The Roundup Top Ten for August 20, 2021
Will the US's Answer to Failure in Afghanistan be More War?by Stephen Wertheim"The war was given so long to work that advocates of a new surge hope Americans have forgotten the last one." |
The US Repeated Mistakes of the Past in Afghanistanby Ali A. Olomi"By flooding Afghanistan with payoffs, bribes and aid, the British created a system of endemic corruption in which local chieftains and favorable bureaucrats would enrich themselves while the rest of the country remained relatively poor." |
It's a White Christmas in Afghanistanby Claire Potter"The crush of refugees waiting to be rescued is tragic and predictable--because this is what surrender looks like." |
How Empires Fallby Matt Wehmeier"Decisive political moments are rarely expected, and even more rarely planned. Governments change all the time. But every once in a while, empires fall." |
Scrapping the Color Code: A Post-Racial America is Inevitableby Jim SleeperThe 2020 Census is showing that whiteness is no longer the civic and cultural norm, but also that bureacratic color-coding can't support a version of civic Americanism that can stand up to a growing white backlash. |
Prison Tech Comes Home: Tenants and Residents in the Surveillance Stateby Erin McElroy, Meredith Whittaker and Nicole E. WeberLandlords have combined technologies developed for screening tenants in the 1970s with more recent digital surveillance and facial recognition systems developed in prisons to dramatically increase control over their tenants during an affordable housing crisis. |
GOP Revives Old Tactic: Blame Outsiders for Diseaseby Jonathan Zimmerman"The coronavirus is spreading most rapidly in places with low vaccination rates, not high immigration." |
Off Main Street: Black Space, Agency, And Community Building In The Jim Crow Southby Kirin MakkerNostalgic references to "Main Street" are common today, but conceal the racially exclusionary nature of both business ownership and consumption in American history. |
The Afghanistan War Was Founded on Lies. Some People Are Still Telling Themby Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison"It was a lie every time pundits and officials insisted that victory was around the corner." |
Debt and Disillusionmentby Rebecca Gordon"We know, in other words, that there are only a relatively small number of spaces in the cockpit of today’s economic plane. Nonetheless, we tell our young people that the guaranteed way to get one of those rare gigs at the top of the pyramid is a college education." |