratic progressivism in a set of values that emphasized hard work, neighborhood, faith, family and flag. Being connected to Americans’ everyday experiences kept the party pinioned to the mainstream.

. It grew prone to taking flights of fancy in policy and rhetoric, be it Medicare for All or “defund the police,” going to places where middle-of-the-road voters would not follow. It became more vulnerable to the insular outlooks of its most privileged and educated members.

And that is the fact I keep returning to. Biden is not what ails the party. As things stand, he is the Democrats’ best shot at curing what ails the party.

today, the party is bleeding working-class voters of all varieties. As John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira point out in their forthcoming book, “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?” Democrats have been losing ground among Hispanics for the last few years. In 2012, Barack Obama carried nonwhite voters without a college degree by a 67-point margin. In 2020, Biden carried this group with a 48-point margin. Today, the Democratic ticket leads among this group by a paltry 16 points

These cultural and spiritual roots give him not just a style but a governing agenda. He has used the presidency to direct resources to those who live in the parts of the country where wages are lower, where education levels are lower, where opportunities are skimpier. Biden’s ethos harks back to the ethos of the New Deal Democratic Party, but it also harks forward to something — to a form of center-left politics that is culturally moderate and economically aggressive

Something almost spiritual is at play here, not just about whether the Democrats can win in 2024, but who the Democrats are.

I also find myself arriving foursquare at the conclusion that rejecting the president now would be, in the first place, a mistake. He offers the most plausible route toward winning the working- and middle-class groups the Democrats need, the most plausible route toward building a broad-based majority party

But it would be worse than a mistake. It would be a renunciation of the living stream of people, ideas and values that flow at the living depths of the party, a stream that propelled its past glories and still points toward future ones.

The war in Ukraine has emerged as the first armed conflict in a struggle between three twenty-first century great powers, the United States, Russia, and China--the Oceana, Eurasia and East Asia that Orwell predicted in 1984.  While Russia is trying to destroy the post-1989 settlement that emerged in Europe after the USSR collapsed, the United States and the EU and an enlarged NATO are trying to maintain it.

Meanwhile, tensions have grown steadily between the United States and China over Taiwan

Germany in 1914 decided to back Austria to the hilt in its demands against Serbia because the German government wanted a trial of strength with France and Russia, whom they thought they could either humiliate diplomatically or defeat militarily.  The men and women in charge of US foreign policy today clearly still believe that our will should prevail anywhere on the globe, and might not be averse to military action to make that point.

Most important of all, Iran is another player in the situation that could easily escalate it. 

The United States, to my horror, has been trying to improve its relations with Saudi Arabia, which would definitely make Washington a partner in an anti-Iranian alliance in the Middle East.  There is even talk of Israel normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia, which might draw it into such an alliance.  

If Israel, the US and Saudi Arabia decided to attack Iran, Russia--which has friendly relations with Iran now--might join in on Iran's side.  It would be extremely difficult for the United States to maintain its generous support for Ukraine while also fighting such a conflict ourselves.  And with the United States involved in two different conflicts already, Beijing might easily decide that the time to invade Taiwan had come.  Suddenly we would be in the midst of a third world war.

In this kind of environment, the greatest powers regard any defeat by one of their allies as a potentially disastrous shift in the balance of power.  That is why the United States is doing so much to support Ukraine, and it is one reason that President Biden immediately announced the strongest possible support for Israel, including conventional military support even though Israel is not facing a conventional war. 

The Arab-Israeli tragedy continues.  Four generations of Palestinians have now grown up under occupation, each one at least as hostile to Israel as the last.  75 years of conflict, combined with demographic changes, have made Israel a very different country than it was before 1967.  Despite its repeated failure to impose its will on the Palestinians, the Israeli government is now the verge of its most destructive effort to do so yet in Gaza.  It speaks of destroying Hamas, and Netanyahu has even advised Gazans to flee--but there are about two million of them living in the most densely populated political entity on earth, and they have nowhere to flee to.

A great power makes a mistake, in my opinion, when it ties its destiny to that of a smaller power in the midst of an endless war.  The real responsibility of great powers is to keep in mind the ultimate objective of any war--"which is to bring about peace," as Clausewitz said.  That is what Germany could and should have done in 1914, and what several American presidents tried to do in the Middle East.  It does not seem to be our policy now.

The largest declines in news attention over this period were found among working-age and pre-retirement Americans—for example, more than six in ten Americans ages 50-64 paid close attention to the news in 2016 compared to less than half in 2022.

around two-thirds of those ages 65 or older say they follow the news “all or most of the time” (down from a high of 81 percent in 2018) compared to less than one-fifth of those ages 18 to 29.

One-third of U.S. adults in 2022 said they follow the news at least “some of the time” while just under three in ten said they pay attention to the news “only now and then” or “hardly at all”.

it occurs in conjunction with shifts in media consumption towards digital devices, overall declining trust in the media and other institutions, and “high levels of news fatigue” across demographic groups.

It’s easier for people to do something else with their time and find more enjoyable distractions that don’t involve keeping up with the latest implosion in the House of Representatives, fights between dumb politicians, or what new conflict is flaring up in another part of the world.

Even as fewer people than ever are paying close attention to what is actually going on in America and the world, more and more Americans (and politicians) are piping off routinely—online, in the workplace, and in family gatherings—with hard-and-fast opinions about what it all means.

the net result is a more divisive and less informed citizenry coupled with a clear inability of major institutions and political parties in America to do anything cooperative on common economic, security, and social problems.

In a pluralistic society like ours—with important rights to freedom of speech and individual beliefs—it is not the job of government or others to coerce people into paying more or closer attention to what is going on.

But media companies, government bodies, and philanthropists could certainly put more money and effort into creating trustworthy news platforms for reporting important facts, presenting neutral analyses, exploring successes and failures in public policy, and hosting civil discussions about the important issues shaping the country.

it’s also possible that population aging has something to do with it. There’s a pretty well-established literature linking youthful population bulges to elevated risk of conflict.

For example, Cincotta and Weber (2021) find that countries with a median age of 25 or less are much more likely to have revolutions:

Evidence from the 1990s reveals that countries where people aged fifteen to twenty-nine made up more than 40 percent of the adult population were twice as likely to suffer civil conflict.

Data collected from 1950 to 2000 found that countries where 35 percent or more of their adult populations comprised people aged fifteen to twenty-four were 150 percent more likely to experience an outbreak of civil conflict

, the young people crowd each other out, and this makes them mad. This effect is obviously exacerbated when the economy is stagnating. Also, simply having a lot of young men around without much to lose seems like a risk factor in and of itself.

Whether rich or poor, the countries in the Greater Middle East — I’ll throw Afghanistan and Pakistan into the mix, since they’ve also been a big locus of conflict — just don’t tend to experience much economic growth at all.

But the good news here, at least from a conflict-avoidance perspective, is that these countries are getting steadily older. There are a number of countries in the region where median age has already passed the 25-year mark:

how much things have changed

When Iran threw hundreds of thousands of soldiers against Iraq in “human wave” attacks in the 1980s, the median Iranian was just 17 years old; now, the median Iranian is in their early 30s.

Saudi Arabia got involved in the Yemen war, but was reluctant to send ground troops against the Houthis — possibly because the Houthis are formidable, but possibly because the Saudis have relatively few young people to send.

Hezbollah resides in a considerably older country than in 2006 when they attacked Israe

On the other hand, there are a number of other countries in the region that are still pretty young:

troublingly, Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, Iraq, and Pakistan are projected to still be below a median age of 25 a decade from now.

all of these countries are still aging at a steady clip — as are the countries that are already over 25. The fundamental reason is the big collapse in fertility rates in the Greater Middle East (and across the broader Muslim world) over the past few decades.

When Iran exploded in revolution and fought a titanic war against Iraq in the late 70s and 80s, its fertility was over 6; now it’s down to about 1.5

When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, its fertility was over 7; now, it’s below 4

I don’t want to claim that “demography is destiny” here, and it’s all too easy to look at individual countries and tell just-so stories about how aging and fertility might have affected their conflict

The old Middle East, with massive crowds of angry young people thronging the streets, ready to explode into nationalist or sectarian or revolutionary violence, is steadily disappearing, being replaced by a more sedate, aging society. Given the horrific outcomes of the last few decades, it’s hard not to see that as a good thing.

Since 1992, the number of people getting inheritances from parents has nearly doubled even as bequests from grandparents and aunts and uncles have remained flat. Your 50s will be your peak inheriting ages, which makes sense given that an average 65-year-old in the U.S. can expect to live to around age 83 and your parents are, sadly, mortal.

If you look only at the lucky few who inherited anything, their average is $266,00

And if you look only at those in their 70s, it climbs to $344,000. Of course, that’s the value at the time of the gift. Add inflation and market-level returns and many bequests are worth much more by the time you earn your septuagenarian badge.

when we ran the numbers, we found they weren’t random at all.

White folks are about three times more likely to inherit than their Black, Hispanic or Asian friend

it remains vast enough to help explain why the typical White family has more than six times the net worth of the typical Black American famil

Up and down the demographic charts, it appears to be a case of to whom much is given … much more is given

Folks in the bottom 50 percent of earners inherit at half the national rate, while those in the top 1 percent are twice as likely to inherit something.

he confirmed that inheritances make the rich richer. But a rich kid’s true inheritance goes far beyond cash value: In a million less-measurable ways, elite parents give you a head start in life. By the time they die and hand you a windfall, you’ve already used all your advantages to accumulate wealth of your own.

“It’s not just the dollar amount that you get when your parents die,” Ricco said. “It’s the safety net that you had to start a business when you were younger, or the ability to put down a larger share of your savings into a down payment and a house because you know that you can save less for retirement.

“Little things like that are probably the main mechanisms through which intergenerational wealth is transmitted and are not easily captured just by the final value of what you see.”

Just one variable — how much you inherit — can account for more than 60 percent of U.S. wealth inequality

So, if you had to guess someone’s economic station in life and you could peek at only one data point, inheritance would be a pretty good bet. It’s one of the clearest socioeconomic signals on the planet.

“They actually reflect many advantages, many inequalities of opportunities that we face.”

The U.S. tax system does little to temper our uneven inheritance. Consider the stepped-up basis provision, “one of the most egregious (tax loopholes) that we have,”

When you sell something at a profit, you typically pay capital gains tax. But you can avoid that tax by holding the asset until you expire. At your death, the cost basis of your assets gets stepped up to their current value — meaning your heirs avoid getting taxed on what might be a very substantial gain.

Say you’re a natural-soda fan who bought $1,000 of Hansen Natural Corp. stock in 2000. You watched your money grow to more than $1.15 million as sleepy Hansen became the world-eating Monster Beverage Corp. Selling the stock would force you to pay capital gains on more than $1 million in earnings, so instead, you took it to the grave

(If you needed cash, you probably borrowed against your stockpiled stock pile, a common strategy among the 1 percent.)

If your heirs sell it, they’ll pay no taxes. If the value of the stock rises to, say, $1.151 million, they would owe taxes only on that extra $1,000.

Now multiply that loophole by the millions of homes, businesses, equities and other assets being handed down each year

It encourages older folks to hoard homes and businesses they can no longer make full use of, assets our housing-starved millennial readers would gladly snap up.

Early on, Goldwein said, it may have been considered necessary because it was difficult to determine the original value of long-held property. Revenue lost to the loophole was partly offset by a simpler-to-administer levy: the estate tax.

For now, you’ll pay the federal estate tax only on the part of your fortune that exceeds $12.92 million ($25.84 million for couples), and rising to $13.61 million in 2024 — and that’s only if your tax lawyers aren’t smart enough to dodge it.

“Between politicians continuing to cut the estate tax and taxpayers becoming increasingly good at avoiding it, very few now pay it,” Goldwein said. “That means we now have a big net tax break for most people inheriting large amounts of money.”

Kumon presents a convincing explanation: If you didn’t produce a male heir in Japan, it was customary to adopt one. A surplus son from another family would marry into yours. That kept your property in the family.

In Europe, if an elite family didn’t produce a male heir, which happened more than a quarter of the time, the default was for a daughter to marry into another well-off family and merge assets. So while Japanese family lines remained intact from generation to generation, European family lines merged, concentrating wealth into fewer and fewer hands.

As other families compete to marry into the Darcys’ colossal estate — spoiler for a novel from 1813! — inequality increases.

Given a few centuries, even subtle variations in inheritance patterns can produce sweeping societal differences.

Overall, 55 percent of Hispanic teenagers and 54 percent of Black teenagers say they are online almost constantly, compared with 38 percent of white teenagers;

Black and Hispanic kids ages 8 to 12, another study found, also use social media more than their white counterparts.

we also have to ask,” she went on, “why they are so drawn to social media? Is it the messages on social media that’s exacerbating the depression and anxiety, or was the depression and anxiety already there to begin with and social media is a way to self-medicate?”

“It’s culturally more acceptable in youth of color households to use technology for social and academic reasons compared with white households,” Charmaraman said. “Parents don’t worry as much about it. There isn’t as much shame around it.”

“We know broadly that youth of minoritized communities have longer commutes, fewer opportunities to do after-school activities, fewer resources,” Magis-Weinberg told me. They may not have spaces to hang out safely with friends nearby; social media is a more accessible option. “But we have to ask,” Magis-Weinberg added, “what is social media use displacing?”

Largely because of lower income levels, Black and Hispanic teenagers are less likely to have broadband access or computers at home. This makes them disproportionately use their smartphones, where social media apps ping, whiz and notify

Lucia Magis-Weinberg, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Washington who studies teenagers and tech, compares internet use of the phone to snorkeling, whereas computers allow more of a scuba dive.

WhatsApp, hugely popular in Latin America, is used by Hispanic teenagers more than by other demographic groups of the same ages.

“The way social media use presents itself is as something that is actively harmful,” Marsh told me. Already kids from these communities have few advantages, he explained. They may not have access to after-school programs. They’re often in single-parent households. They lack support systems. “I think in the long term,” he said, “we’re going to see real differences in the impact.”

Let’s consider just reading, which also happens to be correlated with both mental well-being and school achievement

According to Scholastic’s most recent Kids and Family Reading Report, the percentage of kids ages 6 to 17 who read frequently for pleasure dropped to 28 percent in 2022 from 37 percent in 2010.

Those numbers fall precipitously as kids get older; 46 percent of 6- to 8-year-olds read frequently in 2022 compared with only 18 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds.

All this raises the possibility that disparities in internet use could in turn intensify overall declines and existing differences in reading across racial groups among adults.

The average daily time spent reading per capita by ethnicity in 2022 was 0.29 hours for white adults, 0.12 for Black adults and 0.10 for Hispanics.

In other words, one danger is that social media not only reflects real-world disparities, it could also exacerbate them.

Greater use of social media by Black and Hispanic young people “can help perpetuate inequality in society because higher levels of social media use among kids have been demonstrably linked to adverse effects such as depression and anxiety, inadequate sleep, eating disorders, poor self-esteem and greater exposure to online harassment,”

Akeem Marsh, medical director of the Home of Integrated Behavioral Health at the New York Foundling, a social services agency, said that among the hundreds of largely Black and Hispanic kids he sees from communities with fewer resources, social media use is often a primary concern or it comes up in treatment. Kids who use it frequently often respond with traumatized feelings and repeated anxiety.

The answer, according to experts, includes sports participation, in-person socializing, after-school clubs and activities, exploring the outdoors, reading and more.

We need greater awareness of the disparities as well, and most likely, immediate action. What we do not need is another “sudden” yet regrettably delayed realization that something has gone very, very wrong with America’s kids, but we were too busy looking the other way.