Can You Turn a Terrorist Back Into a Citizen?
Brenadan I. Koerner | WIRED
“Koehler’s key finding has been that all extremists, regardless of ideology, develop a sort of tunnel vision as they go through the indoctrination process. An ordinary high school or college student, Koehler argues, has a lot of problems (tricky classes, meddling parents, romantic woes) as well as many potential solutions (study harder, find a job, date someone new). A person who’s journeying down the path toward radicalization, by contrast, sees their problems and solutions each get winnowed down to one—a process that Koehler terms ‘depluralization.’ The solitary problem for these individuals is always that there’s a global conspiracy against their race or religion; the solitary solution to such persecution is violence, with the goal of placing themselves and their group in control of a revamped society.”
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‘Make America Big Again’? The Headache of Translating Trump into Foreign Languages.
Samantha Schmidt | The Washington Post
“Since the beginning of his political rise, Trump’s remarks have been translated into a slew of languages worldwide, and his official swearing-in only elevates the power of his words. For some, his simple vocabulary and grammatical structure make his speeches easy to follow. But for others, his confusing logic, his tendency to jump quickly from topic to topic and his lack of attributions for so-called facts make his remarks sound like a puzzling jumble, and that creates a headache when translating Trump’s speeches for non-English audiences.”
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Russia: Life After Trust
Michael Idov | New York Magazine
“One tends to imagine life in an autocratic regime as dominated by fear and oppression: armed men in the street, total surveillance, chanted slogans, and whispered secrets. It is probably a version of that picture that has been flitting lately through the nightmares of American liberals fretting about the damage a potential autocrat might do to an open society.
