Pop Culture Roundup: This Week This Week: Armageddon, a kiss, black freedom fighters, Amos and Andy, Mel Gibson and more.

The State of the Presidential Debate by Jill Lepore How should candidates—and voters—argue about politics?

We, the Plutocrats vs. We, the People by Bill Moyers Saving the Soul of Democracy

15 Years after 9/11, can we Recover our Republic? by Juan Cole Making sure the Constitution and our rights are strong is the best way of honoring the victims of the 9/11 attacks.

The Virtue of an Educated Voter by Alan Taylor The Founders believed that a well-informed electorate preserves our fragile democracy and benefits American society as a whole. We are dangerously far from their vision today.

Is Trump an Aberration? by Aviva Chomsky The Dark History of the “Nation of Immigrants”

Another Obama Apology Tour? by Author It’s true that on Tuesday the president didn’t actually apologize in Laos for American actions in the 1960s, but he danced right up to the line.

Xi Jinping’s Authoritarianism Does a Disservice to China’s Nuanced Political Tradition by Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Kate Merkel-Hess Depicting China’s people as inheritors of a single set of values, rather than individuals shaped by and able to draw on many strands of indigenous culture, is wrong.

Finding My Own Truth As Poland Rewrites Holocaust History by Tamara Micner Do Jews and Poles want to perpetuate narratives that deny the differences within Polish society during World War II? Or do we want to heal?

Was the E.R.A.’s Defeat Really a Loss for Feminism? Did feminists win even though the E.R.A. was defeated? A New York Times roundtable.

History tells us that the Calais wall would not be fit for purpose by Sean Lang Incredibly, 27 years after the world celebrated the fall of the detested Berlin Wall, barriers are back in fashion.