Kim Kardashian never plays it safe. https://t.co/NXmmVNHwFT pic.twitter.com/YoQMKyUovR— E! News (@enews) February 18, 2019
Kim Kardashian Wears Her Most Shocking Dress Ever as She Manages to Avoid a Nip Slip https://t.co/BgxnWPaPGJ— People (@people) February 18, 2019
Saving the liberal world order requires a conservative approach, argue @profLind and William C. Wohlforth. The U.S. should aim to preserve what has been won and minimize the chances that more will be lost.https://t.co/oo5i0zOzpk— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) February 15, 2019
The liberal world order is in peril. Seventy-five years after the United States helped found it, this global system of alliances, institutions, and norms is under attack like never before. From within, the order is contending with growing populism, nationalism, and authoritarianism. Externally, it faces mounting pressure from a pugnacious Russia and a rising China. At stake is the survival of not just the order itself but also the unprecedented economic prosperity and peace it has nurtured.Keep reading.
The order is clearly worth saving, but the question is how. Keep calm and carry on, some of its defenders argue; today’s difficulties will pass, and the order is resilient enough to survive them. Others appreciate the gravity of the crisis but insist that the best response is to vigorously reaffirm the order’s virtues and confront its external challengers. Bold Churchillian moves—sending more American troops to Syria, offering Ukraine more help to kick out pro-Russian forces—would help make the liberal international order great again. Only by doubling down on the norms and institutions that made the liberal world order so successful, they say, can that order be saved.
Such defenders of the order tend to portray the challenge as a struggle between liberal countries trying to sustain the status quo and dissatisfied authoritarians seeking to revise it. What they miss, however, is that for the past 25 years, the international order crafted by and for liberal states has itself been profoundly revisionist, aggressively exporting democracy and expanding in both depth and breadth. The scale of the current problems means that more of the same is not viable; the best response is to make the liberal order more conservative. Instead of expanding it to new places and new domains, the United States and its partners should consolidate the gains the order has reaped.
The debate over U.S. grand strategy has traditionally been portrayed as a choice between retrenchment and ambitious expansionism. Conservatism offers a third way: it is a prudent option that seeks to preserve what has been won and minimize the chances that more will be lost. From a conservative vantage point, the United States’ other choices—at one extreme, undoing long-standing alliances and institutions or, at the other extreme, further extending American power and spreading American values—represent dangerous experiments. This is especially so in an era when great-power politics has returned and the relative might of the countries upholding the order has shrunk.
It is time for Washington and its liberal allies to gird themselves for a prolonged period of competitive coexistence with illiberal great powers, time to shore up existing alliances rather than add new ones, and time to get out of the democracy-promotion business. Supporters of the order may protest this shift, deeming it capitulation. On the contrary, conservatism is the best way to preserve the global position of the United States and its allies—and save the order they built.
A REVISIONIST ORDER
Since World War II, the United States has pursued its interests in part by creating and maintaining the web of institutions, norms, and rules that make up the U.S.-led liberal order. This order is not a myth, as some allege, but a living, breathing framework that shapes much of international politics. It is U.S.-led because it is built on a foundation of American hegemony: the United States provides security guarantees to its allies in order to restrain regional competition, and the U.S. military ensures an open global commons so that trade can flow uninterrupted. It is liberal because the governments that support it have generally tried to infuse it with liberal norms about economics, human rights, and politics. And it is an order—something bigger than Washington and its policies—because the United States has partnered with a posse of like-minded and influential countries and because its rules and norms have gradually assumed a degree of independent influence.
This order has expanded over time. In the years after World War II, it grew both geographically and functionally, successfully integrating two rising powers, West Germany and Japan. Supporting liberalism and interweaving their security policies with the United States’, these countries accepted the order, acting as “responsible stakeholders” well before the term was optimistically applied to China. As the Cold War played out, NATO added not just West Germany but also Greece, Turkey, and Spain. The European Economic Community (the EU’s predecessor) doubled its membership. And core economic institutions, such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), broadened their remits...
Thanks to Twitter, celebrity culture already drives our politics. Soon enough it will drive our policy too, says @tylercowen https://t.co/4RaerYYRWx— Bloomberg Opinion (@bopinion) February 12, 2019
Social media elevates the interests of politicians over parties, which means things are only going to get messier.Keep reading.
The latest political controversy involves Rep. Ilhan Omar tweeting and insinuating that American political support for Israel is driven by Jewish money and lobbying. Leaving aside her views for now, the general trend is striking: Social media is allowing individual politicians to further their own careers at the expense of their party’s reputation. The result is that U.S. politics is quickly changing into a parade of celebrities.
Put yourself in Omar’s shoes. You are a freshman representative in a group of 435. Most of your cohort will never receive national recognition, and as a Muslim woman, perhaps your hold on the seat is not entirely secure. You will probably never run for president, or even Senate, so your future is not tied very closely to that of the Democratic Party.
At some point you realize that if you tweet about Israel, you will get attention. You probably believe in what you are saying, and you think your opinions will contribute to the dialogue. But the tweets will also make you a national celebrity. That may help your future ability to get a book contract, hit the lecture circuit, or join a lobbying or nonprofit firm. Even if most Americans find your views objectionable, there will be a place for you in a country this large, wealthy and diverse.
I have found that when people perceive their self-interest and sense of morality to be in harmony, they are very likely to act in accordance with them.
And so it came to pass. Omar started tweeting about Israel, later tweeted a problematic remark about “Benjamins,” people were offended and accused her of anti-Semitism, and she has since apologized. But don’t be too distracted by the apology: She definitely got people talking about one of her preferred issues, and she raised her profile significantly. And she hasn’t withdrawn her main point.
Of course, it is the Democratic Party that ends up looking bad. For one thing, most Americans are pro-Israel. Even if the tweets had been less controversial, the mere act of talking about Israel exposes more fissures in the Democratic coalition than among Republicans.
Or consider Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, arguably a genius on social media. She is attracting more attention than most (all?) of the Democratic presidential candidates, and now has over three million Twitter followers. She has been setting the Democratic agenda on both tax and environmental policy, and spurring a general sense among primary voters that the party ought to be moving further to the political left.
But is this all good for the Democratic Party? The positive spin would be that she is revitalizing debate in the party and giving it greater appeal to the young. The negative spin is that she is pushing the primary candidates too far to the left, and making them look tired and stale compared to her energy and innovativeness. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s response to the Green New Deal idea was striking: “It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive. The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”
No matter what the final result may be, the upstarts have been empowered relative to the establishment...
— Abe Greenwald (@AbeGreenwald) February 12, 2019
On Monday, Democrats called on Rep. Ilhan Omar to apologize for once again tweeting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, this time about rich Jews pulling the strings of American politicians. So she responded with a tweet apologizing “unequivocally” for not realizing that Jews were so touchy about anti-Semitism. And then, in that tweet, she trashed AIPAC for its “problematic role” in American politics.Keep reading.
What’s the point, exactly, of asking anti-Semites—or any bigots—to apologize for their bigotry? There are a few ways to look at it. Do you want them to express regret about being bigoted? Do you want them to express regret about giving voice to their bigotry? Do you really just want them to do a better job of pretending not to be a bigot? In the end, it doesn’t matter, because none of these positions changes the fact of their bigotry. Omar’s very apology contained paranoia about AIPAC.
Asking for an apology is an immoral response to anti-Semitism because it’s designed to allow the anti-Semite to move past her offense. In the public sphere, these apologies become a licensing fee paid by people like Omar every time they want to sound off about the evil Jews. She “apologizes,” people praise her willingness to learn and grow, and the headlines shift from her offense to the hysterics who won’t let her be. The only ones who benefit here are the bigots and their allies. In the case of Omar, those allies are either her fellow Democrats trying to do damage control or anti-Semites who are thrilled to see one of their own successfully playing the game...
Writer Sues Twitter Over Ban for Criticizing Transgender People. You can’t tell journalists to learn to code or to take a joke either. https://t.co/9bCeERhfFj pic.twitter.com/ltWXRcdKDQ— Nick Short (@PoliticalShort) February 12, 2019
Canadian blogger tweeted ‘Men aren’t women,’ violating harassment rules on the platformRTWT.
*****
In the case of Twitter’s policy update for transgender issues, the company banned the practice of intentionally referring to individuals by the wrong gender or referring to their previous names, saying it can be a form of harassment. The policy was designed to make Twitter a more inclusive space for transgender individuals.
Ms. Murphy says that Twitter locked her account on Nov. 15, telling her that to regain control of her account, she would need to remove two tweets she posted the prior month. One tweet stated: “How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?” The other said: “Men aren’t women.”
Ms. Murphy deleted the tweets, and posted a response to Twitter, saying, “I’m not allowed to say that men aren’t women or ask questions about the notion of transgenderism at all anymore?” The post went viral, according to her suit, receiving 20,000 likes. Days later, Twitter informed Ms. Murphy that she needed to delete this tweet as well, the suit says.
Twitter then banned Ms. Murphy permanently. According to the suit, Twitter sent an email to Ms. Murphy on Nov. 23, informing her that an item she had posted previously on Nov. 8 violated the company’s hateful conduct policy because she referred to a transgender woman as “him,” according to the suit.
The suit says Ms. Murphy had tweeted “Yeeeah it’s him” to refer to an image of a Google review of a waxing salon posted by a Twitter account with a male name and a female name in parentheses. In the past year, the suit states, the person behind that account had filed complaints against aestheticians for refusing to perform Brazilian waxes due to that person’s male genitalia.
"Bad teaching is a common explanation given for the disastrously inadequate public education received by America’s most vulnerable populations. This is a myth." Ex-teacher @merrycheeked1 reveals the brutal truth of what happens in NYC's classrooms: https://t.co/gkQWB5Ghey
— Quillette (@Quillette) February 11, 2019
The first presidential campaign of the #MeToo era is raising new questions and resurrecting old episodes, to the discomfort of Dems @finneganLAT https://t.co/Diu3UEFrFz
— Mark Z. Barabak (@markzbarabak) February 10, 2019
As he lays ground to run for president, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock looks back with regret at his failure to recognize the gravity of a top aide’s sexual harassment of a colleague.Keep reading.
After he was fired, the advisor went to work for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and was soon accused of harassing two more women. Bullock now says he’s “deeply sorry” he never told de Blasio about his aide’s misbehavior.
“I was wrong and naïve to think I did enough,” Bullock, a Democrat, wrote Feb. 2 in a blog post.
Kamala Harris has similar regrets. So does Bernie Sanders. And so does Joe Biden.
The 2020 presidential race is the first to occur since the #MeToo movement changed the nation’s cultural and political climate. Democratic contenders are already struggling to control the damage from their own shortcomings in policing sexual harassment in the workplace.
“You can say you support #MeToo, and you can say you support women, but you have to be able to demonstrate that in your own organization and in your own behavior,” said Kelly Dittmar, a political scientist at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics.
“I don’t think we’re going to see all of a sudden a wholesale overturning of the allowances that we’ve given to folks for this type of behavior, or not acting significantly to stop this behavior in the past. But I do think the bar is higher.”
Cold political math is at least part of what’s drawing heightened attention to sexual misconduct: Women consistently turn out to vote in greater numbers than men. Women have also strongly preferred Democrats in recent elections, driving the party’s takeover of the House in the November midterm.
In the White House race, Democrats face pressure to nominate a candidate who can draw a strong contrast with President Trump. A Democrat who is perceived as not dealing with sexual harassment seriously could have a hard time attacking the president over allegations by multiple women that Trump sexually assaulted them.
The accusations, which Trump denies, have not caused die-hard supporters to desert him, but the president remains highly unpopular among women in general.
For Harris, the U.S. senator from California, the issue has become fraught since the Sacramento Bee revealed in December that the state paid $400,000 to settle a lawsuit over alleged sexual harassment by Larry Wallace, one of her closest aides for 14 years.
When Harris was state attorney general, she named Wallace as chief of the Division of Law Enforcement. He was in charge of her personal security detail, and he was a crucial figure in her political life: He led Harris’ successful drive to win endorsements from dozens of police groups that had once roundly opposed her.
In September 2016, Wallace and at least four others on her staff at the attorney general’s office were notified of the initial complaint filed by Danielle Hartley, Wallace’s executive assistant.
Three months later, Hartley sued the state, alleging Wallace had “harassed and demeaned” her in his Sacramento office. He kept a printer on the floor beneath his desk, she claimed, and ordered her every day to get on her knees to put paper in it or replace the ink, at times with him and male co-workers watching. Harris’ successor, Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, approved the settlement in May 2017.
Harris said she was not told about the case until the Bee asked about it two months ago. The inquiry led Wallace to resign as a senior advisor on her Senate staff in Sacramento.
“It was a very painful experience to know that something can happen in one’s office — of almost 5,000 people, granted, but I didn’t know about it,” Harris told CNN. “That being said, I take full responsibility for anything that has happened in my office.”
Critics have attacked the credibility of Harris, one of the Senate’s most pointed interrogators of Brett M. Kavanaugh when he faced sexual assault accusations at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. A Bee editorial called her denial of any knowledge of the Wallace settlement “far-fetched.” And if she’s to be believed, it said, she “isn’t a terribly good manager.”
Larry Gerston, a political scientist at San Jose State, said Harris was facing the conundrum of many politicians: How do they justify actions they took — or didn’t take — prior to the #MeToo movement shifting public attitudes?
“It’s very hard for those folks to go back and undo what they did at a time when it wasn’t viewed as terrible as it is now,” he said.
CNN’s Jake Tapper: “What about the language the President uses and the joking references to genocide against Native Americans?”
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 10, 2019
Rep. Liz Cheney: “Elizabeth Warren has made herself a laughingstock, and I don’t think anybody should be surprised that’s been the reaction to her” pic.twitter.com/15VbWPFLq4
Who urinated in her boots? A mystery at a California military base has led to claims of a cover-up https://t.co/lOPuvqJomE— L.A. Times: L.A. Now (@LANow) February 10, 2019
For Staff Sgt. Jennifer Pineda, a 15-year veteran of the California Air National Guard, the military was a family calling. She followed her older sister and brother-in-law into the guard, where she now holds an administrative position at the elite 144th Fighter Wing in Fresno.More.
On a March morning four years ago, Pineda was about to dress into a uniform she had stored overnight in a stall in the women’s bathroom when she made a foul discovery.
Someone had urinated in her boots.
The incident left Pineda humiliated and frightened and would trigger a series of behind-the-scenes investigations whose scope has come to extend beyond what happened that day at the Fresno base.
The defiling of Pineda’s boots has led to allegations that high-ranking officers tried to bury the incident, including by destroying evidence that could have potentially identified a suspect through DNA, and retaliated against a male pilot who supported her efforts to find the perpetrator, according to interviews and guard records obtained by The Times. Some in the wing have begun calling the ongoing saga “Pissgate.”
After The Times began asking questions about the Pineda episode, the California Military Department, which oversees the guard, asked the U.S. Air Force Inspector General’s Office to conduct an investigation.
In the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, guard leaders are concerned about the degrading nature of the act aimed at a woman, according to two sources close to the investigation, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly speak about the matter. Only about 20% of the officers and enlisted members in the guard are women.
The inspector general’s inquiry is the third investigation into the Pineda affair and part of a broader probe into whether whistle-blowers at the 144th wing suffered reprisals for questioning the actions or conduct of their superiors on a range of matters. At least five guard members from the 144th wing, including a pilot who was killed in October in a crash during a training mission in Ukraine, filed formal complaints. The guard recently suspended a 144th commander for reasons it said were unrelated to the Pineda incident.
“This boils down to just unprofessional leadership and cronyism,” said Maj. Dan Woodside, a retired 144th fighter pilot who is a witness in the inspector general’s Pineda investigation and has complained about how she was treated. “If anybody had urinated in their boots, they would have done everything they could to find the perpetrator, even if it involved calling the FBI.”
Two of the guard’s top officers held key leadership positions at the 144th at the time of the Pineda incident: Maj. Gen. Clay Garrison, who has since become head of the air guard, and Col. Sean Navin, now one of its five wing commanders. Neither responded to requests for interviews...
The #GreenNewDeal is perhaps the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard. But don’t tell leftists! I pray #Democrats run on it — the entire party! <Rubs hands together diabolically ha ha!> This is truly the best political thing ever lol. 😂😎😝
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 9, 2019
The Green New Deal isn't just un-American, it's also completely bonkers. https://t.co/r7VeFTAQIt
— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) February 8, 2019
Thank you @USATODAY for publishing the FULL quote & context of what I said.
— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) February 9, 2019
We are all holding to see if @ChelseaClinton will apologize for perpetuating this leftist media hoax.
Similar to #Covington, this hoax has resulted in death threats against me.https://t.co/3VEAkX23nx
By embracing socialist-minded economic policy, from a Green New Deal to single-payer health insurance, the top 2020 presidential hopefuls are boosting Trump's prospects for reelection, opines @HotlineJosh https://t.co/4Mwoj3uELZ
— National Journal (@nationaljournal) February 8, 2019
Alexis Ren Enjoys her Morning Coffee Braless - https://t.co/XUcL1A4ZYG - pic.twitter.com/NJ7f62mOan
— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) February 6, 2019
Devin Brugman's Body in a Leopard Bikini - https://t.co/3gVFEZxPXV pic.twitter.com/TXJkLUxTLC— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) February 7, 2019
