An American Maverick | Europe’s Rightward Shift | Skim Reading

“Controlled environments encourage complacency, making it hard to cope when controls break down, as they sooner or later must. Constant disruptions, however, prevent recuperation: nothing’s ever healthy. There’s a balance, then, between integrative and disintegrative processes in the natural world-an edge of chaos, so to speak-where adaptation, especially self-organization tends to occur. New political worlds work similarly.” – John Lewis Gaddis, On Grand Strategy

“Inverted-U curves are hard to understand. They almost never fail to take us by surprise, and one of the reasons we are so often confused about advantages and disadvantages is that we forget when we are operating in a U-shaped world.” – Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath

An American War Hero and Maverick: On August 25, 2009, the country lost its long-known Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy. Nine years to the day later, the country lost its Maverick of the Senate, 81-year-old John Sidney McCain lll. McCain was a true war hero, a staunch Arizona conservative and two-time presidential candidate who still valued working across the aisle. He was an old-fashioned gentleman, gracious, witty, known for one-liners. Above all, he was committed to American democratic ideals, and stubbornly believed that country should come before party. He was born on a base in the Panama Canal Zone where his father was stationed in 1936. Destined to enter the ”family business”—both McCain’s father and grandfather were four-star admirals, the first in US naval history—he was a member of the Naval Academy’s Class of 1958. After graduation McCain became a naval aviator, and was on a mission during the Vietnam War when he was shot down and captured in 1967. He survived five and a half torturous years in a Vietnamese prison camp. Freed in 1973, he remained in the navy until retiring in 1981 and moving to Arizona to enter politics. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1982 and served two terms; in 1987 he was elected to the Senate, winning reelection five times.

As a former POW, McCain could always speak with authority on military matters during his long career in Congress. He was stubborn, but humble enough to change course when convinced he’d made an error in judgment. At times he was fearless enough to buck Republican Party leadership, as he did on campaign finance reform and the GOP-led effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Those actions helped revive McCain’s legacy of commitment to strong moral principles that had been tarnished during the George W. Bush administration, when he compromised those principles vis-a-vis the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorism suspects, something he had repeatedly insisted was “torture.” John McCain is survived by his wife, Cindy, seven children, five grandchildren and his 106-year-old mother, Roberta.

Taliban Peace Talks: For the second time since June, Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani has offered Taliban insurgents a cease-fire in the country’s 17-year war. Afghan and US officials had hoped Taliban leaders would continue the private peace talks started in July. Instead the Taliban ignored Ghani’s truce offer and accepted an invitation for peace talks in Moscow, scheduled for early next month. Both Afghanistan and the US were invited to the talks, but both declined, believing it undermines their efforts to engage the Taliban directly. (WaPo)

Ugandan Singer Accused Of Treason: Bobi Wine is the stage name for a Ugandan pop singer turned politician, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, who rose to fame in part by criticizing the government through song. Now Wine, or Ssentamu, is singing the blues. He was campaigning for an opposition parliamentary candidate earlier this month in the same town where President Yoweri Museveni was campaigning for a different candidate. Chaos broke out, Museveni’s convoy was pelted with stones, and Ssentamu’s driver was killed. Ssentamu was arrested, held in military custody for 10 days, apparently beaten within an inch of his life, and charged with treason. (WaPo)

Oh Hey, Another Bad Tweet: President Trump tweeted Friday that he was cancelling Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to North Korea because the country hadn’t made enough progress on denuclearization. He said Pompeo would probably visit when “our Trading relationship with China is resolved.” Then he said “I would like to send my warmest regards and respect to Chairman Kim. I look forward to seeing him soon!” One international policy expert tweeted that Trump was “undermining his own leverage again. Not to mention his [secretary of state] and new envoy”. “It’s fine to not send the secretary due to lack of progress,” she wrote, “but don’t then also talk about how you are eager to meet with [Kim] and how China is thwarting you.” (Guardian)

Swedish Meatheads: The Sweden Democrats is a far-right, anti-immigration populist party based on nationalism. Once on the extreme fringes, in the last decade they have risen to a position where they have completely jammed up the traditional power blocs of Swedish politics, which since 1976 have been based around competition between the Social Democrats and a grouping of three or four non-socialist parties. Today, none of the mainstream parties will co-operate with Sweden Democrats, but neither bloc can form a majority government without them. (Guardian)

Many Wrongs Make A Far-Right: Croatia’s right-of-centre president, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, rejects accusations of tolerating ultranationalism and defends her warm relations with Russia’s President Putin. She says she hopes Croatia’s national football team’s second place finish in the World Cup would give her country of 4.2 million people a boost following years of economic recession. Croatia, the EU’s newest member state, is currently grappling with mass emigration. Grabar-Kitarović has distanced herself from rising Euroscepticism and xenophobia in Europe, and said far-right figures in Croatia were “the exception, not the rule.” But critics say she engages in “dog-whistle politics” to hard-right voters. (Guardian)

Migrants Stuck On Ship: Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, also the country’s interior minister and leader of the far-right League, is under investigation for his role in refusing to let 134 migrants disembark from an Italian coast guard vessel docked in Sicily. Salvini wanted assurances from other countries that they would take the migrants in. Once the announcement was made that a formal investigation of his role in the standoff was underway, Salvini allowed the migrants to leave the ship over the weekend. (NPR)

The Catholic Church’s CIvil War: Retired Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 77, a former Vatican ambassador to the US,  said he told Pope Francis in June 2013 that there was a thick dossier on Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, but the pope did not respond, and McCarrick continued in his role as a public emissary for the church. Vigano said for at least five years the Pope has known  McCarrick “was a corrupt man, [but] he covered for him to the bitter end.” Vigano described church hierarchy as maintaining a “conspiracy of silence not so dissimilar from the one that prevails in the mafia.” He named a string of cardinals and archbishops who he said also knew about  McCarrick. In calling for the Pope’s resignation, Vigano said, “Corruption has reached the very top of the church’s hierarchy.” (Guardian)

The American Dreaming: The Trump administration is considering freezing $3 billion in foreign aid that Congress has already approved. Foreign aid regularly tops the list of the most unpopular US government programs and is one of the few federal programs that a near-majority of Americans support cutting. One researcher questioned whether this would be the case if typical Americans understood just how well-off they are compared to typical people in the rest of the world. Here are hints about the study’s outcome: the average US resident estimated the global median individual income is about $20,000 a year; actually, it’s about $2,100 a year. Americans typically place themselves in the top 37 percent of the world’s income distribution; actually, the vast majority of US residents rank comfortably in the top 10 percent. (WaPo)

– “Horrific deaths, brutal treatment: Mental illness in America’s jails: A comprehensive Virginian-Pilot investigation” (Virginian-Pilot)

– “A Truckload of Nike Shoes, Left as ‘Bait,’ Stings Chicago: Even in a city rife with distrust of law enforcement, residents were shocked by the sting operation: A tractor-trailer filled with Nike sneakers parked in an impoverished neighborhood on the South Side.” (NYT)

– “A Mother’s Zip Code Could Signal Whether Her Baby Will Be Born Too Early:Every year, more than 400,000 women in America have babies who are preterm, low birthweight, or who die before their first birthday.” (Atlantic)

– “The truth about the Trump economy: Did Trump unleash an economic miracle, or take credit for Obama’s work?” (Vox)

– “Air Guitarists Compete For Fame And Glory At World Championships” And that fame and glory is just as real as their guitar. (NPR)

– “No amount of alcohol is good for your overall health, global study says” We know…shut up. (CNN)

– “America’s Invisible Pot Addicts: More and more Americans are reporting near-constant cannabis use, as legalization forges ahead.” (Atlantic)

– “Need More Self-Control? Try a Simple Ritual: Study finds an unusual technique for eating less” (Scientific American)

– “How To Survive A 10,000-Foot Fall” Gravity can be a real jerk sometimes. (NPR)

– “Money Really Does Lead to a More Satisfying Life” Money can’t buy happiness but it can literally buy anything else…which isn’t half bad. (NYT)

– “How to get a good night’s sleep: A science journalist spent months researching sleep. Here’s what he found.” (Vox)

– “Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound” Wh need to rea boo whe yo ca jus skim it? (Guardian)

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