Short Takes – 1-22-23

Five Rules for an Aging World. NYTimes.com article.  Pull quote: “The faster aging happens in the rich and middle-income world, the more important the fact that Africa’s population is still on track to reach 2.5 billion in 2050, and reach four billion by 2100. The movement of even a fraction of this population will probably be the 21st century’s most significant global transformation. And the balance between successful assimilation on the one hand, and destabilization and backlash on the other, will help decide whether the age of demographic decline ends in revitalization or collapse.”

The America trap: Why our enemies often underestimate us. WashingtonPost.com article. Kagan never answers the central question, but describes the result in the lead up to WWII. Pull quote: “Liberal democracy was not just losing ground. It faced a potent challenge from a vibrant and revolutionary anti-liberal doctrine that attracted followers and imitators throughout Europe and beyond. Americans, British and French during World War I and for decades afterward assumed that Bolshevism posed the greatest threat to liberal democracy. But Bolshevism proved less easily exported than both its proponents and its opponents believed. Ostracized by the rest of Europe, the Soviet Union turned inward to wrestle with the transformation of its society. When democracies fell in the 1920s and ’30s, they fell to the Right, not the Left.”

Trump team struggles to consolidate support ahead of S.C. event. WashingtonPost.com article. Small scale event for Trump. Pull quote: “Trump’s last large event in the state, a spring rally in Florence, attracted thousands of supporters, and the pre-rally reception invitation boasted 36 co-chairs — a show of force that included people like McKissick, Scott and Norman, who are not expected to be with Trump again at his event. Trump has chosen a much smaller venue this time, the inside of the State House in Columbia, which is expected to accommodate about 500 people.”