This is an version of Up for Debate, a publication by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up well timed conversations and solicits reader responses to at least one thought-provoking query. Later, he publishes some considerate replies. Sign up for the publication right here.
Question of the Week
Young girls are struggling. “Nearly 1 in 3 high school girls reported in 2021 that they seriously considered suicide—up nearly 60 percent from a decade ago—according to new findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” The Washington Post studies. Drawing on the identical research, Axios notes, “About 30 percent of teen girls said they had seriously considered attempting suicide, up from 19 percent in 2011.” What is occurring? Whether you’ve gotten younger girls in your life who’ve formed your perspective or different experiences with this matter, I’d love to listen to your ideas.
Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.com.
Conversations of Note
When Jon Ronson printed So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed in 2015, I hoped his quite a few illustrations of on-line mobs meting out cruelty within the guise of holding others accountable would persuade the plenty that becoming a member of digital pile-ons does extra hurt than not––each as a result of the details of assorted issues so typically show totally different, or extra sophisticated, than they at first appeared and since even in circumstances the place a person deserves some punishment or sanction, zealous hordes are incapable of proportion. The hate of uncoordinated vigilantes who purport to carry others accountable can add as much as a lot punishment that their targets wind up pondering suicide.
For people, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is an undervalued rule. For media establishments, who purport to behave within the public curiosity and rightly take into account accountability of their ambit, I‘d posit a special responsibility to refrain from initiating or amplifying false or misleading stories––and where coverage is later proved to be misleading, to revise unjustly unflattering portraits of individuals as prominently as they published them.
Alas, even in cases where targets of public opprobrium are especially rich and famous––which is to say, possessed of more ability than most of us to counter false or misleadingly one-sided information––coverage that seems likely to tarnish a person’s popularity is simply too typically way more distinguished than protection that appears more likely to burnish or revive it.
For instance, in “Armie Hammer Breaks His Silence,” the journalist James Kirchick revisits the case of an actor whose profession was destroyed when he confronted accusations of maximum sexual misconduct. Although Kirchick’s reporting doesn’t resolve something definitively, it consists of vital details that readers of the unique protection should know as updates, as they offer very totally different impressions of what might need occurred. As but, nonetheless, publishers of bygone protection haven’t up to date their articles. (Kirchick has expounded on his reporting course of for Meghan Daum and The Fifth Column.)
And at The Free Press, Megan Phelps-Roper is launching a sequence, “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling,” that may probe the vilification of the well-known creator of the Harry Potter books. Rowling is portrayed by some as a transphobic bigot whose views are egregiously past the pale––and had been that true, opprobrium can be applicable. Bigotry in opposition to trans folks is certainly odious. But do Rowling’s precise phrases validate the ways in which she has been characterised? Cathy Young, Kat Rosenfield, Brendan Morrow, and the Blocked and Reported podcast have all discovered vital proof of doubtful assaults––and not less than one Rowling attacker retracted his claims fairly than defend them in court docket.
Less well-known topics of vilification are far much less more likely to have anybody following as much as vindicate them (commentators on the populist proper are throwing round accusations of “grooming” kids as extensively and frivolously as any character assassins in American life). However, Nicole Carr of ProPublica proved an exception to that rule final yr, telling the story of Cecelia Lewis, an educator wrongly hounded out of a job and adopted to a different throughout an ethical panic about what individuals erroneously considered important race principle.
Whether an individual is legendary or obscure, blameworthy or innocent, they deserve, on the very least, scrupulous accuracy when their habits is described to mass audiences. Folks on the best and left who fall wanting that mark are extra alike than they suppose. As lengthy as their carelessness is so frequent, the case in opposition to pile-ons is hermetic.
Joe Biden’s Criminal-Justice-Reform Failures
At The Marshall Project, Jamiles Lartey argues that the administration has did not clear a low bar that it set:
Last May, President Joe Biden sat with members of the family of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor within the White House as he signed an govt order he known as the “most significant police reform in decades.”
One of the extra notable guarantees within the order was establishing a “National Law Enforcement Accountability Database,” that may acquire detailed details about officers who dedicated misconduct. The deadline to launch it was Jan. 20, the identical day that 5 Memphis law enforcement officials had been fired for the beating demise of Tyre Nichols—a killing that has as soon as extra ignited nationwide debate about policing. The Department of Justice has but to announce the database, and didn’t reply to a number of requests for touch upon its standing.
Deadlines for different initiatives in Biden’s order, like new requirements for credentialing police departments, seem to have additionally come and gone with out acknowledgement or public outcomes.
On Art and Supposed Harm
In a New York Times column in regards to the censorship of artwork and “the anxious philistinism that can result when bureaucratic cowardice meets maximalist ideas about safety,” Michelle Goldberg writes:
I’m not naïve sufficient to imagine that if the left rediscovered a passionate dedication to free speech, the best would hand over its livid marketing campaign in opposition to what it calls wokeness. But I do suppose that if the left is to mount a convincing response to what has turn into a wholesale assault on mental liberty and free expression, it wants to have the ability to defend difficult and provocative work.
A Business Contagion
In The Atlantic, Annie Lowrey argues that layoffs at one firm are likely to spur layoffs at different corporations for numerous causes which will don’t have anything to do with a monetary crucial to hold them out:
When executives see their company opponents letting go of staff, they seize what they see as a chance to cut back their workforce, fairly than having no alternative however to take action.
Shedding staff when all people else is doing it avoids drawing public scrutiny to or creating reputational injury for a given agency, for one. A lone enterprise saying that it’s downsizing is more likely to be described as mismanaged or troubled, and might be mismanaged or troubled. However merited, that type of popularity tends to hinder an organization from attracting funding, staff, and clients. But if a agency downsizes when everybody else is doing it, the general public seldom notices and buyers seldom care.
Copycat layoffs additionally let executives cite difficult enterprise situations as a justification for cuts, fairly than their very own boneheaded strategic selections. In this situation, the issue isn’t that company management poured billions of {dollars} right into a quixotic new enterprise or employed tons of of what ended up being redundant staff. It’s not that the C-suite misunderstood the aggressive atmosphere, necessitating a expensive and painful readjustment. It’s Jay Powell! It’s a COVID-related reversion to the imply! Who might have recognized?
In addition to being easier for executives to elucidate to their shareholders or the board, large-scale copycat layoffs are simpler to hold out and higher obtained by staff than selective or strategic layoffs. Managers let staffers go as a substitute of firing them, blaming financial situations fairly than detailing their direct studies’ shortcomings. Morale would possibly take much less of a success if the remaining staff fault the broader enterprise atmosphere as a substitute of their bosses.
Another attainable cause layoffs are contagious is that executives would possibly take different companies’ hiring and firing selections as a type of market intelligence. Even when an organization’s personal financials seem sound, it might interpret a competitor’s layoff announcement as an indication of worsening situations.
Provocation of the Week
In Unherd, Thomas Fazi explains why he’s apprehensive about World War III:
By offering more and more highly effective navy tools in addition to monetary, technical, logistical and coaching help to one of many warring factions, together with for offensive operations (even inside Russian territory), the West is engaged in a de facto navy confrontation with Russia, no matter what our leaders could declare.
Western residents need to be instructed what’s going on in Ukraine—and what the stakes are. Perhaps the wildest declare being made is that “if we deliver all the weapons Ukraine needs, they can win,” as former Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen not too long ago asserted. For Rasmussen, and different Western hawks, this consists of retaking Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 and which it considers of the utmost strategic significance. Many Western allies nonetheless take into account this an uncrossable pink line. But for the way lengthy? Just final month, the New York Times reported that the Biden administration is warming as much as the concept of backing a Ukrainian offensive on Crimea.
This technique is predicated on the belief that Russia will settle for a navy defeat and the lack of the territories it controls with out resorting to the unthinkable—the usage of nuclear weapons. But this can be a huge assumption on which to gamble the way forward for humanity, particularly coming from the very Western strategists who disastrously botched each main navy forecast over the previous 20 years, from Iraq to Afghanistan. The fact is that, from Russia’s perspective, it’s preventing in opposition to what it perceives to be an existential menace in Ukraine, and there’s no cause to imagine that, with its again in opposition to the wall, it received’t go to excessive measures to ensure its survival. As Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, put it: “The loss of a nuclear power in a conventional war can provoke the outbreak of a nuclear war. Nuclear powers do not lose major conflicts on which their fate depends.”
During the Cold War, this was extensively understood by Western leaders. But at this time, by continually escalating their help for Ukraine’s navy, the United States and Nato seem to have forgotten it, and are as a substitute inching nearer to a catastrophic situation.
That’s all for this week––see you on Monday.