Twelve Things That Caught My Eye Today: The Suffering Uyghurs, Lebanon, When Harry Became Sally & More

1. UK House of Commons: Uyghur forced labour in Xinjiang and UK value chains

2. Lebanon: “The People Are Hungry, and the Worst is Yet to Come”

We only realize the extent of the catastrophe that has hit the Lebanese, if we compare the current collapsed currency rate of some 11,000 LBP to the US dollar and the rate in September 2019 when it amounted to some 1500 LBP to the dollar.

This means that the average monthly income, which stood at some 700,000 LBP or $470 at the time, today equals some $64. All this has made the Lebanese rush to buy subsidized products and sometimes store them. Recently, a video went viral on social media showing shocking scenes of people fighting over a box of powder milk that was still on the list of subsidized items by the government. 

3. Ryan T. Anderson: Amazon Won’t Let You Read My Book

Three years ago the Post ran a hit piece titled “ Ryan Anderson’s book calling transgender people mentally ill is creating an uproar.” The second sentence read: “In the 264-page book, ‘When Harry Became Sally,’ Anderson makes an inflammatory claim — that transgender people are mentally ill.”

My book made no such claim. I contacted the Post asking them to quote a single sentence from the book supporting their contention that I had called transgender people mentally ill. They couldn’t, because it doesn’t exist. Within a day, the newspaper had entirely rewritten the story, removing the falsehoods and changing the headline.

Three years later, the world’s largest e-commerce platform — owned by the richest man on the planet — has canceled my book. In a letter last week to four U.S. Senators, Amazon justified its decision to delist “When Harry Became Sally” by claiming it frames “LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.” This recycled charge is as false now as when Mr. Bezos’ newspaper first made it.

4. Catholic News Agency: Poll: most Illinois voters want parental notification for abortion, but lawmakers seek repeal

5. Brookings Institute: 6 policies to boost employment for Black men

Reducing crime rates and incarceration of Black men is a vital step towards boosting employment rates. There are a number of ways to achieve this. First, states and localities should expand the use of community policing and other approaches that successfully reduce crime without subjecting Black men to excessive use of force. Second, mental health professionals should be consistently deployed along with police, to defuse situations where mental illness leads to violence and deaths. Third, greater investment in programs that reduce crime and violence among young Black men – including summer employment and others, like Becoming a Man, that teach young participants how to avoid violence in confrontational situations. Fourth, expanded drug courts and treatments for those suffering from substance addiction. Fifth, seek out and eliminate the sources of racial bias in law enforcement at all levels.

6. Kevin D. Williamson: Hillbilly Agonistes

Vance’s views are, in many cases, not mine. But he is not auditioning for the vacancy at Lou Dobbs’s old desk. We can have a useful argument with intelligent, informed, honest people with whom we disagree. I wish there were more opportunities for such disagreement, both within the Right’s factions and between the Right and the Left. Our politics have been tribalized and sacralized (which ultimately are the same thing) at just the wrong time in our cultural history: the moment when new manners and mores associated with social media and the mutation of celebrity culture into an airborne virus have led to a general lowering of intellectual standards and the nearly complete annihilation of the spirit of compromise and cooperation. Reversing that dismal tide will require a campaign for hearts and minds, and a very different kind of politics from the one we have endured so far in this wretched century.

7. Robby George and Rick Santorum warned us: The New Yorker: How Polyamorists And Polygamists Are Challenging Family norms

In the popular imagination, polygamists are presumed to be right-wing misogynists and polyamorists to be decadent left-wingers, but the two groups share goals and, often, ways of life. In the years I’ve spent talking to members of both communities, I have found that it is usually the polygamists who are more cognizant of common cause. 

How feminists don’t care in a big way about this is beyond me.

8. Samuel Benson: The danger of trading religion for politics

The problem, some would say, is not just the rise of politics and fall of faith. Politics are not inherently bad, nor are all Americans theists. But as politics replace faith, fueled by hate, the irony (and danger) of it isn’t lost on religious politicians themselves. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Latter-day Saint, decried this pandemic-era mentality and the shift from pews to PACs: “We may not have any real friends, and we may not know our neighbors, but at least we can hate the same people together on Facebook. And that’s bringing people together in this new type of religion.”

9. Gracy Olmstead: The Risk of Gentleness

As I sat — nine months pregnant — during Advent, surrounded by reminders of Jesus’ imminent birth, I found myself dwelling often on the sacred surprises we neither expect nor fully deserve. In 2020, like many others, I realized how often love calls us to take frightful, beautiful risks.

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11. National Catholic Register: Examen for Masculine Virtue

12. Dan Darling: Why It’s Okay to Enjoy Some Good News