Hello Again

Issue #3.1 ~ February 3rd, 2024

Fresh from its three-and-a-half month hiatus, TLBR resumes publication with this premiere issue of 2024.

First, I’d like to welcome back all my old subscribers, and welcome in those of you who entered a subscription during the months that publication was suspended. Thanks to everyone for your patience while my wife and I completed our move to Manhattan and our (sometimes challenging, still ongoing) adjustment to apartment living.

Next, I want to give you a heads-up about a few minor changes I’m introducing to the format of the newsletter, beginning with this issue and then going forward …

1. I’ll be relaxing the publication schedule from a fixed “every three weeks” to a more relaxed “every few weeks”, affording myself the flexibility to publish either more or less frequently, depending both on the urgency of whatever current topic(s) I’m writing about and on the status of my non-writing projects from week to week.

2. I’ll be changing the title of each issue’s closing section from “Interesting reading from the past few weeks” to simply “Interesting further reading ...” so as to include not only recently published magazine articles and op-ed pieces, but also selected books and occasional long-form online content that seem particularly relevant to current times regardless of their original publication date.

3. In keeping with the above change, I’ll also be modifying the format of the closing section, replacing the lengthy excerpts that accompanied each suggested reading in the past with a brief explanation as to why I’m recommending it - and, in some cases, including a short excerpt of just a sentence or two.

And finally, since I was unable to do this while TLBR was on hiatus, please let me extend belated year-end holiday wishes to you all. May we each find our own unique way of working toward a more just, peaceful, and harmonious world in 2024 and beyond.

---

Revisiting, and revising, the “two tasks”

I last wrote about these two critical endeavors in April of 2023, issue #2.06 … (1) in the short term, prevail at the polls in 2024; and (2) in the long term, seek out ways to communicate more effectively with MAGA supporters. In the nine months since then, the urgency for task one has grown exponentially, and the viability for task two has diminished significantly.

Let’s examine each of the tasks in light of events since then.

1. Prevailing in this year’s elections - both the presidential contest and the congressional races - could not be more important. A second presidential term for Trump will be catastrophic for our own country, and for every one of those countries allied with us in the struggle to preserve democracy and some sort of rules-based global order. (See the recommendation below for The Atlantic’s full January/February 2024 issue.) And, if we are to be faced with Trump’s return to the White House, all that will separate us from a lawless and autocratic presidency will be a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.

2. Bridging the gap between us and MAGA supporters could not be more impossible in these next nine months leading up to the November elections. Violent rhetoric is sure to pervade the national discourse, and threats of violent action are likely to be looming as a constant backdrop to that dysfunctional discourse. Attempts to bring skillful speech to the forefront during these contentious months are almost certainly doomed to instant and ignominious defeat.

Accordingly, from now until November, our two tasks reduce to one task only, that of prevailing at the polls. It’s essential that Trump never gets his threatened opportunity to be “dictator on day one”. Our second task must await the outcome of that election, at which point we will need to revisit it - hopefully from a proactive place of attempting to heal the ongoing polarization resulting from a MAGA defeat, but possibly from a reactive place of trying to mitigate the harm that will surely result from a MAGA victory.

Going forward, we will look more deeply into how Buddhist teachings can guide our speech and our actions in the months ahead, as we pursue success on our one and only critical task.

---

Interesting further reading …

1. “Doppelganger”, by Naomi Klein. In this unique blend of political analysis and personal memoir, Klein - already well-known for her years of activism and writing on the climate change crisis - chronicles her life during the first two years of the Covid pandemic, when her online “brand” became conflated and confused with that of the alt-right conspiracy author Naomi Wolf. What might have been merely an interesting anecdotal account of Klein’s struggles to protect her public persona becomes instead a compelling personal and intellectual narrative. She meticulously explores the rich history of literary, philosophical, and psychological investigations into the individual experience of confronting one’s “double” - Philip Roth’s novel “Operation Shylock” plays a significant part in this exploration. And then she employs what she’s learned from these sources as a lens through which to view the recent cultural and geopolitical trends that have brought about what she labels the “mirror world” - an alternate reality in which established facts and scientific evidence are met with suspicion and denial, while anecdotal stories and conspiracy theories are accepted as uncontested truth. Klein’s quest to understand that world leads her to a surprising sense of humility and compassion; it’s well worth your time to accompany her on that journey, and discover where it leads you.

2. The Atlantic, January/February 2024 issue. Twenty-four of the magazine’s staff writers each contribute a short essay on their particular concern about how a second Trump presidency could impact the country and the world. Topics considered include immigration, the Justice Department, misogyny, climate, the courts, extremism, abortion, and disinformation. Here’s an excerpt from editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s introductory letter, somberly entitled “A Warning” …

   “…we felt it necessary to share with our readers our collective understanding of what could take place in a second Trump term. I encourage you to read all of the articles in this special issue carefully (though perhaps not in one sitting, for reasons of mental hygiene). Our team of brilliant writers makes a convincingly dispositive case that both Trump and Trumpism pose an existential threat to America and to the ideas that animate it. The country survived the first Trump term, though not without sustaining serious damage. A second term, if there is one, will be much worse.”

3. Lydia Polgreen wrote this wide-ranging opinion piece for the New York Times, reflecting on the differing reactions to the recent ruling handed down by the International Court of Justice in response to the case South Africa brought against Israel for its actions in Gaza. She raises the troubling prospect of yet another divide beginning to emerge between the Global North and the Global South … “One of the biggest threats to the rules-based international order is the growing consensus in the poor world that the rich world will apply those rules selectively, at its discretion, when it suits the powerful nations that make up the Global North, such as when Russia invaded Ukraine.” Her thoughts sent me back to Anne Applebaum’s article for The Atlantic “There Are No Rules”, which I featured in the last issue of TLBR. Both essays remind us of the importance for an effective global rule-based order, an aspiration that’s slowly slipping ever further away.

---