We're Back, Baby
I almost broke down and became a bucket hat guy today.
Almost.
I bring you greetings from Larnaca, the sun drenched coastal capital of Cyprus. We are closing out our summer here before returning to our first crop of meetings on Monday.
A ton of newsletter-y stuff transpired since I last opined, so I want to tick through a few things before we head out for our evening shenanigans. Now that I’m back on this side of the planet, the newsletter should return to its regular Sunday schedule.
In the July 7 edition, we took up the issue of President Biden’s fitness for a second term. Man, that feels like ages ago. In the interim, he courageously bowed out of the presidential race. In an act of selflessness, he passed up his shot at recapturing the most important office in US society.
He realized his policies were more popular than he was and did the hard thing. That’s a testament to his character.
Since then, VP Harris has consolidated the support of Democratic leaders and yesterday afternoon (local time) she announced that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz would be her running mate. If you believe polls, they are now up on Donald Trump and JD Vance. This turnaround in the electoral situation shows the wisdom of Biden’s decision. Harris is running on the economic and policy record of the Biden presidency but she is a more compelling avatar to the public, is a better communicator regarding administration policies, and isn’t 81 years-old running for a second term.
In the June 16 newsletter, we talked about summer reading. I finished Hugh Howey’s Shift yesterday. It is the uneven second book in the Silo series. Silo was adapted by Apple TV+ in 2023 and season one of the show covers the first half of the first book, Wool. I enjoyed Wool but found the ending lacking. I found Shift to be compelling at times but uneven. The book leaps between several timelines and in the end spends too much energy in places I care less about and not enough where my interests lie. I reckon I will pick up the third book Dust at some point but I want to see how far they get in the story in season two, which is scheduled for a November release.
In that same newsletter, I previewed the book Tyranny of the Minority by Levitsky and Ziblatt. Hope and I both read the book this summer. She tore through it faster than I did and I think enjoyed it more. The aspect I appreciated most was in the first half, as they laid out why multi-racial democracies are so hard to get right and why they begin to fray when the numerical minority becomes or approaches minority status. This was also a central theme of How Civil Wars Start, where Barbara F. Walter referred to the “aggrieved” minority as “Sons of the Soil.” Levitsky and Ziblatt do a good job explaining the international origins of the obstruction, parliamentary skullduggery, and judicial nonsense that’s rife in US politics. But the weakest part of the book is the closing with their proposed solutions. I think they greatly, maybe naively, overestimate the willingness of various factions to cede power and go quietly into the demographic night, and I think I’ll leave it at that.
In another prior edition, we discussed ableism and disability access in and around Tacoma. As many of you know, my mom was gravely injured by an intoxicated driver, and is dependent on a wheelchair to get around town. I spent time with her this summer traversing much of the city.
We spent a lot of time on Hilltop and shout out to the folks at Ice Cream Social, Red Elm, and Le-Le’s on MLK, which have become family favorites because of the accessibility of their facilities. On the other hand, aspects of mom’s neighborhood still aren’t accessible. Businesses with narrow single doors are a particular bugaboo.
Infrastructurally, Hilltop, like much of the city, is filled with buckled pavement, dead-end sidewalks, and intersections lacking curb cuts. One thing that I wish more people internalized is that if you live long enough, eventually everyone will deal with a disability. Making our society more accessible is an investment in everyone’s collective future, not just my mom’s.
I’m gonna hit these streets for the evening but this Sunday I am finally going to tackle this bananas AF piece about tween influencers in The Wall Street Journal that I’ve been wanting to write about since June.
Τα λέμε την Κυριακή (see you Sunday).
As always, if you have any thoughts or feedback about the newsletter, I welcome it, and I really appreciate it when folks share the newsletter with their friends.