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Are the Charlottesville White Supremacists Really “Nazis”?

To discuss the horrific events in Charlottesville this weekend, and the grotesque response to them from President Trump, I spoke by phone with Jelani Cobb , a staff writer at the New Yorker and a professor of journalism at Columbia University. During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed whether neo-Nazi and neo-Confederate should be used interchangeably, what Woodrow Wilson has in common with Donald Trump, and why Republican condemnation of Trump’s response shouldn’t get anyone too optimistic about the future of the GOP. Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2fDLRKj August 14, 2017 at 05:09AM

The Devilish Magic of Halo Top

This has been the summer of Wonder Woman , of “Despacito,” of rosé and brosé and frosé, of Game of Thrones spoilers, and of near-weekly red weddings at the White House . But more than all of those things, it’s been the summer of Halo Top. The low-calorie ice cream–maker, which didn’t exist before 2012, has given the ice-cream industry a brain freeze, forcing its competitors to remake their strategies in the mold of its success. Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2fCMLXG August 14, 2017 at 03:04AM

There Is Only One Side to the Story of Charlottesville

“ Heil Trump ,” the white supremacists chanted as they marched past me, turning my beloved hometown of Charlottesville into a rallying point for fascists, white supremacists, and their preppy enablers in the so-called “alt-right.” One side instigated the rally, dubbed it #UniteTheRight and spent months escalating violent rhetoric. President Trump blamed “ many sides .” They rallied to prevent the removal of a Confederate statue. Trump’s nationally televised response—“we must cherish our history”—was heard less as a dog whistle than as a bullhorn . Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2uSonTR August 13, 2017 at 10:29PM

The Real Meaning of “On Many Sides”

On Saturday afternoon, Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and open-carrying, camo-wearing militia members combined forces at a Charlottesville, Virginia, rally to “Unite the Right.” This congregation of white people who love the president of the United States and hate racial, ethnic, and religious minorities chanted “blood and soil” and extended their arms in stiff salutes. The rally culminated in the death of at least one person when the driver of a gray Dodge Challenger plowed through a crowd of counter-protesters, seemingly with the intent to maim and injure. Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2vZrTRa August 13, 2017 at 03:50AM

This Was a White-Power Movement Showing Its Strength

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia—The proximate reason for Saturday’s Unite the Right event, a demonstration of neo-Nazis and white supremacists, was to “defend” the city’s memorials to Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Earlier in the year , city officials voted to remove the statues, which were erected in the early 20 th century as monuments to white supremacy. For many residents of today’s Charlottesville, the statues were a blight—fraught objects that anchored racist propaganda in the city’s geography. Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2hV7vuw August 13, 2017 at 03:46AM

How Socialists Can Win

In the 2010 midterm elections, the first of the Obama presidency, Republicans took back the House by gaining 63 seats , the largest midterm swing since 1938 . Among the beneficiaries of that swing: the Tea Party, a patchwork of local organizations and larger monied groups unified by an anti-tax, anti-government, anti-Obama platform, whose candidates won 47 seats in Congress on election day. Millions voted in the election. According to an analysis done by the group Patchwork Nation, there were only around 67,000 members of Tea Party groups nationwide. Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2vsymTb August 12, 2017 at 07:52PM

The Angle: On Strike Edition

Padded box : Donald Trump lives in a bubble, which is why he won't try anything at all to win back the voters currently dropping from the fringes of his 2016 constituency with great rapidity, Jamelle Bouie writes . Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2wC32zS August 12, 2017 at 02:07AM

Firing Jeffrey Lord Doesn’t Fix CNN’s Jeffrey Lord Problem

Jeffrey Lord is a political hack and shameless troll who spent the past two years wasting America’s time on CNN as one of the world’s dumbest and most slavishly pro-Trump pundits. He appeared regularly on CNN’s political programming as one of Donald Trump’s chief water-bearers, playing the part so well that Anderson Cooper once felt compelled to note—on air!—that Trump could defecate on his desk and Lord would defend it. Cooper’s crude observation was wholly accurate: Lord’s only qualifications for being on television were his readiness to applaud even Trump’s most noxious moments and the fact that he already owned a suit. Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2uO8j5B August 12, 2017 at 01:53AM

More Skilled Workers, Fewer Family Members

Americans are less divided on immigration than you might think. If the question is whether we ought to admit more immigrants or fewer of them, you’ll certainly find disagreement. But when you ask about the kind of immigrants we should admit, there is something close to a consensus. Political scientists Jens Hainmueller of MIT and Daniel Hopkins of the University of Pennsylvania have found that preferences vary relatively little according to education, partisanship, labor market position, or the respondent’s level of ethnocentrism. Given a choice, Americans of all types strongly favor admitting highly educated, English-speaking immigrants in high-status jobs. Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2vuwzLM August 12, 2017 at 12:53AM

Social or Shameful?

In the Slate Plus bonus segment of Wednesday’s edition of the Culture Gabfest, the hosts discuss Julia’s enthusiasm for online Boggle and Stephen’s weakness for virtual Hearts. Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2uwauiJ August 12, 2017 at 12:05AM

The Bubble President

Among the most striking aspects of Donald Trump is how, as president, he has taken the pathologies and dysfunctions of the modern Republican Party and brought them careening to their logical conclusions. The racial dog-whistling of Republican campaigns since Richard Nixon becomes outright racism in the hands of the Trump; the contempt for expertise seen from the party’s right-wing base becomes an administration staffed with amateurs and apparatchiks. And now, as the president’s approval sinks to new lows, what was once Karl Rove’s disdain for the “reality-based community” has inevitably given way to a president who chooses to disregard reality altogether, living instead in his own private Idaho where he is beloved and successful. Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2vWE2Xg August 11, 2017 at 11:01PM

Who Will Pay for Takata’s Future Victims?

So far, exploding air bags made by the Japanese auto supplier Takata have been linked to 18 deaths and 180 injuries worldwide. For its failures, the company has been besieged by lawsuits, a global recall, and finally bankruptcy. But odds are there will be more harm. A lot more. Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2uNCxFL August 11, 2017 at 08:18PM

Workers Are Going Galt

In the early years of the Obama administration, as new taxes on upper-income Americans were enacted as part of Obamacare and the expiry of the Bush tax cut loomed, it was common to hear libertarian types warn that businesspeople and entrepreneurs might just Go Galt. That is to say, if they determined that losing 50 cents of every dollar in taxation wasn’t worth their trouble, they’d take a cue from the hero of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged ,   fold up their businesses, and quit work altogether. Check out this March 2009 Michelle Malkin column for an exegesis of this, um, idea. “ Enough ,” she wrote. “While they take to the streets politically, untold numbers of America’s wealth producers are going on strike financially.” Slate Articles http://ift.tt/2uxr120 August 11, 2017 at 07:25PM