South Koreans Must Not Let Their President’s Failed Self-Coup Go to Waste
Quico Toro, Persuasion
A rare opportunity to entrench democracy is at hand

Liberal democracy, it has been said a million times before, is such a dull, procedural affair that it often struggles to rally deep emotional attachment even from its supporters. Crises like the one South Korea has just gone through—moments when the survival of liberal democracy seems in doubt—can sometimes square the circle, renewing people’s commitment to democratic ideals and binding them emotionally to a system that so often errs on the side of limp proceduralism.

Which is why as I saw Koreans pouring into the streets of Seoul last night to reject the president’s power grab, I felt more hopeful than afraid. Their country is going through the kind of crisis that, if courageously handled, can leave a democracy stronger. For their sake and ours, let’s hope they succeed.

Getting mean and dirty only helps Trump
Steve Schmidt, The Warning

Adopting a politics of authentic morality that places a premium on service and people would be a start. It is time to start imagining the future.

Progressives should appreciate their liberation from the defense of 20th century
government programs and departments that Republicans have long attacked as unnecessary, bureaucratic and wasteful. Everything will be gone within four years, and mostly gone in two.

Unless the Democratic Party is fueled by idealism, opportunity and fighting to be on the side of ordinary Americans, it defaults into being the extremely unappealing party: weak, elitist and out-of-touch.

Manufacturing is a war now
Noah Smith, Noahpinion
And the democracies are losing.

And one absolutely essential component of an FPV drone is a battery. In fact, improvements in batteries — along with better magnets for motors and various kinds of computer chips for sensing and control — are what enabled the drone revolution in the first place. And who makes the batteries? That would also be China:

The democratic countries have all struggled to respond to China’s industrial assault, because as capitalist countries, they naturally think about manufacturing mainly in terms of economic efficiency and profits unless a major war is actively in progress

America’s counties are less purple than they used to be

Robert J. Vanderbei, Princeton University

Showing just red and blue states doesn’t paint an accurate picture of national politics.

How right-wing media is like improv theater

Danielle Lee Tomson, University of Washington; Kate Starbird, University of Washington

Improv theater is known for improvisation, audience participation and riffing on memes and stories circulating on social and traditional media – all hallmarks of right-wing media.

Is masculine anxiety spurring support for Trump among Gen Z?

Nick Lehr, The Conversation

What does it mean if young men sense that their masculinity is under threat? Or if they sense a bleak and hopeless future?

The National Assembly voted down the decree, but the political crisis isn’t over.

South Korea is in the grip of a political crisis after President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Tuesday — a shocking move that sparked mass protests and drew sharp rebuke from the country’s parliament.

Though Yoon has said he will reverse his declaration, that’s unlikely to end South Korea’s political problems, which go beyond Tuesday’s emergency.

Yoon first made the declaration during a televised announcement on Tuesday night local time, claiming that the opposition party to his government was in the midst of an “insurgency” and “trying to overthrow the free democracy,” likely in reference to the political deadlock between himself and the parliament that has prevented him from enacting his agenda. Despite that ongoing gridlock, the move to declare martial law took Yoon’s political opponents, allies, the South Korean public — and the world — by surprise.

South Korea and America

First of all, we have to take in a very basic reality: that attempts to establish military dictatorships have been made in democracies, and will be made in other democracies –including, very possibly, in the American one.

Those instincts led South Koreans, en masse, to ignore the declaration of martial law, and to do the very things that their president tried to forbid them to do: speak, gather, resist.

Would Americans take a similar stand? Thanks to South Koreans in the last hours, and thanks to many other examples around the world, contemporary and historical, we can know the danger signs, and we can make preparations. Others have given us time to think, and have set for us good examples. We will have no excuses.

Rightwing president backs down after most serious challenge to country’s democracy since 1980s

South Korea’s rightwing president has been forced to back down after he unexpectedly declared martial law only to face unanimous opposition from the national assembly, in the most serious challenge to the country’s democracy since the 1980s.

President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law late on Tuesday amid a dispute with opposition parties he accused of pro-North Korean sympathies and anti-state activities.

But after some of the tensest hours in the country’s recent history, Yoon said troops would return to their barracks and the order would be lifted following a cabinet meeting.