Photo credit: Neville Crabbe
I am visiting family this week for the first time since the pandemic began: a neighbor took the photo above, right before I left, in the parking lot behind my home in a small city in Western Massachusetts.
If you want, catch up on posts you haven’t had time to read-Monday’s conversation with Karen L. Cox about why Confederate monuments are fake history has been burning up the internet.
Everybody needs a break, right? And a snack! But even though it’s summer, don’t eat garbage.
Claire Bond Potter is Professor of Historical Studies at The New School for Social Research and co-Executive Editor of Public Seminar. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020).
Short takes:
The President Who Cried Wolf keeps claiming that he is juggling offers from for “the book of all books,” but as it turns out, no major publisher will touch him. As Alex Shepherd write, “It’s hard to escape the strong impression that any book he might produce would focus heavily” on conspiracy theories of various kinds and lies about the 2020 election, “a third rail for any respectable publisher.” (The New Republic, June 16, 2021)
“The only way to protect voting rights over the long term is federal legislation.” writes Judd Legum at Popular Information. I think that’s right: states have made a hash of it over and over. Now Texas Republicans are turning on a key provision of a bill that failed a few weeks ago when the Democratic caucus in the legislature walked out. A delegation is coming to Capitol Hill this week to ask the federal government to act. (June 15, 2021)
As it turns out, a Green United States produces jobs. The trade-off is that they are dirty, dangerous, and difficult jobs and, workers will have to move regularly around the country to benefit from them. Kim Hart at Axios gets very specific about what infrastructure means to the people who build it. (June 15, 2021)