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I believe that Cohen basically told the truth in his testimony on Wednesday, but I don’t believe that he is a changed man.

He’s just switched teams and concluded that the Democrats can now give him what he wants, so he says what appeals to them. That may be progress, but it is not moral renewal.

Normal people have moral sentiments. Normal people are repulsed when the president of their own nation lies, cheats, practices bigotry, allegedly pays off porn star mistresses.

Were Republican House members enthusiastic or morose as they decided to turn off their own moral circuits, when they decided to be monumentally unconcerned by the fact that their leader may be a moral cretin?

Those are the sorts of things rookies and amateurs say.

This is how moral corrosion happens. Supporting Trump requires daily acts of moral distancing, a process that means that after a few months you are tolerant of any corruption. You are morally numb to everything

I’ve heard the rationalizations. This is gang warfare. We have to do everything we can to defend our team. The other team leaves us no choice. Those are the sorts of things people say to give themselves permission to yield to their venal ambitions.

Do they think that having anesthetized their moral sense in this case they will simply turn it on again down the road? Having turned off their soul at work, do they think they will be able to turn it on again when they go home to the spouse and kids?

Professionals know that effectiveness in any realm, especially politics, depends on having some guiding and consistent integrity that people can trust

In “East of Eden,” John Steinbeck writes: “Humans are caught — in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too — in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last. …

A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard clean questions: was it good or was it evil? Have I done well — or ill.”

That is the passage that confronts us as we decide to defend or condemn Trump. The moral drama is the central drama. Did you, at your crucial moment, side with generosity or greed?

The way that people tend to argue today, particularly online, makes things worse.

hilosophers and social scientists have long pondered the question of why people hold different beliefs and values

odds are that neither camp is having any effect on the other; on the contrary, the attacks make opponents dig in deeper.

If you want a chance at changing minds, you need a new strategy: Stop using your values as a weapon, and start offering them as a gift.

You wouldn’t blame anyone involved for feeling as if they’re under fire, and no one is likely to change their mind when they’re being attacked.

even when two groups agree on a moral foundation, they can radically disagree on how it should be expressed

Extensive survey-based research has revealed that almost everyone shares at least two common values: Harming others without cause is bad, and fairness is good. Other moral values are less widely shared

political conservatives tend to value loyalty to a group, respect for authority, and purity—typically in a bodily sense, in terms of sexuality—more than liberals do.

Sometimes conflict arises because one group holds a moral foundation that the other simply doesn’t feel strongly about

One of the most compelling explanations comes from Moral Foundations Theory, which has been popularized by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU. This theory proposes that humans share a common set of “intuitive ethics,” on top of which we build different narratives and institutions—and therefore beliefs—that vary by culture, community, and even person.

When people fail to live up to your moral values (or your expression of them), it is easy to conclude that they are immoral people.

Further, if you are deeply attached to your values, this difference can feel like a threat to your identity, leading you to lash out, which won’t convince anyone who disagrees with you.

research shows that if you insult someone in a disagreement, the odds are that they will harden their position against yours, a phenomenon called the boomerang effect.

3. Listen more.

effective missionaries present their beliefs as a gift. And sharing a gift is a joyful act, even if not everyone wants it.

so it is with our values. If we want any chance at persuasion, we must offer them happily. A weapon is an ugly thing, designed to frighten and coerce

A gift is something we believe to be good for the recipient, who, we hope, may accept it voluntarily, and do so with gratitude. That requires that we present it with love, not insults and hatred.

1. Don’t “other” others.

Go out of your way to welcome those who disagree with you as valued voices, worthy of respect and attention. There is no “them,” only “us.”

2. Don’t take rejection personally.

just as you are not your car or your house, you are not your beliefs. Unless someone says, “I hate you because of your views,” a repudiation is personal only if you make it so

he solution to this problem requires a change in the way we see and present our own values

when it comes to changing someone’s mind, listening is more powerful than talking. They conducted experiments that compared polarizing arguments with a nonjudgmental exchange of views accompanied by deep listening. The former had no effect on viewpoints, whereas the latter reliably lowered exclusionary opinions.

when possible, listening and asking sensitive questions almost always has a more beneficial effect than talking.

howing others that you can be generous with them regardless of their values can help weaken their belief attachment, and thus make them more likely to consider your point of view

for your values to truly be a gift, you must weaken your own belief attachment first

we should all promise to ourselves, “I will cultivate openness, non-discrimination, and non-attachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world.”

if I truly have the good of the world at heart, then I must not fall prey to the conceit of perfect knowledge, and must be willing to entertain new and better ways to serve my ultimate goal: creating a happier world

generosity and openness have a bigger chance of making the world better in the long run.

Roll, Jordan, Roll, the most insightful book ever written about American slaves and the most lasting work of American historical scholarship since the Second World War.

the authors illuminate in their characteristically energetic prose the myriad ways in which the master-slave relationship "permeated the lives and thought" not merely of elite slaveholders but of their whole society. In doing so they elucidate the master class's deeply learned relationship to Christianity and to history (especially classical culture), which in turn highlights th

it provides significant and powerful support to the now academically unfashionable argument that the antebellum North and South were separate cultures with divergent political, economic, moral, and religious values; a work of searching historical anthropology, it reveals a profoundly alien society and culture.

to indict the authors for what is now called insensitivity (and they will be so indicted) is to ignore the psychological acuity and tragic sensibility that they bring to their subject. In defining the slaveholders' peculiar characteristics and world view, the Genoveses dissect the graciousness and generosity, the noblesse oblige and courage, the frankness and sense of ease, that were entirely common. Nevertheless, they are at pains to show that slaveholding wasn't a flaw in an otherwise admirable makeup but was intrinsic to that makeup--that is, they make plain that the admirable grew out of the loathsome

they open their book with Santayana's remark "The necessity of rejecting and destroying some things that are beautiful is the deepest curse of existence." True, they convincingly argue that a paternalist ethos often mitigated slavery; they reveal that the master class internalized Christian and chivalric values, which, they chillingly write, made its members "less dangerous human beings"; they demonstrate that in defending the peculiar institution southern theologians consistently bested their northern opponents in biblical exegeses (the Old Testament patriarchs owned slaves, Jesus didn't condemn slavery, and Paul and other New Testament writers sanctioned it); they show that slaveholders subscribed to "a code that made the ultimate test of a gentleman the humane treatment of his slaves"

They repeatedly dismiss as "psychologically naïve" the notion that slaveholders (able, though not licensed, to give free rein to their tempers and impulses) would invariably treat their slaves well because it was in their pecuniary interest to do so.

as Christians the slaveholders acknowledged that men are weak and sinful creatures who if given absolute power will abuse it. Because slavery perforce granted masters such power, the Bible, although it didn't condemn slavery, did condemn the sins that grew inevitably from it

The identity of America as a whole, its history and its destiny, are somehow tied to Christianity

Political leaders feel the need to appear Christian, say Christian-sounding things, show up at Christian institutions, and end their speeches with “God bless America!” American money proclaims “In God we trust.

The current election cycle is demonstrating (once again) that the rhetoric and mythology of a uniquely Christian America should come to an end. Why? Because the votes don’t lie.

Though voters may speak piously and rather vaguely about Christian values and ideals, polls and election results communicate clearly that this is a nation consumed by fear, anger and suspicion, none of which are Christian virtues.

If voters were serious about presenting to the world a picture of a Christian America, they would need to be painting with the colors of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, fidelity, gentleness and self-contro

Americans and their leaders will continue to speak in the name of God, even profess grand things about God, as they make their case for American Exceptionalism and the righteousness of the American Way. But from a scriptural point of view, it is all rubbish. What matters is not what you say but how you live. And from a Christian point of view, nothing matters more than living a life that is inspired by God’s love for everyone.

God is not fooled. God simply asks: Did you feed the hungry, offer drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick and visit those in prison?

God is asking the nations about their public policy, not their verbal piety, because the true test of Christianity has only ever been the test of love.

Love or noise? Love or nothing? Christianity hinges on how people choose between them. If Americans were serious about being a Christian country, they would call forth and elect leaders who are patient and kind, and never boastful or rude. They would demand a political process much less characterized by vitriol and noise.

In calling for an end to the rhetoric of a “Christian America,” I am not calling for an end to Christianity in America. The violence and hate, and the greed and the lack of sympathy for those deemed dangerously other, indicate that now is precisely the time for a sustained infusion of God’s love in our political deliberation.

“Today’s massive scale of instability and its capacity to cross borders, vividly demonstrated by the refugee crisis in Europe, makes humanitarian aid a global public good that requires an appropriate fund-raising model,” the report says

Countries that host refugees feel the impact acutely, but do not always have direct access to donor money. And refugees are often prohibited from working in the countries where they are living.

The report urges money transfer agencies to drop their fees, which is a nod to the importance of remittances from migrants to their home countries, especially in times of crisis. The authors of the report also encourage more cash assistance, rather than food, tents and blankets. They cite one 2014 study in which 70 percent of a sample group of Syrian refugees traded “in-kind assistance they received for cash.”

The microtax idea is modeled after a tax on airfare that helped raise about $2 billion between 2006 and 2011, largely for immunization programs worldwide.

“Religion is an attempt to find meaning in events, not a theory that tries to explain the universe.” It exists because we humans are the only species, so far as we can know, who have evolved to know explicitly that, one day in the future, we will die. And this existential fact requires some way of reconciling us to it while we are alive.

This is why science cannot replace it. Science does not tell you how to live, or what life is about; it can provide hypotheses and tentative explanations, but no ultimate meaning

appreciating great art or music is ultimately an act of wonder and contemplation, and has almost nothing to say about morality and life.

Here’s Mill describing the nature of what he called “A Crisis in My Mental History”:

It is perfectly possible to see and record the absurdities and abuses of man-made institutions and rituals, especially religious ones, while embracing a way of life that these evil or deluded people preached but didn’t practice

Seduced by scientism, distracted by materialism, insulated, like no humans before us, from the vicissitudes of sickness and the ubiquity of early death, the post-Christian West believes instead in something we have called progress — a gradual ascent of mankind toward reason, peace, and prosperity — as a substitute in many ways for our previous monotheism

We have constructed a capitalist system that turns individual selfishness into a collective asset and showers us with earthly goods; we have leveraged science for our own health and comfort. Our ability to extend this material bonanza to more and more people is how we define progress; and progress is what we call meaning

But none of this material progress beckons humans to a way of life beyond mere satisfaction of our wants and needs. And this matters. We are a meaning-seeking species

Ditto history

religious impulses, once anchored in and tamed by Christianity, find expression in various political cults. These political manifestations of religion are new and crud

Russell, for his part, abandoned Christianity at the age of 18, for the usual modern reasons, but the question of ultimate meaning still nagged at him. One day, while visiting the sick wife of a colleague, he described what happened: “Suddenly the ground seemed to give away beneath me, and I found myself in quite another region. Within five minutes I went through some such reflections as the following: the loneliness of the human soul is unendurable; nothing can penetrate it except the highest intensity of the sort of love that religious teachers have preached; whatever does not spring from this motive is harmful, or at best useless.”

Our modern world tries extremely hard to protect us from the sort of existential moments experienced by Mill and Russell

Netflix, air-conditioning, sex apps, Alexa, kale, Pilates, Spotify, Twitter … they’re all designed to create a world in which we rarely get a second to confront ultimate meaning — until a tragedy occurs, a death happens, or a diagnosis strikes

Liberalism is a set of procedures, with an empty center, not a manifestation of truth, let alone a reconciliation to mortality. But, critically, it has long been complemented and supported in America by a religion distinctly separate from politics, a tamed Christianity

So what happens when this religious rampart of the entire system is removed? I think what happens is illiberal politics. The need for meaning hasn’t gone away, but without Christianity, this yearning looks to politics for satisfaction.

Will the house still stand when its ramparts are taken away? I’m beginning to suspect it can’t.  And won’t.

like almost all new cultish impulses, they demand a total and immediate commitment to save the world.

it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: ‘Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions that you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant; would this be a great joy and happiness to you?’ And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered: ‘No!’”

They are filling the void that Christianity once owned, without any of the wisdom and culture and restraint that Christianity once provided.

social-justice ideology does everything a religion should. It offers an account of the whole: that human life and society and any kind of truth must be seen entirely as a function of social power structures, in which various groups have spent all of human existence oppressing other groups

it provides a set of practices to resist and reverse this interlocking web of oppression — from regulating the workplace and policing the classroom to checking your own sin and even seeking to control language itself.

“Social justice” theory requires the admission of white privilege in ways that are strikingly like the admission of original sin

To the belief in human progress unfolding through history — itself a remnant of Christian eschatology — it adds the Leninist twist of a cadre of heroes who jump-start the revolution.

many Evangelicals are among the holiest and most quietly devoted people out there. Some have bravely resisted the cult. But their leaders have turned Christianity into a political and social identity, not a lived faith, and much of their flock — a staggering 81 percent voted for Trump — has signed on. They have tribalized a religion explicitly built by Jesus as anti-tribal.

The terrible truth of the last three years is that the fresh appeal of a leader-cult has overwhelmed the fading truths of Christianity.

This is why they are so hard to reach or to persuade and why nothing that Trump does or could do changes their minds. You cannot argue logically with a religion

— which is why you cannot really argue with social-justice activists either

so we’re mistaken if we believe that the collapse of Christianity in America has led to a decline in religion. It has merely led to religious impulses being expressed by political cults.

both cults really do minimize the importance of the individual in favor of either the oppressed group or the leader

They demonstrate, to my mind, how profoundly liberal democracy has actually depended on the complement of a tolerant Christianity to sustain itself — as many earlier liberals (Tocqueville, for example) understood.

It is Christianity that came to champion the individual conscience against the collective, which paved the way for individual rights. It is in Christianity that the seeds of Western religious toleration were first sown. Christianity is the only monotheism that seeks no sway over Caesar, that is content with the ultimate truth over the immediate satisfaction of power. It was Christianity that gave us successive social movements, which enabled more people to be included in the liberal project, thus renewing i

The question we face in contemporary times is whether a political system built upon such a religion can endure when belief in that religion has become a shadow of its future self.

We have the cult of Trump on the right, a demigod who, among his worshippers, can do no wrong. And we have the cult of social justice on the left, a religion whose followers show the same zeal as any born-again Evangelical

I think it was mainly about how the people of Britain shook off the moral decadence of the foreign policy of the 1930s, how, beneath the surface, there were depths of feeling and determination that we never saw until an existential crisis hit, and an extraordinary figure seized the moment.

how profoundly I yearn for something like that to reappear in America. The toll of Trump is so deep. In so many ways, he has come close to delegitimizing this country and entire West, aroused the worst instincts within us, fed fear rather than confronting it, and has been rewarded for his depravity in the most depressing way by everything that is foul on the right and nothing that is noble.

I want to believe in America again, its decency and freedom, its hostility, bred in its bones, toward tyranny of any kind, its kindness and generosity. I need what someone once called the audacity of hope.

I’ve witnessed this America ever since I arrived — especially its embrace of immigrants — which is why it is hard to see Trump tearing migrant children from their parents

But who, one wonders, is our Churchill? And when will he or she emerge?

But the Europeans say they will discuss the Trump administration’s concerns only after the bloc receives a permanent, unconditional exemption from the tariffs. They regard the tariffs as illegal under global rules.“We will not negotiate under threat,” the commission said in the statement Tuesday.

“There is huge frustration with the way the administration is doing business,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director in London for Eurasia Group, a consultancy.

Economists say the biggest danger to the global economy is not so much the tariffs as the insecurity they sow among business managers trying to plan where to buy or sell products that contain steel or aluminum. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Big metals consumers like auto manufacturers and construction firms have been stockpiling supplies, girding for a disruptive trade war. “As a result, there is a visible surge in steel prices in the U.S., which negatively affects manufacturing and many other sectors,” said Max Finne, assistant professor of operations management at the University of Warwick in Britain.Mr. Trump’s provocative approach has fueled anxiety in Europe that the long-awaited economic recovery is losing momentum. The threat of a trade war adds to a list of risks that are making businesses less willing to invest and create jobs, including the imminent end of European Central Bank stimulus, Britain’s planned exit from the bloc and political deadlock in Italy.

The European Union regards the planned tariffs on steel and aluminum as a violation of international treaties and has already complained to the World Trade Organization, normally the arbiter of trade disputes. The complaint lays the groundwork for the bloc to impose retaliatory tariffs on a long list of American products — including bluejeans, bourbon and Harley-Davidson motorcycles — as early as mid-June.

The Obama administration pursued such an agreement for years, but it was largely moribund even before Mr. Trump took office, in part because of popular opposition in Germany.

Europe would be happy to cooperate with the United States to press China on issues such as protection of intellectual property. But in the current climate it seems unlikely that the European Union and United States are capable of joining forces.“The way Trump is going about it may not be the most effective, but he’s put it on the agenda. There is some sympathy for that,” Mr. Rahman said. “But it’s very difficult. The process seems completely broken.”

The name Rosetta Stone is now applied to just about any type of key used to unlock a mystery.

emotic (the everyday script, used to write documents),Greek (the language of Ionian Greeks, an administrative script), andHieroglyphs (for priestly business).

No one could read hieroglyphs at the time of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, but scholars soon pieced out a few phonetic characters in the demotic section, which, by comparison with the Greek, were identified as proper names.

I have never observed any of these qualities in Trump. Over the past year I have frequently been asked whether he has any redeeming qualities. I’ve thought about this as objectively as I can, and the only one I’ve come up with is his relentless drive

Think for a moment about the immense difference between how you feel and behave at your best and your worst. It is when we feel safest and most secure that we think most clearly and expansively. It’s also when we are most inclined to look beyond our self-interest, and to act with compassion, generosity, consideration and forgiveness.

In the face of fear, it is a physiological fact that our most primitive and selfish instincts emerge. Control of our behaviour shifts from the prefrontal cortex to the emotionally driven amygdala – sometimes referred to as “fear central”. As we move into fight-or-flight mode, we become more self-centred, and our vision narrows to the perceived threat, which in the modern world is less to our survival than to our sense of value and worthiness. We lose the capacity for empathy, rationality, proportionality and attention to the longer-term consequences of our actions.

Trump represents an extreme version of a sickness from which most men suffer, to some extent. The most powerful stand we can take in opposition to Trump’s values and behaviour is to pursue a higher purpose every day, seek more common ground amid our differences, and find better ways to take care of others and add value wherever we can

How can a group that for decades—and especially during the Bill Clinton presidency—insisted that character counts and that personal integrity is an essential component of presidential leadership not only turn a blind eye to the ethical and moral transgressions of Donald Trump, but also constantly defend him?

Part of the answer is their belief that they are engaged in an existential struggle against a wicked enemy—not Russia, not North Korea, not Iran, but rather American liberals and the left.

Many white evangelical Christians, then, are deeply fearful of what a Trump loss would mean for America, American culture, and American Christianity

radio talk-show host Eric Metaxas said, “In all of our years, we faced all kinds of struggles. The only time we faced an existential struggle like this was in the Civil War and in the Revolution when the nation began … We are on the verge of losing it as we could have lost it in the Civil War.”

“It’s the Flight 93 election. FOREVER.”

the artist Makoto Fujimura, who speaks about “culture care” instead of “culture war.”

For them, Trump is a man who will not only push their agenda on issues such as the courts and abortion; he will be ruthless against those they view as threats to all they know and love. For a growing number of evangelicals, Trump’s dehumanizing tactics and cruelty aren’t a bug; they are a feature. Trump “owns the libs,” and they love it. He’ll bring a Glock to a cultural knife fight, and they relish that.

Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, one of the largest Christian universities in the world, put it this way: “Conservatives & Christians need to stop electing ‘nice guys.’ They might make great Christian leaders but the United States needs street fighters like @realDonaldTrump at every level of government b/c the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps & many Repub leaders are a bunch of wimps!”

what is most personally painful to me as a person of the Christian faith is the cost to the Christian witness. Nonchalantly jettisoning the ethic of Jesus in favor of a political leader who embraces the ethic of Thrasymachus and Nietzsche—might makes right, the strong should rule over the weak, justice has no intrinsic worth, moral values are socially constructed and subjective—is troubling enough.

there is also the undeniable hypocrisy of people who once made moral character, and especially sexual fidelity, central to their political calculus and who are now embracing a man of boundless corruptions

“We’re losing an entire generation. They’re just gone. It’s one of the worst things to happen to the Church.”

Proximity to power is fine for Christians, Coppock told me, but only so long as it does not corrupt their moral sense, only so long as they don’t allow their faith to become politically weaponized. Yet that is precisely what’s happening today.

Many evangelical Christians are also filled with grievances and resentments because they feel they have been mocked, scorned, and dishonored by the elite culture over the years

According to Fujimura, “Culture care is an act of generosity to our neighbors and culture. Culture care is to see our world not as a battle zone in which we’re all vying for limited resources, but to see the world of abundant possibilities and promise.”

The sensibilities and dispositions Fujimura is describing are characterized by a commitment to grace, beauty, and creativity, not antipathy, disdain, and pulsating anger. It’s the difference between an open hand and a mailed fist.

has spoken about a distinct way for Christians to conceive of their calling, from seeing themselves as living in a Promised Land and “demanding it back” to living a “faithful, exilic life.”

Labberton speaks about what it means to live as people in exile, trying to find the capacity to love in unexpected ways; to see the enemy, the foreigner, the stranger, and the alien, and to go toward rather than away from them

“The Church is in one of its deepest moments of crisis—not because of some election result or not, but because of what has been exposed to be the poverty of the American Church in its capacity to be able to see and love and serve and engage in ways in which we simply fail to do

as a starting point, evangelical Christians should acknowledge the profound damage that’s being done to their movement by its braided political relationship—its love affair, to bring us back to the words of Ralph Reed—with a president who is an ethical and moral wreck

until followers of Jesus are once again willing to speak truth to power rather than act like court pastors—the crisis in American Christianity will only deepen, its public testimony only dim, its effort to be a healing agent in a broken world only weaken.

The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about Enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create reality. And while you are studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’

What Trump adds is a level of salesmanship that is truly a wonder to behold. He is a con man of surpassing brilliance and conviction, and every time he survives the fallout of a con, he gets more confident about the next one.

a presidential con man at this level of talent, legitimized by public opinion, enlarged and enhanced by the office and its trappings, is far harder to catch. It seems to me we had one shot of doing this definitively —the Mueller investigation — and we failed

So, of course, Trump has upped the ante again. Why wouldn’t he? He has proven that he can obstruct justice and get away with it, so now he is not only refusing to comply with any subpoenas and barring critical witnesses from testifying, but claiming, through his lawyers, that the only branch of government that can investigate the president’s compliance with the law is the executive branch itself, over which the president has total control:

The worry about a president receiving assistance from a foreign country, let alone inviting it, was one of the central concerns of the Founders when they came up with the mechanism of impeachment. It need not be a conspiracy or a crime. It was about violating the integrity of the American political system — to the advantage of another country.

Combine the blithe ease with which Trump considers this impeachable offense with his now-demonstrated attempts to obstruct justice, and now add a legal claim that the Congress cannot oversee what might be presidential criminality … well, you have a situation that impeachment was specifically designed for.

A tyrant’s path to power is not a straight line, it’s dynamic. Each concession is instantly banked, past vices are turned into virtues, and then the ante is upped once again. The threat rises exponentially with time

. Sympathizing with people whose livelihoods have vanished is entirely the moral thing to do. But unemployment and poverty are not the same as persecution, and the migration is self-evidently economic. Nonetheless, Sieff’s central figure in the story is going to claim asylum when he reaches the border. In other words, the generosity of America in providing asylum for the persecuted is being fraudulently exploited by hundreds of thousands of immigrants.

The current crisis in immigration is, in fact, a giant and flagrant abuse of the very meaning of asylum. Just as illegal immigration is an affront to legal immigration, so blatantly fraudulent asylum pleas trivialize and exploit those who genuinely need our help.

he went further and explained why America, at its best, is an inversion of that twisted racial identitarianism: “What this president doesn’t understand is that unlike every other nation on earth, we’re unable to define what constitutes ‘American’ by religion, by ethnicity, or by tribe; you can’t do it. America is an idea. An idea stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It gives hope to the most desperate people on earth.”

more importantly, Biden was able to express all this with authority. The speech was a defense of American decency against an indecent commander-in-chief — and it echoed loudly because Biden is, so evidently, a decent human

for 25 minutes or so this week, I felt as if I were living in America again, the America I love and chose to live in, a deeply flawed America, to be sure, marked forever by slavery’s stain, and racism’s endurance, but an America that, at its heart, is a decent country, full of decent people.

decency is the heart of his candidacy. And voting for Joe Biden feels like voting for some things we’ve lost and have one last chance to regain. Normalcy, generosity, civility, experience — and a reminder that, in this current darkness, Trump does not define America.

“Currently, 66 percent of the public says ‘it would be too risky to give U.S. presidents more power to deal directly with many of the country’s problems.’ About three-in-ten adults (29 percent) offer the contrasting opinion that ‘problems could be dealt with more effectively if U.S. presidents didn’t have to worry so much about Congress or the courts.’”

Three in ten is not a terrible place to start if you want to become an American autocrat

here’s one demographic in particular that is even more fertile territory: “The share of conservative Republicans who say that presidents could deal with problems more effectively if they ‘didn’t have to worry so much about Congress or the courts’ has doubled since March 2018. Today, about half of conservative Republicans (52 percent) hold this view, compared with 26 percent a year ago.

Brits now favor expanding security over freedom by 65 to 35 percent.

“Across all dimensions, support for security was highest among groups that the Conservative Party now relies on most heavily for its voters: older age groups, pensioners, white voters, and those with lower levels of education.” If you wonder why the Tory Party has shifted away from Thatcherite liberalism to more statist authoritarianism, this is a clue. If they didn’t, they’d disappear

“British politics is undergoing a sea change and it is for security, not freedom. Most voters are not freedom fighters who want more rampant individualism, a small state and lower taxes. They want well-funded public services, security for their family, and a strong community in the place in which they live.”

“66 percent of 25-34 year olds favor ‘strong leaders who do not have to bother with Parliament’ and 26 percent believe democracy is a bad way to run the country.”

Our journalism relies on our readers’ generosity – your financial support has meant we can keep investigating, disentangling and interrogating. It has protected our independence, which has never been so critical. We are so grateful.

But the United States is not taking those kinds of steps today.“There is from President Trump’s America a selfishness that is new,’’

With Mr. Trump’s unembellished nationalism and slogan of “America First,’’ his efforts to blame first China and then Europe for the coronavirus, and his various misstatements of fact, “it means that America no longer serves the planet,’’

“America was always strong on self-interest but it has been very generous,” he said. “That generosity seems to be gone, and that’s bad news for the world.’’

“But this crisis is confirmation of a structural change in U.S. political leadership,’’ she said.

“There is no U.S. global leadership and no U.S. model,’’ Ms. Major added. “Success would be that you manage the pandemic at home, rally allies around you, lead the alliance, supply global public goods and organize the global response, as with Ebola.”

The suggestion that Mr. Trump tried to buy out the German company, “true or not, did not play well in the European media,” Mr. Westmacott said. “It felt more ‘America first’ than America in its traditional role of a big-hearted great power.’’

The United States did provide some early aid to China. But in general, the administration has left even close allies to fend for themselves.

Mr. Trump has defended his ban on all travel from the European Union, but he did not bother to consult with European leaders or even give them advance notice.

it was the energetic French president, Emmanuel Macron, who called Mr. Trump twice in 10 days to suggest a G-7 virus summit by videoconference. Mr. Trump agreed, but left Mr. Macron to organize it.

Germans and Europeans generally are angry about accusations from German officials that the Trump administration, and reportedly Mr. Trump himself, offered $1 billion to a German pharmaceutical company, Cure-Vac, to buy monopoly rights to a potential Covid-19 vaccine.

Whatever the reality, “the point is that people think Trump is capable of that,’’ Ms. Major said. “That’s where we’ve arrived in the trans-Atlantic relationship, that people say, ‘Yes, that sounds right for the American president.’ ’’

“Seen from a distance, Trump’s performance has pretty much confirmed the views people over here already had of him — that it’s all about ‘me,’ with no acceptance of responsibility for earlier failures.’’

Instead, American institutions “don’t seem to be able to cope at home,” she said, and there is “a Trump response to act alone.’’

The contrast is to China, which made huge mistakes at the onset of the crisis, but since then appears to have managed it effectively, using harsh quarantine measures others are studying.

China is also now sending aid — needed respiratory and surgical masks, ventilators and medical personnel — to Italy and Serbia, which have condemned their European allies for not providing early and efficient help.

On Wednesday, China offered the European Union as a whole two million surgical masks, 200,000 advanced N95 masks and 50,000 testing kits

The Chinese billionaire Jack Ma has even offered aid to the United States, promising to send 500,000 virus test kits and a million protective masks.

“There is a serious battle of narratives,’’ Ms. Major said. “And the Chinese have become good at what was once America’s tool, soft power.’’

The Chinese, she said, are “trying to make everyone forget that a lot of what we’re experiencing is because of their domestic failure.’’

even as China provides aid to Italy and Serbia, she said, “it is asking, ‘Where are your European friends?’ and giving the impression that China acts, is coordinating, leads.’’

But the United States, she said, “seems unwilling or unable to lead.’’

The United States “seems at least as fragmented as the European Union, if not more so,’’ said Marietje Schaake, a former European legislator now at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center.

“The U.S. looks more fragile in part because it lacks the social structures we have in Europe,” she added. “There is comfort in knowing that there is a bottom, a net that will catch you.’’

s

In retrospect, the crisis may also mark a moment of fundamental global shift.“What will this mean in five years for great-power competition?” asked Ms. Major. “In 10 years will we say, ‘This is the moment that China rose and the U.S. declined,’ or will the U.S. rebound?”

The government hopes to use the findings to unravel a riddle that will allow Germany to move securely into the next phase of the pandemic: Which of the far-reaching social and economic restrictions that have slowed the virus are most effective and which can be safely lifted?

Other countries like Iceland and South Korea have tested broadly for infections, or combined testing with digital tracking to undercut the spread of the virus. But even the best laid plans can go awry; Singapore attempted to reopen only to have the virus re-emerge.

President Trump is in a hurry to restart the economy in an election year, but experts warn that much wider testing is needed to open societies safely.

Both Britain and the United States, where some of the first tests were flawed, virtually forfeited the notion of widespread testing early in their outbreaks and have since had to ration tests in places as they scramble to catch up

Germany, which produces most of its own high-quality test kits, is already testing on a greater scale than most — 120,000 a day and growing in a nation of 83 million.

Merkel, a trained scientist, said this week that the aim was nothing less than tracing “every infection chain.”

Every 10 people infected with the virus now pass it to seven others — a sharp decline in the infection rate for a virus that has spread exponentially.

The generosity and solidarity on such striking display inside of Europe’s largest and richest economy have been missing in Germany’s response to poorer European nations in the south, which were hit hardest by the virus.

the chancellor’s mixture of calm reassurance and clear-eyed realism — as well as her ability to understand the science and explain it to citizens — has been widely praised and encouraged Germans to follow social distancing rules. Her approval ratings are now higher than 80 percent.

That broad confidence in government has given Germany a tremendous advantage. It is much of the reason a knock on the door by a police officer and strangers dressed like aliens asking for blood can engender good will rather than alarm

Nationally, the Robert Koch Institute, the government’s central scientific institution in the field of biomedicine, is testing 5,000 samples from blood banks across the country every two weeks and 2,000 people in four hot spots who are farther along in the cycle of the disease.

Its most ambitious project, aiming to test a nationwide random sample of 15,000 people across the country, is scheduled to begin next month.

“In the free world, Germany is the first country looking into the future,”

“We are leading the thinking of what to do next.”

In Gangelt, a small town of about 12,000 in northwest Germany, tests of a first group of 500 residents found that 14 percent had antibodies to the virus. Another 2 percent tested positive for the coronavirus, raising hopes that about 15 percent of the local population may already have some degree of immunity.

“The process toward reaching herd immunity has begun,”

t may hold valuable insights for places that lag behind as the pandemic runs its course.

The mortality rate in the town, for example, turned out to be 0.37 percent, much lower than the national rate of 2.9 percent which is calculated based only on detected infections.

“We are at a crossroads,” said Mr. Hoelscher, the professor. “Are we going the route of loosening more and increasing immunity in the summer to slow the spread of this in the winter and gain more freedom to live public life? Or are we going to try to minimize transmissions until we have a vaccine?

“This is a question for politicians, not for scientists,” he added. “But politicians need the data to make an informed risk assessment.”

“I thought to myself if we’re going into lockdown, we need to start working on an exit strategy now,”

The next day, he said he wrote a short pitch to the Bavarian government. Six hours later, he had the green light. It took another three weeks until the test kits had arrived, a new lab was opened and teams of medics started fanning out across the city.

Six days after they first rung his doorbell, a doctor and two medical students came back to Mr. Germann’s apartment, household number 420 out of 3,000.They put on disposable protection suits, gloves and goggles and one of them sat down on a plastic stool they had brought along to take a small vial of his blood. Then they removed and bagged their suits, disinfected the stool and any surface they had touched and left. It took all of 10 minutes.

He knows that he is privileged by virtue of his gender and his skin color, but in his heart he is sick of being reminded about it. Like lots of other white men in America, he is grappling with a growing sense that the term white man has become an epithet

The bedrock issue, though, is Rogan’s courting of a middle-bro audience that the cultural elite hold in particular contempt—guys who get barbed-wire tattoos and fill their fridge with Monster energy drinks and preordered their tickets to see Hobbs & Shaw. Joe loves these guys

Why is he connecting so deeply with so many men, for such long stretches of time, at a moment when no one else can seem to hold anyone’s attention for more than two minutes?

There’s a tendency right now to make every single thing about Donald Trump, but if you don’t see the dotted line connecting the president to a wave of men who feel thwarted and besieged and sentenced to an endless apology tour, then you’re not paying attention.

The hard truth for some of Rogan’s critics in the media is that he is much better at captivating audiences than most of us, because he has the patience and the generosity to let his interviews be an experience rather than an inquisition.

how many mainstream entertainers routinely expose their audiences to Harvard biologists? Or climate-change experts? (The Uninhabitable Earth author David Wallace-Wells, episode No. 1259.) Or biosocial scientists? (The Yale professor Nicholas Christakis, episode No. 1274.) Or ethical-leadership lecturers? (The NYU Stern business-school professor Jonathan Haidt, episode No. 1221.)

“Learn, learn, learn, ladies and gentlemen,” Joe said at the start of one podcast episode this winter, wrapping up an ad read for the online education platform Skillshare. “That’s what I’m getting out of this. I think it’s very important to continue to challenge your mind.”

He’s right! It is! And don’t we want men thirsting for knowledge? Don’t we want them striving, setting goals, learning, learning, learning? Don’t we want more Joes?

Plenty of the role models that men choose for themselves draw eye rolls from everyone else, or dire warnings, or #cancel tweets

if we’re all going to make it through this era alive, men do need alternatives to look up to

the irony is that so many of the men who demonstrate a level of intelligence and empathy worth aspiring to—they’ve pretty much all been on Joe Rogan’s podcast

Free speech and its consequences, particularly the deplatforming of right-wing political provocateurs, is a push-button subject for Rogan, and it’s where he gets himself into the most trouble.

the same core stimulus: a plunging sense of self-worth caused by a rapidly changing society.

that’s not why people are obsessed with him. In reality, it’s because Joe Rogan is a tireless optimist, a grab-life-by-the-throat-and-bite-out-its-esophagus kind of guy, and many, many men respond to that.

like lots of other men in America, not just the white ones, he’s reckoning out loud with a fear that the word masculinity has become, by definition, toxic

It’s a tough message for a very rich guy like Joe Rogan to sell, but he pulls it off because he has never stopped coming across as stubbornly normal. He’s from a middle-class Boston suburb, he’s bald, and for God’s sake, his name is Joe.

Rogan seems like a regular Joe, but he’s not. He is driven, inexhaustible, and an honest-to-goodness autodidact.

His brain is wicked absorbent, like Neo in The Matrix, uploading knowledge through a hot spear jammed into the back of his skull. He’s a freak of nature, and most of his fans cannot, in fact, be just like him.

a key thing Joe and his fans tend to have in common is a deficit of empathy. He seems unable to process how his tolerance for monsters like Alex Jones plays a role in the wounding of people who don’t deserve it.

At the very least, he shows too much compassion for bad actors, and not enough for people on the receiving end of their attacks.

In order to get at the truth of Joe’s beliefs, you have to ignore what he says and watch what he does. Rogan likes to say that he’s voted for a Democrat in every presidential election—aside from a brief ill-advised fling with Gary Johnson—and that he despises Trump.

More revealing is who he invites onto his podcast, and what subjects he chooses to feast on in his stand-up specials. And if you cast a wide enough net, clear patterns emerge. If there’s a woman or a person of color (or both) on Joe’s podcast, the odds are high that person is a fighter or an entertainer, and not a public intellectual.

if you look past the jokes themselves and focus on the targets he’s choosing, the same patterns emerge. Hillary, the #MeToo movement, why it sucks that he can’t call things “gay,” vegan bullies,

All the same, because of their core DNA and their comfort with getting booed, comedians still tend to be at the forefront of so many of these debates over language and identity, touching those electrical wires in ways other people wouldn’t dare. Joe touches them all the time

The competitive energy, the drive to succeed, the search for purpose, for self-respect. Get better every day. Master your domain. Total human optimization

Joe likes Jack. He likes Milo Yiannopoulos. He likes Alex Jones. He wants you to know that he doesn’t agree with much of what they say, but he also wants you to know that off camera they’re the nicest guys. If we all have fatal flaws, this is Joe’s: his insistence on seeing value in people even when he shouldn’t, even when they’ve forfeited any right to it, even when the harm outweighs the good.

It comes from a generous place, but it amounts to careless cruelty. He just won’t write people off, and then he compounds the sin by throwing them a lifeline at the moment when they least deserve it.

His invitation to Jones was indefensible, and his defense was even worse. I had assumed going in that Rogan would explain himself at the top, similar to what he’d done after booting the Jack Dorsey interview. But he didn’t. He went the other way. He promised a “fun” interview with Jones, as if it was a joyful, long-awaited reunion rather than offensive for even existing, and he assured his listeners that “you’re gonna love it.”

My Joe Rogan experience ended because he wore me out. He never shuts up. He talks and talks and talks. He doesn’t seem to grasp that not every thought inside his brain needs to be said out loud. It doesn’t occur to him to consider whether his contributions have value. He just speaks his mind. He just whips it out and drops it on the table.

And yet I came away more comfortable with Joe’s vision of manhood—and more determined to do the exact opposite.

I’m glad, though, that the men of America have Joe Rogan to motivate and inspire and educate them in limitless ways, including how to recognize a moron

Rogan’s podcast gushes like a mighty river of content—approximately three episodes a week, usually more than two hours per episode, consisting of one marathon conversation with a subject of his choosing. Over the course of about 1,400 episodes and counting, his roster of guests can be divided roughly three ways: (1) comedians, (2) fighters, and (3) “thinkers,”

The life he lived was all transactional, all the time. Having never expanded his emotional, intellectual or moral universe, he has his story down, and he’s sticking to it.

A key part of that story is that facts are whatever Trump deems them to be on any given day. When he is challenged, he instinctively doubles down — even when what he has just said is demonstrably false

Trump sees no contradiction at all in changing his story about why he fired Comey and then undermining the explanatory statements of his aides, or in any other lie he tells. His aim is never accuracy; it’s domination.

Any addiction has a predictable pattern — the addict keeps chasing the high by upping the ante in an increasingly futile attempt to recreate the desired state. From the very first time I interviewed him in his office in Trump Tower in 1985, the image I had of Trump was that of a black hole. Whatever goes in quickly disappears without a trace. Nothing sustains.

Beneath his bluff exterior, I always sensed a hurt, incredibly vulnerable little boy who just wanted to be loved.

Trump’s need for unquestioning praise and flattery also helps to explain his hostility to democracy and to a free press — both of which thrive on open dissent.

In neurochemical terms, when he feels threatened or thwarted, Trump moves into fight or flight. His amygdala gets triggered, his hypothalamic-adrenal-pituitary axis activates, and his prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain that makes us capable of rationality and reflection — shuts down. 

This is what makes his access to the nuclear codes so dangerous and frightening.

The Trump I got to know had no deep ideological beliefs, nor any passionate feeling about anything but his immediate self-interest.

Over the past week, in the face of criticism from nearly every quarter, Trump’s distrust has almost palpably mushroomed. No importuning by his advisers would stand a chance of constraining him when he feels this deeply triggered. The more he feels at the mercy of forces he cannot control — and he is surely feeling that now — the more resentful, desperate and impulsive he becomes.

I vividly remember the ominous feeling when Trump got angry about some perceived slight. Everyone around him knew that you were best off keeping your distance at those times, or, if that wasn’t possible, to resist disagreeing with him in any way.

In the hundreds of Trump’s phone calls I listened in on with his consent, and the dozens of meetings I attended with him, I can never remember anyone disagreeing with him about anything. The same climate of fear and paranoia appears to have taken root in his White House.

The W.H.O. emergency use approval allows the Sinopharm vaccine to be included in Covax, a global initiative to provide free vaccines to poor countries. The possible inclusion in Covax raises hopes that more people — especially those in developing nations — will get access to shots at a crucial moment.

“This should be the golden time for China to practice its vaccine diplomacy. The problem is, at the same time, China itself is facing a shortage,”

“The whole world is short of this vaccine,” said a Sinovac spokesman, Pearson Liu. “The demand is just too great.”

Andrea Taylor, who analyzes global data on vaccines at the Duke Global Health Institute, called the potential addition of two Chinese vaccines into the Covax program a “game changer.”

“The situation right now is just so desperate for low and lower middle income countries that any doses we can get out are worth mobilizing,” Ms. Taylor said. “Having potentially two options coming from China could really change the landscape of what’s possible over the next few months.”

China’s vaccines have been rolled out to more than 80 countries, but they have faced significant skepticism, in part because the companies have not released Phase 3 clinical trial data for scientists to independently assess the vaccines’ efficacy rates. An advisory group to the W.H.O. published the data this week.

The Sinopharm vaccine developed with the Beijing Institute of Biological Products has an efficacy rate of 78.1 percent, according to the W.H.O. advisory group.

The Sinovac vaccine has varying efficacy rates of between 50 percent to 84 percent, depending on the country where Phase 3 trials were conducted.

for China’s leaders, the W.H.O. approval can still be seen as a badge of honor. Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has pledged to make a Covid-19 vaccine a “global public good.”

After India announced export restrictions on vaccines last month, Indonesia and the Philippines said they would turn to China for help. Last week, China’s foreign minister offered to help South Asian nations get access to vaccines.

Indonesia said it would get additional doses from Sinovac after President Joko Widodo held talks with Mr. Xi. In a speech the same week, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines said he owed “a debt of gratitude” to China for its vaccines.

“They don’t like to subsume their generosity in their products under some U.N. brand,” said J. Stephen Morrison, director of the global health policy center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are in a historic phase,” he said. “They want the recipients to know that this is China delivering.”

Said Park in a social media post on Tuesday: “Thank you for your solidarity, your generosity, your kind words and support for the AAPI community … the point of this is to allow you to make the decision to be safe when you are about to be in a risky place or situation because a ride costs too much. So keep this post in mind for your safety.”