What Happened Today: September 09, 2022
King Charles’ emotional address; Defunding the police; D.C. declares emergency
The Big Story
Britain’s new monarch, King Charles III, appeared to choke back tears at several moments in a tribute to his late mother, Queen Elizabeth, that was broadcast Friday night. The pre-recorded speech, which was screened at a prayer service in St. Paul’s Cathedral, ended with these words: “To my darling mama, I want simply to say this: Thank you. Thank you for your love and devotion to our family and to the family of nations you have served so diligently all these years. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” Though he became king automatically when his mother died, Charles, who at age 73 had been the longest-serving heir to the throne in British history, will be officially proclaimed monarch on Saturday morning in a ceremony known as an Accession Council. It remains to be seen what kind of public role Charles will play as monarch. Previously known—apart from the gossip-page fodder of his two marriages and famous sons—for playing an unusually active role in charitable and social causes, Charles has said that he will curtail those activities as king. Among the causes he took up as prince, Charles was best known in recent years as an environmental activist; he attended functions like the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Summit in Glasgow, where he met with President Biden. While Charles has described his version of climate activism as “challenging the accepted wisdom, the current orthodoxy, and conventional way of thinking,” in fact his views are squarely in line with the prevailing sentiments of the current U.S. White House: blaming climate change for causing wars and global instability while pushing for more “renewable” green energies.
In the Back Pages: TikTok’s Anti-Feminist Influencers
The Rest
→ Support for “defunding the police” is overwhelmingly led by white liberal Democrats who back measures to cut police presence at roughly twice the rate Black Democrats do, according to a new analysis of data taken from the massive 2020 Cooperative Election Survey. A new report from the Manhattan Institute highlights not only the racial division in support for anti-policing policies but also the remarkable fact that this trend accelerated during the nationwide surge in rates of violent crime over the past two years. “Local violent-crime levels significantly reduce support among nonwhite Democrats but have no effect, to significantly positive effects, on support among white Democrats,” the report finds. According to the study’s author, Zach Goldberg, “the data indicate that white Democrats’ defunding and depolicing attitudes are powered by a unique group-based (or “privilege conscious”) moral ideology that boosts their support for such policies in high-crime areas.”
Read it here: https://www.manhattan-institute.org/is-defunding-the-police-a-luxury-belief
For a deeper exploration of the roots of the white liberal “privilege conscious” moral ideology, check out Goldberg’s 2019 essay for Tablet on the “American White Savior Complex.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-white-saviors
→ Number of the Day: $36.59 million
The amount Oberlin College has agreed to pay in a settlement with Gibson’s Bakery, which sued the famously progressive school for publicly denouncing the shop as racist after a bakery employee caught a black student shoplifting in 2016. The incident quickly became a national news item, with protestors at the campus, including members of the faculty and senior administration, calling the store racist and arguing that Oberlin should cut ties with Gibson’s, a bakery founded in 1885 and located across the street from the campus. First settled in 2019, the case saw numerous judges and juries side with the bakery after reviewing evidence that senior administrators at Oberlin didn’t believe the claims that Gibson’s was racist, but nonetheless moved to cut ties with the establishment out of fears that students would throw “tantrums,” as administrators wrote to one another in several emails. “The message to other colleges is to have the intestinal fortitude to be the adult in the room,” the lawyer for Gibson’s said after the jury awarded damages in 2019. With a final decision last month from Ohio’s supreme court to not hear the college’s appeal, Oberlin has finally agreed to pay damages to the bakery, though perhaps too late. “If the money doesn’t come through within the next couple months,” a member of the Gibson family wrote, “I’ll be forced to declare bankruptcy and shut the doors of Gibson’s for good.”
Read More: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/us/oberlin-bakery-lawsuit.html
→ Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C., declared a public emergency and created a new Office of Migrant Services to support the nearly 10,000 migrants that have been bussed up from Arizona and Texas to her city since April. The office, which will have a $10 million budget (and hopes to have those funds reimbursed by the federal government), is a recognition that Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona will continue sending migrants from their states in what is partially an effort to force the federal government to meaningfully address the border crisis and partially a thumb in the eye of Democratic lawmakers. According to Reuters, 85% to 90% of the migrants bussed to D.C. leave the city after several days, continuing to other parts of the United States—perhaps even back to Texas or Arizona.
→ In Tablet today, our Ukraine correspondent, Vladislav Davidzon, takes a break from heavy artillery to attend a film festival in the Georgian mountains.
Having vanquished the Russian hipster-occupiers, we piled into a spacious red minibus along with the rest of the festival guests and journalists and set off for the long mountainous drive to the northern Svaneti region. The Upper Svaneti region of Georgia is splendidly isolated while also paradoxically having played a central role in international trade routes over the centuries. The vistas on the way are breathtaking and the ancient kingdom of Colchis—where the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts took place—was here. The region was also home to Balkan-style clan warfare, honor killing and bride kidnappings that lasted through the start of the 20th century in medieval villages dotted with outcroppings of UNESCO heritage-listed, 25-meter-tall rock towers, erected a thousand years ago to protect the villages from raids.
Read More: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/caucasian-mountain-film-festival
→ As Ukraine and its supporters celebrate the success of the country’s recent counteroffensive against Russia, the country’s top general warned in an article published Wednesday by Ukrinform, Ukraine’s state-run media outlet, that the conflict could still spark a “limited” nuclear war between Russia and the West. “There is a direct threat of the use, under certain circumstances, of tactical nuclear weapons by the Russian armed forces,” wrote Ukraine’s commander in chief, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny. “It is also impossible to completely rule out the possibility of the direct involvement of the world’s leading countries in a ‘limited’ nuclear conflict, in which the prospect of World War III is already directly visible.”
→ Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, Moscow’s chief rabbi since 1989 and the head of the Conference of European Rabbis since 2011, has resigned from his post in opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine. “I could not remain silent,” he wrote in a statement about the decision. “Viewing so much human suffering, I went to assist the refugees in Eastern Europe and spoke out against the war.” Goldschmidt has been living in Israel since March, when Russia first launched its attack, and his daughter claims he was pressured to speak out in support of the war but refused to do so. “We did our best to navigate and build the community through the tumultuous 1990s and in the increasingly authoritarian Russia under the current president,” Goldschmidt said. Now, however, he has grown concerned that his outspoken criticisms of Putin and the war might endanger Russia’s Jewish community.
Graph of the Day:
Thirty-year fixed rate mortgages now sit at 5.89%, the highest rate since 2008. This data is sure to be of particular interest to the Federal Reserve, as surging prices in the housing market had been a key contributor to inflation. As of July 2022, 85% of large American housing markets were down from their highs, according to The Wall Street Journal, signaling some success in the Fed’s rate hikes to date. At the same time, however, those rate hikes make it harder for prospective buyers to afford homes. A Wall Street Journal report in June found that between still-high home prices and climbing interest rates, buying a home in the United States is more expensive than it has been in decades.
Read More: https://www.wsj.com/articles/mortgage-rates-hit-5-89-highest-level-since-2008-11662646125
→ Quote of the Day:
As an American in Taipei [in 1973], you understood in a visceral way that you were living in an outpost of the American empire in Asia, protected by the American military. Now, while Taiwan remains a close ally, it is also protected by something far more subtle—its absolutely central role [as] a colossus in the global market for semiconductors, the brains of modern electronics.
Jeff Sommer in The New York Times, writing about Taiwan’s market dominance in the production of semiconductors, the vital chip that runs every kind of computerized device, from iPhones to electric vehicles and military systems. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, worth $400 billion, is the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturing company and one of the 12 most valuable companies in the world. It is also of crucial strategic importance to Taiwan’s political future—so much so that Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, calls the company the country’s “silicon shield,” though how long this shield can last remains an open question. All of this makes the current diplomatic discussions vis-à-vis Taiwan between the United States and China all the more significant. “If you start looking at the role Taiwan plays in just about every industry,” one professor of international relations said to Sommers, “you have to ask, ‘What could we produce without it if it were gone? In Year 1, we would face tremendous disruptions across all sectors of the economy. It would take years to recover and to replace that capacity, if it were destroyed.”
Read More: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/09/business/silicon-markets-china-taiwan.html
→ In a growing public health crisis in New York City, the mayor’s office is now noting the “possible presence” of Legionella, a potentially deadly bacteria that can cause Legionnaires’ disease, in the drinking water at the Jacob Riis Houses in lower Manhattan, a sprawling New York City Housing Authority complex with 3,700 residents. The possible presence of Legionella was first found in lab tests in August and not disclosed to the public until now. This adds to the mounting worries—and also the spiraling political crisis for Mayor Eric Adams—that began in early August, when residents at the Riis Houses first noticed and reported that their water was cloudy. It wasn’t until Sept. 2—four weeks after those first reports and three days after lab results concluded there was arsenic in the water—that the city told residents that the water was unsafe. On Thursday, Mayor Adams announced that new tests for arsenic were coming up negative—though he failed to mention that the tests were performed after the water was allowed to run for several hours. “They could have tested it before it was flushed, and instead they tested it after,” Assemblymember Harvey Epstein (D-Manhattan) said. “They’re flushing everything, so what if [arsenic] reappears in a month?”
Read More: https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/9/8/23343829/arsenic-testing-nycha-taps-flushed
Additional reporting and writing provided by The Scroll’s associate editor, David Sugarman
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Welcome to TikTok’s Anti-Feminist Influencers
Are the “trad life” personalities on social media changing the culture or just selling a lifestyle brand, like the right wing equivalent of Goop?
By Katherine Dee
Recently, my friend Indian Bronson tweeted about the preponderance of anti-feminist influencers who promote “traditional values” online. These women seem to appear on the scene overnight, quickly amass followers, and become small-time celebrities. Bronson is right to notice this: One of the best known and least utilized social media hacks, if you’re an aspiring female influencer, is to understand that conservatism sells. In a Discord server I’m in, an anonymous young woman quipped to a young man asking how to launch himself into internet stardom, “If you want to be an influencer, just catfish as a right-wing woman.”
For Bronson, the reason for this easy appeal is that “almost every mainstream institution/popular culture outlet is about satiating/validating fat, promiscuous, cultureless consumers. These young women are appealing to healthy, traditional, identity-exclusive tastes. It’s upscale.” That’s how trends work: When you oversaturate one category, like the choice feminism that defined the millennial generation, your only remaining options are to innovate on the trend or offer a sufficiently different alternative. It’s not such a crazy idea that after nearly a decade of liberal-slanted, socially permissive media, we’re due for a “vibe shift.”
Trad influencers like Shannen Michaela or JustPearlyThings have been able to build lucrative followings by turning the idea that “feminism is a scam” into a desirable-looking lifestyle brand. That’s worth something, obviously, but it doesn’t make them the future of the culture, and it’s not clear just how far their influence extends.
Politically, it’s doubtful that these influencers are changing anyone’s mind. Nobody is going to be convinced of “the truth about feminism” by somebody who acts as if they might have berated you on a college campus about your perceived support of Bernie Sanders. For the most part, the anti-feminist trads don’t reach people who aren’t already sympathetic to their views.
One woman I spoke to claimed her only exposure to these types of trad influencers came when she saw liberal accounts mocking the perceived ridiculousness of their videos or otherwise critiquing their politics. It’s the same reason that an earlier wave of “trad” women in the media, like Lauren Southern, didn’t spark a cultural revolution, despite gaining massive followings. Fundamentally, this content is for people already in that milieu—arguably, it’s not even for women.
What might be happening, however, is an embrace of traditional and right-wing coded values in less obvious ways. I spoke to 10 young women who identified as apolitical, centrist, or leftist about this, and they described a few different expressions of these changes.
One was conservatively slanted content from creators you wouldn’t think to describe as socially conservative, some of whom may even identify as leftists. This seems to be more of a change in sensibility: an acknowledgment from a diverse group of people that modern “lean-in” feminism is lacking something, although that acknowledgment is not necessarily framed in a politicized way. Areas of concern mentioned by the women were diverse, including hormonal birth control; hookup culture; the material, biological realities of womanhood; and the impact of porn on young women …
To read the rest, click here.