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the most significant political figure in France — some would argue the most powerful — is Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far right.

It also highlighted the appeal of baldly nationalist messages on both sides of the Atlantic at a time when traditional parties are struggling to address the insecurities of voters facing economic dislocation and a sense of vulnerability to terrorism.

“More than ever the National Front has become the heart of French political life and the political party around which the others situate themselves,”

These days, in his party, being an obvious grifter isn’t a liability, and may even be an asset.

this doesn’t just go for outsider candidates like Mr. Carson and Donald Trump. Insider politicians like Marco Rubio are simply engaged in a different, classier kind of scam — and they are empowered in part by the way the grifters have defined respectability down.

About the grifters: Start with the lowest level, in which marketers use political affinity to sell get-rich-quick schemes, miracle cures, and suchlike

The term “cultural appropriation,” which emerged from academia but has been applied more broadly — say, to refer to Washington Redskins fans wearing feather headdresses or white people in cornrows — has drawn ire from opponents of political correctness. But supporters say it captures a truth: that the melding of cultures is often about which group has the power to take symbols, styles or language from another.

The video issued by the University of Washington shows students from various ethnic groups and of various sexual orientations saying that almost any portrayal of them can cause a wound: For example, dressing in drag can denigrate the struggles of gay and transgender people.

At Duke University, the Center for Multicultural Affairs has filled its Facebook page with images of young people holding up pictures of offensive stereotypes, including white people in blackface and a man dressed as a suicide bomber, with the hashtag #OurCulturesAreNotCostumes.

Athletics doping crisis: UK Athletics wants to reset world records

The sport's governing body has made 14 proposals, among them longer bans for drug cheats and a public register of tested athletes.

UKA chairman Ed Warner said it was time for "radical reform", adding: "The integrity of athletics was challenged as never before in 2015."

President Obama and his Cabinet members fanned out across the country Wednesday

Lisa, an English teacher, had written to the president as a new mother in January 2015

The president and his 18-vehicle motorcade descended on the modest home, and the president sat for a half-hour chat in the living room, decorated with a sign that read “Bless this house with love and laughter.”

But it was after Trump started calling for stronger surveillance of Muslim-Americans in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks that a handful of conservatives ventured to call Trump's rhetoric something much more dangerous: fascism.

Since launching his campaign this summer, the billionaire real estate magnate has regularly deployed inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants -- particularly regarding Latinos -- and repeatedly raised the alarm about foreigners entering the country. That has escalated following the series of shooting rampages and explosions in Paris this month allegedly perpetrated by ISIS and amid a national debate over accepting Syrian refugees.

"Trump is a fascist. And that's not a term I use loosely or often. But he's earned it," tweeted Max Boot, a conservative fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who is advising Marco Rubio.

ut as I watched Trump propose a plan to halt the entry of all Muslims into the country and receive hearty cheers of approval from a campaign crowd, it no longer seemed especially amusing. Instead, it struck me that this may be what fascism looks like in a world where politics has been subsumed by the entertainment business. Trump is Don Rickles with the political inclinations of Francisco Franco.

most of his competitors for the Republican presidential nomination condemned his idea to ban Muslims, calling it out of step with American values (with the significant exceptions of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul). Bush said Trump is “unhinged.” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie branded his idea “ridiculous.” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said the scheme was “downright dangerous.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich called it yet another example of Trump’s unfitness for high office.

Singling people out for surveillance and exclusion because of their religion certainly reeks of fascism.

aiwan has elected its first female president in a landmark election that could unsettle relations with Beijing.

<img alt="Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen casts her ballot." class="media__image" src="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160116153820-taiwan-election-6-large-169.jpg">Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen casts her ballot.The election also marked the first time the KMT has lost control of the island's legislature. The DPP took 68 of the 113 seats in Taiwan's parliament compared to the KMT's 35.

That could anger Beijing, which views Taiwan as an integral part of its territory that is to be taken by force if necessary. Beijing has missiles pointed at the island

Those contradictions rest at the core of the Merkel legacy

As German chancellor, Ms. Merkel oversaw a golden decade for Europe’s largest economy, which expanded by more than a fifth, pushing unemployment to the lowest levels since the early 1980s.

As the United States was distracted by multiple wars, Britain gambled its future on a referendum to leave the European Union and France failed to reform itself, Ms. Merkel’s Germany was mostly a haven of stability.

The futurist philosopher Yuval Noah Harari worries about a lot.

He worries that Silicon Valley is undermining democracy and ushering in a dystopian hellscape in which voting is obsolete.

He worries that by creating powerful influence machines to control billions of minds, the big tech companies are destroying the idea of a sovereign individual with free will.

The point is not that there is a direct line between, say, “The Turner Diaries” and the Oval Office. Rather, it’s that the tropes that define the Trump administration’s rhetoric and policies — apocalyptic xenophobia, anti-Semitic conspiracies, racist fear-mongering — are also the tropes that define white-supremacist literature.

To the hundreds of thousands of fans of Mr. Kendall, Ms. Williams and other writers, Mr. Trump must seem like a character out of racist central casting: a rule-breaking white knight who will stop at nothing to root out the conspiracies and take on their race’s enemies. No wonder the bond between Mr. Trump and the far right is so strong:

Not only is he a hero out of their novels, but in supporting him, they have become heroes themselves.

Like Ocasio-Cortez, I am a pro-choice woman who was raised in the Catholic church. Now happily non-religious, I’m used to holding simultaneous truths that are often painted as contradictory – like, say, revering hard facts while feeling motivated by something deeper than our minds can comprehend.

today the movement mobilizes people of all – or no – faiths across the country to fight inequality.

Leaders draw on scripture alongside statistics to call out the immorality of corporate, government and social structures in the US. Among their fans is Bernie Sanders, who was raised Jewish but isn’t actively involved in organized religion.

The young men voted for Hillary, they called home in shock when Trump won, they talked about flipping the House, and they followed Peterson to other podcasts—to Sam Harris and Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan

What they were getting from these lectures and discussions, often lengthy and often on arcane subjects, was perhaps the only sustained argument against identity politics they had heard in their lives.

With identity politics off the table, it was possible to talk about all kinds of things—religion, philosophy, history, myth—in a different way. They could have a direct experience with ideas, not one mediated by ideology

Rick started life, deep in the germinal phases of Rick and Morty, as a scabrous parody of “Doc” Brown from Back to the Future. But he’s evolved into something much stranger: Doctor Who crossed with Doctor Faustus crossed with Larry David crossed with William Burroughs crossed with my therapist. His view of existence—of which he has seen a supernatural amount, having traversed many universes—is desolate and bracing. He builds himself a tiny robot whose sole purpose is to stand on the kitchen table and pass him the butter. “What is my purpose?” asks the robot. “You pass butter,” says Rick. A pause. “Oh my God,” says the robot, head dropped, tiny tin hands hanging. “Yeah,” says Rick in his rancid, sardonic way. “Welcome to the club, pal.” His grandson, Morty, meanwhile, is constantly, stammeringly overwhelmed: “What the hell, Rick? What the hell?!”

I have wept with laughter at Rick and Morty; I have flinched in repulsion. The humor oscillates between an ingrown bro-ness, a cackling in the man cave, and something so emancipated and post-everything that it is nearly transcendent. Nearly, but not. “Nobody exists on purpose,” says Morty to his sister. “Nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die. Come watch TV.” Rick, burping warlock of the spaceways, puts it differently: “When you know nothing matters, the universe is yours.”

If you’ve been wondering why Jordan B. Peterson, the Canadian professor, guru of modern masculinity, and author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, has been selling so many books and filling so many theaters, this is why. Rick and Morty is why. It’s no surprise, really, that a small and well-documented subset of the Rick and Morty fan base exhibits terrible, snickering, alienated-white-male troll behavior

Dr. Peterson integrates psychology, history and mythology to describe how people behave and what they can do to live fulfilling lives

He makes tasks like cleaning one’s room or finding a career sound like dragon-slaying voyages. His lectures infuse ordinary activities with new meaning.

In psychological terms, what many people who become Jordan Peterson fans are looking for is called self-efficacy — belief in our ability to achieve goals

The American presence in Japan now extends far beyond the fast-food franchises, chain stores and pop-culture offerings that are ubiquitous the world over.

some very rarefied versions of America to be found in today’s Japan.

In Japan, the ability to perfectly imitate—and even improve upon—the cocktails, cuisine and couture of foreign cultures isn’t limited to American products; there are spectacular French chefs and masterful Neapolitan pizzaioli who are actually Japanese.

The scientist and historian Vaclav Smil called Haber-Bosch “the most important technical invention of the 20th century.” Bosch had effectively removed the historical bounds on crop yields, so much so that he was widely credited with making “bread from air.” By some estimates, Bosch’s work made possible the lives of more than two billion human beings over the last 100 years.

They depend on electric fans to pull air into the ducts and over a special material, known as a sorbent, laced with granules that chemically bind with CO₂; periodic blasts of heat then release the captured gas from the sorbent, with customized software managing the whole catch-and-release cycle.

“The first thing they said was: ‘This will never work technically.’ And finally in 2017 we convinced them it works technically, since we built the big plant in Hinwil. But once we convinced them that it works technically, they would say, ‘Well, it will never work economically.’ ”For the moment, skeptics of Climeworks’s business plan are correct: The company is not turning a profit.

Sandra created the meet-up group over a year ago. She saw it more as a book club, for studying books that have shaped Peterson’s thinking, though it’s morphed into more of a self-help group since then. She’s interested in Peterson’s intellect, the way he weaves different ideas together. She calls herself a diehard liberal, but a contrarian.

“Fundamentally, it’s responsibility is what’s he’s selling,” said Xander Miller, the group’s other de facto leader. “Individual responsibility.” These days, one of the others chimed in, you can “get a trophy just for showing up.”

Since discovering Jordan Peterson, he’s taken to carrying a large notebook with him at all times, in which he lists everything he needs to do on a given day, including shaving and brushing his teeth. He makes lists of everyone he speaks to, as well, and puts checkmarks beside the names of those with whom he has meaningful interactions. “Before, I wasn’t taking control, and I wasn’t making decisions,” he said. “I’m becoming more the master of my own life.”

it’s a serious question. Does it matter if the president did bad things as long as he’s not a criminal? Should presidential character count?

In the modern age it seems to have been completely subsumed into the cant of hyper-partisanship. Republicans denounced Bill Clinton as a sleazy huckster whose behavior spoke to a larger disqualifying character flaw. But they dismiss Donald Trump’s transgressions as peccadilloes that shouldn’t be allowed to detract from a record of achievement. Hillary Clinton fans, who now say that a woman who accuses a powerful man of sexual impropriety must be believed, spent a good deal of time trashing the reputations of her husband’s many accusers.

Recent history tells us that there have been important moments when character has counted.