Today, America can no longer go to war without the private sector.
During World War II, about 10 percent of America’s armed forces were contracted. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that proportion leapt to 50 percent.
Today, 75 percent of U.S. forces in Afghanistan are contracted. Only about 10 percent of these contractors are armed, but this matters not. The greater point is that America is waging a war largely via contractors, and U.S. combat forces would be impotent without them.
The Left’s enthusiastic embrace of these tropes and rhetoric props up the narrative that, for a woman to have reached the upper echelons of power in her field, she could only have done so through depravity and deception.
Source: Your Gleeful Liberal Takedown of Hillary Clinton Is Affirming Institutional Sexism
This aura of avoidance adds to a perception that she’s dishonest and secretive. Whether or not she’s hiding something, avoiding the press provides another reason to think that she is hiding something.
Source: The Deeper Reason Many Intelligent Progressives and Independents Will Not Support Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton is a generationally talented politician — albeit across a different set of dimensions than men tend to be talented politicians.
Source: It’s time to admit Hillary Clinton is an extraordinarily talented politician
An appealing story may get likes and upvotes on social media regardless, and the social validation of a given narrative can be turned into votes.
But believing something doesn’t make it so—and a lot of people believing the same thing doesn’t make something true either.
Source: In the post-factual democracy, politicians win by getting feelings right and facts wrong — Quartz
This shift in the type of illegal immigrant has put a strain on the US immigration system. Mexican economic migrants can simply be dropped off on the Mexican side of the border after being caught, but Central Americans claiming asylum must go through a slower and more complicated process.
Source: US immigration policy has totally lost touch with US immigration reality — Quartz
What we are seeing is anger at a disruption of our economy and, really, our social order—of the magnitude we saw when the agricultural age gave way to the industrial age
— Anne Marie Slaughter, New America
The answer may have less to to with the Trump himself than with broader social and economic changes—and the implications of that are daunting.
The full skein of reasons for anxiety about the surge of populist anger in America right now is of course more extensive still. It may be unlikely that any of them imply that an extreme form of political doom, like fascism, is coming. But the important consideration isn’t what to fear, it’s what to know: Donald Trump may be defeated in November; the anger and resentment behind him won’t be.
Source: Why Is Populism Taking Over the Republican Party? – The Atlantic