Today's Opinions

By Drew Goins Assistant editor Email

Missed yesterday’s edition? You can view previous newsletters or see the latest from the Opinions section. 

In today’s edition:

• How America could use friendship, and how a trans congresswoman dealt with the opposite
• West Africa’s coups promised security but delivered chaos
• The world needs more nonprofit journalism

Is civic friendship possible?

(Washington Post illustration; iStock) 

You might be tempted to write off Greg Weiner’s essay promoting friendship as the antidote to America’s political bitterness. But by the time the political science professor has schooled you on Aristotle, Cicero and Augustine of Hippo, you’ll see his suggestion is at least well-based in scholarship.

Weiner is a proponent of civic friendship, a different sort of bond than personal friendship, he explains, nor quite the same thing as mere civil dialogue, either.

Civil dialogue, he begins, is “about how we interact”; civic friendship deals with “why we do or what we hope to achieve in our interaction.” Weiner walks slowly through the difference and the implications that follow, even up to the distinction between “nomocratic” and “telocratic” regimes, and which one the United States is.

There seems to be no friendship of any variety at the moment between House Republicans and Democrat Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first-ever transgender person elected to Congress; Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) introduced a resolution to ban McBride from using the women’s bathroom.

Matt Bai writes that McBride’s response was a work of “political artistry,” so I’ll provide it here in full: “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker [of the House Mike] Johnson, even if I disagree with them.”

Americans don’t hate trans people, Matt writes; most just care about their own grocery bills more than they care about ensuring trans folks’ protections. If other Democrats can join McBride in recognizing that fact, he says, the box Republicans keep trying to stuff the party into will quickly fall apart.

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In fact, maybe Democrats don’t need to befriend the people dehumanizing them — just outsmart them.

Chaser: Megan McArdle writes that Democrats’ strategy of “trickle-down social justice” failed the party — and that it’s time to stop listening to the “professional left” that long pushed it.

From Keith Richburg’s column on how recent coups in West Africa have turned the Sahel into the world’s terrorism hotspot. He writes: “A glaring irony is that the militaries that seize power from elected governments often fail at the one job they’re supposed to be good at: providing security.”

Local affiliates of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have driven up deaths in the region by 37 percent over just two years ago. And it’s not as though these juntas are succeeding economically or on a human rights front, either, Keith points out.

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The greatest worry is that chaos keeps spilling into the other democracies of West Africa, enormous Nigeria chief among them. “If democratic countries become destabilized,” Keith writes, “more people could become lured by the falsehood that the military can do a better job.”

Chaser: This summer, the Editorial Board complicated the narrative of Africa as a coup-ridden continent. Now, as then, U.S. policymakers need to wise up on Africa if they’re not to get caught off guard.

More politics

In a grim moment for the news media (a phrase I have shortcutted on my keyboard), Jen Rubin writes that she nevertheless sees a spot of light, “a part of the news ecosystem that seems to be growing by leaps and bounds.”

Jen writes that nonprofit news organizations such as ProPublica are turning out tons of scoops, expanding in scope, and filling in gaps where regional and state outfits have atrophied.

She especially lauds ProPublica for its focus, seriousness, and “density and depth,” writing that she hopes it can keep spinning off imitators — and hold the toes of the ol’ Washington Post and its ilk to the fire.

Chaser: You know what “news” offering isn’t doing you any good? “Morning Joe,” Erik Wemple writes in a column providing five reasons Democrats should turn the MSNBC show off.

Smartest, fastest

• Before Matt Gaetz made the decision to withdraw from consideration for attorney general on Thursday, the Editorial Board called for the release of the House Ethics Committee’s findings in its investigation of the congressman. (So did Ann Telnaes, via a cartoon.)
• For better or (more likely) worse, we’re thundering toward a golden age of cryptocurrency, Adam Lashinsky writes, and you can thank Trump.
• A confrontation between the president-elect and the Fed he desperately wants to strip of independence might be inevitable, Catherine Rampell writes.

It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.

An extended hand —

Hard to grasp when the other

Swats at palms all day

***

Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!