Morning Belz, May 27

Foucault confusion and r/NoFap.

Foucault’s critique of experts, what to do with it now? — American Affairs
One year later, few charges for arson in Mpls — Reformer
Progressive Philly DA beat cop-backed challenger  — Inquirer*
“The sexual counterrevolution” is underway — Spectator**
Kristof: Vaccinating the world is smart investment for U.S. — NYT
A politically-moderate Jewish friend shared this with me — The Bulwark***

*it’s an opinion piece that makes an interesting point. Krasner won, handily, in a primary that was “billed as a test for the progressive prosecutor movement” amid rising crime. Some speculated there would be a “soft-on-crime backlash” in that election. Here’s a long collection of headlines about that. Such a backlash did not materialize.

**probably overstates the case for a “counterrevolution,” but it seems like something is going on. Ran the article by a friend of mine who just finished his sophomore year at a Big Ten university. His response: “I think being porn free is the new trend.” r/nofap, a “porn addiction and compulsive sexual behavior recovery peer support forum” on Reddit, has 819,000 members, I assume most of them young men based on the comments, and it’s fascinating to scroll through. Interestingly, it’s non-religious, and the subreddit rules ask people to “avoid religious or anti-religious content.”

***sample: “There is no difference between a man accosting a Jew on the streets of New York in 2021 under the guise of ‘anti-Zionism’ and a man accosting a Jew on the streets of Berlin in 1931 for ‘anti-Bolshevism.’ The anti-Semites in both circumstances believed they were speaking truth to power. An air of justification is consistently applied to anti-Semitism, a pernicious narrative that attacking the Jews is ‘punching up,’ rather than ‘punching down.’”

Quote
“To cease from evil, to do good, and to purify the mind yourself, this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.” — Siddhartha Gautama

About: I send this email most weekdays in an effort to stay informed and in touch. I was a newspaper reporter for 14 years, most recently at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I explained why my family left Minneapolis here. Now we live just outside Chattanooga and I work on Scuffed News. Please share this newsletter with anyone you think might enjoy it. And please consider supporting this work with your money on Patreon.