**** The Cumulative Toll of Democrats’ Delusions

Many Democrats assumed that Americans would ultimately not vote for Donald Trump. But this, Representative Ritchie Torres says, was pure delusion.

@powellAtlantic on the Democratic congressman who wasn’t surprised by the results of the election:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/democrats-lost-voters-ritchie-torres/680599/?gift=yGKGqaI9BMfIDuch_TrGYXxoZayrh8hJwv0fQGPUz0s&utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

****** Why Liberals Struggle to Cope With Epochal Change

“If liberals are to respond effectively to the challenge of a new Trump administration, they will need to reflect critically on what happened in 1989, and discard the story they’ve always told themselves about it,” writes Ivan Krastev:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/01/liberals-wrong-about-1989/681165/?gift=yGKGqaI9BMfIDuch_TrGYW5YYsIhfdQhN3kvuho98Ys&utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

**** Are Young Men Really Becoming More Sexist?

In this episode of “Good on Paper,” @JerusalemDemsas tries to “untangle some of the reasons young men may be feeling disaffected and reacting differently than young women to macroeconomic and political trends.” https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2024/12/young-men-sexist/681034/?gift=yGKGqaI9BMfIDuch_TrGYUD31APQ3VI2HHEZYpNtNTM&utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

Evans: I lived a naughty life. I lived in the English countryside, so we had a big treehouse and all sorts of naughty things going on. But anyway, less of my naughtiness, but yes, people interacting in person is really important, going back to the contact hypothesis and building empathy. And then we can also think about these algorithms. So if it’s the case that corporate algorithms are creating a skewed sense of what people see, and creating an unrealistic depiction of social life, then that’s something we could regulate, as we might regulate other areas. So I think those would be the three things for me: the reducing the status competition by boosting the supply of housing, encouraging empathy with more personal interactions by getting kids off their phones, and also thinking about how do you change the algorithm so that people don’t see this distorted sense of humanity, which is just making them think that other people are crazy, when actually, most people are pretty moderate and towards the middle.