Vox: America’s racial future is California’s present

America is changing, and it’s changing fast. People feel that. And everything we know about identity and politics suggests this kind of transition will push America into a fragile and even dangerous place. Look at Donald Trump and the ideas that powered his rise — this transition has already pushed America into a fragile and even dangerous place. “Slowing massive demographic change is not fascist; it’s conservative,” warns Andrew Sullivan. [...]

Eric Garcetti is the mayor of LA. He’s its first Jewish mayor and its second Mexican-American mayor. He was reelected in 2017 with a stunning 81 percent of the vote. I’ve always found him to be unusually thoughtful on questions of diversity and national identity, perhaps because of the place he lives and works, and perhaps because of how many of those questions are bound up in his own biography. [...]

I think Democrats are very good at speaking about the discomfort of what it means to be a person of color, of having a different relationship with the police department. But on the other side of it, Democrats have lost the more national vision of a national identity. We run away from too often just embracing patriotism, of speaking about the United States as a great nation and a great people and a great country.  

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Bloomberg: The Millennial Crown Prince Running Saudi Arabia

Known as Mr. Everything for his deep influence in all aspects of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is radically changing his country before he even takes his seat on the throne. Bloomberg’s Profiles takes a closer look the most powerful young man in the region.

Quartz: Happiness doesn’t change much in long marriages. But something else does

To answer that question, sociologists Paul Amato from Pennsylvania State University and Spencer James of Brigham Young University examined data from 1,617 participants in the Marital Instability over the Life Course survey, a longitudinal study of marriage in the US conducted from 1980 to 2000. All respondents were married at the start of the survey; by the end, about half of them still were, the rest having divorced (19%), become widowed (5%), or dropped out of the study. [...]

In couples headed for divorce, reported happiness declined continuously and precipitously until the marriage’s end. Couples that stayed together saw a moderate decrease in happiness through the first decades of their partnership as well, with a slight uptick around the 30-year mark. [...]

Conflict, for instance, declined dramatically and continuously over the course of a life together. After a dip in the first decades when work and family obligations consume a couple’s time, the frequency of shared activities increased. By the fourth decade of marriage, couples reported spending as much time dining, socializing, and having fun together as they did when they were newlyweds. [...]

Divorced women reported more unhappiness, fewer shared activities, and more conflict than their former husbands did. Women in long-term marriages reported less happiness and more conflict at the start of the marriage, though eventually their views of marital conflict converged with their spouse’s.

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Vintage Everyday: 6 Racist, Sexist and Dishonest Vintage Advertisements That Seem Shocking Today (March 04, 2018)

These vintage advertisements are from Beyond Belief, a book by art collector and former advertising executive Charles Saatchi, which brings together the most shocking advertising campaigns of the last century. From racism and sexism to dodgy health claims, nothing was out of bounds for the real-life Mad Men.

“In the middle of the last century, marketing men had few qualms about creating brutally offensive advertisements...It proved a grimly amusing task to find so many examples that I could collect together; they provide a clear insight into the world of the ‘Mad Men’ generation and the consumers they were addressing. Although many of the advertisements selected are alarming they present an important portrait of society in the 1940s and ‘50s.” - Charles Saatchi.

Misogynistic, racist, unscientific, dishonest and just plain bizarre, these ads demonstrate how our attitudes towards women, race, tobacco, personal hygiene and drugs have changed over the years. 

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The Guardian: Blame for the ‘migrant crisis’ lies with national politicians, not the EU

To be sure, the EU failed to anticipate the scope of the 2015 migration crisis. But today’s dismal turn of events has more to do with how national politicians have behaved than with the European project itself. Politicians should explain the complexities of migration rather than pander to anxieties and alarm citizens. Throughout history, Europe’s very fabric was born of age-old movements of entire populations. With so many desperate people on the move today, seeking safety or simply a better life for themselves, migration cannot simply be stopped. Instead it must be managed.

But there’s an obvious discrepancy between what the EU commission is proposing and what national governments are ready to do. For instance, Brussels institutions have published a plan for Africa, calling for spending of €32bn (£28bn) over six years and focusing particularly on infrastructure. Will the leaders of EU states accept it, even though it’s a bare minimum? Or will they try to take the easier route of building walls and barriers in order to allay the very fears some of them have fanned?  

Look at the facts: the number of migrants arriving in Europe by sea has dropped spectacularly – in Italy, by over 70% compared to last year. But that reality has gone almost unnoticed. There is no large-scale migration crisis in Europe now. Instead, what we’re seeing are domestic political crises in which the theme of migration is exploited by demagogues. [...]

The dominance of the nation state also goes some way to explaining why the needs of citizens – in terms of jobs and social policies – are paid insufficient attention. Take the Maastricht treaty. It has been essentially used in the name of economic and fiscal rigour – a topic dear to the heart of the conservative European People’s party, which has long acted as the de facto ruler in Brussels. That is largely what has turned the eurozone into a bogeyman for people who care about social justice. But here’s the thing: only the budget deficit and GDP parameters of the Maastricht treaty were enacted. The parts that pointed to social policies have been left to languish. Who is aware today that the Lisbon treaty, in article 3, talks of goals relating to social progress and economic growth, and that it even mentions full employment?

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