BBC4 A Point of View: Napoleons and Normalcy

"I have lived long enough now", writes Adam Gopnik, "to see several absolutely horrific epochs come and go...looking much less absolutely horrific once they're gone.

"He reflects on how Donald Trump's presidency will affect our sense of what constitutes normality.

"Are we every day normalizing behaviour", he asks, "that will bring an end to normalcy itself".

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The Conversation: How the humble potato fuelled the rise of liberal capitalism

The efforts in 2012-13 by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to ban the sale of extra large soft drinks failed precisely because critics viewed it as an intrusion into the individual’s right to make their own dietary choices. “New Yorkers need a mayor, not a nanny,” shouted a full-page advert in the New York Times. And when a school near Rotherham in northern England eliminated Turkey Twizzlers and fizzy drinks from its canteen, outraged mothers rose in protest, insisting that their children had the right to eat unhealthy food. [...]

Today’s somewhat uneasy marriage of public health and individual choice is the result of new ideas that emerged during the Enlightenment. During the 18th century, states across Europe began to rethink the bases of national wealth and strength. At the heart of these new ideas was a new appreciation of what we would now call public health. Whereas in earlier centuries rulers wished to prevent famines that might cause public unrest, in the 18th century, politicians became increasingly convinced that national strength and economic prowess required more than an obedient population disinclined to riot. [...]

Clearly, to do this required an ample supply of nourishing, healthy food. There was a growing consensus across Europe that much of the population was crippling itself with poorly chosen eating habits. For instance, the renowned Scottish physician William Buchan argued this in his 1797 book Observations Concerning the Diet of the Common People. Buchan believed that most “common people” ate too much meat and white bread, and drank too much beer. They did not eat enough vegetables. The inevitable result, he stated, was ill health, with diseases such as scurvy wreaking havoc in the bodies of working men, women and children. This, in turn, undermined British trade and weakened the nation. [...]

These potato-fanciers never suggested, however, the people should be obliged to eat potatoes. Rather, they explained, patiently, in pamphlets, public lectures, sermons and advertisements, that potatoes were a nourishing, healthy food that you, personally, would eat with enjoyment. There was no need to sacrifice one’s own well-being in order to ensure the well-being of the nation as a whole, since potatoes were perfectly delicious. Individual choice and public benefit were in perfect harmony. Potatoes were good for you, and they were good for the body politic. [...]

As in the 18th century, in today’s China the idea is that everyone – you, the state, the population as a whole – benefits from these healthy eating campaigns. If everyone pursued their own self-interest, potato advocates past and present have argued, everyone would eat more potatoes and the population as a whole would be healthier. These healthier people would be able to work harder, the economy would grow and the state would be stronger. Everyone would benefit, if only everyone just followed their own individual self-interest.

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Jacobin Magazine: Identity Politics Can Only Get Us So Far

A scrupulous review of what socialist and working-class movements have usually demanded — universal health care, free education, public housing, democratic control of the means of production — doesn’t easily square with how identity politics are typically understood. In its strictest sense, identity politics describes how marginalized people embrace previously stigmatized identities, create communities on the basis of shared attributes and interests (which are typically held to be essential and unchanging), and rally either for autonomy or for rights and recognitions. I would take this argument a step further and say that even the new left social movements that gave birth to the term identity politics have not always fit this mold. [...]

Carl Wittman’s influential broadside, “A Gay Manifesto,” published in 1970 by the Red Butterfly brigade of the Gay Liberation Front, gives us useful insight into the early militants’ thinking. Far from celebrating the gay ghetto, Wittman treats San Francisco as a “refugee camp.” Rejecting gay marriage as a political goal, he calls instead for alternatives to matrimony. And while stressing the political necessity of coming out, Wittman underscores the tentativeness of identity with glances at a liberated, bisexual future: “We’ll be gay until everyone has forgotten that it’s an issue.” Likewise, Dennis Altman’s 1971 polemic, Homosexual Oppression and Liberation, concludes with a chapter titled “The End of the Homosexual.”

Under the rubric of liberation, activists embraced identity in order to abolish it. Marxist ideas about class struggle — which similarly culminate with the abolition of social classes — influenced their ideas. They rallied around demands for adequate income, housing, medical care, ecological well-being, and meaningful employment. Their liberation struggle was ultimately a revolutionary call to action with a universalist view of freedom. [...]

All of the new left social movements trace similar trajectories. Over the course of the 1970s, the women’s movement, the black movement, and the gay movement all retreated from their original, radical outlooks to take on essentially liberal worldviews. As political imaginaries contracted, each began to dwell more comfortably in the house of identity. This process dovetailed with post-Fordism’s and neoliberalism’s new forms of lifestyle consumerism. Periodic upsurges in radicalism occasionally interrupted this trend, but these outbreaks were quieted, domesticated, and reabsorbed back into the main movement.

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Haaretz: Israel's Top Court Says Same-sex Surrogacy Law Discriminatory, but Defers Ruling

In his interim ruling, Joubran noted that the court feels "no small amount of discomfort" from the current state of the law. "It is hard to agree with a situation in which single people and same-sex couples are prevented from exercising their right to become parents as part of surrogacy agreements. The law grants this right to one group but excludes another one due to its identity, preferences, orientations or life style. [...]

Two weeks ago the Knesset passed the first reading of a different bill, which would allow single women to contract surrogacy services only if they suffered from medical problems that precluded them from carrying a pregnancy and only using their own ova. It does not offer anything to the petitioners in the case before the court. The court, nonetheless, said it would wait to see the legislation put on the books before ruling. [...]

In October 2014 the Knesset passed a first reading of a bill sponsored by then-Health Minister Yael German that was based on the recommendations of the Mor-Yosef Committee, but stated that not only single women, but single men and homosexual couples could arrange for surrogate births in Israel. Six weeks after that vote, the Knesset was dissolved and a law which would have allowed the next Knesset to pick up the legislative process where it was left off did not apply, leaving it on the Knesset floor.

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The Atlantic: What Does "Late Capitalism" Really Mean?

The cynical #latecapitalism meme going around social media calls out the inequities and absurdities of the modern economy. Google search interest in the phrase has more than doubled in the past year. In this episode of Unpresidented, Atlantic contributing editor Annie Lowrey explains where the phrase comes from, how it got so popular, and the deeper meaning of its current usage.