Will Rogers famously advised, “If you want to get out of a hole, stop digging!” Tragically, the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors and its chair, Jay Powell, keep desperately digging in their pathological efforts to bury the phantom of inflation.

Fed heads are haunted by their fellow economists’ criticism that they were slow to react to out-of-control “transitory” inflation in 2021—when they were frozen in an obsolete 2020 drive to turbocharge economic stimulus out of COVID—but amazingly they are now making the same mistake once again, trying to fight last year’s war, by staying focused on the inflation boogeyman while missing the new and more potent economic dangers lingering on the horizon—namely, economic recession, a hard landing, and financial panic.
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The impacts of Fed oversteering are felt disproportionately and inequitably by certain sectors; education, healthcare, and to some extent government are basically impervious to rising rates, comprising over half of GDP; so disinflation has to come from cyclical sectors such as services, manufacturing, and housing/construction; and already, as the third author warned on CNBC, some sectors such as the $10 trillion commercial real estate space are poised for complete havoc.

The dangers of the Fed’s policy come right out of its projections at this week’s FOMC meeting. The Fed states that appropriate monetary policy will cause GDP to only rise 0.4% this year. But data from the first quarter indicate that GDP in the first 3 months of the year will rise at an annual rate of at least 2%, if not more.

This implies that GDP must decline over the last three quarters of this year for the Fed to reach its target. If that is not planning a recession, we don’t know what is! For GDP to decline over the next three quarters means that Powell is planning for no employment growth whatsoever. In other words, payroll growth, which has averaged well over 300,000 per month over the past 6 months, must drop below zero over the remainder of this year. The only way payroll can grow is if there is another steep drop in productivity growth, which would be unprecedented following the record productivity drop the US economy experienced last year under Powell’s watch. This is a policy designed for disaster.

Read More: Make Banks Pay for More Deposit Insurance

But the worst fallout of the Powell program is yet to come. Powell himself has admitted that monetary policy works with a lag. Yet, despite the recession the Fed is planning for the US economy, Powell admits that there has been no discussion of potentially lowering rates later this year despite his recession projection.

This reminds us of Powell’s disastrous 2021 statement that, while commodity, housing and security prices were soaring, he laughingly uttered “we are not even thinking about thinking about raising interest rates!”

Powell’s rigidity is inexplicable following the collapse of SVB and other financial institutions. It appears that the Fed has been completely blindsided by the liquidity problems his policy caused the banking system. There are reports that regulatory authorities never tested the banks’ liquidity position for interest rates over 2% even though the Fed was long planning for rates to be two to three times higher. The magnitude of this failure adds to the significant missteps that Powell and the Fed have pursued since the COVID Crisis hit in March 2020.

Fortunately, capital markets disagree with the Fed’s hawkish positioning. The Federal Funds futures rates are well below the what the FOMC is now projecting just as they were presciently above Powell’s wrongly dovish projections two years ago when inflation was accelerating. Markets are pricing in expectations that the Fed will be forced to start cutting rates within a couple of months, with an expected end-of-2024 interest rate less than half that of the Fed’s, while 2-year yields have sank far below 4% already.

But the markets predictions will only force the Fed’s hand if Powell is listening to the markets. If not, watch out!

The Fed is missing pervasive disinflation throughout the economy

The Fed’s stubborn insistence on relying on faulty, time-lagged and cherry-picked statistics means that it misses the pervasive disinflation that is currently spreading throughout the entire economy. Gaudy headlines that “monthly inflation rose 6%” are hardly as straightforward as they appear.

As the second author has pointed out, Powell’s preferred inflation reading, CPI excluding energy, food, and now housing, ignores the most significant expenses for individual Americans and excludes half the entire economy. All those exclusions carelessly thrown out show prices are actually coming down across the entire economy.

Oil prices are down 50% from their peaks last year, with WTI crude oil falling from $140 to around $70 a barrel. Natural gas prices are also down. Henry Hub Natural Gas prices have fallen 80% from $10 last year to $2 per million British thermal units (mbtu) now. Food prices are down by 20% to 50% across the board, ranging from cattle, pork and poultry to soybeans, corn and wheat, to name just a few.

Even beyond energy and food, goods disinflation is widespread across the entire economy, especially across the non-food/energy commodities and industrial complex. Lumber is down 90%, industrial metals are down, while finished goods and consumer products are now being massively discounted amid supply gluts.

In housing, mortgage rates of 7% have brought the single-family housing market to a practical standstill while completely freezing commercial real estate lending, with construction jobs falling 50% last month—the steepest drop in history. From what the third author is seeing on the ground, most builders are only finishing what was already started as they refuse to start any new projects. This is on top of steep rent disinflation in new contracts, which is yet to be reflected in the time-lagged full-year rent measurements because these include older contracts that take up to 12 months to fully roll off.

Manufacturing has turned negative while supply chains have completely de-bottlenecked as shipping and cargo rates have collapsed. In fact, far from being log-jammed, major supply chain players such as railroads are now openly complaining about half-empty railcars and “significant unused excess capacity” amid huge drops in industrial production.

Contrary to time-lagged statistics, forward-looking expectations of future inflation have decreased dramatically. Financial markets, through inflation break-evens, are now pricing in future inflation will be well below 3% and much closer to 2% across any timespan.

But all of these current and forward-looking indicators are insufficient to the Fed, which stubbornly maintains a persistent, misguided focus on labor costs, partly because its staff of 400 group-thinking economists appear to be married to abstract mathematical models rather than real-world economic linkages.

But as we’ve noted before, blaming inflation on labor market tightness reflects an obsolete Phillips Curve mentality which even Powell disparaged earlier in his tenure. There has been zero empirical correlation between inflation and wages for at least 50 years, and if anything, higher wages are past overdue as real wage growth has actually trailed inflation for much of the last three years—meaning wages have been pushing inflation down, not up, and is due for some catch-up.

There is simply no way to get the wage numbers Powell wants unless he destroys crucial services sectors including hospitality, retail, restaurants, and tourism. We ought to be celebrating record employment while increasing labor supply instead of aiming to increase unemployment or kill wages.

Philosopher Abraham Kaplan warned researchers 60 years ago to beware of “the law of instrument” where if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. It is time to stop hammering random sectors of a strong economy due to anachronistic thinking and, perhaps, professional insecurity.

The past two weeks have featured a remarkable series of events that highlight big shifts in the geopolitics of East Asia. Each of them casts light on the opportunities and risks shaping that region and the world.

Xi in Moscow

Most of the news coverage has gone to Xi Jinping’s visit with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Images of the Chinese and Russian presidents exchanging warm words, pledging to expand and deepen their commercial ties, and raising glasses together provided the embattled Putin with something he badly needs: the visible support of a powerful friend willing to embrace a man recently indicted by the International Criminal Court.
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Beyond the show, Putin appears to have gotten little of substance from this meeting. We don’t know what the two men said privately, but Xi made no public call for ceasefire or issue threats to back Russia’s military if (when) a Chinese-sponsored compromise is not accepted by Kyiv and its NATO backers. The joint statement they agreed to made clear they were not establishing the “military-political alliance” that would quickly change the balance of power on the Ukrainian battlefield.

Read More: An Insider’s Perspective on China’s Strategy

China benefits strongly from trade with Russia (and now with oil imports at a significant discount), but Xi is also deeply sympathetic with Putin’s drive to challenge Western (especially U.S.) dominance of the international system. That’s why the two leaders are closer than any time since they toasted a friendship without limits three weeks before the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022—and why we must continue to watch Xi’s evolving approach to Putin’s war.

Kishida in Kyiv

The near-simultaneous visit by Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio to Ukraine was also striking. Kishida had to make this trip. Japan will host a G7 summit in Hiroshima in May, and he was the only G7 leader who had yet to visit Ukraine. But there are several reasons why this stop was still a big deal. It was the first visit by a Japanese prime minister to any country at war since World War II, and Kishida didn’t limit his trip to Kyiv; he also went to the site of a mass grave in the city of Bucha to pay respects to Ukrainian victims of alleged Russian war crimes.

Most importantly, the timing of the visit, which coincided with Xi’s trip to Moscow, made for a bold statement. His March 21 stop in Bucha, where he pronounced himself “outraged by the cruelty” of Russian soldiers, highlighted the formal charge that Putin is a war criminal within hours of Xi lifting a glass of champagne to toast his Russian friend.

It’s a sign that Japan’s prime minister intends to be more diplomatically assertive and outspoken than most of his predecessors. That said, given China’s importance for Japan’s economy, he will modulate his criticism and focus it mainly on Putin.

South Korea and Japan break new ground

In another sign of Japan’s more ambitious foreign policy, Kishida’s trip to Ukraine followed an important new agreement with South Korea. On March 16, he met with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol in Tokyo to announce a diplomatic breakthrough between the two countries that will end Japanese export controls against South Korea and normalize their military and intelligence-sharing relations. They have also restored shuttle diplomacy, which was broken off in 2011.

To get there, the two governments had to finally resolve a long dispute over compensatory payments to Korean victims of forced labor during Japan’s wartime occupation. That finally became possible because both sides decided they had more to fear from the expansion of China’s influence in East Asia and from potential North Korean aggression than domestic political benefit from keeping this controversy alive.

North Korea shakes a nuclear fist

Speaking of North Korea, the Japan-South Korea agreement was announced just hours after an increasingly belligerent DPRK launched yet another intercontinental ballistic missile to protest both the South Korea-Japan meeting in Tokyo and ongoing US-South Korean joint military exercises. Last weekend, North Korea staged what it called a nuclear counter-attack simulation against South Korea and the United States. Then on March 22, it fired multiple cruise missiles off its east coast toward Japan.

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On the surface, all these stories might look like more of the same for a region in which it’s becoming harder for powerful countries to balance their economic and security interests. But China has never before auditioned for such an ambitious role on the global stage. Russia is increasingly desperate for any form of Chinese support against the West. Japan’s government is pursuing a much more assertive foreign policy than in the past. And South Korea and Japan are becoming much more concerned about China’s intentions and North Korea’s growing capabilities.

Right at this moment there is a person in labor preparing to give birth. They got pregnant exactly nine months ago. They may have been trying to conceive. They may have been hoping to avoid it.

But thanks to the five far-right conservatives on the Supreme Court – four of whom will never be capable of carrying a child – that person will face a life-threatening delivery whether they wanted it or not.

Republicans drafting and implementing more and more extreme abortion bans talk about nine months of pregnancy like going through it is no different from failing to get your teeth cleaned every six months or putting off an eye exam. Sure, there could be some discomfort – a cavity that could have been avoided, headaches from needing new glasses – but mostly, they seem to suggest, it’s a minor inconvenience. They refuse to recognize the very real health effects a pregnancy creates – a realignment of the skeleton, changes in blood pressure, permanent dysfunction in organs that will never recover, and the increasing likelihood of death, especially for those who are not white.
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We can assure you that nine months is a very, very long time.

Read More: Even Religious Americans Favor Abortion Rights Post-Dobbs

It has now been nine months since we could provide abortions in the state of Alabama, and nine months since we could make direct referrals to an out-of-state abortion clinic because Alabama considers them a “conspiracy” that could result in jail time. In those nine months, five of the seven abortion clinics in the Gulf states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama have closed or moved elsewhere, creating a vacuum for maternal and sexual health care that no legislature has offered resources to fill. The two of us who have remained are doing the best we can to provide other services, with limited support.

Less than a month after Roe was overturned, our clinic moved to a “pay what you can” free clinic model, knowing that if we didn’t see the patients who come to us, no one would. Since then, we have talked to Medicaid patients who can’t get a doctor to return their calls. We’ve treated patients with things as simple as yeast infections who would otherwise wait weeks to get into the county health center. We’ve cared for patients who had no embryonic heart tones but couldn’t get medication to end the pregnancy because their private physicians are terrified of ending up in jail, losing their license, or both. We’ve offered pregnancy confirmations to those who are uninsured and can’t start the Medicaid application process without them; provided timely prenatal care when people need it, not making them wait two to three months for an appointment; talked to patients who travel out of state for legal abortions, but are sent away from their Alabama hospitals when they think they may have a complication; and given away free contraception because no one else is investing in preventing pregnancy even now that abortion is illegal.

Read More: The Most Common Abortion Method Is in Danger in Every State

In the past nine months, someone got pregnant in the South and wanted an abortion but had to leave the state to get one. Someone else got pregnant and is about to give birth despite not having seen a doctor for their entire pregnancy. Another person miscarried but sat in a hospital waiting room for hours bleeding into her clothes and onto the floor before leaving, unseen. We know because these are the stories our patients have shared with us.

Nine months is a very long time – for us and for our patients. But unfortunately for our health care system, this is just one short moment. As bad as things have been since the Dobbs decision, without support for contraception, prenatal care, and other reproductive health services, this crisis will only grow worse. And the next person getting pregnant may not survive at all.

Israel, my homeland, was built by people who came together from all over the world to escape ruthless persecution, and for nearly 75 years, it has enjoyed prosperity beyond our ancestors’ wildest dreams. Today, Israel teeters on the edge of the abyss. The current crisis, sparked by proposed changes to the judiciary, hides both the root cause and a fundamental solution. Israel needs a constitution, or its equivalent, now.

By constitution, I mean a set of shared, fundamental principles coded into law. A contract that people are willing to uphold, regardless of whether they personally win or lose, is the glue that holds diverse societies together. Constitutions are not panaceas—they are often politicized and vigorously debated —but they provide a framework to tackle seemingly unbridgeable differences from the deepest common ground.

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In the Israeli military, soldiers learn to navigate the desert by moving from one waypoint to the next. We teach those who get lost to retrace their steps to the last point of knowing where they were. This is no different. Countries with constitutions can start at their shared principles, their last known waypoint, then debate how to apply or evolve them to move forward. If they get lost, they know where to restart the journey. Countries without that shared foundation debate what their principles are in the face of every new challenge, and risk getting permanently lost in the desert.

That is what is happening in Israel. The easy explanation for the current conflict is to blame it all on the politicians. They certainly bear responsibility, especially the many who act in self-interest. But half of Israel supports this government’s actions, and the other half is on the verge of revolt over them. The hard truth is that Israel is being destroyed by disagreements because it has not done the work to build a sound foundation of the most important things its people agree on.

Looking back, the debate over a constitution has been deferred for decades. Deep social, political, and religious differences, which should have been a big incentive to define the common ground, instead became an excuse for leaders to shy away from the challenge. We claim shared ideals, but with not nearly enough written down, and with the most important things left vague and assumed, it has been too easy for anyone to claim the moral right. That is precisely what is happening between Israel’s branches of government and the people on either side of the current conflict.

Now, the accumulation of each incremental failure to compromise based on agreed upon principles has expanded Israel’s margins, as more and more people are squeezed out and pitted against each other. It is evident in the country’s inability to govern, with five general elections in the past four years, and in the current conflict. Any one of the judicial proposals presented opportunities to come together. We failed to do that. Not just once and not just on this topic, but many times, over many years. The myriad unresolved issues that by themselves were manageable have now metastasized into a fundamental divide and an attempt by those in power to overthrow the entire system.

Forming a constitution will be extremely difficult; it always is. The history of other nations shows that it is usually these moments that bring the highest risk of destruction but also the biggest potential for evolution. Politicians will cite past failures as reasons to defer yet again. That kind of thinking has brought the country to this unimaginable brink.

Israel does not need to tear itself apart over whether the judiciary should be protected or reformed. Israel needs to pause the current legislation to focus on the root cause and find a more sustainable means of addressing this and our many other divides. This means a constitution or its equivalent, with stronger checks and balances on all three branches of government, defined by the people who will bear the consequences of them.

We are two weeks from Pesach, Passover, the holiday that commemorates the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. At first, they were held together by the persecution they were running away from. Eventually though, as they moved beyond Pharaoh’s reach, they began to consider what they were running toward, and the Ten Commandments became the foundation they decided to build around. Just as it was 4,000 years ago, Israel can no longer survive glued together only by fear and common enemies. With prosperity gifted by the sacrifices of our ancestors, we now must build a shared foundation, the next waypoint that will keep us from wandering too long in the desert.

On Monday, news broke that the Treasury Department is studying how to officially raise the nation’s deposit guarantee above $250,000 in response to the ongoing banking crisis. The news comes on the heels of the decision by the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to guarantee all uninsured deposits at the failed Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a speech Tuesday that the Treasury is prepared to take similar actions if other banks threaten to collapse.

The emergency unlimited deposit insurance is grounded in a simple idea: if depositors at failed banks face no loss on their deposits, individuals and businesses who bank at other fragile banks will feel more confident in the security of their own deposits, stopping a more widespread bank run in its tracks.
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Significantly enhanced or unlimited deposit insurance would be a major gift to privately run banking institutions. If regulators are serious about moving forward and expanding deposit coverage, Congress must require banks to pay for the privilege. Any unlimited deposit insurance scheme needs to be paired with additional regulatory reform of the regulated and unregulated banking sectors alike and a significant increase in risk premia banks pay to the FDIC. Without Congressional action, we run the risk of creating a new standard for crisis response that could cause more bank failures, not fewer.

Enhanced deposit insurance could indeed help in stemming this current panic and preventing the next. The stakes are not small: in the FDIC-insured banking system, at the end of last year, uninsured deposits amounted to $7.7 trillion, over 40 percent of all deposits. A sweeping guarantee of those deposits could make traditional bank runs a relic of the past—why leave a bank in distress when you know you’ll still have access to all of your money if it fails? It would make clear that we should not expect depositors, whether they are individuals or small businesses, to closely follow the financial health of the bank they use. The guarantee could also make it simpler for larger businesses to manage cash flow needs by reducing their reliance on cash-like financial products, such as money market mutual funds or insured cash sweep accounts that spread money across many banks to stay within the FDIC’s current $250,000 limit.

Why has deposit insurance not been unlimited in the past? Banks serve public purposes – the intermediation of credit and the creation of money – but are motivated by private sector aims of financial gain. A deposit guarantee would meaningfully change this relationship by providing a new advantage to banks, a significantly more stable deposit base. Policymakers and economists alike have been concerned about the “moral hazard” that might produce: if banks don’t face the threat of a run, they will use that stability to invest in riskier or less liquid assets, chasing yield that will enhance their profits. Government’s deposit guarantee, a public good, would be used to enhance the profits of banks. If a bank fails, its equity and bond holders might be wiped out, but the smart investors would have enjoyed years of subsidized returns before the collapse.

Read More: Who Is Really to Blame for the Silicon Valley Bank Collapse?

One way to prevent this would be to limit the risks banks could take, specifically by tightening existing regulation including capital and liquidity requirements. Banks provide critical financial services because governments give them the exclusive power to transform short-term liabilities into longer-term assets. If a critical liability, the deposits, are going to be made run-proof, we should expect banks to keep more cash on hand in case a crisis occurs and depositors want their money back. The largest “too big to fail” banks already face enhanced requirements thanks to governance changes in the years after the 2008-2009 Great Financial Crisis. But in 2018 Republicans in Congress, joined by a handful of Democrats, rolled back these requirements on most banks, one of the primary reasons we face the crisis we have today.

In addition, Congress would need to pair unlimited deposit insurance with significantly higher fees to the FDIC for deposit insurance. These should be carefully linked to the leverage of a bank to ensure that the riskiest banks pay the most for the insurance their depositors enjoy.

Tighter regulation of this sort could have problematic side effects, specifically tempering banks’ ability to extend credit to borrowers. Businesses in search of credit have in many cases a ready alternative to the traditional banking sector: the network of hedge funds, private equity funds, and investment banks that make up the so-called “shadow banking” sector (i.e. major financial companies like Blackrock and Apollo). Nearly all major financial institutions touch the unregulated world of shadow banking in some form through their borrowing and lending activity. For instance, when a company in need of funds sells an asset with a promise to buy it back shortly later, the repurchase agreement created establishes a short-term credit relationship. Most of the time, these agreements can be renewed or “rolled over,” creating a depositor-like banking relationship. This is functionally banking, but importantly, without the need for a banking charter.

Estimates of the size of the sector vary because there are no comprehensive reporting requirements, but the Financial Stability Board, a global body that monitors the financial system, pegs the size of the non-bank financial intermediation in the U.S. at $20 trillion, about 15 percent of American financial assets.

Despite the name, shadow banking is not inherently nefarious; a good deal of the activity can improve the functioning of financial markets. Money market funds, for instance, enable millions of Americans to earn a return on cash-like deposits by gaining access to yield-bearing financial products that would otherwise be difficult to access. This is especially important in eras of high inflation. Similarly, repurchase agreements create helpful liquidity for large companies in need of short-term cash or those interested in using their excess cash to earn a modest return.

The problem is that shadow banks are not subject to the same regulatory requirements of traditional banks, but they enjoy an effective public guarantee. When crises occur, the Federal Reserve, working in consultation with the other institutions of government, steps in to provide systemic insurance, as they did in 2008, 2020, and again this month. The Fed now even uses its own repurchase agreement facilities as a primary method of implementing monetary policy. When a crisis occurs, we know that the U.S. government will support the institutions involved in bank-like activity, even if they have not been appropriately regulated before. The shadow banks thus enjoy the opportunity to engage in bank-like financial activity without the regulatory requirements that traditional banks have.

Unlimited deposit insurance and greater capital and liquidity ratios, as desirable as they may be, could inadvertently push more funding into this largely unregulated money market, creating more instability, not less. Investors often find ways around rules to achieve results similar to what the government tried to control. If new legislation requires regulated banks to pay for the privilege of unlimited deposit insurance, then shadow banks will need to enter the regulatory perimeter to ensure that they do not become the sites of increasingly risky behavior.

Policymakers today need to simultaneously restore depositor confidence and address the risks an unlimited deposit guarantee might introduce. If Congress takes no action, it is likely that unlimited deposit insurance guarantees will be introduced again in the next crisis, creating a dangerous precedent and ignoring the risks to financial stability.

As soon as former President Donald Trump declared on his social media site, Truth Social, that he would be arrested on Tuesday, March 21, his congressional and media allies sprung into action to decry any legal action that could be taken against him. For many of them, the principal message was that prosecutions of former leaders are the kind of thing that you only see in authoritarian countries.

The truth is that prosecuting powerful world leaders is something we see in democracies all the time—just not in the United States. Far from weakening their governments, many of these countries rank higher than the U.S. when it comes to political rights and civil liberties. Democracies young and old have held past presidents and prime ministers accountable—and come out as strong (or stronger) on the other side. That’s because following the evidence of crimes and prosecuting leaders, when the evidence merits it, is the most powerful signal a democracy can send to its population that the law applies to everyone equally.
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Read more: Donald Trump Would Be the First President Ever Criminally Charged. Others Have Come Close Though

We can look to France as an example of how to hold former elected officials accountable. In 2021, Nicolas Sarkozy became the second former French president to go to prison when he was found guilty of corruption and illegal use of campaign funds in not one, but two separate trials. During his lengthy political career, Sarkozy was viewed as a divisive politician, due to his tough-on-crime stances and his inflammatory rhetoric, referring to rioters as racaille and voyous (“scum” or “thugs”) and discussing new policing initiatives as a chance to “cleanse” immigrant, minority neighborhoods as one would do with a Kärcher, a kind of pressure washer.

So did prosecuting Sarkozy, even so many years after the offenses took place, destroy France’s democracy? It did not. Freedom House, a non-profit that focuses on the expansion and protection of freedom and democracy around the world, gave France an overall score of 89 out of 100 on its political rights and civil liberties, six points higher than the U.S. The Economist Democracy Index—which tracks democracies based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties—shows that over the last decade, France has gone from a “flawed democracy,” ranked 27 overall, to a full democracy. Meanwhile, the U.S. has done the opposite, falling from 19th place all the way to 30th, from full democracy to “flawed democracy.”

Consider also Taiwan, a much younger democracy, still shaking off the hangover of nearly 40 years of martial law. Politics there can still be chaotic, divisive, and extremely complicated—inextricable from decades of its one-party rule and the constant threat of an attack from China. In 2010, former President Chen Shui-bian and his wife were sentenced to 19 years in prison on bribery charges. The trial was criticized by many in Taiwan as politically motivated, but it did not destroy Taiwan’s nascent democracy. Indeed, Taiwan has one of the highest rankings of any country Freedom House has ranked, topping out at 94. The Economist’s rankings put Taiwan in the top 10 democracies in the world, up from 37th place in 2013.

This shows that indicting and, if the evidence merits, imprisoning divisive leaders does not automatically lead to a deterioration of democracy, nor does it inevitably lead to ceaseless, partisan tit-for-tat of investigations and prosecutions. Evidence of this truism has been repeatedly demonstrated throughout the democratic world, as countries that hold their leaders accountable do not sink into authoritarianism. South Korea, for instance, has jailed four of its former presidents, with one, Park Geun-Hye currently serving a 20-year sentence for charges related to bribery and coercion, yet South Korea’s democracy is ranked just as strong as the U.S.

In countries like Brazil and Italy, politicians as different as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Silvio Berlusconi have shown that leaders who face legal challenges can rally back and, in Lula’s case, retake the presidency. The same can be said of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who mounted a comeback last year despite an ongoing corruption trial. (Though, it should be noted that if Netanyahu does end up in prison, he would be the third Israeli leader to end up behind bars, most recently proceeded by Ehud Olmert who was released in 2017 after serving two-thirds of a 27-month sentence for corruption.) This should serve as a reminder that an indictment is only part of the process, but even a guilty conviction does not necessarily spell the end of someone’s political career.

In the U.S., however, we’re currently watching Republicans collectively wring their hands about holding the powerful accountable, as though Trump is untouchable under our legal system. House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) conjured “Third World countries” in a statement decrying what she said was “the Radical Left” following “the lead of Socialist dictators.” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy—who has studiously resisted holding anyone accountable for the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021—suggested that a Trump indictment would “subvert our democracy.” Newly elected Senator Eric Schmitt tweeted that the potential arrest was “some Third World Banana Republic lunacy.” These messages have been echoed on conservative media too, with Tucker Carlson suggesting Monday night that a Trump indictment would “destroy America’s justice system,” which he says “we would never recover from.”

Trump is not a normal politician and prosecuting him would not require drumming up false charges. As the Research Director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), my colleagues and I have tracked Trump’s unprecedented corruption during his time in office, and we maintain a running list of at least 56 crimes Trump has been credibly accused of committing since he first launched his campaign in 2015. The disquiet and foreboding many feel about prosecuting a former president seems to completely ignore the damage done to a justice system that seems to provide unwritten exemptions to serial violators solely because they’re wealthy and powerful.

No one should be prosecuted for their political views. But by allowing world leaders to escape investigation and indictment for crimes they may have committed simply because they happen to be politically powerful would create an undemocratic, two-tier justice system. If we withhold justice for fear of creating a cycle of retaliatory prosecutions, we will ultimately become guilty of the very erosion of democratic norms we are trying to stop.

As concern in Washington is growing over Israel’s anti-democratic turn, new questions are arising about the underlying strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Such a reflection is welcome, especially if it produces recognition that for much of the past quarter century, Israel has acted as an adversary of the U.S.

Indeed, while enjoying the status and perquisites of a U.S. special ally, it has pursued policies not only in variance with American strategic interests but often directly adversarial to them. And it has done so on a wide array of fronts, in the Middle East and across the globe.

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The adversarial shift began with the ascendance of a specific leader: Benjamin Netanyahu. From his first rise to power in 1996 through the more than years 15 years he has held the reins—after losing an election in 1999, Netanyahu returned in 2009 and, with the exception of an 18-month hiatus between June 2021 and December 2022, has been prime minister ever since—Netanyahu has consistently and increasingly advanced foreign and security policies that, whether directly or indirectly, undercut U.S. strategic interests.

Notably, these policies pertain not only to areas in which Israel could be argued to hold overriding interests, such as the Palestinian one. Although Netanyahu’s diplomatic approach on this front has been at odds with U.S. interests for all but the Trump years, Washington should, and has been, understanding of this divergence between the two allies. The same case can be made for Netanyahu’s policy on Iran, even as he has unequivocally sabotaged and derailed American efforts on this front.

But the remarkable fact is that Netanyahu’s Israel has pursued policies at odds with American strategic interests across much of the world. Let us recount the ways.

In Europe, Netanyahu’s Israel has adopted a policy aimed at undermining the European Union and the liberal democratic order for which it stands. In fact, it has aligned itself not merely with some of Brussels’s staunchest adversaries—such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński and Mateusz Morawiecki, and Italy’s Matteo Salvini, to name a few; it has openly embraced some of Europe’s most far-right parties and their populist leaders whose opposition to Brussels transcends E.U. politics and turns on an illiberal agenda with, astonishingly, neo-fascist and even neo-Nazi strains. A partial list includes the Freedom Party of Austria, founded by a former Nazi SS officer, and Germany’s extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

For Netanyahu, these relationships have been first and foremost transactional. In exchange for Israel turning a blind eye to their historical and ideological links with neo-Nazism and present-day anti-Semitism at home, these parties provided their support for Israel’s policy on the Palestinian front. Such support, moreover, has also served a wider strategic aim for Netanyahu: by undermining E.U. consensus on foreign policy toward Israel, these relationships contribute to sowing divisions within the E.U. itself and weaken Europe’s core liberal norms.

Of course, Netanyahu’s brazen diplomatic posture against the liberal democratic order—the cornerstone of American foreign policy since the end of the Second World War—has been reflected most strikingly in his intimate relationship with Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin. As Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu should certainly maintain cordial and constructive relations with Moscow, a major world power with a growing presence in the Middle East, including across Israel’s northern border of Syria. But the relationship Netanyahu has cultivated with Putin has gone far beyond what has been strategically necessary to safeguard Israeli interests; worse, it has often come at Washington’s expense.

The full cost to U.S. strategic interests became apparent in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although launched during Netanyahu’s brief hiatus from leadership, the relationship he had cultivated over the years with Putin has made Israel into a natural outlet for Russian capital and commodity exports. The conduct is not limited to Jewish Russian oligarchs, for whose welfare (more in the sense of their wealth than health) Israel could claim to care; enter any supermarket in Israel since Western powers imposed sanctions on Moscow, and the number and variety of products from Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea will settle any question as to where Israel truly stands.

Regardless of whether Israeli supply of arms to Ukraine would make a difference on the battleground, its blank refusal of Kyiv’s requests poked a hole in American efforts to present a unified front against Russian aggression. And although Israel has shifted its rhetoric of neutrality somewhat in favor of Ukraine and is reportedly ready to consider supplying it with some defensive weapons systems—the result, no doubt of Iranian military assistance to Russia and U.S. pressure—Netanyahu’s intimacy with Putin should be regarded as Israeli betrayal of the special relationship with the U.S.

A similar approach can be seen in Netanyahu’s policy toward China, the other global player determined to undercut American leadership. China’s rivalry with the U.S. alone should have restrained Netanyahu from forging a comprehensive partnership with it. Yet under his leadership, Israel has become a leading supplier of R&D and cutting-edge technologies and accelerated China’s transformation into becoming America’s “most serious competitor,” as President Biden has defined it.

Remarkably, Israel has also at least declared itself a a geo-strategic backer of China. At a 2017 meeting with President Xi, Netanyahu encouraged China to assume its rightful place “on the world stage,” and waxed romantic by describing the Israeli-Chinese relationship as “a marriage made in heaven.” Meanwhile here on earth, Netanyahu’s Israel has opened itself up to strategic investments by China in its infrastructure, such as the mass transit system in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, which will also run in sensitive underground locations abutting Israel’s military and defense compound, and parts of the Haifa Bay Port, which may steer the U.S. Sixth Fleet elsewhere.

Perhaps most egregiously, Netanyahu has had the temerity to meddle in American domestic politics. He has used Israel to sow divisions between Democrats and Republicans, to anathematize a sitting U.S. president (Barack Obama), and to manipulate—we are using this word advisedly—another one (Donald Trump) to withdraw from a hard-reached international agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. The withdrawal is widely recognized to have been a huge strategic mistake, not only for U.S. security interests but, ironically, also for Israeli ones.

Disagreements between allies are par for the course in international relations. Yet in the case of Netanyahu’s Israel, the kind and quality of its foreign-policy divergences with the U.S. are the stuff of an adversarial relationship, not a friendly one. That there is a certain reluctance to designate Netanyahu’s Israel an adversary of the U.S. is understandable. After all, the U.S. and Israel are bound by a special relationship. And in many ways they are. The very fact that it can contain and subsume the detrimental foreign policies of Netanyahu makes it a very special one indeed.

We need to find a way to talk about America’s founding. The 250th anniversary of our independence provides us with an opportunity to come together and acknowledge that something unique happened in 1776, something that had not happened before. And yet, we must also recognize that many were excluded from the values that we associate with the founding and how much of our history since has been about rectifying that wrong.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, in March 1773, a group of Virginians—Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, and Patrick Henry among them—gathered at a tavern in Williamsburg, VA to create the intercolonial committees of correspondence, a system designed to aid communication between the colonies and organize resistance against Parliament. This committee system stands among the first efforts to unify the British colonists against British imperial rule, jumpstarting the movement towards revolution.
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On March 10 of this year, a similar gathering took place just down the street from where that tavern once stood. This time, more than three hundred historians, curators, and civic leaders from 34 states met to begin laying the groundwork for the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.

Williamsburg was a fitting place for us to gather. It was in the lands of the Powhatan peoples, “Tsenacomoco,” or what the English renamed Jamestown—just a few miles away—that English colonists arrived to establish England’s first permanent settlement in the New World in 1607. In July 1619, the first representative assembly gathered there. Only a month later, in August 1619, the first ship carrying enslaved Africans landed near Jamestown at Point Comfort, today’s Fort Monroe.

We assembled this time with one question: How can we discover, share, and discuss our full history? We must lift up every hero, whether famous or unsung. And we must squarely face the horrors. Only when we better understand what happened in the past—and have a fuller appreciation of everyone’s history—can we see ourselves and our future more clearly.

Read More: How to Create a Sense of Belonging in a Divided America

Alexis de Tocqueville, one of many Frenchmen enamored with the idea of America, remarked: “When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.” Even as we convened to collaborate and plan for this event of great historical significance, we acknowledged that many Americans do not share our love of history. Many think it is irrelevant to their lives, boring, and abstract. Many have become cynical about it, believing that history is told in different ways by different political factions for different political purposes. Some believe history is cherry-picked for heroism. Others believe we over-emphasize the horrific. Many feel their stories are untold. Most do not appreciate that the ideas that were debated in 1776, the tensions and contradictions that were experienced in this community over two-hundred and fifty years ago, still echo today across our nation.

Many Americans are also concerned about our current division and discord. You often hear people say: “We have never been this divided.” Or they’ll postulate that all Americans were united in their desire for independence from the Crown. The truth is, we have always been a fractious country. From the very beginning, our diversity has been a source of strength, but it has also been a source of disagreement. We were divided at the time of the Revolution over religion, politics, economics, ethnicity, status, class, and the institution of slavery. We were divided as well about whether the fight for independence was heroic and wise or treasonous and foolhardy.

As we plan for the commemoration of our formation as a nation, we must never confuse nostalgia with real history. There were then, as there are now, as many hypocrites as heroes; as many who claimed rights for themselves while denying them to others; as many who resented the abuse of power while themselves abusing it.

To see this clearly does not diminish in any way the reality that the words that were written, and the system of laws and government that was designed, have inspired every movement for human dignity, sovereignty, equality and liberty everywhere, ever since. From the French Revolution to the War for Ukraine, from abolition to civil rights, from voting rights to human rights—all of these great movements here and around the world—have looked to our history for inspiration, justification and motivation.

To quote de Tocqueville: “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” He believed that our strength lies within our civil society, in communities and citizens who gather together to build something better. Many have rightly fought to make that sense of community more inclusive. It is a fight that is ongoing. But it is we as citizens who must focus on those repairs that remain necessary.

Our 2026 commemoration must be about far more than fireworks and tall ships. It cannot be celebrated by some, resented by others and ignored by most. It must not be about “red states” and “blue states” fighting over how we talk about and teach our founding story. It must reflect our diversity while reinforcing our union. It must remind us why the privilege of American citizenship remains the cherished goal of countless people everywhere and reacquaint us with the responsibilities that come with citizenship. We must do far more than plan a big birthday party.

As a country, we have been at our best when we’ve come together. We can choose to design and deliver commemorations of our history that deepen every citizen’s’ connection to our nation. We can tell many stories while weaving the thread of our shared American story.

Our hope is that as 2026 arrives, Americans in every corner of our nation can look into the mirror of our history and see themselves and each other more clearly. Every story has value. Every person, regardless of when they came or how or for what reason is part of this story—and the story we are building as a country. This is our common cause. It is not an easy task. But without it, we cannot understand ourselves or our nation and we cannot move forward. Without it, we will not form a more perfect union.

In 1987, Doris Fish, at that time San Francisco’s reigning drag queen, had accumulated enough notoriety for a Pittsburgh TV station to fly him east for an interview on its daytime talk show Pittsburgh 2Day. The studio audience was wide-eyed, and for good reason: Doris walked on in a red-fringed halter top, purple skirt, cobalt-blue opera-length gloves, gold platforms, and grapefruit-size earrings under a teased blonde wig. The host, Jon Burnett, seemed fairly agog himself, until after a bit of sparring, he realized how funny and self-confident Doris was.

The interview had a telling moment: After some initial banter, Burnett turned serious: “How do kids look at you, and what kind of example are you setting, and do you worry about being an example?” Doris answered smoothly, “Oh yes, certainly. I like to think that I have to set a positive example to let children know if they want to be drag queens it’s a perfectly all right thing to be!”
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The audience laughed appreciatively at the quip. No one, Doris included, imagined an era was on the way in which “drag queen” could be considered a profession, and a child might conceivably aspire to be one. But in fact drag queens like Doris were creating that future, perhaps without even knowing it. They thought of themselves as entertainers, not political workers. And yet, today, we can see just how much drag—for all its glamour and fantasy—was a political act.

Now drag queens, along with queer people across the spectrum, are such a quotidian part of the cultural scene that it can be hard to remember—and younger people obviously can’t remember—that, not so many decades ago, queer people were all but totally invisible. When, in 1981, the blockbuster TV soap Dynasty introduced a gay character, the media treated it as an event on the scale of an invasion. Which, I guess, it was.

At a time when a lot of gay people involved in the fight for equal rights (like Harvey Milk) were nervously trying to look as respectable as candidates going to corporate job interviews, drag queens wanted to stand out, respectability be damned. The drag shows that Doris was putting on in San Francisco, and Lypsinka, RuPaul, and the Lady Bunny in New York , Atlanta, and elsewhere, weren’t overtly political—but there’s more than one kind of politics. And they weren’t attracting just gay audiences. Straight people were flocking to them, too, because the shows were terrific and hilarious, and they got them. Camp humor, which had begun as a secret code among a coterie of in-the-know urban gay men, had invaded popular culture. And so, somehow, had queer people—and middle Americans were giving them a thumbs-up.

Drag queens would show up at every protest and pride march (the cameras loved them), horrifying the queer politicos who came in office attire and, as Doris wrote in a letter to a friend, “busy giving gays a bad name.” But they were really doing opposite: putting the nail in the coffin of the postwar conformity that had been struggling not to look ridiculous since kids in jeans had started to challenge it in the ’60s.

Read More: Black Queer History Is American History

Doris’s face (if not his name) became familiar to the public through the dozens of greeting cards for which he modeled, in a series of loony or glamorous guises, for West Graphics, a San Francisco company that, with the advent of Doris, became an ’80s phenomenon. Suddenly middle Americans were getting birthday and anniversary and get-well cards with a drag queen on the front. Card-shop owners were making their rent because of Doris.

Meanwhile, John Epperson’s Lypsinka was mining old movies to satirize clichés about women, and to make it clear (even while audiences were doubled over) how outmoded and damaging those clichés were. Doris and the Sluts a-Go-Go, the drag troupe he led, were doing their shows in a TV-talk-show format as a way of satirizing, and thus protesting, queer invisibility on TV. They didn’t think of themselves as pioneers, but they were setting a precedent for the now totally regular appearance of queer people in the media.

Then, with the advents of AIDS during the ’80s, drag queens went from being the pariahs of the queer community to its heroes. They showed up on the AIDS wards to entertain patients and at the constant AIDS benefits to raise money for them. At a time when unembarrassed homophobes were proclaiming that people with AIDS had gotten just what they deserved, drag queens became recognized as keepers of the flame of gay culture by a gay population finally proud to acknowledge that it had a culture. Camp was no longer a secret—it belonged to everybody.

We’re living in a moment of resurgent homophobia. Like anti-Semitism, it will probably never die out, and opportunistic politicians will always find in the specter of queers a handy way to get a crowd riled up. Hence the recent Tennessee legislation (with other states sure to follow) that outlaws public shows by performers—including male and female impersonators—that the state considers harmful to minors, including, of course, the popular drag-queen story hours that libraries and bookstores have now been presenting for some time.

What could be more joy-killing than trying to suppress a phenomenon that brings so much delight—to the kids, their parents, the drag queens, and the sponsors (not to mention those among us invested in seeing young people take an interest in books)? Well, good luck with that—or, rather, bad luck. Drag queens, like the queer population that gave rise to them, are a genie that’s not going back in the bottle. If Doris’s generation of drag performers wouldn’t keep quiet even during an era of rank homophobia, you can bet that the current generation, which has tasted tolerance, won’t back down. You just don’t silence a drag queen.

When Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor and 2024 presidential hopeful, was inaugurated for a second term in February, DeSantis centered his vision for the next four years on the idea that “freedom lives” in the Sunshine State. Baked into DeSantis’ speech was an emerging battle for the public memory of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Over the past few years,” he said, “as so many states in our country grinded their citizens down, we in Florida lifted our people up. When other states consigned their people’s freedom to the dustbin, Florida stood strongly as freedom’s linchpin.”

Yet behind this soaring rhetoric of liberty lies a very uncomfortable fact that DeSantis wants us to forget: Florida has been among the worst-performing states when it comes to protecting people from COVID-19 deaths.
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As Oliver Johnson, mathematician at the University of Bristol, England, noted last December, if Florida were a country, its COVID-19 death rate would put it at “10th worst in the world, behind Peru and various East European countries that got slammed pre-vaccine.”

It’s true that Florida has a high proportion of older people, who face the greatest risk of death from COVID-19 if infected by the coronavirus, and the state’s performance looks better if its COVID-19 death rate is adjusted for age. And when you examine deaths from all causes (known as “all-cause mortality”) over the full three years of the pandemic, Florida’s performance is only a little worse than that of California. But Florida is doing extremely poorly at vaccinating its most vulnerable citizens. Booster coverage among elderly residents of nursing facilities in Florida is the second lowest among all U.S. states, and general booster rates are among the worst in the nation. These critical public health indexes are unlikely to improve, given DeSantis’s embrace of anti-vaccine rhetoric. Such rhetoric plays well with the conservative base that he needs to excite if he is to beat Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary.

Across the country, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, rumored to be a possible presidential candidate if President Biden doesn’t run for a second term, was also sworn in for a second term. He too campaigned under the rhetorical glint of freedom, upheld by his version of the history of the pandemic; and he too had his own struggles curbing the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In our finest hours,” Newsom boasted, “California has been freedom’s force multiplier. Protecting liberty from a rising tide of oppression taking root in statehouses.” Newsom’s version of freedom includes a protection of reproductive rights, access to health care, and green growth, which he contrasted with the January 6^th, 2021 attack on the White House amidst turmoil over pandemic policies. In a statement seemingly hurled directly at DeSantis, Newsom argued that “Red state politicians, and the media empire behind them,” are “selling regression as progress, oppression as freedom.”

The context for the continued debates over COVID-19 policy in the U.S. is in part the ongoing death toll of around 2,700 deaths every week. But the subtext is the looming 2024 presidential election. Both likely seeking their respective party’s nomination, DeSantis’ and Newsom’s political platforms squarely rest on a calculated set of claims about how they see the history of the past three years.

As we enter what promises to be a fierce campaign cycle, Americans will be voting for more than their next president. They are voting over the public memory of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Republican and Democratic nominees will present a vision of the past three years that panders to their respective bases and distorts the history of the pandemic. Pandemic memories, in other words, are jarringly malleable political weapons.

Despite an uptick in COVID-19 cases in the 2022-23 holiday season, around 6 in 10 Americans say they think the worst of the pandemic is behind us. But how do we reckon with the mass death, disability, and orphanhood that COVID-19 caused in the U.S.? As Yea-Hung Chen, epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, told NPR: “There are neighborhoods & communities in the U.S. where you have COVID deaths maybe every three homes. It’s just been numbingly awful.”

Some U.S. politicians are attempting to memorialize what we have been through. Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear, for instance, announced in January that state officials are constructing a COVID-19 memorial on the capitol grounds in Lexington to honor the nearly 18,000 Kentuckians who have died of COVID-19. One Houston couple, Mohammed and Ruth Nasrullah, have curated a virtual memorial, “COVID-19 Wall of Memories,” sharing personal stories of 15,000 Americans whose lives were lost to the pandemic.

As we enter a new phase of the pandemic, one centered on how to remember, we might look towards the past. Reeling from World War I and the devastating impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic, Ohio’s Republican Senator Warren G. Harding spoke before the Home Market Club of Boston on May 14^th, 1920, in what became a hallmark speech, “Back to Normal.” His speech is credited as helping him win a convincing victory in the Presidential Election in November 1920 over Democratic candidate James Cox (Harding won 60% of the popular vote). “Poise has been disturbed, and nerves have been wracked, and fever has rendered men irrational,” Harding began. “America’s present need,” he urged, “is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity.”

Taking aim squarely at former president Woodrow Wilson’s progressive foreign and domestic policies, and set against the context of race riots in Chicago, strikes in the steel and meat packing industries, and controversial attempts by local authorities to ban public gatherings and institute mask mandates to curb the flu pandemic, Harding jabbed that “the world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation.” “Let’s get out of the fevered delirium,” Harding concluded, and head towards the “normal forward stride of the American people.”

Harding struck a chord that many Americans wanted to hear in 1920, campaigning on freedom, resiliency, and, above all else, normalcy. And in part it worked, ushering in a wave of so-called post-pandemic normalcy, a term coined in 1976 by historian Alfred Crosby in America’s Forgotten Pandemic. Many Americans today, gripped by the collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic of the past three years, will likely resonate with the same campaign promises, which is why on both sides of the political aisle, DeSantis and Newsom are gearing up their campaigns under the banner of freedom. But, like Harding’s victory in 1920, the deeper battle this election cycle will be over pandemic memory.

The U.S. ended 2022 with something of a cultural amnesia over the ongoing pandemic, with a wish to forget the past three years. Throughout the pandemic, one common, nonpartisan frustration has been: “why does the pandemic have to be so political?” The answer is that politics always permeates public health. What we need to brace for now is the politics of historical memory. How will the first three years of the pandemic be remembered? How will they be forgotten?

As we observe the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War, which claimed more than 4,600 American lives and countless Iraqis, we must make an honest assessment of the war. The war cost the U.S. trillions, upended Middle East stability, and ultimately benefited Iran’s aggressive and expansionist agenda by capturing much of the political and military institutions in Baghdad and Damascus. Despite its tremendous cost, the war weakened America’s geostrategic position and damaged our national credibility.

What can be learned from this calamity? As authors of the U.S. government’s definitive study on the Iraq War, two somewhat conflicting central points stand out. First, the war should never have occurred. Second, once the war began, it should not have been abandoned without leaving behind a stable Iraq, even if that meant staying for years.

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Invading Iraq in 2003 was strategic folly and one of the worst foreign policy decisions in the history of the Republic. Tainted and inaccurate intelligence provided justification for disarming Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. Pretending that Iraq could be the hearth for democracy in the Middle East or that it was abetting Al Qaeda terrorists were similar delusions. But the decision to invade defied an even larger truth, one that was clear even before the war. Iraq provided a physical and practical buffer to Iran, a country that few disputed had an active weapons of mass destruction program in 2003 and which has consistently demonstrated the intent to use such a capability alongside its terrorist objectives.

Iran, which regularly calls for the destruction of the U.S. and actively supports our enemies, was the larger and clearer threat to our interests both then and now. Regime change in Iraq destroyed a status quo that, by extension, benefitted the U.S. In essence, Iraq’s geostrategic position in 2003 helped regional security by focusing Iran’s attention and resources next door. In addition to this geopolitical damage, the preemptive invasion, conducted without U.N. Security Council authorization and on the basis of dubious intelligence, squandered our international standing and goodwill, which was abundant in the wake of 9/11.

Read More: There Were Many Ways to Die in Baghdad

Once the invasion occurred and Iraq’s security forces evaporated those same considerations should have driven U.S. policy to restore the country’s stability, vis-à-vis Iran. The region represents a vital strategic interest for the U.S., as does blocking the expansion of Iranian influence. Unfortunately, the U.S. chose to ignore this reality and when politically expedient, withdrew from Iraq and hoped for the best. Beyond the error of the initial invasion, withdrawing was nearly as significant a strategic error, placing Iraq’s future into the hands of a corrupt and sectarian Prime Minister who was intent to establish Shia domination and Iranian alignment. While Iraq’s condition had improved significantly since 2003, sufficient signs existed in 2011 that progress was fragile. Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s sectarianism and authoritarianism, toxic components that would lead to further destruction of Iraq, had been on full display and reported to Washington. Iraq, shattered by decades of war, sanctions, and corruption, needed longer to heal and needed American help to prevent an Iranian takeover.

Although we had decided that we were done with Iraq and all its associated challenges, Iraq wasn’t done with us. American strategic myopia enabled Maliki’s government to kill or disenfranchise Sunnis and financially isolate the Kurds, paving the way for the rise of ISIS and a return of U.S. forces. We are still in Iraq today, and still without a status of forces agreement that was used for political cover to end our military presence in 2011. But today’s Iraq looks very different. Iranian-backed militias, on the Iraqi payroll, now outnumber the Iraqi Army. The Ministry of Defense now includes officers and generals who are designated terrorists. Iranian aligned militias have captured state resources through political representation in Parliament and by controlling key posts in lucrative ministries. Iran’s influence now waxes in an uninterrupted arc from Tehran to the Mediterranean, traipsing across Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

Retaining U.S. forces in Iraq would have been a difficult decision for a war weary America. But a residual force that was closely tied to key political objectives and aimed at reducing Iranian influence could have prevented the treacherous strategic situation we face today: Iraq as a broken and devastated nation, serving as a base and transit point for Iranian forces. Luckily, the U.S. retains some tools to steer Iraq to a more constructive and stable future. The U.S. can impose high economic costs on the Iraqi military and government to remove Iran-backed terrorists from its payroll, withhold U.S. banknote transfers that inexplicably continue despite their laundering by Iran, and remove sanctions waivers so Iraq can free itself from an artificial energy dependence on Iran. And perhaps most importantly, the U.S. must militarily deter Iran so that it retracts rather than expands its regional aggression. Only these measures are likely to reverse the tailspin of Iraq’s perilous future, a future that we set in motion twenty years ago.

By now, we’re all familiar with the newfound popularity of Ozempic, a drug created to help manage type 2 diabetes, being used as the new miracle weight loss drug. Recent studies have shown that the active ingredient in Ozempic, semaglutide, can cause weight loss and in 2021, the FDA approved a drug with a higher dose of semaglutide to treat “obesity.” However, the popularity of this new drug is increasing the weight of the pressure to pursue thinness. The return of low-rise jeans and Kim Kardashian shrinking her BBL were some of the first harbingers of the reversion back to a time when only our phones were allowed to be “thick.” It’s clear that the unlearning and undoing of a century’s worth of harm by the rise of the “body positivity movement” is regarded as just another trend.
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I was born on the heels of Generation Y, so my mind and body developed during the ‘Got Milk?’ propaganda of the early 2000s. Truth be told, if Ozempic was introduced when I was growing up, I probably would’ve been eager to get my hands on some myself. I was raised—even in an African immigrant household—to believe that the worst thing you could possibly be is fat. I grew up wondering if the taste of Slim Fast would make me diminish and dance like the women in the commercials. I lusted after those dry, unappetizing Weight Watchers pastries because I craved the feeling of eating chocolate without immediately feeling guilty afterward. I felt the disappointment in my mother’s gaze whenever she bought me clothes where the tag had double digits. I longed for a weight loss version of a get-rich-quick scheme to make the numbers go back down. Just 15 years ago, you’d be hard-pressed to find any dissenting voices concerned about these weight loss fads to make the impressionable masses shrink instantly.

So what’s changed?

In the past 10 years, there has been more mainstream recognition of many social justice issues, likely aided by the egalitarianism of social media. One of many issues brought to the forefront is the widely-accepted marginalization of fat people. For the first time, fat people had the power and the platform to be visible on our own terms, tell our own stories, and call for the advancement of body positivity.

The body-positive movement’s origins have always been political. The movement was started by fat Black women in the ‘60s and largely addressed the fact that fatphobia is rooted in anti-Black racism. However, despite Black women being targets of medical fatphobia as well as their looks being used to undermine their leadership in the women’s rights and civil rights movements, the fat acceptance groups that followed also chose to center whiteness and undermine Black women’s contributions. And the reason why it’s so easy for people to hop on the Ozempic train is that the mainstream commodification of the body-positive movement is as flavorless and diluted as the low-fat diet regimens of yesteryear.

Read more: What the Ozempic Obsession Misses About Food and Health

Before 2014, I had never considered fatness as an identity. Even though my own experiences with eating disorders proved the exact opposite, I wholly believed that fatness was a choice and something separate from one’s self—a skintight suit I’d spend the rest of my life shedding. Learning about the pillars of the body-positive movement helped me unlearn these harmful ideas that perpetuated my internalized fatphobia and fatphobia towards those larger than me. At the time, I thought this process of unlearning was an obvious prerequisite for anyone to consider themselves a participant in the movement. But the internet doesn’t require any proof of internal work for you to use #bodyposi with a photo of yourself.

Millennials experienced the most profound shift from the Kate-Mossian beauty standard that dominated all media, to a steady increase in body-diverse representation. As warm and fuzzy as it felt in the beginning, to see a lingerie commercial featuring women with (and without) hips, thighs, and tummies freely dancing around in their underwear, the hyper focus on representation shifted the conversation away from liberation to a much more palatable discourse surrounding self-love. After all, the movement was originally created to disrupt the social order and dismantle the systems that keep white, thin, able-bodied people in power. The easiest way to undermine that effort and, yet again, center whiteness was to extract a by-product of years of marginalization that everyone (especially non-cis and non-male) can relate to and make that aspect a nameless and faceless enemy that is less threatening to the status quo: a negative self-image.

But what’s wrong with focusing on self-love? Well, for one, self-love is clearly absent of politic. Self-love is what has been used to justify the erasure of the most marginalized bodies in favor of size-8-to-12 white women being pushed to the forefront. Self-love has equated “feeling bad about your body” with being marginalized because of it. Anyone who tries to speak out in opposition to the lack of radicalism is quickly silenced, being told that body positivity is for everyone because everyone has access to the feeling of insecurity. The fact is that insecurity is rooted in society’s discouragement of having any racialized features—and this includes fatness.

Anything can be done in the name of self-love, and the selves that society loves have the power to cause harm without reproach. Dangerous diets and surgeries are bought and sold in pursuit of self-love. How else do we explain the willingness to create scarcity of a potentially life-saving medication in pursuit of vanity? Fatphobia is already inherently ableist, but watching the indifference towards making a drug (that is meant to assist with the very disease that makes society scorn fat people) be made inaccessible to those who need it in real time has further underlined the fact that fake concerns for public health is nothing more than a tactic meant to disappear anyone that they deem undesirable. For self-love in no way discourages the suffering of others.

I count myself both lucky and unlucky that I am not easily swayed by idle affirmations. Of course, in my journey, I have been seduced by the adorable illustrations with positive platitudes attached to them that amount to some version of “love yourself.” But that was never enough to sway me. Why should I love myself when the world treats fat people like second-class citizens? Why should I love myself instead of trying harder to be a version of myself that the rest of the world would encourage me to love?

My skepticism forced me to dig deeper. My self-love is an act of defiance because the only reason I was taught to hate myself was to uphold white supremacy. I was taught to hate myself so that other people could profit from it. I was taught to blame myself for my own marginalization instead of working to dismantle the systems that have placed me there. And more important than that, it’s not just about me. Our reliance on the “love yourself” and the mainstream body-positive ideology has made the issue of fatphobia an individual battle and in that, there is no solidarity. Without community, we are easily divided and conquered.

The Ozempic craze is a swift wind that has revealed that we’ve spent the past decade building a house of cards. We need a new way to think about body positivity now more than ever. The mainstream idea of body positivity threatens the fight for fat liberation, as we face yet another massive push for fat elimination. This is what happens when a movement for liberation is reduced to something as fickle as women dancing in commercials.

The war in Ukraine has now entered its second year—but President Joe Biden has yet to articulate a credible strategy. It is therefore critical for conservatives to take stock and clearly chart out a path forward that can fill this vacuum, a vision rooted in conservative principles that heeds the lessons of history. In other words, a foreign policy that serves American interests, and thus is not a recipe for perpetual conflict.

In this context, it is vital to frame correctly what a conservative approach to U.S. foreign policy should be. This is to put the interests of Americans—their security, freedom, and prosperity—front and center. This does not mean disparaging the interests of others; to the contrary, it requires international collaboration. But it means forthrightly evaluating our foreign policy based on how it serves those concrete interests.
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This approach cautions against two extremes. We cannot just pull back from the world and hope for the best. The world is too dangerous, and we cannot trust rapacious governments not to exploit our withdrawal. On the other hand, it is simply untenable for Americans to bear the vast majority of the burden among our allies in standing up to threatening states.

Serving Americans’ interests requires realism. Conservatives are proud of America and unabashed in their assertion of its values and interests. They are not self-flagellators. But true conservatives are also practically minded. If nothing else, conservatism understands that the world is a competitive and often dangerous place, tradeoffs exist, and meeting one’s responsibilities—whether as a nation, community, or family—requires sober planning, a clear and sober assessment of things, and effective implementation.

In this context, we need to be absolutely clear: Without question, the top external threat to America is China—by far. China is ten times the economic scale of Russia and leads the world in manufacturing. Beijing seeks first to dominate Asia, now the world’s largest market zone, and from that position control the global economy. This will enable it to inject itself into every part of American life—undermining our jobs, our freedoms, and ultimately our security. We cannot allow this to happen.

Read More: An Insider’s Perspective on China’s Strategy in Ukraine

China is making significant progress toward that goal. It is undertaking a historically unprecedented military buildup specifically designed to defeat the American military and to split apart our alliances in Asia that designed to prevent Beijing from dominating this critical region. And yet, despite a lot of fanfare and talk, our military position in Asia continues to deteriorate. As The Heritage Foundation has extensively documented, America’s armed forces (and the industrial base to support it) are too old, too unready, and too small to ensure we can defeat China in a war in the Western Pacific. This is an intolerable danger.

It’s through this lens that we need to view the Ukraine war. First, let’s be clear: Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is an evil act. It is wrong to conduct a war of aggression to conquer another country. It is wrong to conduct atrocities. These are some of the reasons why it’s been the right thing for America and European nations to support Ukraine. It is also in our collective interest for the Russian military to be weakened and kept from NATO’s borders.

But we do not live in a vacuum. China is making progress toward its goal that, if achieved, would be the most dangerous to Americans. And we do not have unlimited resources. In a republic, the nation’s foreign policy should serve the citizens’ interests considering all the threats and needs the nation faces. To serve Americans’ interests, Congress must put the most consequential and grave national security threats first.

Yet we are not doing that. The fact is that our concentration on Ukraine has undermined our ability to address the worsening military situation in Asia, especially around Taiwan. Advocates for unconditional support of Ukraine say that these two objectives are not in tension. Yet this is simply not borne out by the facts. The U.S. has already sent tremendous quantities of military hardware that will take years to replenish to Ukraine and spent roughly $112 billion on aid, all while continuing to underinvest in the Pacific. This aid includes weapons, industrial base focus, and money that could have gone to the primary theater. This is the real world, one in which American largesse is not unlimited, not the one we might wish it to be. In this world, America must focus on China and deterring war over Taiwan.

Meanwhile the Biden Administration, while dramatically increasing domestic spending, has failed to invest the resources necessary to redress the worsening military balance in Asia. Now we are in a situation in which we cannot continue to spend and borrow as U.S. national debt climbs over $31 trillion. Former George W. Bush economics advisor Glenn Hubbard has argued, the U.S. is in a very difficult fiscal position; given the profligate spending of recent years, it can no longer afford to simply borrow to fund any needed defense increases.

This means that the economic tradeoffs are real—it is vital to face up to this because the Ukraine War seems unlikely to end any time soon. Russia will likely continue mobilizing its population for war, both in expanding its military and putting its economy on a war footing. The U.S., therefore, needs to focus its limited resources on the threat most dangerous to America: China.

Fortunately, though, this doesn’t require abandoning Ukraine. The solution is clear: for European countries, especially Germany, to step up and take the lead in their own conventional defense and in supporting Ukraine. Many treat this as far-fetched, but it isn’t. The European economies dwarf Russia in scale. If they put their minds to it, they can shoulder a greater burden of defending themselves and supporting Ukraine. And they have every reason to— as Ukraine is in their neighborhood. The U.S. should still help, but in a supporting role consistent with a genuine prioritization of Asia.

Yet the Biden Administration and many in Congress have done exactly the opposite: smother any hint of European assumption of responsibility by strutting around as “American leadership.” The results have been predictable. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has barely budged in its military buildup and provided only meager support to Kiev. This must change.

For the first time in modern history, the U.S. faces a peer superpower in China. We must act like it. However just and noble Ukraine’s cause is, continuing to focus on it at the expense of confronting and deterring China is not wise, moral, or conservative.

Seven months ago, when I took up my role at the helm of United Nations Climate Change, I said that we would need to do things differently if we are to meet the challenge of the climate emergency.

The report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today underscores that need in dramatic terms. This synthesis of the most up-to-date science we have from a global community of experts adds yet more certainty, more data, and more detail to a simple truth: Unless we reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 43% this decade, we are locking ourselves into a future of escalating climate extremes, food crises, and nature loss.
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While there has been significant progress on the climate agenda over the past years, today’s IPCC report is clear: It’s the pace at which we decarbonize our societies that will determine our success. Unless we supercharge climate action this decade, the Paris Agreement goals will be lost.

As the head of the U.N. organization tasked with addressing the climate emergency, I see three priorities for this year to get us on course.

First: chart a clear path towards 2030

If we are to halve emissions by the end of the decade, we need to get specific now. This year’s so-called Global Stocktake—a U.N.-led consultation process to assess progress towards the Paris goals—is a unique opportunity to establish where the world stands on climate action and identify the gaps that remain.

This year will see the culmination of this two-year long process, which includes inputs from countries, businesses, cities, civil society, and others. As a key pillar of the 2015 Paris Agreement, it is designed to help countries build ambitious national climate plans and see what they have achieved so far.

But the Stocktake has to be more than yet another synthesis report. Countries must use this moment to agree on the concrete milestones that will take us to our 2030 targets.

This roadmap cannot be limited to our emission reductions alone. It must include detailed steps for all work areas including on climate adaptation, loss and damage, finance, technology, and capacity building.

For the Stocktake to deliver that pathway, the G20 countries, who are responsible for more than 80% of global emissions, must lead the way. The Indian G20 presidency’s leadership, in particular, is essential to inject the necessary political momentum into the Stocktake process ahead of COP28.

Second: align global finance flows with our climate goals

The emission reductions described by the IPCC today are simply not achievable under our current financial architecture, which is stuck in the last century.

The upcoming Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are a moment to push ahead with reforms to multilateral development banks (MDBs) and move away from a system that continues to treat development and climate goals as separate challenges.

MDBs and their vast lending powers have the ability to fuel the green transition we must achieve this decade. But we can only harness this potential if MDBs update their operating models to provide more concessional lending at better terms for climate projects.

Whether it’s a reform of the MDBs, reducing support for high-emission industries and projects, or scaling up private finance for the green transition, we must see progress this year to pave the way in unlocking funds for countries on the frontlines of the climate emergency.

Third: launch an accountability revolution

Today’s IPCC report shows how every bit of additional warming translates into more suffering for people, especially the most vulnerable.

Taking this science seriously means putting an end to vague commitments and broken promises. The time for greenwashing, delay, and deception is over.

As U.N. Climate Change, we will sit at the heart of a renewed focus on accountability. Last year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres provided a first set of principles to guide the development of credible climate targets for businesses and other non-state actors. In the coming months, we will publish a plan to show how we can build on these recommendations to close accountability gaps.

As the intergovernmental climate process shifts from negotiation to implementation, countries will face stronger scrutiny. Many of the climate plans submitted to date amount to nothing less than a broken promise. Unless they are backed up with policy and plans for delivery, these plans are meaningless. Supporting countries to push commitments off the paper and into action will be a priority for U.N. Climate Change ahead of COP28 and beyond.

If we are to truly do things differently, all these elements—a 2030 roadmap, finance reform, and improved accountability mechanisms—must come together at COP28, the next major U.N. climate conference, to be held in Dubai this December.

It is my conviction that by giving us not only a plan, but also a renewed sense of political and corporate accountability on climate change, COP28 can be the moment in which we double-down on the future we can still create.

On March 15, 2023, Rep. Stan McClain answered questions about House Bill 1069, aimed at rewriting and restricting Florida’s sex education curriculum. In a now viral video, he acknowledged that the proposed legislation he sponsored would not only prohibit instruction about menstruation to students not yet in sixth grade, but forbid any discussion whatsoever about periods during the school day.

Fluency in the menstrual cycle is not only an essential matter of personal health and hygiene, but in our post-Roe society, such knowledge rises to the highest levels of political urgency. That goes double for Floridians: In the coming weeks, the Republican-led legislature is poised to further curtail abortion; in February, the Florida High School Athletic Association attempted to mandate that student athletes submit their menstrual histories to the state.
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Public officials’ own ignorance about periods—including the reality that many girls already have had started having them by or before sixth grade—should be proof enough of the foolishness of the Florida bill. But its folly is eclipsed by the clear danger posed by such ignorance.

Read more: America’s Very Real Menstrual Crisis

Consider remarks made by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in support of S.B. 8, his state’s law that all but obliterated abortion access in 2021, well before the United States Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. By creating liability for anyone who provides or helps someone procure an abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected, usually at around the six-week mark of pregnancy, S.B.8 is among those laws that have earned the nickname “six-week ban.” Gov. Abbott asserted at a press conference the day after S.B.8 went into effect that the law doesn’t pose a burden because “it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion.”

He couldn’t be more wrong. A “six-week ban” on abortion is emphatically not the same as a six-week window to obtain one. In fact, this is Menstruation 101: Pregnancy is measured by the date of the last menstrual period (“LMP”), not the date of the missed period. For those whose cycles are a precise 28-day rotation, they are considered four weeks pregnant on the first day of a missed period. This means that in the best-case scenario—an accurate pregnancy test result on day one of a missed period in a predictable 28-day cycle—a person has a maximum of two weeks to obtain an abortion. (It’s worth noting that 87% of women do not have regular periods, especially teens, making it that much harder to benchmark a pregnancy’s 40-week countdown.)

Political leaders like Gov. Abbott and Rep. McClain, who are either woefully misinformed about the mechanics of menstruation or willfully peddling murky math and outright lies, know that limiting knowledge advances their agenda. Which is why it is increasingly vital that the rest of us—especially anyone capable of becoming pregnant—be fully engaged in understanding the ebbs and flows of the menstrual cycle.

The current Florida bill aside, it is alarmingly clear we can’t rely solely on schools to impart these lessons. Not only is sex education highly polarized and partisan, only 17 states even require that it be medically accurate.

We need more avenues for sharing basic information about menstruation. Here’s an intervention that’s ripe for consideration: going directly to the billions of consumers worldwide who purchase pads, tampons, period underwear and menstrual cups, as well as other supplies and resources, on a regular basis. The federal government can and should require menstrual product companies doing business in the U.S. to provide standardized, accurate information about the menstrual cycle in their packaging and on consumer web sites. The Food and Drug Administration already mandates uniform language in tampon boxes to warn about the risks and symptoms of toxic shock syndrome. When it comes to imparting menstrual literacy, the life-saving impact is just as real.

Given that many period product companies already make menstrual advocacy part of their mission—participating in campaigns to address period poverty, combat stigma, or end the “tampon tax”—private and philanthropic support for educational campaigns should be a timely and coordinated extension of these efforts, too.

In this ominous next chapter for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, ensuring that the basics of the menstrual cycle are understood by all must be among our national priorities. A federal directive and private-public partnerships can—and must—help fill the breach.

China is everywhere in global politics. China is “ubiquitous,” a retired Senior Colonel Zhou Bo of China’s PLA told me in a recent conversation. On March 10, in an agreement brokered by Beijing, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to normalize relations, after seven years of bitter rivalry in a deal that sidelined the U.S. Earlier, on February 24, China put forward a 12-point proposal for peace in Ukraine. On March 20, President Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow, where he discussed the situation in Ukraine with Vladimir Putin. A phone call with Ukraine’s President Zelensky is expected soon, perhaps this week.
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In our interview, Senior Colonel Zhou Bo spoke with refreshing candor about what the “watershed moment” means for China and the world. “China is entering the ocean,” he stressed, using a metaphor that I suspect will soon become common. I was particularly interested in his statements on how Russia’s invasion has harmed significant Chinese interests. Dramatically, he also said that “Russia cannot win this war.” It is clear that in Beijing’s view the conflict in Ukraine will continue, that the West has no plan to solve it, and that China expects its role as mediator will only grow. For Beijing, the war in Ukraine is a trigger for new security arrangements in Europe that will have to be made before peace returns.

Senior Colonel Zhou Bo served in different posts in Guangzhou Air Force Regional Command. From 1993 he worked successively as staff officer, Deputy Director General of West Asia and Africa Bureau and then Deputy Director General of General Planning Bureau of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Ministry of National Defense of China. His last position in the Ministry of National Defense was as Director of the Centre for Security Cooperation in the Office for International Military Cooperation, with responsibilities for multilateral cooperation. He retired from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at the end of 2019 and is now a senior fellow of Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He speaks as a PLA delegate at the Shangri-La Dialogue and the Munich Security conference.

Do you think Russia made a strategic mistake invading Ukraine? Do you think Russia is weaker now than before the invasion?

I don’t believe so far Russia has regretted this war, but I think they would regret the way they fought the war. They did not fight it well, especially at the beginning when they dispersed their armed forces in attacking from too many directions. The communications and logistical supply were poor; the command chain would start from Moscow, but there was no front commander post. Putting all this together, it was not as good as they wished. But about the war itself it is not as straightforward, because for Putin, this involves the existence of Russia itself.

Let me ask you about the Chinese position. It seems difficult for me to say that China has been neutral. Chinese officials are critical of the Ukrainian right of self-defence, they are critical of the American role, but I have yet to see a critical word about the invasion itself…

I think China has been neutral and now a more constructive neutrality is developed because of the 12-point peace plan we proposed. From day one China has made it clear sovereignty must be respected and this is a gentle suggestion that the war is in violation of sovereignty. This kind of suggestion cannot be misunderstood. Because of China’s relations with Russia, there is a difference in ways that China might provide suggestions or even criticisms, but China’s clear-cut position on this issue should not be misunderstood. China’s proposal on peace in Ukraine is a big step forward. The success on mediation between Iran and Saudi Arabia will encourage China to make more proposals, but the challenge is always to find road maps. With reform and opening up, as Deng Xiaoping said, China was trying to get across the river by feeling the stones on the riverbed, but now China is entering the ocean.

What do you mean by the “ocean” in this context?

You can’t feel the seabed. These are uncharted waters, but there is no turning back. We are talking about Global China. When Boris Johnson talked about Global Britain, it was probably more rhetorical. But Global China is definitely real. China is ubiquitous. China’s influence is everywhere. The PLA’s operations overseas are carefully chosen to be humanitarian in nature, but as your strength grows, people have higher expectations for you. We are talking about the world. This is the ocean we are wading in.

Let me insist on whether China has been neutral. Why has China refused to call the war a war? Should a superpower be afraid to call things by their names?

China does have some sympathy with Russia on how this war came about because of NATO expansion, despite NATO’s promises on no expansion from time to time. When people talk about a murder, the murder is only a result, but it has causes. China understands why Russia is resentful. When China stresses sovereignty must be respected, it also tries to look at it from a more comprehensive perspective. Countries like South Africa, Brazil, or India are taking similar positions like China on this.

Why has President Xi not talked to President Zelensky? I asked Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba last week and he was perplexed. A neutral country has to speak to both sides.

Because this situation is so complicated. Russia is our largest neighbour, and Ukraine is an important trade partner, it is difficult for China to make a choice. Besides, the all-out support in the West for Ukraine makes things more complicated. There is no doubt that China wants to see a ceasefire because China’s interests were damaged in Europe. Because of China’s neutrality, China’s relations with Western capitals have soured. This is ludicrous because China has nothing to do with this war. China was not informed, China was not involved, but now people simply want China to be involved and pick a side.

Let’s turn to China’s role. What should we expect from President Xi’s visit to Moscow and a possible phone call with President Zelensky?

Chinese and Russian leaders have regular exchanges of visits since late 1990s on alternative basis. Last year it was Russia’s turn, so this year it is China’s turn. I am sure China’s peace plan will be discussed. This is a watershed. There is no doubt about that. But a peace proposal from a third party only works when both sides feel they cannot fight anymore. That is the best time to jump in. Currently neither side is interested in stopping the fighting. Washington is not interested in a ceasefire either.

Will China supply weapons to Russia?

I am totally confused why you ask this question. It does not make any sense to me that China, which has not provided weapons to Russia since the outbreak of the war, would change its mind, especially at a time when they have actually announced a peace plan. Why would Antony Blinken say that? By saying it, Blinken was actually giving a pre-emptive warning because China providing military support would be the worst fear of the U.S. But it’s totally impossible.

You said China and Russia have a close relationship. If Russia was on the brink of being defeated then supplying weapons might make sense?

No. Your scenario is impossible. Russia cannot win this war, but Russia won’t lose this war either. Because of Russia’s size, because of its strength including its largest nuclear arsenal in the world and because Russia cannot afford to withdraw. And because there might even be changes in the West on supporting Ukraine. Will support continue if it turns out to be a war of attrition?

In Samarkand in September last year, strangely, Putin said he understood China’s reservations and questions about the invasion. What did he mean?

I think he understands this war doesn’t serve China’s interests. In your interview with Sergei Karaganov for the New Statesman, he said in this war, the biggest victor was China. That is impossible because China’s relationship with Europe has soured simply because China has refused to take sides. China’s relations with Europe are critically important, of course. Besides, China’s Belt and Road now is subject to readjustments. Some China’s companies have stopped doing business with Russia for fear of American sanctions. I believe Putin knows that and that this explains his words.

Read More: Xi Jinping’s Visit to Moscow Isn’t Really About Ukraine

But then China is incredibly generous. Russia has created all these problems and China has not responded. How to explain this generosity of the Chinese spirit?

Because we are neighbours, this relationship needs to be first looked at in bilateral terms. Then it becomes a regional or global issue. China has made some contributions. First, China did not throw wood into the fire. People don’t think about this, but imagine China took Russia’s side? That would be the dawn of WW3. Second, China made it very clear nuclear weapons cannot be used. These were China’s contributions. In the days to come there will be more.

If there is a peace agreement, what are the foundations for such an agreement. Does it involve Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine or does it include territorial negotiations and concessions?

Actually we had a conversations in the Valdai Club this afternoon and I asked the same question. The problem is how these two countries can find a solution. Right now, for both of them, the solution is total victory. So the war will simply last. China stands ready when it can help, but only these countries can solve the issue, they have to come to a ceasefire first. For Russia, it at least needs some victory. If eventually Russia could only put Crimea that it occupied in 2014 under control, why does Putin need to launch the war at all? Zelensky said victory is inevitable if allies keep their promise. That means he does have concerns that the allies may not keep their promise, especially if this war turns out to be a war of attrition. The U.S. has already made it clear that it doesn’t want a ceasefire asserting that a ceasefire now actually ratifies Russia’s gains on the ground.

Is it a potential embarrassment that President Xi is visiting Moscow so soon after Putin is indicted for war crimes by an international court?

I don’t think so. The issuance of the arrest warrant by the ICC is at best symbolic. The ICC only has jurisdiction in countries that have signed the Rome Statute, but Russia is not a signatory, nor is China, India, or the U.S. Therefore, the ICC cannot enforce the warrant unless Putin travels to a state prepared to arrest him. The arrest warrant serves no purpose than to make Putin more defiant, as was seen in his sudden visit to Mariupol after the announcement. If peace is what we aspire to, the warrant simply makes it more difficult to achieve.

Was China informed about the invasion?

Our former ambassador to the U.S., now foreign minister Qin Gang has written in the Washington Post that China was not informed. People have their own sources too to prove that, so the allegation is gone.

What are the lessons and consequences for the Taiwan question?

This is a ridiculous question. Why are the two issues related? There is no sovereignty issue in the case of Taiwan. And why would a war in Europe have consequences for Taiwan?

Let’s turn to China’s recent initiative in the Middle East. Does the normalization of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia under Chinese mediation signal the end of American hegemony in the region?

No. The American presence in the region is not as strong as before, but the U.S. will not go away. But on this issue China is doing what the U.S. cannot do. Why? Because the U.S. doesn’t even have diplomatic relations with Iran. It cannot become a mediator between the two sides. The U.S. has allies in the region. It has to adopt double standards. Therefore, China can do a better job, but this is not an attempt to replace the U.S.

China has accused the U.S. of trying to suppress it, but it relies on the U.S. to secure vital supply lanes for oil and trade. Is that a contradiction? Does the initiative signal a different approach with China becoming self-reliant on security?

China is concerned about the security of sea lanes in the Indian Ocean, to the extent it has established a logistical base in Djibouti. But is it correct to argue that U.S. is providing public security goods? Even in the Cold War sea lanes were kept open.

If there were a war between Saudi and Iran, this would damage China’s interests, both economic interests and energy security, profoundly. So China needs to prevent a war and that may explain its new role.

You are correct. China depends on energy imports from the Middle East, which make up 40-50% of Chinese energy imports. We are trying to diversify, but that is the situation for now… At the same time, China’s activity in the Middle East now comprises almost everything, from building infrastructure to launching satellites to energy imports, therefore its stake on peace and stability in the Middle East has become higher. This is the first time China becomes directly involved in regional security. The biggest question of the 21st century is, if China’s rise is inevitable, will China create a better world? My answer is, at least it can make a safer world. At least it will make much less harm than the U.S.

This interview has been edited and condensed

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a behemoth report on our warming world—something it has done routinely for three decades. Though the findings have evolved considerably over the years, the news cycle is always strikingly similar: World leaders offer bombastic soundbites, and headlines warn of impending doom. In turn, many people will interpret this report as a stark warning that humans are joy-riding down the highway to hell.

As a climate scientist of two decades, I do not share this view. Certainly, there is cause for deep concern. Today’s report confirms that humanity is on track to blow past 1.5°C (2.7°F) of planetary warming by the early 2030s. With each additional half-degree, the risk of deadly heat waves and flooding will increase substantially—and the effects are already manifesting on every continent. This is an existential crisis, and our actions today will dictate what happens tomorrow.
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Even so, the latest assessment—as well as those released last year—did not fill me with dread. Like many scientists, I was disheartened for decades, but today’s report makes me feel more inspired than ever. Here are three reasons why:

We’ve already come a long way

In 1985, two decades before the release of An Inconvenient Truth, 89 scientists from 29 countries gathered in Austria to discuss the emerging science of climate change and the growing body of evidence suggesting it was human-caused. Attendees resolved to work shoulder-to-shoulder with policymakers to develop a response; the IPCC was born soon after.

The challenge before them was enormous, but the IPCC worked diligently to lay a strong scientific foundation for new policy. It paid off. Every major international climate agreement—from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1990, to the Paris Accords of 2015—was built atop findings from the IPCC. In just 30 years, the IPCC established scientific consensus, achieved near-universal public awareness, and aligned 198 governments around a transformative policy agenda.

Read More: How Climate Change Became Central to U.S.-Europe Relations

That is without precedent, and it is worth celebrating.

To put that achievement in perspective, consider tobacco. Physicians first noted that smoking caused “scorched lungs” in the 1600s, and a link to cancer was established in 1795. It took another 150 years for the medical community to coalesce around the dangers. Even then, you could still smoke on an airplane until 1990.

Progress is always a process—and when it comes to climate, progress is accelerating. This cannot come a moment too soon. We are walking when we must be sprinting.

Decarbonization is accelerating

Today’s “synthesis” report builds on a 1,977-page document released last year, which was devoted entirely to climate solutions. Authors acknowledged that existing climate commitments are insufficient, and without deep and rapid changes to the global economy, temperature averages could rise 3°C (5.4°F) by 2100. However, they also made clear that catastrophe isn’t inevitable, and there is still plenty we can do. “We actually have all the knowledge we need. All the tools we need. We just need to implement it,” said Friederike Otto, one of the IPCC report authors. If we can implement those changes, temperatures will likely stabilize within two decades.

Even the highway to hell has exit ramps.

To limit warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F), emissions must peak within the next two years, and the world must reach net-zero by 2050. “Deep, rapid, and sustained” emissions cuts have always been a tall order, but fortunately, clean energy has never been more viable. The IPCC found that solar panels are about 85% cheaper than in 2010; the same goes for the batteries required to store renewable energy. As prices plummet, demand is rising faster than most models anticipated. China will install more solar capacity this year than the United States did in the last decade, potentially kicking off a renewable energy race to the top.

In total, climate finance increased 60% since the last assessment cycle concluded in 2014; that figure will only continue to grow as recent climate laws are fully implemented. Notably, the IPCC also found that at least 18 countries have already managed to decouple economic growth from emissions, sending a clear signal to other nations that green transition need not be an albatross.

The age of restoration has begun

Decarbonization will take time—utility-scale wind farms and interstate transmission lines are not built overnight. Fortunately, the IPCC has identified another tool we can leverage immediately: photosynthesis.

The latest report re-affirms that three of the top five highest-potential mitigation techniques involve living ecosystems: halting deforestation, restoring carbon-rich ecosystems like wetlands and rainforests, and improving how we manage agricultural lands. Ecosystems are the backbone of Earth’s climate, currently absorbing half of all greenhouse gases emitted by humans. They are also incredibly resilient—as carbon pollution has accelerated, so too has nature’s ability to capture it. Research shows that forests are absorbing carbon faster in response to more carbon in the air, and trees have surprising abilities to adapt as temperature and moisture change.

All told, repairing our broken relationship with nature could provide at least one-third of the emissions reductions required to stabilize our climate. These projects are immediately scalable, relatively inexpensive, and they require no technical leaps of faith.

Read More: Here’s How Carbon Offsets Can Live up to Their Bold Promises

The impacts of climate change will not be uniformly distributed. Though countries in the Global South contributed little to the present crisis, they will nonetheless bear the brunt of it. Nature is not just a powerful mitigation tool; it can also build community resilience as temperatures rise. Integrating trees into farmland, for example, can provide crucial shade for heat-stressed crops; restoring mangrove forests can protect coastal communities from storm surge; and improved rangeland management can bolster local water supplies. In fact, if adequately funded, these “natural” climate solutions can help address many of humanity’s greatest challenges in one fell swoop: food and water security, species loss, “spillover” pandemics, and economic inequality.

In 1936, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

That is our challenge.

Climate change is a planetary emergency, and we shouldn’t forget that there are severe consequences to getting this wrong—and right now, we are getting it wrong by not acting fast enough. But we cannot lose sight of what awaits us if we get this right. We are standing on the precipice of one of the greatest economic transformations in human history—if we can see this through, we will be living in a world that is richer in every sense of the word.

As the push notifications arrive, don’t panic. Let the bad news sink in but recognize that it need not be fate. A bright future awaits if we’re willing to build it.

Between 2003 and last month, when I returned to Iraq again, I’ve watched the country I grew up in change beyond my recognition. That’s why I called my book about this period A Stranger in Your Own City. It wasn’t just that the texture of Baghdad changed, the map, the smell etc., the people who lived there changed too. And it became very dangerous, especially during the first phase of the civil war, between 2004 and 2008. There were many ways to die in Baghdad in those years.

THERE WERE MANY WAYS TO die in Baghdad: killed by car bombs; taken out by militias working in tandem with security forces to target Sunnis; targeted by Sunni insurgents killing Shia and those deemed to be US collaborators. Translators and contractors and government employees were under fire. Journalists and even cleaning women working for the Americans were kidnapped. American retaliation meant the fairly indiscriminate killing of civilians; civilians also died at the hands of militias and insurgents when they found themselves in the midst of the fighting—always the collateral damage of war. (Or not so collateral as the WikiLeaks video of the killing of an Iraqi cameraman showed.) In the lawlessness and chaos that engulfed the whole city, criminal gangs overlapped with the insurgents and militias kidnapped doctors and business people.
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No one ever knew for sure who was doing what killing. Those who could afford it fled to the safety of Amman and Beirut. The levels of fear, anxiety and violence that Iraqis went through on a daily basis could not be measured or reported. Life was shaped by a cycle of violence and counterviolence, by sectarian politicians spewing hatred from pulpits and TV channels, by the ugliness of American occupation, and the racism of foreign soldiers and mercenaries, and of course by the insurgency.

In the midst of all of that violence, random death and war, Iraqis continued to go to work and send their children to school. Traders sold their wares from carts as they always had and often died in the IED attacks; a day or two later, other traders appeared in their place. People jostled in crowded markets until mortars or car bombs ripped through them . . . When the blood had been washed away, they returned to the same markets again. We were playing a game of Russian roulette. My favourite tea house, consisting of a few metal tables and wooden benches that sat on the pavement under the shade of a large eucalyptus tree, was bombed three times; each time I told myself, it can’t be bombed again, and went back to sit on its rickety benches.

It was not even a year after the toppling of the statue and the regime when people started uttering the unthinkable, that maybe life under Saddam had been better. How could they even think it? Had they forgotten the wars and the secret police and the suffocating dictatorship? The answer was that at least then we knew the parameters of fear, and we knew how to survive. In the midst of this chaos, no one knew anything any more. What were the new boundaries? Not to be seen with the Americans? Not to get a job with the new police and security services? Is it even better not to work at all than work with the new government? Is it worth trying to avoid driving through potential IED sites? But where are those sites this week? And how can you make sure that mortars fired by kids won’t fall on your house?

People were so desperate for anything resembling security that there was general approval for the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, when rumours spread that he had personally chopped off the hand of a captured insurgent and was carrying out death sentences himself. Maybe, they said, here is someone who will finally be able to deliver security.

The reality of life in Baghdad was much worse than anything we could portray in snippets of news and articles. The real misery and bewilderment of the people could never be captured and translated into words. Journalists themselves were regularly getting killed—I woke one morning in Beirut to read about the kidnapping of an American journalist. The translator was shot and killed; there was a picture of his feet sticking out of the back of a pickup truck, an image that will haunt me for the rest of my life. He was a childhood friend, a father, who loved Western music. I was as angry at him as his killers—why did he have to do this dangerous job? The euphoria and excitement of working with Western journalists in the early days of the war was gone, replaced by paralysing fear. As for the son of the prominent Sunni politician who lured them into the ambush, I have never wished for someone to be punished as I wished it for him.

Later, when the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq climbed to 1,000, there was a flurry of coverage in the Western media. A critical benchmark had been reached, they declared, but what was the critical benchmark for the number of Iraqi civilians killed? How many had died by then? To this day there is no accurate number, of those killed through the sanctions, in the war, and in the violence that followed.

Excerpted from A STRANGER IN YOUR OWN CITY by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. Copyright © 2023 by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

There are things that are true that shouldn’t be. The meat shouldn’t think. We shouldn’t die. But there it is. We shouldn’t be able to create consciousness— a conscious world-changing mind—by having sex. But there it is. It is poetic to notice these things. They are so bizarre that if you spend a lot of time just thinking about these things it messes up your regular foolish head and lets you breathe. That’s what poetry does. It’s also what religion does, but religion takes these impossible truths as a license to invent, which doesn’t ring bells for a lot of us anymore.
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But religion got a lot right about holidays and ritual readings. I’ve been a scholar of the history of doubt and disbelief for a few decades, and in giving talks about my books I’ve had the opportunity to listen to people speak about religion and the loss or lack of it. I’ve been surprised at what I’ve come to understand, for one thing, about how a lot of us who are happy to be unbelievers still take part in religion’s holidays—and many of us feel conflicted about it.

The spring holidays (Easter, Passover, Holi) are upon us and they’re worth thinking about in poetic terms. Many of us who don’t believe in God or organized religion usually celebrate just to make other people happy and we like parts of the parties. We may tolerate the more religious talk with an outsider’s melancholy.

I’m not trying to get anyone to do anymore holidays or ritual than they already do; I’m just suggesting we add a poem and find a way to have a deeper experience with what we are participating in, and to notice that we are doing it together.

Of course, for many people the supernatural parts of religion are super important, but I think poetry does that same job. I know, it’s not an exact fit, but hear me out.

After my first big Doubt talk, a very pregnant couple asked me whether they could have a religious ceremony for the baby as their parents were hoping, even if they are atheists? They seemed happy when they described what the grandparent generation wanted, they lit up when they mentioned that the food would be delicious, and that they’d been to these things their whole lives. But they genuinely didn’t want to insult their family faith by faking it, nor betray their true belief in science and reality in a way that they might live with as an act of cowardice or just a badly wrong note.

I hadn’t been expecting this kind of question, so I gave a historical answer about how ritual is reinterpreted in different times and places to match what people believe and want. I said Yes. I told them that I take part in religious ritual and holidays—poetically—and consider them a sweet part of life. As the two of them were going, I shouted after them that they may want to add some poetry so that they’d be lifted up at the ceremony.

I’m sure they knew what I meant, since poetry is not uncommon at any ritual, and has become expected at weddings and funerals. Still, I shouted further, because some Walt Whitman lines came to mind. I added that there’s a famous place in Leaves of Grass when he has asked himself what the point of life is, with a terrific incisiveness, really raking life and himself over the coals in the question and then he writes:

Answer: That you are here—that life exists and identity,/That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

It was an electric moment in the room. Today I’d suggest a poem to do with babies for the particular kind of event we were talking about, but as it happened it struck a lot of people in the room quiet and they wanted a copy, they wanted to know where to find it.

The tiny piece of poetry invites us to see ourselves as part of a great story of humanity. It reminds us that it is already quite a thing just that we came into existence. I am always knocked out by the “and identity.” He’s reminding us of the unlikelihood of our personalities, of our wild inner lives, and personally it catches me when I feel like I’m skidding.

Why did I shout that out? I didn’t have kids yet, but I had been to family ceremonies for babies where someone read a poem and the whole room changed, times where the new mother heard the words and looked encouraged and shining, where parenthood was exalted as so adventurous and inventive and wondrous that the whole party was moved to join the human fray, to take on the roller-coaster of this experience and do what it takes to have that kind of joy. I wanted those two to have that lift. It was an epiphany for me, about what people want and need, about what is troubling us and what might help fix it.

I’ve come to see how apt the Whitman was in that moment of epiphany, especially that “you may contribute a verse.” That’s basically my message. You have the right to have your own genuine encounter with whatever you have inherited from your religion that you feel like keeping. You don’t have to make anything up from scratch. We have rich ritual and profound poetry. We only have to put them together.

That goes for holidays, too. Choose a poem from any anthology of world poetry for a holiday. Come back to the same poem next year, next time. Which poem? Well, religious holidays are often “about family” for us, but if you look closely, holidays often have a deep theme, for instance the absolution of shame. Or a community attempt to be reborn with the spring. We can see holidays as poetically doing what some say they do supernaturally and pick our poem to match that feeling or idea. And we can feel connected to each other in this.

One tip from religion is that we need repetition. We need repetition because in order for words that can shift our perspective to work on us we need to remind ourselves over and over. We need repetition because coming back to deep ideas helps us to understand them. And we need repetition because, over time, it helps us see how we have changed and how we have stayed the same—just as visiting a city we once lived in can help us see ourselves more clearly and know ourselves in time. Consider the poems we hear over and over at weddings, say, as not cliches but rather as what we can call cultural liturgy. We can all participate in choosing that, voting with what we use and make popular.

Listening to people who came to my talks I learned that many of us are okay without a caring God or heaven, or gods, or karma and rebirth. But it’s important to notice what else we lost when we left religion. Nonbelievers of many stripes wrestle with those losses. Religions provide rituals and recitations to confirm vows, guide meditation, affirm morality, make decisions, process shame, and cope with death. They provide texts for silent meditation, and mark off time in the communal calendar for quiet introspection. They get us to sing, dance, swim, fast, feast, and they remind us to try to be grateful. People reinvent all of this, or miss it and feel locked out, sure that they can’t touch the ritual without full belief.

A historical surprise I kept getting is how normal it is through time for people to keep practicing the rituals they were taught, while shifting the details towards personal taste and usefulness. The reason they don’t drop them is because they matter. The lights that we hang at the same time are not nothing. Chocolate shaped bunnies and chocolate covered matzoh, colored eggs and colors thrown on each other—they are not nothing. They can bring together communities that are breaking.

In today’s hypercharged political situation, it seems fair to ask what we are passing along to the next generation. Poetry brings us empathy, first of all from the intimacy of the poetic voice, and because it is a place to show our truth rather than to show off. Poetry draws us close and whispers of the paradoxes of the human experience, that we feel so permanent and our problems so significant, and yet we know well of death and how things fall apart.

The way many of us see it, God or another unseen personality is the one demanding the rituals at holidays, weddings, and the like—so if you don’t believe, there is no reason to do them. When we are pushed to take part, we feel uncomfortable with how all the odd behaviors seem to suggest we believe in nonsense. But what if in fact it is the ritual that supports people? Religious ritual can carry participants through life’s great transformations.

Whether it is a wedding or a funeral, rituals take us step by step into the knowledge that something big has happened and things will never be the same. Rituals can gather our support around us, in a crisis, say, at a time when it would never otherwise occur to us to have a party.

At the big moments, surely some of the words spoken should be something you believe, a visit with the poetic that leaves you less shaken than you were, and much stirred. Other than that, all the Interfaithless need is to remember that the rest of us are out here, trying to be awake to the poetry of all this madness and beauty. I laughed when I made up the term Interfaithless, but it stuck because there are a lot of us who have faith in the inter of us.

A lot of people who aren’t religious still love holidays—perhaps especially as a time that families and friends travel to be together. Rituals take effort, too, often in the form of dessert decoration and mood demands. Maybe just read the poem and do whatever part of the holiday comes easy.

People benefit from holidays whether they are believers or not. Rituals tell the body what time of year it is, and suggest a focusing idea for all of us, an idea like renewal, or abstaining, forgiving, or indulgence. They give us something to look forward to, like special drinks and snacks and feasts that only come out once a year. We need wonder in our lives and that’s what holidays are for. They set up occasions to sense the awe of it all.

We live mostly without what religion and other rituals give people in many societies. What we have lost and need back isn’t the supernatural. The enchantment of the world was always poetic, it was always real. Consciousness is at least as magical as virgin birth. The inspiration we need has to do with noticing the weird beauty of the real. We may lean on traditions in these big life moments because they are ready-made and expected. I think we are right to intuit that such moments call for ceremony.

A small adjustment to the way we think about ritual and the poetry of our lives can offer a large payout of support. And it’s not just about us individually. It’s about who we are as a community, so we can feel the good of ourselves frequently and not only when there has been a catastrophe. And it’s about who the next generation gets to be. A little poetry can save the world.

The Interfaithless can take a holiday moment to notice the spectacular absurdity of being ambitious mortals failing and loving and trying and dying and living, together. A little intention goes a long way in the human corner of this rather extraordinary universe.