The Nation Mar-24-14

Toxic Tweets Not So Sweet
 Re Michelle Goldberg’s “Feminism’s Toxic Twitter Wars” [Feb. 17]: sometimes the feminist “scene” is too much to handle. As feminists, we have to strike a balance between coping with the damage heteropatriarchy has caused every one of us (of any gender) and being activists. When the vitriol of supposedly inclusive feminist spaces precedes the commitment to intersectional identity politics, I get exhausted. 
 As an avid tweeter and feminist, I find it difficult to escape the brusqueness of short-form discourse. It seems almost “on trend” to get caught up in call-out politics. There is a fine line between critical engagement and petty discontent. We have to learn to be gentle with one another: bell hooks urges activists to love, for “love can uproot fear or…

@brycecovert
White male privilege is one hell of a drug.
 @EdgeofSports
“House of Cards” is to “Scandal” as. . . Barry Bonds in 1991 is to Barry Bonds in 2001.
 @NicholsUprising
Robert Reich on 2016 race: If income inequality’s not addressed “a lot of people—Elizabeth Warren, others, maybe even me...” might run.
 @ZoeSCarpenter
Nearing the pinnacle of depravity, Senate Republicans blocked a healthcare and education bill for veterans. 
 @MiriMarkow
Deinstitutionalization: “More than 3 times as many seriously mentally ill people in jails and prisons than in hospitals.”
 @gzornick
O’Reilly wants Michelle Obama to say: “You teenage girls. You stop having sex. You stop getting pregnant.” #foolproof
 @chrislhayes
 Few things make me like this president more than when he’s getting criticized for lack of bellicosity in foreign affairs.…

The escalating crisis in Ukraine has set off reckless missile-rattling in this country. As Harvard’s Stephen Walt tweeted on March 2: “Public discourse on #Ukraine situation hitting new hghts in hyperbole. (‘New Cold War, WW III,’ etc.) Rhetorical overkill not helpful.” He may have
 been thinking of neocon Charles Krauthammer, who in his Washington Post column called for the United States to ante up $15 billion for Ukraine and send a naval flotilla to the Black Sea. The same paper headlined that the crisis “tests Obama’s focus on diplomacy over military force,” quoting Andrew Kuchins of the Center for Strategic and International Studies decrying President Obama’s “taking the stick option off the table.” 
 The Obama administration has responded to the crisis by flexing its own rhetorical muscles. When Russian…

Ours is an age of riots and rebellions, of radical self-creation in the heady streets: Spain’s indignados, the Occupy movement and, of course, the Arab Spring. We are understandably excited by crowds in the streets, and our pulse may even rise at the sight of broken glass and flames, because for so long such images have represented the shards of the old world through which we can catch the perceptible glint of the new. The protests in Venezuela might therefore seem to be simply the latest act in an upsurge of world-historic proportions.
 Not so fast. 
 Despite hashtags like #SOSVenezuela and Jared Leto’s remarks at the Oscars, these protests have more to do with returning economic and political elites to power than with their downfall.
 Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution” leapt…

On March 2, with President Obama on the cusp of a decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, an estimated 1,200 students from more than eighty colleges descended on Washington to urge him to reject the project.
 “The Keystone XL pipeline, if approved, would carry over 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil—best described as a semi-viscous, carbon intensive, toxic injustice—through America’s heartland each day,” organizers wrote in their call to protest.
 Students rallied at Georgetown University and then marched to the White House. At the day’s climax, close to 400 protesters were arrested for acts of civil disobedience. 
 The Keystone XL fight has become a crucial issue for young environmentalists across the country. Check out thenation.com/
activism for information on the next steps in the fight against climate…

New York will end the practice of solitary confinement for certain classes of inmates, including young people and pregnant women, as part of an agreement announced February 19, The New York Times reported. 
 The landmark move stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union challenging the state’s confinement practices. New York will now be the largest correctional system in the country that prohibits solitary confinement for young inmates.
 —Julianne Hing Colorlines.com…