The Conversation: Why losing a dog can be harder than losing a relative or friend

Many times, I’ve had friends guiltily confide to me that they grieved more over the loss of a dog than over the loss of friends or relatives. Research has confirmed that for most people, the loss of a dog is, in almost every way, comparable to the loss of a human loved one. Unfortunately, there’s little in our cultural playbook—no grief rituals, no obituary in the local newspaper, no religious service—to help us get through the loss of a pet, which can make us feel more than a bit embarrassed to show too much public grief over our dead dogs.  [...]

Our strong attachment to dogs was subtly revealed in a recent study of “misnaming.” Misnaming happens when you call someone by the wrong name, like when parents mistakenly calls one of their kids by a sibling’s name. It turns out that the name of the family dog also gets confused with human family members, indicating that the dog’s name is being pulled from the same cognitive pool that contains other members of the family. (Curiously, the same thing rarely happens with cat names.) [...]

The loss of a dog can also seriously disrupt an owner’s daily routine more profoundly than the loss of most friends and relatives. For owners, their daily schedules—even their vacation plans—can revolve around the needs of their pets. Changes in lifestyle and routine are some of the primary sources of stress.

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Bloomberg: Why Trump Gets Away With Lying

But more than 50 years ago, an American sociologist and political scientist predicted that extreme social conditions might make it possible for a vulgar, lying demagogue to appeal to a broad group of ordinary people. Three psychologists have now run experiments reproducing the effect in a set of volunteers holding a mock election — demonstrating how Trump’s vulgarity can be a feature, not a flaw, and a key part of his appeal to a huge swath of America that feels abandoned by the economic and political establishment.

As Oliver Hahl of Carnegie Mellon and colleagues note, a survey taken after the 2016 U.S. Election found that Trump supporters don’t believe many of his lies, especially his most egregious ones. When Trump claimed that global warming is a Chinese hoax, most recognized it as false, but they didn’t much care. They saw his language as expressing deeper truths. [...]

Lipset suggested that a crisis of legitimacy would have psychological consequences — and set the stage for a lying demagogue to be perceived by many people as bravely speaking suppressed truths. In normal conditions, voters shun any candidate who obviously lies and abuses widely shared social norms. But in a crisis, Lipset argued, disenfranchised voters may see such violations as a symbolic protest, and a deliberate poke in the eye to the elites they have come to despise.

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Bloomberg: A Brexit Choice Between Bad and Worse

Staying in the European Union's customs union after Brexit, or joining some specially tailored version of it, would leave the U.K. with a worse deal than the one it currently enjoys as a full member of the EU. All Remainers think so, and a good many Leavers would probably agree. Proposing such an outcome comes close to admitting that the whole Brexit project has gone wrong. It has gone wrong — but, understandably, that's something May and her colleagues are unwilling to say. [...]

The problem is that a customs union stops the U.K. from striking new deals of its own, negating one of the main supposed benefits of Brexit. Worse, Britain would be bound by EU trade deals with third parties, despite having no vote on them, and no guarantee of sharing in the reciprocal benefits the deals would confer on EU partners. Membership in the EU is already unpopular with roughly half the country. Such a grossly asymmetrical arrangement would be even more toxic. [...]

Exactly how this catastrophic failure of leadership will be resolved is hard to say. No forthright pro-EU candidate for the highest office has emerged in either party. The country seems exhausted, and calls for a second referendum to reverse the Brexit choice are falling on deaf ears. Nothing short of a major political crisis seems capable of breaking the collective paralysis.

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The Atlantic: A Cassandra Cry Against Pope Francis

From the start, there was controversy. Before the first synod was even over, Vatican leaders hosted a press conference and hinted at a surprising possibility: Local parishes might be able to determine when remarried Catholics can receive communion, even in cases that previously would have been denied outright. According to Douthat—or more specifically, the reporters he relies on—many bishops were shocked at what they saw as a unilateral decision by Francis and a few of his liberal supporters. In the days that followed, the disagreements played out in the press, and prominent clergy staged private interventions with their colleagues. By the end, the initial findings had been softened significantly. But even at the conclusion of the second synod the next fall, the implications of the meetings remained unclear. Ultimately, it was up to the pope to synthesize the bishops’ findings.[...]

Douthat was, and is, in the latter camp. He began tossing the word “schism” around. He published a scathing Times column accusing the pope of being the “chief plotter” in the Vatican’s Renaissance-court-style politics. A large group of prominent liberal American clergy and theologians published a response letter, pointing out that Douthat does not have theological credentials, warning him of the seriousness of accusations of heresy, and arguing that his “view of Catholicism [is] unapologetically subject to a politically partisan narrative that has very little to do with what Catholicism really is.” Although Douthat’s criticism of Francis is phrased more carefully in his book than it often is in his columns, his eye-rolling is still apparent: The columnist negatively compares Francis to President Donald Trump, dangles the word “heretic,” and looks down on the pope’s management style. One of Francis’s favorite phrases is “make a mess!,” Douthat writes. “In that much he has succeeded.” [...]

While most Catholics might not disagree with Douthat’s claims about doctrine outright, some—including the pope—would likely foreground their description differently. Catholicism, like any religion, is indeed a set of principles and writings and teachings, but it is also the lived experience of the body of believers—the church, little c. Lived religion is inevitably messier than doctrine; people’s lives and human communities confound the kind of neat, logical boxes found in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica or canon law. And Catholicism offers perhaps the richest examples of diversity within one tradition. From the folk saints of Mexico to charismatic worship in Kenya, Catholic communities often push the rigid boundaries of doctrine to find a religious expression that fits their distinctive history and tradition.

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Haaretz: Jeremy Corbyn's anti-Semitism Problem Is Actually a Kremlin Complex

Corbyn's inability to understand those who consider anti-Semitism to be central as a narrative of politics and not incidental has ideological underpinnings.

In the far left’s political bubble, mainstream Jewish organisations become peripheral and unimportant, but marginal ones are publicly courted. This is why he chose to go to the alternative Jewdas Passover seder and stayed for four hours; why he wants miniscule, irrelevant groups like the Jewish Voice for Labour present at a roundtable discussion on anti-Semitism he has called with mainstream Jewish representative organizations; why he prefers groups on the far Left in Israel to the mainstream sister Labour party. [...]

With Jews, it is the exact opposite. Listening to "the people" does not count. There may well be justified criticism of the blunt-edged approach of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, but as several authoritative surveys have demonstrated, it broadly represents the Jewish community’s relationship to the State of Israel and its concern about anti-Semitism emanating from the Left.  [...]

In contrast Corbyn has perfected the expression of selective outrage. He therefore condemns Saudi Arabia for the war in Yemen, but remains silent on the protests against corruption in Iran. He praises Maduro’s Venezuela, but turns a blind eye to the hungry queuing for food, the use of force and the arrest of opposition figures.

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