Current Affairs

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Is Mocking the Deaths of Anti-Vaxxers "Necessary"? Or Cruel and Useless? Feb 03, 2022

Show notes

Michael Hiltzik is a Pulitzer Prize-winning business columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He has recently attracted a lot of (almost entirely negative) attention for a column and tweets arguing that mocking the deaths of anti-vaxxers is "necessary." Hiltzik joins to defend and explain his position to Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson, who believes that Hiltzik's stance is cruel and unhelpful. Michael argues that his argument is more nuanced than it is being characterized as. Nathan suggests that as the one who intentionally tweeted an offensive provocation, Michael is responsible for that characterization. Michael argues that dark humor is an important weapon, citing the Current Affairs article "The Necessity of Political Vulgarity." Nathan argues that while incivility can be tactically useful, directing it against people who have died of COVID does nothing to create more productive discourse on vaccines.

But what about people in positions of power who use that power to spread damaging misinformation? Are they fair game? Should we "never speak ill of the dead"? With whom must we empathize? Are some people beyond empathy? Are we to show respect for the lives of those who do not respect the lives of others? These questions are hotly debated.

Discussion of Michael's controversial column begins around 6:00. The "How to Talk to a Science Denier" interview is here.

How Segregation Was Built—And Why It's Still With Us Feb 03, 2022

Show notes

Sheryll Cashin is the author of White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality. She has been called "one of the most important civil rights scholars of our time." Her book "exposes the ways in which American policy decisions, from the early twentieth century to the present, have constructed a ‘residential caste system’ resulting in the entrapment of Black people in high-poverty neighborhoods while ‘overinvesting in affluent white space.’" In this rich conversation she talks to Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson about how racial segregation was created and why it persists. We dive deep into the mechanisms by which inequality reproduces itself from generation to generation.

How Can Socialists Get Things Done In State Government? Feb 03, 2022

Show notes

Today, in our last episode of the year, we present a hopeful discussion about what leftists can accomplish in power. Sam Bell is a Rhode Island state senator and Democratic Socialists of America member. The Boston Globe has called him "the most outspoken member" of the RI state senate, and he has tried to use his position to advance left policies in a state historically dominated by extremely conservative Democrats and a powerful political machine. In this episode, we have what is hopefully an uplifting and exciting conversation about what it's like to take on "machine politics" and why some victories are more within reach than you might think. This episode is a useful primer not only on Rhode Island politics, but on the way that leftists can win office and then use that office effectively to change the politics of their state. We talk about:

- How his state became dominated by extremely right-wing Democrats out of step with the progressive inclinations of the electorate

- Why state legislators are more powerful than you might assume, and how to use that power

- How many bills are passed without anyone scrutinizing them or exposing what they do, and why just putting in the effort to study and raise questions about bad legislation can thwart it

- How machine politicians want you to think they're more powerful than they actually are

- Why taking on the Democratic leadership can make you more popular with constituents, even if the leadership hates your guts

- Why power doesn't always work the way you think it does, and how a seemingly weak left might able to do more than it assumes

"When you do stand up and fight, sometimes you win. And when you lose, you gain power. You show that the machine is not as strong as it always was. When you have the dissent, you make it easier for the next person to stand up and dissent. And you weaken [the machine's] power. You push them to the left. When they're more afraid of the left than the right, then they move to the left." — Sam Bell

We hope that this episode can offer encouragement and inspiration to those who want to take on the establishment and build the progressive left. In 2022, we will need to work harder than ever before. If you don't think you can change things, remember that those who hold power always want to make sure the powerless do not think they can successfully challenge the status quo. But often they're weaker than they seem and you have a greater capacity than you know. And if we don't do it, who will?

Why Are Student Loans Such a Catastrophe? Feb 02, 2022

Show notes

Today Nathan is joined by Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell, author of The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe. Under pressure from progressive Democrats, Joe Biden recently agreed to continue a pause on student loan payments. There has been a great deal of debate over whether Biden should consider canceling large amounts of student debt outright.

Mitchell has spent years studying every aspect of the student loan crisis. On this episode, he helps us better understand what the crisis is and how we got here. We discuss:

- What makes student loans a "catastrophe" to begin with, and why there needs to be some public policy solution

- The mountain of human misery beneath the statistics, what life is actually like for people who can't pay their debts

- Why Josh thinks the establishment of Sallie Mae was one of the most disastrous trainwrecks in the history of Congressional legislation

- How college financial advisers have misled students into thinking their degrees are more valuable than they actually are

- The cases of people with over a million dollars in student debt, or those so old their Social Security checks are being garnished to pay their student loans

- How much of the crisis was created by Wall Street greed versus well-intentioned but disastrous public policy

- Whether a solution is just to make public colleges free, like public high schools

Josh's Wall Street Journal article on borrowers who have crossed a million dollars in student debt is here. Read some Current Affairs coverage of student debt and the financing of higher education in these articles:

- Is Student Debt Cancellation Regressive? NO.

- Cancelling Student Debt Reduces The Racial Wealth Gap

- If You Want To Enact Free College, Cancel Student Debt Immediately

- The Taxonomy of Student Debt Arguments

- Student Debt Forgiveness: Let's Do Some Math

- How Student Debt Is Worsening Gender and Racial Injustice

- The Case for Free College

- What a Better Biden Would Say About Student Loan Debt

How Criminalization Destroys The Lives of Black Children Feb 02, 2022

Show notes

Kristin Henning directs the Juvenile Justice Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. She has worked as a public defender for juveniles in Washington, D.C. and is the author of the book The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth. In the book, Prof. Henning "explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear, resent, and resist the police, and details the long-term consequences of racism and trauma Black youth experience at the hands of police and their vigilante surrogates." In this episode, we talk about why over-policing destroys the ability of many Black children to have normal childhoods and why it's so essential to respond to the transgressions of kids with empathy and compassion rather than brutality. It's not that difficult: it just means treating all young people, regardless of race, with the kind of mercy and generous due process that some (e.g. Kyle Rittenhouse) are already given.

Is Julian Assange Being Unjustly Persecuted By The U.S. Government? Feb 02, 2022

Show notes

A UK court recently ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States. Assange faces serious charges over violating the Espionage Act, based on WikiLeaks' publication of classified United States government documents and video related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The prosecution has been condemned by a number of press freedom and human rights organizations, but there are those who argue that Assange is a criminal or even a "terrorist."

To discuss the case, Nathan is joined by one of the leading experts on it, Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. Prof. Melzer is a specialist in human rights law who has served as a legal adviser to the Red Cross, and is currently Human Rights Chair of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and Professor of International Law at the University of Glasgow. His book The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution is forthcoming from Verso.

We Took Hillary Clinton's MasterClass So That You Don't Have To Jan 19, 2022

Show notes

Hillary Clinton has just released an online course on "The Power of Resilience" through the website MasterClass, where celebrities teach their skills. The course has made the news because in it, she delivers the speech she would have given had she won the presidency in 2016, which she did not. We were curious what else is in Hillary Clinton's MasterClass, so Current Affairs editors Yasmin Nair, Nathan J. Robinson, and Lily Sánchez paid the fee and took the class. In this episode, we reveal all of the class's secrets, so that you can take Hillary's MasterClass without actually taking Hillary's MasterClass. Her useful lessons on resilience, negotiation, and more are helpfully summarized in this delightful conversation.

We discuss:

- Why the class seems to be more about helping Clinton process her loss to Donald Trump than a good faith attempt to teach anyone anything

- How the class rewrites history and leaves out all of the horrible things the Clintons have done over the course of their political careers

- How Clinton presents politics as the struggle of ambitious people to achieve personal goals and fulfillment rather than as a collective struggle that necessitates social movements

- Why it's necessary that nobody ever take the lessons of this class seriously, since the last thing we need is a new generation of vacuous Clintonian politicians

- Why it's strange to get lessons on political success from someone whose decisions led to a catastrophic political failure (campaign in Wisconsin is not one of the class lessons)

Yasmin's Baffler article on Clinton's dystopian elite feminism is here. Her article "Dynasties of Neoliberalism" also discusses Clinton. Nathan's book on Bill Clinton, Superpredator: Bill Clinton's Use and Abuse of Black America, is available here. His article dissecting the Clinton campaign is here. The quote from Bill Clinton about Obama is from a 2012 New Yorker article.

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