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Despite Boris Johnsons best efforts to pretend they arent happening, conversations about his potential replacements continue to bubble along.

By playing a leading role in the recent effort to oust the Prime Minister, Jeremy Hunt has done a decent job of putting himself back on the map. But a gossip from his constituency this week told me that his local party is unimpressed with him over a rather more prosaic issue than partygate or Brexit: the rights of cyclists.

Ive written before about the mania of the cycling culture wars between cyclists and drivers and pedestrians. Nowhere is this more intense, it seems, than in south-west Surrey. Pedestrians are infuriated by cyclists use of pavements, drivers are infuriated by the ever-expanding space bikes are taking up on the road, and cyclists are infuriated by the lack of safe cycle lanes.

The worst of it, I was told, is not that Mr Hunt has taken one side or another, but that he hasnt taken a clear side at all. He is, apparently, playing all sides.

In search of evidence to back up this claim, I was trawling Godalmings village Facebook group. Cycling is clearly a hot-button local issue, but this isnt without upsides. It has inspired an entertaining exchange of doggerels.

Cycle lanes having priority getting longer and wider, catering only for the smug pushbike rider/ writes Kim Hicks. And then we have the serious biker,/ who show off their bits whilst squeezed into Lycra.

Another local, Stephen Bradbury, was quick to respond: I know that some people on bikes like to break the rules,/ But not all of us cyclists are complete fools.

But it was left to Phil Bro to have the last word: Its [sic] been a long day/ To be writing ditties/ Youll bounce off my bonnet if you get on my titties.

My feeling is that Mr Hunt should at least enter the poetry contest if he wont take a clear stance on the policy question.

Last week, I wrote an essay for this newspaper on the creeping power of human resources departments and how they have become unwitting enforcers of radical Left-wing norms in the workplace. In the worst cases, they have started trying to fire employees for Right-wing or pro-Brexit social media posts.

I was somewhat amused, therefore, to come across this description of how a proper, authoritarian Left-wing outfit does it. In Putins People, Catherine Belton describes the career of Putin aide Viktor Ivanov, who worked his way up through the KGBs human resources department: His job was to keep a close eye on everyone, she writes. The job of human resources, said [an ex-KGB officer], was to collect damaging information on colleagues and use it to destroy their careers.

In a smaller, pettier way, I am sure many of us know the type.

My extensive research for last weeks essay has had an unfortunate knock-on effect on all of the algorithms generating my search results and personalised adverts. LinkedIn is now spamming me with an apparently bottomless list of great jobs available in HR, while YouTube serves up an unending diet of ads for products to improve the efficiency of your team and videos on what does an HR girl do all day??? or How to get into HR.

A hot tip in the latter category is to always be networking. With 13 conferences in the next year listed just by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the official HR industry body, it would be almost impossible to ignore such advice. I feel as if I am trapped in some sort of devilish, HR-amplifying algorithmic ratchet.

Forget the anti-vaxxers and Islamists. We must cleanse the internet of these incessant HR groomers.

More here:
The cycling culture wars have come to Surrey, with some bizarre consequences - The Telegraph

Almost immediately after Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, former Vice President Mike Pence issued a celebratory statement. This surprised no one: The Indiana Republican has long been a far-right crusader in the culture wars, so it stood to reason that hed cheer the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization.

But as The New York Times noted, the former vice president and likely national contender in the coming years didnt just applaud the developments. Pence also looked ahead to the next goal.

Mr. Pence ... called on abortion opponents to continue their work to ban abortion access in all states. Having been given this second chance for Life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land, he said.

At a Capitol Hill press conference on Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared, Republicans are plotting a nationwide abortion ban. This wasnt hyperbole.

It was early last month when The Washington Post reported coincidentally, the same day that Politico published its scoop on Justice Samuel Alitos draft ruling, which ended up overshadowing the Posts article that conservative groups hoping to ban abortion have already met with their congressional allies about a possible nationwide ban on the procedure if Republicans retake power in Washington.

The discussions have reportedly advanced to such a stage that specific GOP senators have already sketched out policy details theyre eyeing a six-week abortion ban and wholl be involved in drafting the legislative restrictions.

All of this, of course, was contingent on Republican-appointed justices playing their role and overturning Roe, which is precisely whats happened.

Its not as if conservatives will simply pat themselves on the back, pop the champagne, and exit the arena with a sense of contentment. The Dobbs ruling has emboldened the right and begun a new conversation about how best to build on a regressive foundation.

A HuffPost report added, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for one, allowed that a national abortion ban was possible after the initial leak of the Supreme Courts draft decision. Last week, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) said he would back a federal ban because any of us that believe this is wrong, its wrong, period.

Also on Friday afternoon, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told CNN hes prepared to support a national 15-week abortion ban, which Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey is helping write. (Smith has previously worked on a 20-week ban, but hes now moving his legislation even further to the right, now that hes effectively received a green light from the high court.)

To be sure, other GOP officials will advocate for different policy details, but therein lies the point: For many Republicans, the question isnt whether to pursue a federal ban on abortion, but rather, how.

The result is an election season question candidates arent accustomed to answering: If a national abortion ban reaches the floor, how will you vote?

There was some talk on Friday about the nation effectively dividing in two: In half the country, reproductive health care will remain largely intact, while in the other half, rights will disappear. For many Republicans, such a landscape simply isnt good enough.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

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For many in GOP, returning abortion to the states isnt enough - MSNBC

On the day my state introduced a bill that would limit conversation around gender and sexual orientation in the classroom, I reposted the news to Twitter and cried myself to sleep.

Later that night, my phone buzzed. I squinted my eyes, trying to make sense of the words on the screen.

Im sorry that I couldnt be there for you back then.

The message was from my middle school counselor. I felt my heart sink as memories of growing up queer in the South came back to me hearing classmates use gay as a pejorative, feeling them reject the identity I hadnt yet had the space to embody.

I wondered how different it would have been if Id had a teacher or counselor in my corner someone I could trust and talk to about who I was and wanted to be.

Someone who truly made me feel like it was okay to be myself.

Ten years ago, there were no conversations around identity in my middle or high school. Without resources and support, even well-meaning educators like my counselor avoided discussing topics long considered off limits.

Now I fear a return to that, or worse, as anti-LGBTQ+ and Dont Say Gay bills like Floridas sweep the country. At least 15 states have passed or considered legislation that would affect how educators discuss gender identity and interact with LGBTQ+ students.

Related: OPINION: Why educations culture wars are only about some parents rights

I worry that this legislation, and the moral panic surrounding it, will have a chilling effect on conversations between students and teachers, making it harder for students to form the kind of supportive relationships with adults that can make a huge difference in their lives.

Much of the problem lies in the ambiguity of the laws and the charged rhetoric surrounding them. In addition to prohibiting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in younger grades, Floridas Dont Say Gay law and similar bills include vague language about age-appropriate instruction at any grade level.

Within this climate of intense scrutiny and undefined boundaries, many educators will simply avoid any subject they fear could land them in hot water or elicit false accusations of grooming, a denigrating and inaccurate term used against those who oppose Florida-style legislation.

I wondered how different it would have been if Id had a teacher or counselor in my corner someone I could trust and talk to about who I was and wanted to be.

Even staff who personally agree with these laws may fear getting caught up in an overzealous lawsuit by litigious parents.

This is a recipe for disaster, given what we know about the importance of positive, healthy relationships in addressing the growing youth mental health crisis. As a queer student in the South, having a trusting relationship with an adult at school would have made me feel safer and more welcome.

Students who feel connected at school are significantly less likely to experience a host of negative mental health outcomes, including feelings of hopelessness and thoughts of suicide. The presence of a caring, supportive adult is particularly important for LGBTQ+ youth. Those with an accepting adult in their lives are 40 percent less likely to attempt suicide.

Related: Column: A lesson in hypocrisy whats really behind the parental rights movement

When conversations between educators and students feel like navigating a minefield, these supportive and trusting relationships cant develop. Even if many of these legislative proposals dont pass, they have already created fear and anxiety in schools for students and teachers.

We cant leave kids to face this alone. There is a pressing need for those of us outside of schools to find ways to provide support to LGBTQ+ youth.

One step that adults can take is to become a mentor to LGBTQ+ youth. Mentors can provide emotional support, help their mentees navigate challenges to their identities and help them envision a more hopeful and positive future.

Mentors can also be a source of affirmation at a time when many young people are internalizing the anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric some politicians are using.

Mentoring advocates are joining educators across the country in speaking out against these discriminatory bills and finding ways to help LGBTQ+ students thrive. In Minneapolis, a new nonprofit called QUEERSPACE matches LGBTQ+ youth with LGBTQ+ mentors and works with community partners and families to reduce LGBTQ+ youth isolation, suicide and homelessness.

When my former school counselor reached out to me, I realized how daunting it can be for educators, too, to navigate these issues alone. Organizations like QUEERSPACE serve as a lifeline to students, families and educators alike.

Mentoring wont solve the youth mental health crisis alone, nor is it a sufficient singular response to the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. But its imperative that each of us find ways to combat or circumvent this legislation so that it doesnt further isolate and marginalize young people and limit educators ability to help them.

We must try to be there for students and educators with the kind of affirming support and connection that can make all the difference.

Amaris Ramey is a graduate student pursuing a masters in social innovation. They work as a grassroots organizing manager at MENTOR, a national nonprofit working to expand the quality and quantity of mentoring relationships for Americas young people.

This piece about Dont Say Gay legislation was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechingers newsletter.

The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn't mean it's free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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STUDENT VOICE: 'Don't Say Gay' bills will make it harder for teachers to support students like me - The Hechinger Report

Around the world, and against all scientific evidence, a segment of the population believes that Earths round shape is either an unproven theory or an elaborate hoax. Polls by YouGov America in 2018 and FDU in 2022 found that as many as 11% of Americans believe the Earth might be flat.

While it is tempting to dismiss flat Earthers as mildly amusing, we ignore their arguments at our peril. Polling shows that there is an overlap between conspiracy theories, some of which can act as gateways for radicalisation. QAnon and the great replacement theory, for example, have proved deadly more than once.

By studying how flat Earthers talk about their beliefs, we can learn how they make their arguments engaging to their audience, and in turn, learn what makes disinformation spread online.

In a recent study, my colleague Tomas Nilsson at Linnaeus University and I analysed hundreds of YouTube videos in which people argue that the Earth is flat. We paid attention to their debating techniques to understand the structure of their arguments and how they make them appear rational.

One strategy they use is to take sides in existing debates. People who are deeply attached to one side of a culture war are likely to wield any and all arguments (including truths, half-truths and opinions), if it helps them win. People invest their identity into the group and are more willing to believe fellow allies rather than perceived opponents a phenomenon that sociologists call neo-tribalism.

The problem arises when people internalise disinformation as part of their identity. While news articles can be fact-checked, personal beliefs cannot. When conspiracy theories are part of someones value system or worldview, it is difficult to challenge them.

In analysing these videos, we observed that flat Earthers take advantage of ongoing culture wars by inserting their own arguments into the logic of, primarily, three main debates. These debates are longstanding and can be very personal for participants on either side.

First is the debate about the existence of God, which goes back to antiquity, and is built on reason, rather than observation. People already debate atheism v faith, evolution v creationism, and Big Bang v intelligent design. What flat Earthers do is set up their argument within the longstanding struggle of the Christian right, by arguing that atheists use pseudoscience evolution, the Big Bang and round Earth to sway people away from God.

A common flat Earther refrain that taps into religious beliefs is that God can inhabit the heavens above us physically only in a flat plane, not a sphere. As one flat Earther put it:

They invented the Big Bang to deny that God created everything, and they invented evolution to convince you that He cares more about monkeys than about you they invented the round Earth because God cannot be above you if He is also below you, and they invented an infinite universe, to make you believe that God is far away from you.

The second theme is a conspiracy theory that sees ordinary people stand against a ruling elite of corrupt politicians and celebrities. Knowledge is power, and this theory argues that those in power conspire to keep knowledge for themselves by distorting the basic nature of reality. The message is that people are easily controlled if they believe what they are told rather than their own eyes. Indeed, the Earth does appear flat to the naked eye. Flat Earthers see themselves as part of a community of unsung heroes, fighting against the tyranny of an elite who make the public disbelieve what they see.

The third theme is based on the freethinking argument, which dates back to the spirited debate about the presence or absence of God in the text of the US constitution. This secularist view argues that rational people should not believe authority or dogma instead, they should trust only their own reason and experience. Freethinkers distrust experts who use book knowledge or nonsense math that laypeople cannot replicate. Flat Earthers often use personal observations to test whether the Earth is round, especially through homemade experiments. They see themselves as the visionaries and scientists of yesteryear, like a modern-day Galileo.

Countering disinformation on social media is difficult when people internalise it as a personal belief. Fact-checking can be ineffective and backfire, because disinformation becomes a personal opinion or value.

Responding to flat Earthers (or other conspiracy theorists) requires understanding the logic that makes their arguments persuasive. For example, if you know that they find arguments from authority unconvincing, then selecting a government scientist as a spokesperson for a counterargument may be ineffective. Instead, it may be more appealing to propose a homemade experiment that anyone can replicate.

If you can identify the rationality behind their specific beliefs, then a counterargument can engage that logic. Insiders of the group are often key to this only a spokesperson with impeccable credentials as a devout Christian can say that you do not need the flat-Earth beliefs to remain true to your faith.

Overall, beliefs like flat-Earth theory, QAnon and the great replacement theory grow because they appeal to a sense of group identity under attack. Even far-fetched misinformation and conspiracies can seem rational if they fit into existing grievances. Since debates on social media require only posting content, participants create a feedback loop that solidifies disinformation as points of view that cannot be fact-checked.

More here:
I watched hundreds of flat-Earth videos to learn how conspiracy theories spread and what it could mean for fighting disinformation - The Conversation

Just a decade ago, intellectual history was considered an outmoded sub-field of history. The long decline of intellectual history was the result of a deliberate effort by a generation of social historians to push it from the halls of academiato banish the unfashionable emphasis on the ideas of preeminent Western thinkers. Classifications such as race, class, and gender replaced the study of history as ideas.

By the 1980s, social history had morphed into cultural history, which borrowed its approach from a host of mid-20th-century anthropologists more interested in symbolism and language than in social structures. But then cultural history struggled to lay firm foundations for the historical profession, as challenges to cultural anthropology became legion by the early 1990s. Gradually, cultural history lost its vogue, as many self-styled culturalists began publishing works that mirrored the intellectual histories their dissertation advisors sought to displace decades ago.

This revival of intellectual history would have happened much more slowly had it not been for a group of young scholars who founded a blog for U.S. intellectual history in 2007. This new generationwriting on the internet about their field, free from the constraints of traditional academic publishingdiscovered so many enthusiasts within the ranks of the professoriate that they hosted an inaugural Society for U.S. Intellectual History Conference just two years after the launch of their USIH blog.

One of the founders of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History (S-USIH) is Illinois State University historian Andrew Hartman. His first bookEducation and the Cold War: The Battle for the American Schoolwas a consideration of how the politics of the Cold War fueled fierce public debates about the nature of education in the face of communism. Building on that monograph, Hartman broadened his research and has now written one of the first comprehensive looks at the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s.

In A War for the Soul of America Hartman argues that the late 20th centurys cultural conflicts were born out of the tumultuous 1960s. To most observers this might not seem a particularly provocative thesis, but recent literature, as Hartman shows, has tried to downplay the radicalism of the 60s by demonstrating that this era was also a period of great growth for conservative ideas. Where Hartman diverges from this view of a more moderate or balanced 1960s is in claiming that these years universalized fracture, thus setting up a wide plane of debate between the left and right that grew to a fever pitch decades later.

Hartman positions A War for the Soul of America against three other books that speak to the culture wars. The first is Whats the Matter with Kansas? by the left-wing journalist Thomas Frank. Hartman eschews Franks approach to the culture wars, which dismisses most conservatives as voters who betray themselves by supporting politicians who oppose their economic well-being. Hartman has somewhat more sympathy with the view taken by sociologist James Davison Hunter in his 1991 volume Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. Hartman believes that Hunters thesis of a secular-religious split in American life still holds some truthbut history reveals more complexity than Hunters work admits.

The final text that Hartman engages is Daniel Rodgerss Age of Fracture, which serves as both an influence and another point of departure. Rodgerss 2011 book made fracture a catchword for intellectual historians looking to explain the impossibility of a common cultural language in the late 20th century. His thesis in Age of Fracture is that unfettered markets made consensus impossible, as all language was boiled down into smaller units, leading personal identity to become more important than institutions.

Hartman observes that fracture became evident in the 1960s as the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant consensus disintegrated. And according to him, The culture wars were the defining metaphor for the late-twentieth-century United States. He begins the story in the 1960s, with New Left radicals who challenged the idea of normative America. Opponents of the New Left included former Leninists and socialists who became neoconservative intellectuals, along with familiar conservative political figures such as Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.

What helped to make the culture wars a decades-long feature of American life, Hartman argues, is that the affluent radicals of the New Left took over higher education precisely during its period of greatest growth. The concept of normative America then fell away as the identity-based movements of the sixties offered the promise of cultural liberation to those on the outside of traditional America looking in.

As the culture wars heated up, conservatism enjoyed resurgent popularity at the ballot box. Hartman does not see this as a steady rise to power of the traditional right following Barry Goldwaters loss in 1964. Instead, a mixture of neoconservatism and an innovative embrace of white working-class values gave the Republican Party new resonance with voters. The neoconservatives benefited from their Marxist background, as they understood the difference between New Lefts politics and the consensus liberalism that the right had been fighting all along. They showed how what remained of consensus liberalism could now be claimed by the right as an ally against the New Left counterculture.

Hartman, although primarily interested in the intellectual side of things, convincingly draws connections between ideas and events throughout the book. In his second chapter he moves adeptly between the novels of Saul Bellow, the Moynihan Report, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville crisisin which a Brooklyn teachers strike led to flaring racial hostility between blacks and Jewsin revealing how neoconservatives and the New Left created the dialectic that we know as the culture wars.

After setting the stage in his first two chapters, Hartman details the clash between left and right in the next seven chapters, each of which is a historiography of disputes that defined the culture wars. Subjects include debates about race, religion, gender, art, school curriculums, and history, with close examination of key episodes such as the rights outcry against Andres Serranos Piss Christ exhibition funded by the National Endowment for the Artsand therefore by taxpayers.

But what stands out about A War for the Soul of America is the trajectory that Hartman traces. For him the 1950s were indeed normative America, grounded in white middle-class mores, and efforts to reveal a radicalized society in the United States before the 1960s are a fruitless endeavor. (A significant body of scholarship disputes this: the late historian Alan Petigny, for example, argued persuasively in his 2009 book, The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965, that the country was already giving way to loosened moral standards in the 1950s, with the pedagogy of Benjamin Spock, the art of Jackson Pollock, and the music of jazz musician Charlie Parker.) And paired with Hartmans revisionist historiographical claim about the continued importance of the 60s as the beginning of fracture for normative Americaa point on which conservatives are likely to agree with himis his belief that the metaphor of the culture wars is dead.

The logic of the culture wars has been exhausted. The metaphor has run its course, Hartman writes in the conclusion. Possibly this is true, as the baby boomers who have so long supplied the defining metaphors of American politics give way to a generation that sees the world differently. Yet it seems that the rising generation is quite comfortable with many of the old metaphors, even if they are tired of using them.

Conservatives may dismiss A War for the Soul of America as the work of a left-leaning scholar despairing of the lost paradise promised by 60s radicals. But Hartman is insightful on the working out of global capitalism and something he calls the cultural contradictions of liberation, in which the appearance of choice is often the negation of cherished valueswhether those of the left or right. The ensuing historical ironies abound in Hartmans account, encompassing such examples as the Christian corporate raider or liberal homeschooling parents.

While the culture wars inspired a great deal of farcical, eschatological rhetoric, they also brought about an era of public discourse between left and right that is worth remembering, perhaps even imitating. Surely Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Allan Bloom, for example, communicated something remarkable to us about the soul of America. In the retelling of this conversation, Hartman proves to be both an outstanding historian and a public intellectual mapping the terrain for a new conversation. Compared to this era of the hashtag presidency, we have reason to envy those bygone decades in which political debate appeared on the pages of print newspapers and mass-marketed books.

Seth J. Bartee teaches intellectual history at East Tennessee State University.

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How the Culture Wars Began (and Ended)