The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-02)

MONDAY, MAY 2 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A21

R

epublicans are running two very different campaigns for Novem- ber’s midterms. So far, it’s working. To their base, they promote an unending culture war around race, education and LGBTQ issues. But to appeal to independents and more moderate conservatives, Republicans are offering a thoroughly conventional “Had enough?” argument. Voters unhappy with the leadership of President Biden, inflation and the persistence of covid-19, they say, should communicate their discontent by ending Democratic control of the House and Senate. Lurking over both strategies is former president Donald Trump, who causes no end of moral and psychological complexity for Republican politicians. See: the shame- less lying of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) regarding what he said when about Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 attack. Republicans want it both ways on Trump, hoping his passionate supporters turn out in droves while pray- ing that suburban swing voters don’t think about him at all. Polls for congressional contests are clos- er than the conventional wisdom suggests about impending Democratic catastrophe. Some even give Democrats a slight lead in generic surveys for House races. A Wash- ington Post/ABC News poll released Sun- day found Democrats with 46 percent among registered voters, Republicans with

But the Republicans’ two-step, and
enthusiasm in their base, give the GOP
confidence about the fall.
Democrats, being Democrats, are wring-
ing their hands with apprehension. They
often blame each other for the party’s
troubles — the left goes after the center, the
center assails the left, and the congres-
sional and White House wings sometimes
seem to be speaking different languages.
But there are signs that Democrats,
collectively, have begun to identify the first
task in front of them: to call out the stark
contradiction inherent in the GOP’s strat-
egy and to force the Republican Party as a
whole to own the meanness of its loudest
voices.
If Democrats once hoped they could run
on delivering tangible benefits to middle-
class and lower-income voters, they now
know they can’t duck the culture fights,
especially after their failure to pass large
parts of Biden’s ambitious program.
Even if they salvage some of the presi-
dent’s climate and social spending this
spring, Democrats realize they can’t prevail
on accomplishments alone. They need to
force voters to confront what a vote for
Republicans could lead to.
“I think we make a mistake if we don’t go
straight at Republicans on their obsession
with these very narrowcast, broadly un-
popular cultural fights,” Sen. Chris Murphy
(D-Conn.) told me during an interview. “It’s
just not true that it’s popular to pick on gay
kids. That riles up a subsection of the
Republican base.”
Murphy has been at the forefront in
pushing Democrats toward a more aggres-
sive strategy. His approach was on display
in a widely shared tweet last weekend:
“Republicans fight Disney to force them to
discriminate against gay kids. Democrats
fight drug companies to force them to
lower insulin prices for sick kids. Run on
that.”
The point, he told me, is to “call out their
bigotry and their obsession with these
wedge social issues and contrast it... w ith
our decision to spend our time working on
issues that matter to a much broader
cross-section of Americans.”
“Elections are always a choice,” Murphy
added, “and we’ve got to spend a lot more
time explaining to people how radical this
party has become.”
“You don’t have to talk about Donald
Trump,” he said. “It’s a broader problem
inside the party. And I think it does make a
lot of swing voters uncomfortable. But they
won’t be uncomfortable if you don’t point
out how mean and hateful and spiteful a lot
of Republicans have become.”
While Biden is known for promoting
bipartisan concord, he has made clear that
he, too, is ready to make Republican radical-
ism an element of midterm campaigning.
“This ain’t your father’s Republican Par-
ty,” Biden said on April 22 in Seattle. “This is
the MAGA party now.” Many in the GOP
“who know better,” he added, “are afraid to
act correctly, because they know they’ll be
primaried.”
Biden also signaled his solidarity with
Democrats who are pushing back against
GOP hate campaigns with a surprise phone
call to Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic
state senator from Michigan.
McMorrow’s passionate riposte to a Re-
publican state senator who — falsely and
shamefully — accused her of “grooming
and sexualizing children” went viral, a sign
of how hungry Democratic rank-and-filers
are to take the offensive against what they
see as increasingly naked prejudice.
Speaking as a “White, Christian, mar-
ried, suburban mom,” McMorrow con-
demned the attack as “hollow” and “hate-
ful” and declared: “I want every child in
this state to feel seen, heard and supported,
not marginalized and targeted because
they are not straight, White and Christian.”
Yes, 2022 will be a challenging year for
Democrats. But playing offense is a better
political bet than playing defense. And
wagering that the basic decency of moder-
ate voters will inspire a recoil from intoler-
ance and culture-war obsessions is a fine
place to start.

E.J. DIONNE JR.

Republicans

can’t have it

both ways on

culture wars

BY NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

T

he Russian army’s strangely stumble-footed invasion of Ukraine is only the latest re- minder of the pervasive and long-standing “human resource” woes that frustrate Vladimir Putin’s aspira- tions for superpower status. Russian military tactics and field performance may improve, but the greater demographic constraints on Putin’s ambitions are unforgiving. In the coming years, those constraints will brutally ratchet down the Kremlin’s options. With vast territory and abundant mineral reserves, Russia since the days of the czars has banked upon parlaying natural wealth into geopolitical power. The strategy of becoming an “energy superpower” was always a dubious one, but especially so today. Putin is flailing against the history of modern economic development. The wealth of modern nations is overwhelmingly generated by human beings and their capabilities. Natural resources (land, energy and all the rest) have accounted for a shrinking share of global output for the past two centuries, with no end in sight. Thus, for all its vaunted oil and gas riches, Russia’s export earnings last year were actually lower than Belgium’s. Like other Western democracies, Belgium manages to augment and unlock the economic value residing in human beings. Putin’s petro-kleptocracy is woeful- ly inept on both counts. When Putin does pay attention to demography, he obsesses over head- counts — for him, “capitas” are more important than “per capitas.” He fixates on raising birthrates and seizing neigh- boring territory instead of enhancing the capabilities and productivity of his entire population. Russia is depopulating — even after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, its

total numbers are lower today than when the Soviet Union collapsed. Rus- sia’s working-age population and its pool of prospective 18-year-old con- scripts are also falling. Shrinking societies can prosper, as Germany and Japan have shown. Kremlin policies all but preclude that path for Russia. It is not that Russia lacks talented, enterprising, impressive people, as any- one who has spent time there knows. Nor does it suffer a shortage of formal education. According to one major global assessment, mean years of schooling for Russia’s working-age (15-64) population were comparable in 2015 to levels in Denmark, France and Sweden, and well above those in Austria and New Zealand. The problem is that Russia has somehow managed to create a high-education, low-human-capital society. The syn- drome was evident under the Soviets, but it is even more acute under Putin’s malign rule. Consider the sweeping dimensions of Russia’s developmental fail: In 2019, according to the World Health Organization, overall Russian life expec- tancy at age 15 (male and female com- bined) was lower than in Sudan or Bhu- tan — places designated by the United Nations as “least developed countries.” Urbanization increases human productivity, bringing development gains all around the world, but somehow Russia’s ratio of city dwellers to the general population has stagnated for decades. In shrinking societies such as Germany and Japan, by contrast, both urban population and urbanization ratios have risen. Despite Russia’s large and formidable cadre of highly educated working-age men and women, commercially valuable “knowledge production” appears to be marginal today. According to the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organiza- tion, Russia accounted for less than one- half of 1 percent of international patent

applications in 2019. And Russia’s “patent yield” — international patent applications divided by working-age population with higher education — was far below South Africa’s. Russia’s record of creating value out of its human resources is miserable. It has the world’s ninth-largest population, but its exports of commercial services — marketed knowledge and skills, such as banking or insurance — ranked 26th in 2019, behind both Thailand and Turkey. Since the invasion of Ukraine, some of Russia’s best talent has been voting with its feet, heading abroad any way it can. National wealth is indispensable to state power and human well-being, but the Russian system produces remarkably little private wealth. According to Credit Suisse, total private wealth in Russia in 2020 amounted to $3 trillion: one-ninth of Japan’s, one-sixth of Germany’s, and scarcely more than Sweden’s (a country with a population 14 times smaller). Meanwhile, much of the rest of the world beyond Russia’s borders is speed- ing ahead with improvements in health, education, innovation and wealth. Rus- sia’s dire basic demographic problems are relatively well-known — its declining prospective global shares of total population, working-age manpower, etc. But the demography of Russia’s squandered human potential darkens its prospects further still. Putin’s recognition of this dismal real- ity may have stoked his appetite for ever-greater risk-taking in Georgia, Crimea and now Ukraine. His nuclear saber-rattling is the tactic of a leader playing a weakening hand. An open and liberal Russia could still prosper, but it cannot become a normal country under the rule of a petro-kleptocracy.

The writer holds the Henry Wendt chair in political economy at the American Enterprise Institute.

How demographics could thwart Putin’s ambitions

OXFORD, Md.

I

n a tiny corner of a large compound — composed of a greenhouse, architect’s studio, art museum and a few private offices offered to select tenants — is a carefully curated art collection depicting the Black founding families of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The mere existence of the Water’s Edge Museum would surprise most who stumble upon this unusual configuration of special interests. The museum’s rare collection of paintings and lithographs by artist Ruth Starr Rose is the result of years of research and fearless toil by its curator, art historian and landscape architect Barbara Paca. As a close neighbor during the summer of 2014, I was a constant bystander to Paca’s efforts in this project while recovering — thanks largely to her attention — from a concussion. I happened to be renting a house one door down from her home when my accident — a fall down the steep stairs of NBC’s old Washington headquarters — oc- curred. She immediately took me under her wing. If I wasn’t at her kitchen table most nights for dinner, she routinely delivered meals to my door. She also ferried me to medical appointments, explaining my con- dition to doctors as I could not. You see, Paca and her husband, architect Philip Logan, were parents to a son who suffered a brain bleed three days after he was born and displayed symptoms associ- ated with cerebral palsy. Fortunately, Tilghman Paca Logan never had to experience life as a victim but spent his days traveling the world with his parents, painting and attending a special-needs school in New York City. He died last July at age 19. Because of Tilghman, Paca, a Princeton doctoral graduate, put her keen mind to the task of learning everything about brain injury and brought her experience to my care and to the neurologists we visited. A commanding figure of nearly six feet, she has a bone-shaping handshake and a de- meanor that conveys, shall we say, no nonsense. Thus, I received excellent care from neurologists while also enjoying family life with Tilghman as a frequent guest in his joyful, wheelchair-friendly home.

Though I was witness to Paca’s passionate pursuit of the stories of Black families, whose descendants still live around Mary- land’s Eastern Shore, I didn’t then grasp the depth and breadth of her vision. Not only did she appreciate Ruth Starr Rose’s artist- ry, but she also aimed to correct history’s oversights through art. (For the record, Paca and Logan are Caucasian; among her ancestors are Eastern Shore slave-owning families.) I dropped by the museum unannounced last month and recognized familiar faces in the portraits Paca had scoured the Earth to find. Many had been long forgotten in attics and basements. One foraging expedition took Paca to a drug den in a nearby town where she found and purchased a signifi- cant document that filled in gaps in the Moaney family lineage. I recall a day when she invited some descendants of the por- trait subjects to her house for an unveiling. They had been unaware of the portraits’ existence and gasped in recognition of an aunt, uncle or grandparent. The artist Rose was unique to her time. A wealthy, White woman born in Wisconsin, she began painting in Maryland in the 1930s, when slavery was still a living memo- ry. She wanted to capture the lives of people who likely would have been ignored by other artists of the day. In so doing, she created a revealing history of the ordinary and the spiritual in colorful oils, as well as in black-and-white etchings. Many paintings and lithographs depict spirituals, such as the 1944 “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and her 1955 “Glory Train,” a.k.a. “This Train Is Bound for Glory.” Paca donated a dozen or so framed reproductions of Rose’s spirituals to the local Black church her family regular- ly attended and where Tilghman loved to sing along with the choir. My guide, Garnell Henry, a descendant of the families whose pictures were hanging on the walls, explained how the exhibit showcases different aspects of African Americans’ lives of the day, not as maids, gardeners or, for heaven’s sake, pancake- syrup models but as self-employed workers, business owners, musicians and, especially, nurturing families. I missed seeing Paca this time. She was touring Europe with another exhibit she has curated of Caribbean artist Frank Walter (1926-2009), whose work was not recognized during his lifetime. Her husband, however, showed me around renova- tions to part of the complex — bedrooms, baths and a kitchen — that will serve as their new dwelling place. He and Paca have sold Tilghman’s childhood home and plan to devote the rest of their lives to mission- driven projects. Their enduring work is a testament to the power of art, applied and structural, not only to communicate but also to heal. There can be little doubt that Tilghman’s spirit surrounds and guides them.

KATHLEEN PARKER

Art, history and

healing on the

Eastern Shore

The mere existence

of the Water’s Edge Museum

would surprise most

who stumble upon

this unusual configuration

of special interests.

BY HENNA HUNDAL AND KHUSHNOOD NABIZADA

S

oon after regaining power in Afghanistan, the Taliban made reassurances that its new reign would preserve some of the progress made on women’s rights and democratic governance, including up- holding freedom of speech and per- mitting female journalists to work. But their reassurances have proved utterly hollow. According to a recent report from the International Federation of Jour- nalists, more than half of media outlets across Afghanistan have shut- tered since the Taliban’s takeover. Just around 20 newspapers remain in a country of 40 million people. What’s more, over 70 percent of the Afghan journalists who’ve left the profession are women. The destruction of Afghanistan’s media landscape — an outcome of both ongoing Taliban violence against journalists and the country’s economic collapse — is not unexpected. Local press in war-torn Syria, Somalia and Yemen, for example, has endured a similar fate. However, what’s per- haps defining about the tragedy in Afghanistan is the sheer magnitude of lost progress toward a free press —and how much both Afghanistan and the world are lesser for it. In the two decades preceding the Taliban’s takeover, legions of print, radio and television journalists bloomed, serving as watchdogs of the Taliban as well as the sitting Afghan government. Nurtured through initia- tives such as the Afghanistan Journal- ism Enhancement Education Pro- gram and Kabul University’s robust journalism department, this generation of up-and-coming reporters con- stituted a bright spot for a country rebuilding from the throes of the pre- 2001 Taliban’s oppression. When one of Afghanistan’s trailblaz- ing independent publications, Kabul

Weekly, resumed operations shortly after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, then-publisher Fahim Dashty hailed the comeback as “unprecedent- ed freedom” for Afghan journalists. The return of Kabul Weekly kicked off a renaissance of sorts for independent media outlets, which burgeoned to at least 150 in number by 2003. Inves- tigative reporting on corruption, abuse of power and discrimination signaled a march toward a new dawn for journalists who, despite lingering fear, found tools to carve out their critical role in Afghan society. Sadly, Dashty was killed last year in Panjshir Province during a clash be- tween the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan and the Taliban. Female Afghan journalists, though frequently facing death threats throughout the past two decades, also became a formidable force interro- gating power and gender norms. R adio Shaesta, established by the activist Zarghona Hassan in Afghani- stan’s Kunduz Province, centered women’s voices on topics ranging from politics to reproductive health, distilling actionable information for self-empowerment. At one point, Radio Shaesta had an estimated 800,000 listeners, a testament to the influence of its programs such as “Unwanted Traditions,” which put the attitudes and practices that stifled girls’ advancement under the microscope. Despite the Taliban setting Radio Shaesta ablaze in 2015, Hassan re- fused to be silenced. She reopened the station within just six months. After the Taliban’s takeover, numerous female Afghan journalists have reported being barred from accessing their workplaces. In Ghazni Province, the Taliban specifically instructed one radio station that their operations could proceed if done so “without any woman’s voice.” Indeed, to be a female journalist — or any journalist — in Afghanistan

today is to walk an impossibly thin tightrope. On one hand, senior Taliban leaders assert that journalists can practice within the confines of rules designed to promote “the truth.” On the other hand, these opaque rules, including a thinly veiled threat against media that “could have a nega- tive impact on the public’s attitude or affect morale,” hardly allow for real journalism at all. During the Taliban’s takeover last year, Taliban spokesman Suhail Sha- heen frequently appeared on Western media outlets to reiterate a policy of “general amnesty” for Afghans who had been aligned with the Afghan government. At the same time, Afghan journalists took to social media to document the Taliban’s extrajudicial killings in rural regions outside of international purview, violence that Shaheen dismissed as unauthorized. This pattern of the Taliban dodging accountability creates a predicament for how best to shore up a once vibrant Afghan media. More than just a bul- wark against the Taliban’s dubious claims and contradictions, a free Af- ghan press represents a light in a long struggle, a bend toward a future where a journalist’s role as our collective keeper is firmly entrenched. While accepting her Nobel Peace Prize last year, Filipina journalist Ma- ria Ressa, who’s faced numerous ar- rest warrants for her work, said she stood as “a representative of every journalist around the world who is forced to sacrifice so much to hold the line, to stay true to our values and mission: to bring you the truth and hold power to account.” The generation of Afghan journalists who risked their lives in the name of that vision are heroes. And their erasure is a loss we all bear.

Henna Hundal is a public policy specialist and contributor to Afghanistan’s Khaama Press News Agency. Khushnood Nabizada is the founder and owner of Khaama Press.

LORENZO TUGNOLI FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Journalists of the Etilaatroz newspaper sort back issues i n September 2021 before moving to a new building in Kabul.

Afghanistan’s free press

is crumbling under the Taliban

The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-02)

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