Links, Sunday 18th May

"Democracies, especially developing democracies, are bad at selling themselves. On the surface, they appear weak, riven with conflict and self-criticism. They air their corruption scandals in public. They allow public protests. By contrast, autocracies appear smooth and united—until, suddenly, they aren't." Slate

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For a given value of "real"...

"The United States military has a plan to help defend you from the zombie apocalypse. It's a real plan, made by real military personnel, using real taxpayer's money. Kotaku

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"Though Mody has been critical of her institution, she also has empathy for students who might only be realizing their privilege for the first time. “If what you’ve been told all your life is you’re really talented and you deserve what you have, it’s going to be really hard to find out ’Maybe I don’t deserve it, and all these other people equally deserve it but never even had a shot,’” she said. “Schools are not giving students a space to manage that loss of identity.”" Salon

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"We have now reached a point in history where there are more women in the Thai sex industry being abused by anti-trafficking practices than there are women exploited by traffickers." Laura Augustin

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The author of this article has been made relatively famous because his appearance on a panel recently provoked a serious disturbance at an anarchist conference. I think what he writes is problematic in various respects, notably in that he seems to push back at the idea of taking survivors at their word. But I also think some of his diagnosis of the underlying problem is correct. 

"The totalitarian impulse has found its expression, and it has proven so destructive, in part because we have consistently failed to find the means for handling disagreements, for resolving disputes, for responding to violence, and (yes) for holding each other accountable.  Without those tools, we rely––far too often––on ideological purity tests, friend-group tribalism, peer pressure, shaming and ostracism, as well as general shit-talking and internet flame wars.  Such behavior has been part of our political culture for a long time." Toward Freedom

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"The racial lives of blind individuals disrupt the unthinking assumptions that we all make about race, whereby we naturalize the ability to see and experience racial difference as a basic part of life that is thought to be fundamental to our existence. This shows how sighted people are blinded by their sight. Vision itself seduces them into treating immediately perceptible human differences as obvious distinctions, masking the social practices that make these distinctions visible." Boston Review

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"For all their concerns with their careers, many students go into economics with an idealistic presumption that it will help them understand, question, and change the world. The best economics programs seek to foster this sort of intellectual development, to be sure, but many of them have become increasingly narrow and arid. Economic-history courses were once standard; now they are much rarer. Courses in the history of economic thought and alternative approaches to economics were once pretty common; today, they are an endangered species." New Yorker

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