Weekly Grounding #59
News, links, writing
Weekly Groundings are published every Friday to highlight the most interesting news, links, and writing I investigated during the past week. They are designed to ground your thinking in the midst of media overload and contribute to Handful of Earth’s broader framework. Please subscribe if you’d like to receive these posts directly in your inbox.
“The Two Parties Fail to Understand Place-Based Inequality”
discusses the relationship between geography and class in America for . He argues that “Democrats and Republicans both have immutable narratives about who is left behind in American life and who deserves the most assistance and political attention. For Democrats, it’s ‘black and brown people’ and for Republicans it’s the ‘white working class’—a sectarian racial battle tailor-made to produce deep schisms and mutual animosity between Americans.” Drawing on a recent study by economist Raj Chetty, Halpin argues that “both party narratives fail miserably at representing the reality of economic mobility in America today and both miss the critical importance of communities and place-based approaches to helping lower-income people of all races get ahead in life.” A place-based approach would demand “a real focus on local communities and divergent social contexts rather than one-size fits all approaches favored by the national parties.”
Although not highlighted in Halpin’s article, Chetty’s study also makes the noteworthy observation that “in 1978, white children born to low-income families on the coasts (along with the Midwest and other parts of the country) had relatively good prospects of upward mobility. By 1992, upward mobility for low-income white children in the coasts and in the Southwest fell markedly to rates on par with those observed in Appalachia and other areas that historically offered the lowest chances of upward mobility:”:
“Conversely, for Black children, upward mobility increased the most in the Southeast and the Midwest — areas where outcomes had historically been poorest for Black Americans (Figure 3). However, even with these improvements, Black children born in 1992 still had poorer prospects of rising up than white children in virtually every county in America because initial Black-white disparities were so large.”
“‘Welcome to Hell’: Israel's Torture Camps”
summarizes a new report by the leading Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, “on the systematic abuse and torture in Israeli prisons since October 7.” He notes that “many Palestinians, including children, are held without trial — i.e., they are effectively hostages of the Israeli state — and that this was already the case long before October 7.”The report describes “a systemic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners. This includes frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation; deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions; sleep deprivation; prohibition on, and punitive measures for, religious worship; confiscation of all communal and personal belongings; and denial of adequate medical treatment. These descriptions appear time and again in the testimonies, in horrifying detail and with chilling similarities. The prisoners’ testimonies lay bare the outcomes of a rushed process in which more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, both military and civilian, were converted into a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates. Such spaces, in which every inmate is intentionally condemned to severe, relentless pain and suffering, operate in fact as torture camps.”
“Netanyahu, Defiant, Appears to Have Gone Rogue, Risking a Regional War”
Steven Erlanger, a former New York Times bureau chief in Israel, writes in the Times that “Despite international condemnation, he [Netanyahu] vowed to continue the war against Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel is killing and imprisoning scores of Palestinians each week, without any clear idea of its endgame.”
Erlanger discusses a recent incident in Israel when “protesters massed outside two military bases to support soldiers who had been arrested on suspicion of torturing and sodomizing a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman, a military jail. Hundreds of protesters, including at least three far-right legislators from the ruling coalition and soldiers in uniform, gathered outside that jail and a second base where the men had been brought for interrogation. Dozens of protesters surged into both bases, brushing aside guards, while Mr. Ben-Gvir’s police forces arrived late and in small numbers…The protests at the military bases were the ‘closest I’ve ever experienced to state breakdown,’” said Dahlia Scheindlin, “an Israeli pollster and analyst.”
“Views on America’s Global Role Diverge Widely by Age and Party”
With the United States embroiled in multiple foreign conflicts, Americans’ views on the the country’s global involvement differ based on a number of factors. According to a recent Pew Research study, the most significant is age: “33% of adults under age 35 say it is extremely or very important that the U.S. play an active role in world affairs. That compares with 49% of those 35 to 49, 66% of those 50 to 64, and 74% of those 65 and older.”
This trend holds across both parties: “Among Republicans, majorities in each age group say the country’s strong military makes the world safer. But younger Republicans are less likely than older ones to say this. About two-thirds of Republican adults under 35 (66%) say the world is safer with U.S. military strength. Wider majorities of older Republicans say U.S. military strength makes the world safer, including 94% of Republicans 65 and older. Similarly, younger Democrats are less likely than older ones to say the nation’s military makes the world safer. While 46% of 18- to 34-year-old Democrats say this, 41% say the U.S. military has no impact and about one-in-ten (12%) say it makes the world less safe. In contrast, 54% of those 35 to 49 and 78% of those 50 and older say U.S. military strength makes the world safer.”
“Free Doom”
At
, reflects on Kamala Harris’ deployment of black music for her presidential campaign: “Here we are. Freedom, freedom—numb to the violations of our own soul it demands. Black music is being hijacked to conspire with the propagandizing of black life and thought and self-actualization. Kamala Harris is simply the crescendo of a radio hit, a counterfeit thrill perfect for on the road or high school cruising, canvassing as an impressionable graduate student like I did for Obama in ‘08. And if we’re convinced to sing along every time she plays, she may become one of the presidents at the end of a failed empire. It’s so boring I’m in disbelief that it exists at all, maybe I’ve achieved real freedom. Because the propaganda fails on me it leaves me either heartbroken, indifferent, or in another world where I can see them so clearly I can’t see them at all.”Holiday continues: “What’s comforting is, everyone who will readily sell out to symbolism is loudly and proudly announcing it on the record this pivotal and very dull era, and somehow, especially those who once upon a time called for a ceasefire in Gaza, real leadership, someone coherent at the helm at the very least. They have sudden amnesia about the vice president’s complicity in these months of genocide denialism…This…could be why Sun Ra was so adamant in his conviction that discipline is paramount to whatever amorphous ideal people refer to as freedom. Freedom is the lie hypocrites pursue knowing they’re afraid to self-govern; discipline is what the brave souls who make their own rules demand of their days—the focus to see their personal systems of achievement and grace through, to enforce them and invent them simultaneously, while the free flounder and end up ceding their will to bureaucracy after their hedonism incites chaos and delirium.”
“Unconformed Education: A Personal Deep Dive”
and argue for the uniqueness of every individual in the context of education at . They write that “what we really want to encourage more than anything, based on over fifteen years of home educating experience, is the active involvement of parents in their children’s education, toward discovering and supporting their child’s unique learning potential. This uniqueness is especially important in an increasingly technological age, where the emphasis on efficiency and utilitarianism can infiltrate the atmosphere of the regular school system, and cause us to overlook or override a child’s originality. Resisting the Machine can take a myriad of forms, but it must necessarily come from individuals, like you, or me, to inspire hope in our children that they are not mere cogs in the system, but have agency to carve a future.Gaskovski and Peco note that “Choosing an unconformed educational path can prompt others to react defensively, because they might think it implies there is something wrong with their own family’s choice. I always emphasize that this form of education fits well with our family, without judging more conventional choices—like public school. I actually greatly admire (and I don’t hesitate to tell people this) classroom teachers, public or private, who have a tremendously difficult task in managing bursting rooms full of students with different needs.”
What grounded your thinking this week? Feel free to share in the comments.