The Atlantic: Why Trump Supporters Hate Being Called Racists

As speakers mounted their defenses of the president, it seemed apparent that supporters were cheering them on as a means of affirming not just Trump, but also themselves. Because to accuse a politician of holding virulent racist beliefs is also, if only implicitly, to condemn his or her voters of harboring those same tendencies.

And that’s what the rally-goers I spoke to last night seemed most nonplussed by—not so much that Trump had been roundly condemned in recent days as a racist, or a bigot, but that they, by virtue of association, had been as well. But rather than distancing them from Trump, the accusations have only seemed to strengthen their support of this president. To back down, they suggested, would be to bow down to the scourge of political correctness. [...]

When I asked Roseanna and Amy whether they would join in a “Send her back!” chant were it to take place that night, both women said no, but out of deference to Trump. “He apologized for that, so I think us as Trump supporters will respect him for that,” Roseanna said. She then shared her thoughts on the chant’s target, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who came to America as a refugee from Somalia.

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FiveThirtyEight: Why So Many House Republicans Are Retiring, And Why More Could Be On The Way

And given the high number of Republican retirements from the House in 2018 — at least 23, according to our count — which marked the most “pure” GOP retirements (in other words, excluding those who left to seek another office) since the 2008 election, we wanted to better understand what is driving Republican retirements this year. So here’s a look at how the members voted (including how often they were in line with the president’s stated position), the makeup of their districts and the margin by which they won reelection in 2018: [...]

As you can see, these retirements have come from very different corners of the GOP. All but one of them has voted overwhelmingly with Trump during the 116th Congress, but the members range from being quite moderate to fairly conservative, based on the ideological measure DW-Nominate. And although the partisan lean of all these districts is at least somewhat Republican, the retirees also experienced a mix of results in 2018, ranging from extremely narrow wins to easy victories. But broadly speaking, these retirements fall into three main groups — those who have disagreed with the president, those who faced tough reelection odds and those who would likely lose their seniority status. Some members, of course, fall into more than one category. [...]

Of course, these early retirements don’t necessarily signal a wave of future exits. But considering we’re still many months away from passing the deadlines to run for federal office in all 50 states, the retirement train may keep chugging along in the coming weeks. Other rumored potential retirees include veteran members like 17-term Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, who also voted to condemn the president’s tweets. More possible retirees include the two other Republicans holding onto seats Clinton won in 2016 — New York Rep. John Katko and Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick. In fact, Fitzpatrick, who also voted to condemn Trump’s tweets, already has a prospective primary challenger lining up to take him on for being insufficiently pro-Trump. There’s also the fact that the last time a party flipped the House in a presidential cycle was in 1952. With that history in mind, as well as the misery of minority status in a hyper-partisan atmosphere on Capitol Hill, don’t be shocked if more Republicans decide to exit stage right.

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The Guardian: He, she, or ... ? Gender-neutral pronouns reduce biases – study

According to the report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, those who used gender-neutral pronouns for the cartoon task were more likely to use non-male names in their short story. The gender-neutral pronoun also appeared to improve positive feelings towards LGBT people. The word hen, the researchers believe, helped to combat mental biases that favoured men, and raise awareness of other genders.

Sabine Sczesny, a professor of social psychology at the University of Bern, said the research was further evidence that gender-inclusive language could reduce gender-biases and “contribute to the promotion of gender and LGBT equality and tolerance”. [...]

“From at least the mid-nineteenth century onwards, new coinages have attempted to provide English with a grammatically uncontroversial gender-neutral singular pronoun and related adjectives,” said Jonathan Dent, senior assistant editor at the OED. “American writers of the 1860s and 1870s gave us (s)he or s/he and ze, while hir, first suggested in the form hier in 1910, was embraced by the Californian Sacramento Bee newspaper, which used it as an alternative to him or her and his or her between 1920 and the late 1940s.

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The Guardian: Why are thirtysomethings lonely? Because society doesn’t value friendship

Millennials aren’t just the poorest generation; they are also the loneliest. According to data from YouGov, 30% of millennials (those born between 1982 and 1999) say they always or often feel lonely, compared with 20% of Gen X and 15% of baby boomers. Also, 22% of millennials say they have no friends, which is a significantly higher percentage than those in older generations. [...]

Our culture is based around celebrating romantic and familial milestones: engagements, weddings, christenings. We are not taught to venerate or celebrate friendship in the same way we are romantic relationships. We are not taught that friendships can be just as complex, if not more so, than romantic couplings; that losing a friend can be as heartbreaking as losing a lover. So, when we get to a point in our lives when our friendships start to change, there is no wonder it can feel so lonely.

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The Atlantic: The Death Rattle of White Supremacy

Like a number of other recent attacks, at least two of these incidents appear to be connected to an ideological infrastructure that nurtures and mainstreams hate against people of color. The El Paso shooter allegedly wrote a four-page note to explain his deadly rampage. The author of the manifesto claimed that he was inspired to target Hispanics after reading the manifesto of the Christchurch, New Zealand, terrorist who attacked two mosques and killed 51 people in March. He wanted to kill Hispanic immigrants as an “act of preservation” to reclaim his country from “destruction,” he explained. He referred to Hispanics as “invaders with high birth rates” and expressed his fear of “shameless race mixers,” “the threat of the Hispanic voting bloc,” and the “cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by invasion.”

The manifesto expresses extreme versions of a fear that has also been expressed by prominent political figures. President Donald Trump used invasion to describe a caravan of immigrants trying to cross the border. The Fox News host Tucker Carlson has called immigrants “invaders” who “pollute” the country and make it dirtier. In the past few weeks, President Trump told four congresswomen of color, all U.S. citizens, to go back to where they came from. He stood onstage at a campaign rally while the crowd chanted “Send her back!” for 13 seconds. He retweeted Katie Hopkins, a British extremist who has called migrants “cockroaches” and called for a “final solution” for Muslims. Some Trump supporters now openly flash white-power signs in front of cameras. [...]

As America becomes a majority-minority country, the nation will experience more racial anxiety, which was the primary reason many voters went for Trump in 2016. If you have been in power your whole life, equality looks like oppression. Some white Americans feel that people of color are “replacing” them with each success, each publication, and each promotion. Those who have historically been marginalized, excluded, or cast as permanent sidekicks, though, finally feel that we have the chance to taste the American dream, which in my home tastes like goat biryani.

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