The Making Of 'No Compromise'

Following the 2016 US presidential election, pundits argued that the 81% of evangelical Christians who voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton viewed him as the lesser of two evils. But, according to historian Kristin Du Mez, this explanation is misguided. In Jesus and John Wayne (2020), she argues that evangelicals endorsed Trump because he was the paradigm of militant masculinity that became orthodox among evangelicals in the last century.

In this guide, we’ve organized Du Mez’s analysis into four historical eras of evangelical masculinity. We’ll discuss: how the first and second World Wars caused evangelicals to shift toward a militant view of masculinity; how the Vietnam War and the feminist movement entrenched this view of masculinity in the ’60s and ’70s; how the lack of a military opponent in the ’90s caused this view to soften; and, finally, how the impact of 9/11 and the Obama presidency created a sense of embattlement that led evangelicals to support Trump in 2020.

In Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, sociologist Arlie Hochschild seeks to understand the social, cultural, and emotional forces driving right-wing politics, in an effort to move past the partisan divide and approach American politics from a position of empathy for those on the right. By breaking down this empathy wall, we can come to truly inhabit the emotional world of the right, giving us insight into why these voters believe what they believe—and why those beliefs might make sense given these voters’ experiences.

"The Daily," hosted by Sabrina Tavernise, dives into a momentous Supreme Court case that could heavily influence America's gun rights landscape. Alongside legal experts like Adam Liptak, Elizabeth Prelogar, and Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, they dissect a contentious hearing centered on the Second Amendment and its application in modern times. The backdrop is the recent Bruin decision, fostering a complexity of understanding how historical precedent should inform current firearms legislation.

This nuanced exploration goes beyond the court's walls with Tavernise's updates on Hollywood's labor advancements and AI's burgeoning role in the entertainment industry. Moreover, the global sphere isn't left unexamined as Tavernise touches on Secretary Antony Blinken's policy statements regarding Gaza, providing listeners with a comprehensive snapshot of current diplomatic and cultural tides. As the episode concludes, hear how the Supreme Court might navigate the delicate balance between adherence to tradition and the dynamic nature of constitutional interpretation, potentially setting a critical foothold for future jurisprudence.

In Why We’re Polarized, American progressive journalist, political commentator, and podcaster Ezra Klein argues that Americans are divided into two sharply contrasting groups rooted in partisan identities.

He writes that the clustering of nearly the entire electorate into the Democratic and Republican camps is a story about identity. Specifically, our partisan political identities have become overarching super-identities that encompass and activate our most deeply felt personal, religious, linguistic, socioeconomic, and ethnic/racial identities. In today’s America, these underlying lines of division all come together in one main division—between Democrats and Republicans—that makes bipartisan cooperation increasingly difficult.

In this guide, we explore the origins of modern political polarization and its differing impact on the two major political parties, how polarization has made American politics a winner-take-all struggle, and ideas for how we might depolarize our politics. We also supplement Klein’s ideas and analysis with commentary from other political scholars and analysts and explore additional perspectives that both support and challenge Klein.

Trump used a brazen and relentless digital campaign in his first election. Now, he’s using disinformation techniques pioneered by foreign dictators to try to win another four years in office.

The election of Donald Trump has sparked a great deal of discussion about the fate of American democracy. How Democracies Die explores some key questions that have become paramount in the Trump era. Does the election of a figure like Trump—an inexperienced outsider with obvious authoritarian instincts—suggest that democracy in the US is backsliding? Are we doomed to suffer the fate of other 21st-century democracies, like Hungary, Venezuela, and Turkey, where true democracy ceased to exist? By what processes was democracy killed in those and other countries—and how might we prevent it here?

When you hear the word “bias,” you may think of a conscious form of prejudice—but the most potent biases are actually subconscious. These implicit biases are normal neurological responses to the culture you grow up in. In the United States, everyone encounters and encodes antiblack bias to some degree, even in black communities. This racial bias doesn’t just influence how you make decisions—it determines what you notice in your environment and what becomes invisible. And in high-stakes situations like police encounters, the consequences of racial bias can be devastating.

In this guide, we’ll discuss how your brain creates bias; how that bias impacts every area of your life, from where you live to how you post online; and, most importantly, how to combat implicit bias to create a fairer world for everyone. We’ll also compare Dr. Eberhardt’s research on racial bias to other popular books on racism such as How to Be an Antiracist and White Fragility.

In Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, sociologist Arlie Hochschild seeks to understand the social, cultural, and emotional forces driving right-wing politics, in an effort to move past the partisan divide and approach American politics from a position of empathy for those on the right. By breaking down this empathy wall, we can come to truly inhabit the emotional world of the right, giving us insight into why these voters believe what they believe—and why those beliefs might make sense given these voters’ experiences.

In Caste, Isabel Wilkerson argues that the racial tensions in the United States are better explained through the lens of caste, not race—a 400-year-old hierarchy placing white people at the top and Black people at the bottom. Wilkerson examines the different caste systems around the world and how they damage the lives of everyone involved, even those at the top. She believes that to understand how to move forward, we must examine the past and the racial structures that keep progress as a nation at bay.

In this guide, we’ll explore the basics of Wilkerson’s caste theory, the eight tenets of a caste system, how the caste system affects the lives of people in the upper and lower castes, and how we can move away from caste and create a more equitable society. We’ll also compare Wilkerson’s ideas to those of other books on the subject of race, such as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.