Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 203

Procrastination: A Time-Honored Tradition

Konnikova chronicles how dilly-dallying “dates back to the very beginnings of civilization”:

As early as 1400 B.C., [psychologist Piers] Steel told me, ancient Egyptians were struggling with basic time management. “Friend, stop putting off work and allow us to go home in good time,” read some hieroglyphs, translated by the University of Toronto Egyptologist Ronald Leprohon. Six hundred years later, in 800 B.C., the early Greek poet Hesiod voiced a similar feeling, warning us not to “put your work off till tomorrow and the day after, for a sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor one who puts off his work.” In 44 B.C., Cicero deemed “slowness and procrastination” always “hateful.” …

The sentiment survived intact through more recent times. In 1751, Samuel Johnson remarked, “The folly of allowing ourselves to delay what we know cannot be finally escaped is one of the general weaknesses which, in spite of the instruction of moralists, and the remonstrances of reason, prevail to a greater or lesser degree in every mind; even they who most steadily withstand it find it, if not the most violent, the most pertinacious of their passions, always renewing its attacks, and, though often vanquished, never destroyed.” He concluded that it was “natural,” if not praiseworthy or desirable, “to have particular regard to the time present.”

Darger’s Dark Art

Abigail Welhouse viewed the work of outsider artist Henry Darger at New York’s Andrew Edlin Gallery. She considers how his background informed his strange and poignant work:

Henry Darger was locked up in the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children because of “self-abuse,” the preferred early-1900s euphemism for masturbation. He worked as a janitor, and it wasn’t until he died that his landlord discovered yards upon yards of scrolls in his apartment, including often-disturbing artwork and a 15,000-page novel. The images form a fractured fairy tale, familiar and yet completely their own thing. The cheerful colors manage a melancholy. When the children smile, it’s only because they don’t know what horrors may come next. …

I wonder how Darger felt, living as an artist in secret. His remarkable talent was hidden from the people who saw him every day, who looked over at him and made their own assumptions. Meanwhile, his head held gorgeous, gruesome masterpieces.

(Photo of section of Henry Darger’s “The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion” at an outsider art exhibition in Lausanne, Switzerland, via Flickr user cometstarmoon)

Truvada And Women

It’s been a telling facet of the debate so far that the potential for the drug among women has been absent. This is often the case with AIDS drugs – the gay white rich men pioneer the treatments and only then do others get in on the action. But in some ways, it seems to me, the liberating potential of the anti-HIV drug is even greater for many women, especially in the developing world. A huge factor in their risk profile is the fact that their sexual partners often refuse to use condoms, and, in patriarchal societies, women are put at risk. Truvada might help shift that power differential. Two steps that could speed that process:

WHO needs to quickly issue guidance on PrEP for all of the populations that can benefit. The data are strong enough to warrant this move, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently showed with its guidance that recommended that doctors consider oral PrEP for anyone at high risk of HIV infection … Gilead Sciences Inc., the maker of Truvada, needs [also] to move swiftly to secure regulatory approval in countries where PrEP is most needed. This starts with the countries that hosted clinical trials, where, tragically, PrEP is now out of reach. In two of those countries, South Africa and Thailand, Gilead recently filed for approval. This is an important and welcome step but the process needs to happen much faster and in more places. That requires both more aggressive efforts by Gilead and the willingness of national regulatory authorities to quickly review and approve the company’s applications.

The sooner the better. Update from a reader:

As a biomedical journalist, I have written about HIV for 20+ years. The US is the only place where regulators have approved a Truvada indication for PrEP; that label indication is not approved in Africa, Europe, even Canada. So it is appropriate to deal with PrEP in the context of the US. The CDC estimates that women constitute 20% of new infections and 24% of persons living with HIV in the US. The only data we have on who was prescribed PrEP was presented at ICAAC last September. In the first year after approval, 1774 persons started PrEP; 48% were women.

So it is decidedly NOT true that rich white gay men have been getting PrEP at the expense of other less favored socio-demographics.

Sneaker Sustainability

Bonnie Tsui spotlights the footwear industry’s embrace of knitting:

[K]nit technology just might transform the entire traditional shoemaking process. Athletic shoes make up 30 percent of all footwear sales, and Nike and Adidas dominate, with$14.5 billion and $9.5 billion in sales, respectively, in 2013. Widespread use of the knitting technique could boost the industry’s efficiency—cutting down on materials, labor, shipping, and time, as the products can be made start-to-finish in one place. In its latest sustainability report, Nike states that a Flyknit running shoe is made with 80 percent less waste than a typical Nike design. Consider that Americans buy an average of seven pairs of shoes a year—that’s more than two billion new pairs annually—and you begin to see the difference that a change in manufacturing could make. …

With knitting, you start with a single thread, and you only use as much yarn as you need. “Picture a flat pattern in a butterfly shape,” says [James] Carnes [the global creative director of sport performance for Adidas]. “With the knitting process, you only make that. That’s the breakthrough. You can build into the single knitted layer all the functionality you need, by adjusting the density of the knit in different areas”—a tighter weave to give the foot more arch support, say, or a thinner, breathable weave to create more airflow.

Putin Isn’t Backing Down

Janine Davidson is distressed:

[T]he lack of de-escalation and the media war being conducted by Putin are both alarming signals to the international community that this tragedy has not fractured the resolve of the pro-Russian separatists, nor those in the shadows supporting them. Since the downing of MH-17, pro-Russian separatists have used surface-to-air missiles to bring down two more Ukrainian military jets; for now, there seems no interest in dialing down hostilities.

Eugene Rumer advocates talking to Putin:

It is impossible to rewind this tape, but even at this late point in the crisis there is no substitute for talks and compromise. A military solution is out of the question. Putin has made it clear that he does not want to send his army into Ukraine. He has also made it clear that he can and fully intends to keep Kyiv from winning the war in Eastern Ukraine by sending more fighters and more weapons there. At this point freezing the conflict in place and then looking for a way out of it appears as the only possible option. But that requires talking by all parties to all parties without preconditions. Piling on sanctions and arming Ukraine will only prolong this crisis.

Heidi Hardt downplays the value of direct negotiations between Russia and NATO:

The least costly but least effective route would be for NATO to reopen formal communications with Russia. As of May 1, NATO officially suspended all cooperation with Russia, including cooperation on terrorism, proliferation and other areas related to peace and security. As James Goldgeier writes, Russian President Vladimir Putin ultimately ‘wants instability, not stability, in Ukraine,’ suggesting that pressure for a negotiated solution may have some value. Putin, however, has shown resilience to both diplomacy and targeted sanctions in past crises, such as the 2008 Georgia conflict. This suggests that a return to dialogue or even offering Russia the benefit of reengaging in civilian cooperation would have limited value for convincing the government to stop arming and supporting the separatists.

Masha Gessen posits that Putin “has not lost his resolve to take eastern Ukraine, nor has it been affirmed—Ukraine has very little to do with this story at all”:

It’s not Ukraine that Putin has been waging war against: It’s the West. And if you analyze the Russian president’s statements and actions in the past week through the prism of Putin’s great anti-Western campaign, you will find very few contradictions in them—and even less reason to hope for peace.

Over the course of two and a half years, since starting his third term as Russian president against the backdrop of mass protests, Putin has come to both embody and rely on a new, aggressively anti-Western ideology. It began with simple queer-baiting of protesters, which included accusing them of being agents of the U.S. State Department, and quickly transformed into an all-encompassing view of Russia and the world that proved shockingly powerful in uniting and mobilizing Russia. The enemy against which the country has united is the West and its contemporary values, which are seen as threatening Russia and its traditional values. It is a war of civilizations, in which Ukraine simply happened to be the site of the first all-out battle. In this picture, Russia is fighting Western expansionism in Ukraine, protecting not just itself and local Russian speakers but the world from the spread of what they call “homosfascism,” by which they mean an insistence on the universality of human rights.

An Executive Solution To Immigration?

In the face of a hopelessly deadlocked Congress, Ronald Brownstein expects Obama to act alone on the border crisis and on immigration reform more broadly. His chosen course of action, Brownstein adds, could have major consequences for the Republicans:

The president can’t provide [illegal immigrants] citizenship without action by Congress. But using the same theory of “deferred action” that he employed in 2012 for children brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents, he could apply prosecutorial discretion to allow some groups of the undocumented (such as adults here illegally with children who are U.S. citizens) to obtain work permits and function openly. Though the administration is still debating the reach of Obama’s authority, some top immigration advocates hope he could legalize up to half of the undocumented population.

Such a move would infuriate Republicans, both because the border crisis has deepened their conviction that any move toward legalization inspires more illegal migration and because the president would be bypassing Congress. They would likely challenge an Obama order through both legislation and litigation. Every 2016 GOP presidential contender could feel compelled to promise to repeal the order. Those would be momentous choices for a party already struggling to attract Hispanics and Asian-Americans.

Francis Wilkinson agrees that executive action is the only way forward, even though it will infuriate conservatives:

If Obama defers deportation for a large number of undocumented immigrants, calls for his impeachment may expand beyond the back benches of Congress. But Obama has already deferred deportation for the young “Dreamers” who qualified for his 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. When House Speaker John Boehner outlined his proposed lawsuit against the president for allegedly exceeding his powers, Boehner, no doubt mindful of his party’s poor reputation among Hispanic and Asian voters, focused on Obama’s implementation of the health-care law and left DACA out of the complaint.

A broad amnesty would no doubt inspire legal actions and political recriminations. But Obama is already reviled by anti-immigration activists and Republicans, who will be no more willing to compromise tomorrow than today. Perhaps foolishly, Obama whetted the appetites of pro-immigration forces for bold executive action. Their energy and expectations are high. With Democrats on the cusp of solidifying Hispanic support, perhaps for a very long time, the prospect of alienating Hispanic voters through timidity or inaction may now be the more dangerous route.

Face Of The Day

Former House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) testifies before the House Financial Services Committee on July 23, 2014. Frank testified during the committee’s hearing on “Assessing the Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act Four Years Later.’ By Win McNamee/Getty Images. Dish coverage of the anniversary here. Watch Barney address critics of the law in our Ask Anything series.

The Aftershocks Of Russian Decline

Josh Well tries to make sense of Putin’s appeal within Russia. During his travels there, Well detected “an undercurrent of aggrievement; a sense of having to restart after seven decades of the Soviet State, having to retrace steps back to the path the rest of the world had been on—and then struggle to catch up; a feeling that the chance for Russia to remake itself had been hampered by the hegemony of the West; a knowledge that the county was less than it could be, should be”:

That’s a feeling a great number of Americans can relate to: not only the frustration with growing inequality, but the sense that our country is also somehow becoming smaller than it should be. Here, when our sense of self is threatened, we turn to historical mythology that buttresses our belief in who we are: The American Dream, our forefathers wrestling with what that would be, the presidents who, through our beloved democracy, shaped how we understand it now—FDR, JFK, Reagan. We look for the next in that mold.

But Russians don’t have that history.

Theirs is one in which revolutionary uprisings led to instability before being channeled by a system of control; one in which democracy is associated with a time of devastating economic collapse. We all know the long history of Russian strongmen—from Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin—but can you imagine having that history as our own, having those leaders to look back on? Can you imagine our own country collapsed, our own inequality increased, our own dreams squeezed? Maybe you can, all too well. Now imagine that we had a leader who not only gave us hope, promised us change, but delivered.

Given that state of affairs, Keating is unsure “that U.S. and European leaders hoping to alter the Russian government’s behavior can count on public opinion working in their favor.” What might make a difference:

The bigger concern for Putin may be reports that Russian business leaders are furious about the economic impact of the war in Ukraine, Western sanctions, and Russia’s increasingly isolated political position. So far we haven’t seen any major business or political figures publicly breaking ranks. If that starts to happen, it will be time to start talking about whether this was a game-changer.

Paying For Israel’s Permanent War

Reminding us that the US subsidizes Israel to the tune of over $3 billion a year, Jesse Walker scrutinizes the case for this assistance and finds it lacking:

You hear two sets of arguments for the aid packages. The first is the one you’d expect: With some exceptions, which we’ll note in a moment, people who back Israeli policy tend to want America to fund it. The second comes from the folks who feel the aid gives Washington leverage that it can use to work for peace. America’s checks do give D.C. a greater ability to insert itself into the conflict, a fact that has led a number of Israel’s supporters as well as its critics to call for ending American aid. (Needless to say, that doesn’t mean they’d want the money to stop while the war is in progress.) Despite that power, Washington’s ability to tamp down the tensions has been, shall we say, rather limited. As my colleague Shikha Dalmia wrote a few years ago, “If money could buy peace, Israelis and Palestinians would now be holding hands and singing kumbaya.” Instead we’ve been subsidizing war.

We also pay for the clean-up afterward, David Corn adds, pointing to the $47 million humanitarian aid package the State Department announced on Monday:

According to the UNRWA, 75 of its facilities in Gaza, including schools and warehouses, have been damaged in the fighting. Presumably, some of the $15 million being sent to the agency by the United States—which covers a quarter of an emergency appeal for $60 million issued by the UNRWA—will be used to repair or replace UNRWA installations destroyed by the US-funded Israeli military.

The new package of US assistance includes $3.5 million in funding for Mercy Corps, Catholic Relief Services, and other nongovernmental organizations. According to the State Department, Mercy Corps will use some of this money to supply non-food items to displaced Palestinians and extend a short-term employment program for 3,000 people in Gaza and a “psycho-social support program” assisting about 2000 families. Catholic Relief Services will provide medical supplies and fuel for medical facilities.

(Chart via Yglesias)

Father Time’s Racial Bias

Tom Jacobs highlights new (but not the first) research showing that African-Americans “age” faster than those of other races:

“On average, the biological age for blacks was 53.16 years,” compared to 49.84 years for whites, the researchers report. After controlling for socioeconomic status and health behaviors (they note that obesity rates are higher for blacks than whites, and excess weight can “contribute to progressive breakdowns in biological tissues and systems”), this gap shrank somewhat, but was still pronounced: 52.72 years for blacks, compared to 49.89 years for whites.

Previous researchers have pointed to the corrosive influence of racism as a possible explanation for the poorer health of blacks in America. A small study released in January found blacks who had experienced racism and come to accept (even unconsciously) the concept of racial inferiority had shorter leukocyte telomeres—a different biomarker of aging.

Levine and Crimmins did not attempt to measure negative health effects of racism, but their results are consistent with the theory.