Deseret Magazine November 2024

AMERICAN PROMISE CAN THE CONSTITUTION STILL UNITE US?

BY YUVAL LEVIN

AGE OF GRIEVANCE

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DIVIDED BYJANUARY FRANK BRUNI

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CONTENTS

36 PERSECUTION COMPLEX IS AMERICA IN AN AGE OF GRIEVANCE? by frank bruni

“Intellectual humility allows us to revisit our assumptions.”

56 BEYOND VICTORY WRESTLING ICON CAEL SANDERSON’S COUNTERINTUITIVE SECRET TO SUCCESS. by ethan bauer

AMERICAN PROMISE CAN THE CONSTITUTION STILL UNITE US?

BY YUVAL LEVIN

AGE OF GRIEVANCE

DESERET MAGAZINE UPC REFERENCE WHY WE’RE SO

DIVIDED JANUARY

BY FRANK BRUNI

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DOES JAPAN HAVE THE SECRET TOJUNETHE GLOBAL

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NEITHER HERE, NOR THERE A MAN’S JOURNEY NAVIGATING THE GLOBAL REFUGEE CRISIS. by james walker

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CONTENTS

“Our need for human connection is as essential for survival as food and water.”

IDEAS

68 SCROLLING ALONE Creating community in an isolated society. by josh good

COMMENTARY

CLOSING THE DISTANCE

15

Why national problems are best solved locally. by liz joyner

BREAKDOWN

SCOOPED

LETTERS FROM THE FIELD

MODERN FAMILY

16

EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY

Who owns the news?

How pets change families.

by natalia galicza

by jennifer graham

20

THE ISLAND OF TREASURED CHILDREN

CULTURE

30

DANCE, DANCE, REVOLUTION

72

Hip-hop and “Hamilton” made America feel like home.

A place where kids come first. by hikari hida

by marc nielsen

THE WEST

NOBODY’S HOME

ODE

24

KODACOLOR

Second thoughts about second homes.

76

An ode to the anonymous antique.

by julie brown davis

by natalia galicza

POETRY

79

MISSING by shanan ballam

POINT/COUNTERPOINT

OUT OF PROPORTION

IDEAS

18

AMERICAN PROMISE

THE LAST WORD

64

THE SOCIAL CURE

Did America get the Electoral College right?

The Constitution respects disagreement and reveres unity.

An ancient path to good health is making a comeback.

by ethan bauer

by yuval levin

by matthew brown

NOVEMBER 2024

80

5

CONTRIBUTORS

HIKARI HIDA

KLAWE RZECZY

YUVAL LEVIN

Hida is a Japanese-Thai journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, and Mastermind Magazine. She is a former staff reporter for the Times in Tokyo, where she covered everything from books to politics to gender. Her story about the kid-friendly island of Tokunoshima, Japan, is on page 30.

Rzeczy is a Polish artist specializing in editorial illustrations and digital collages. Rzeczy’s work is featured in The New Yorker, Time, The Economist, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, Billboard, Wired and many other publications. Her collage work can be seen on page 46.

Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. The author of several books on political theory and public policy, an excerpt from his most recent book, “American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation and Could Again,” is on page 64.

FRANK BRUNI

JOSH GOOD

CARLOS ARROJO

Bruni has been a journalist and opinion writer for more than three decades, including more than 25 years at The New York Times. Also a professor at Duke University, he is the author of four New York Times bestsellers. An excerpt from his most recent book, “The Age of Grievance,” is on page 36.

Good is director of the Aspen Institute’s Religion & Society Program, helping journalists, policymakers and clerics better understand religious pluralism in America. He has been published in The Hill, National Review, The Weekly Standard, and The American. His essay on technology and isolation is on page 68.

Arrojo is a freelance illustrator from A Coruña, Spain. His clients in editorial and publishing fields include The New York Times, The Washington Post, El País, Volkswagen and UNICEF. His illustrations have been recognized by the World Illustration Awards, among others. Arrojo’s work can be seen on page 16.

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THE VIEW FROM HERE

UP FOR DEBATE

E

arly this year, at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore encouraged an audience of Republicans and Democrats to improve the civility of their political discourse, especially with those they disagreed with. The two don’t agree on many issues but have struck up an unlikely friendship built on mutual respect. The theme of that event, sponsored by this magazine and Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute, was how to disagree better.

That night, speakers across the political spectrum — from ABC’s Donna Brazile, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, to The Atlantic’s Peter Wehner, a former speechwriter for three Republican presidents — spoke on improving civility in public life. This has been a focus for this magazine all year, but I was still surprised to see how a fairly innocuous plea to be polite was used against Cox. One of his political opponents called the initiative “a leftist, Marxist tactic to get people to drop their opinions,” and Cox was roundly booed at the state’s GOP convention. Throughout the campaign season the initiative was mocked, in a state known for its kindness.

I thought about this as I read Frank Bruni’s “Persecution Complex” in this month’s issue, an excerpt from his book, “Age of Grievance.” The New York Times columnist argues that these days, people on both the left and the right feel attacked, even dehumanized, by the other side, and rather than seeking to understand each other — or heaven forbid, realize they might be wrong about a particular issue — they retreat deeper and deeper into their respective echo chambers.

Over the past year, inspired by that night at the National Cathedral,

I’ve made a concerted effort to practice disagreeing better. I’ll be honest, it hasn’t been easy. There are times I’ve felt insulted. At times I’ve been offended at the suggestion I’m blind to my own biases, uneducated or not that intelligent. In my worst moments, I’ve responded in kind. I’ve often left these exchanges feeling like I let my emotions get the best of me.

But disagreeing better, I’ve learned, doesn’t mean we have to compromise our own beliefs or values. It’s OK if we feel some level of frustration with someone who holds an entirely different worldview. And it can put a strain on a relationship.

But we shouldn’t let differences of political ideology end friendships, or worse yet, make us think of our friends and family as enemies. This may sound like hyperbole, but America is a country built on the idea of disagreeing better. That’s because it’s the bedrock of pluralism, the very foundation of a diverse society that draws on the strengths of people of wildly different backgrounds, ethnicities and belief systems.

And here’s one more thing I’ve learned: during a tense political season like the one we’ve just endured, it’s easy to forget our lives are so much bigger than politics. When things have gotten heated, I’ve found I can almost always find common ground on some other topic. And that has reminded me that our political leanings don’t make us who we are.

By the time many of you read this, the voting will be over, or close to it. One side will undoubtedly feel aggrieved, or worse. But regardless of who wins, true friendship and family ties must persist and survive this election. And the next one, too.

—JESSE HYDE NOVEMBER 2024

9

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THE BUZZ

Our S E P T E M B E R education issue featured the views of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Interfaith America founder Eboo Patel and eight other prominent voices in higher ed on how to make college more accessible and effective (“A Higher Purpose”). Many readers agreed on the value of an education and debated whether today’s campuses embrace expression of opposing political viewpoints. But Thomas Nedreberg pointed out the essays barely touched on affordability, which creates a major obstacle to obtaining a college degree. “All we heard was 10 people who believe in education, which I do as well, but they didn’t say anything useful for someone to actually get an education unless they were born into a rich family.”

The rising price of tuition was discussed in a wide-ranging interview Deseret News Executive Editor Doug Wilks had with former Indiana Gov. and Purdue University President Mitch Daniels (“How to Save Higher Ed”). Reader Breck England bemoaned the hyperfocus schools have on preparing students to make a living. “A liberal education is about more than just $$$. It’s about gaining the wisdom of the ages through the study of philosophy, history, literature, the arts, and, yes, critical theory. I fear that higher ed is becoming nothing but a job-training mill.” But Mark Keith, who has worked at several universities around the country, dismissed the demise of higher education as overblown. “Just do your research before picking a university. Use rankings based on the value of the education and not simply the overall ranking. There are PLENTY of very good options out there that deserve respect rather than criticism.”

Deseret Magazine staff writer Ethan Bauer revisited BYU’s improbable 1984 college football national championship and asked if it could happen again (“Can Underdogs Win in College Football Today?”). The story won praise from author and national college football writer Ivan Maisel, who tweeted: “Nice piece by Ethan Bauer tying together the 40th anniversary of two seminal events, the @BYUfootball national championship and the Supreme Court ruling opening up the televising of (college football).” Readers were nearly unanimous that such a title run couldn’t occur under the current state of college athletics.

Natalia Galicza revealed how African literature gets exposed to an American audience in her profile of the Utah-based online bookstore Iskanchi Press (“The Lion’s Tale”). Marybeth Timmermann, who has translated African literature from French into English for Iskanchi, noted how the story illustrated the “importance of literature and world literature, including literature by African authors, in breaking down stereotypes and broadening people’s understanding and empathy in this great big, fascinating world that we all live in together!”

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“They didn’t say anything useful for someone to actually get an education unless they were born into a rich family.”

NOVEMBER 2024

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COMMENTARY

CLOSING THE DISTANCE WHY NATIONAL PROBLEMS ARE BEST SOLVED LOCALLY

BY L I Z J OYN ER

N

early 250 years ago, America kicked its king to the curb, as this new nation began a great experiment with the most ambitious idea that has ever existed on planet Earth: that a diverse people can self-govern. But to live and breathe free, our founders knew we would need to maintain uneasy relationships across “factions.” That’s how you solve problems without a fancy-pants king telling you what to do.

Fast-forward a couple of centuries and the mutual tolerance required to self-govern is rare. From the groups we join to the things we like on Facebook, we design our lives to surround ourselves with like-minded people. With too much time spent in homogenous digital silos and not enough encountering people we disagree with in the real world, we’re losing the ability to see each other clearly or to learn something new, much less solve the complex challenges we face. This problem is big and it is dangerous.

Americans can be forgiven for looking to our national elected leaders to address this fracture in the body politic. But in America, it was never about the king; it has always been about the people.

As much as we might wish otherwise, healing our civic rupture has to start in the hometowns we share and in the space between us as we lead our everyday lives. I know this because we’ve seen it in our community.

Formed in Tallahassee, Florida, after a divisive issue left leaders wanting a better way, The Village Square is on a mission to build ILLU STR ATION BY KY LE H I LTO N

civic trust between people who don’t look or think alike. In this local revival of the quintessential American town hall, we’ve had hundreds of conversations with tens of thousands of people. We talk in bars, we talk in churches, we talk across a hundred continuous tables in the middle of a downtown street. Through all this talking, we’ve discovered something truly remarkable: People are hard to hate close-up.

Yet divisive politicians and media figures would have us believe that estrangement from our fellow Americans is inevitable because the differences are so vast that there is simply no reason to communicate directly. We can only hope to vanquish “them.” These conflict profiteers know that when we are locked in mortal battle with each other, their market share grows.

This crisis is driven less by the fact that we disagree (our country was built for disagreement) than by the very distance we’ve allowed to grow between us. We don’t know each other, so we don’t trust each other. And if we don’t trust each other, we’ll believe the worst about each other. Closing that distance changes everything, and no president can do that for us.

Years ago, inspired by The Village Square, my husband sparked a friendship with an acquaintance because of their political disagreements. When you decide to move closer, occasionally you realize you agree. But more often you’re struck with the obvious good intentions of people, even when the difference of opinion is vast.

Most importantly, in proximity to each other, humans have a superpower — we reciprocate kindness with kindness. My husband and his friend still disagree, but politics is now about the 20th most important thing about their friendship.

Imagine if most of us felt this way about even just one political “foe”? That’s something within our control. It may sound scary at first, but we’ve been inviting people across the country to “take the dare” to reach out to their political opposite, whether that’s a friend from high school or a neighbor down the street. We’ve found real joy in these new friendships.

Existing communities can encourage these same unlikely relationships at scale — churches can gather with politically dissimilar congregations around mission work and left-leaning groups can partner with right-leaning ones. You can even start a Village Square in your hometown. In a digital age driving us apart, we can become intentional about occasionally coming together. It’s tragic if we don’t at least try.

If we citizens do our part, then the next time politicians hold a finger in the wind — as they are prone to do — they will see that the wind has shifted, and that we no longer wish to live our lives in the toxic binary created by our distance.

Together we can write the next chapter of our history, in our hometowns and with our family, friends and neighbors. In a country of, by and for the people — we shouldn’t have it any other way.

L I Z J OY N E R I S T H E F O U N D E R A N D P R E S I D E N T O F T H E V I L L A G E S Q UA R E .

NOVEMBER 2024

15

THE BREAKDOWN

SCOOPED WHO OWNS THE NEWS?

F E W E R P E O P L E T R U S T the news than ever. Politi-

cians deride it, young adults are bored of it and the rest of the market seems confused by it. Once deemed a common resource for objective reporting on current events, the “fourth estate” has splintered. While local news struggles to stay afloat, national outlets chase disparate audiences and offer competing worldviews. Skepticism may fall on the reporters and anchors who face the public, but the entire industry has evolved, responding to changes in the environment where it operates with new business models and ownership structures. So who owns the news? Here’s the Breakdown.

—N ATAL IA GAL IC Z A

0% CONFIDENCE

A record-high 39 percent of Americans have no confidence in mass media. Half believe that national news outlets mislead and misinform their audiences to push agendas or chase profits. Ninety-five percent believe corporate interests influence coverage, and nearly three-quarters want news organizations to be more transparent about their funding.

39% 50% 95% 72% 16

OF AMERICANS HAVE NO CONFIDENCE IN MASS MEDIA BELIEVE NATIONAL NEWS OUTLETS MISLEAD AUDIENCES BELIEVE CORPORATE INTERESTS INFLUENCE COVERAGE WANT TRANSPARENCY IN NEWS ORGANIZATIONS’ FUNDING

DESERET MAGAZINE

6 MEGA OWNERS

That’s the number of conglomerates estimated to control 90 percent of the media — empowered by deregulation of ownership in the Telecommunications Act of

1996 — although measures vary and properties change hands.

Several of them own news outlets, including Disney (ABC, ESPN, Vice), Warner Bros.

Discovery (CNN), and Comcast (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo), which earned $121.57 billion in 2023. That’s more than Tesla, IBM or Bank of America.

A 4-0 VOTE

The Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to air contrasting opinions on matters of public interest until the bipartisan FCC ended the practice by unanimous vote in 1987. That spawned a vibrant ecosystem of partisan radio talk shows, personified

by Rush Limbaugh, which has now largely moved to podcasts. It may have influenced the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s strategy to amass 185 local television stations, reaching 4 in 10 households (Nexstar Media Group, a politically neutral competitor, owns 200).

The FCC’s “corollary rules” limited personal attacks and political editorials until 2000.

1987

THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE ENDED

BY UNANIMOUS FCC VOTE

1 IN 3

40 GOLDEN YEARS

That’s how many Americans prefer mainstream and network outlets, like CBS News (owned by Paramount Global, but an ongoing merger will give controlling ownership to tech billionaire Larry Ellison).

Others are mostly split between local news, social media and digital-only news sites.

On the radio, many are hearing from iHeartMedia, which runs 860 stations in 160 markets, plus a plethora of podcasts that span and sometimes ignore the political spectrum.

In the later 20th century, newspapers averaged 12 percent profits — some hitting up to 30 percent — with ads fueling 80 percent of revenue. Business hadn’t always been so good. Starting in 1792, the government had subsidized postage to keep the media afloat, up to $35 billion annually in today’s money. But classified ad sales peaked at $19.6 billion in 2000 before crashing by 77 percent in 12 years, undercut by online services like Craigslist.

Some news advocates want to bring back government subsidies.

“THE FIRST AMENDMENT … RESTS ON THE A S S U M P T I O N T H AT THE WIDEST POSSIBLE D I S S E M I N AT I O N O F I N F O R M AT I O N FROM DIVERSE AND A N TAG O N I S T I C S O U R C E S I S E S S E N T I A L TO T H E W E L FA R E O F T H E P U B L I C , T H AT A F R E E P R E S S I S A CO N D I T I O N O F A F R E E S O C I E T Y.” SUPREME COURT JUSTICE HUGO B L AC K , A S S O C I AT E D P R E S S V. U N I T E D S TAT E S , 3 2 6 U . S . 1 ( 1 9 4 5 )

1.25 BILLION VISITS

57% OF NEWSPAPERS

That’s how often users checked the three leading news websites in July 2024: CNN (525 million), The New York Times (386 million) and Fox News (337 million). Though publicly traded, the Times has been run by the dynastic Ochs-Sulzberger family since Adolph Ochs bought the paper in 1896. Fox News is part of News Corp., along with The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, operated under the controlling ownership of the Rupert Murdoch family.

Most newspapers are held by seven companies including Gannett, which owns more than 200 dailies, about 175 weeklies and USA Today. Academic studies have found that when conglomerates buy local newsrooms they often condense coverage areas, reduce local content and nationalize stories, cutting resources to maximize profit. One exception is The Washington Post, which Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought in 2013.

WEBSITE VISITS IN JULY 2024

525m CNN

386m

NEW YORK TIMES

337m

12%

AVERAGE PROFIT MARGINS FOR NEWSPAPERS IN THE LATER 20TH CENTURY

80%

OF NEWSPAPER REVENUE WAS FROM ADS

$19.6b

CLASSIFIED AD SALES IN 2000, BEFORE DROPPING 77% BY 2012

FOX NEWS

ILLU STR ATION BY C A R LOS A R R OJ O

NOVEMBER 2024

17

POINT / COUNTERPOINT

OUT OF PROPORTION DID AMERICA GET THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE RIGHT?

E V E R Y F O U R Y E A R S , Americans practice some peculiar math. No other country still

uses a system like the Electoral College to select a national executive by indirect vote.

It was enshrined in the Constitution as a compromise between letting Congress choose the president and a popular vote — unheard of in 1788. Today, its practical implications hinge on the allocation of electoral votes reflecting the size of each state’s congressional delegation, inherently reducing the impact of major population centers. That’s by design, but the country has grown and evolved over the past two centuries, expanding the vote to include most adult citizens. Is the Electoral College still an essential measure to protect small states and pluralism? Or an anachronism that makes America less democratic? — E T H A N BAU E R

18

DESERET MAGAZINE

ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE

PROTECTING THE FEW

MANY AMERICANS ARE unhappy with the Elec-

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE is a triumph of federal-

toral College, but that’s not new. In the 1960s, civil rights activists saw it as a tool for preserving the old political order they opposed. In 1970, it took a filibuster by Southern senators to kill an overwhelmingly bipartisan constitutional amendment that would have instituted a popular vote, after an uncomfortably close tally in the 1968 election. In 2000 and 2016, this antiquated process delivered presidents who won despite losing the popular vote. No wonder a 2023 Pew poll found that 65 percent favor direct voting.

The Electoral College responded to a question that is now thankfully obsolete: how to represent the enslaved population in Southern states. As Founding Father James Madison put it, “the substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.” Along with the regretful Three-Fifths Compromise, which increased that region’s congressional representation, it gave far more weight to its voters in presidential elections. Today, it has a similar effect for all rural states.

In 1790, 95 percent of Americans lived in rural areas.

Today, 80 percent live in cities, concentrated in coastal states. One effect is that a vote in sparsely populated Wyoming is worth about four times more than a vote in California. From another perspective, the math gets even worse. According to Stanford sociology professor Doug McAdams, margins of victory in all but six battleground states during the 2012 presidential election rendered 4 in 5 American voters irrelevant — on both sides of the aisle.

Sometimes, decisive votes come from just a few counties, which can bring fringe views and extreme positions into the national discourse.

Imagine a baseball game, writes Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., where a team wins not by scoring the most runs, but by winning the most innings. The absurdity not only fuels those who question the validity of elections, but also discourages participation. What’s the point of voting, after all, if most Americans agree with you, but you still lose? “Although our founders felt we needed a brake against ‘mob rule,’” writes Dan Glickman, former U.S. secretary of agriculture under President Bill Clinton, the Electoral College “is incompatible with our current national credo that every vote counts.”

ism that has delivered clear mandates and peaceful transitions of power for two centuries. As a buffer between the people and the presidency, it counters demagoguery, cronyism and regional political machines while empowering coalitions and protecting our pluralistic society from the tyranny of the majority. It requires candidates to account for both the many and the few.

Under a popular vote, cities like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago would dominate elections, reshaping policies to their advantage. The apportionment of electoral votes protects smaller states and rural areas from this fate. The rise of swing states like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania may be controversial, but it’s not unhealthy. “Battleground states are not perfect microcosms for America,” says Audrey Perry Martin, an expert in election law and Federalist Society contributor, “but they are much closer than massive population centers.”

No single region has enough electoral votes to secure the presidency, so candidates must build diverse geographic coalitions, which can empower minority voting blocs.

Blue-collar workers were instrumental in delivering Michigan in 2016. Latter-day Saint women helped decide Arizona in 2020. This year, Georgia will likely hinge on Black voters who constitute just 30 percent of its population. “By encouraging candidates to build broad coalitions, the Electoral College helps ensure that the interests of minority groups are considered,” Martin says.

One problem this system prevents is the runoff election.

When a popular vote is too close to call, or no candidate achieves a 50-percent majority, additional rounds of voting can take some democracies to a precarious place. But here, candidates can obtain clear mandates, even when third parties divide the popular vote, as occurred in 1992. Only once in U.S. history has no candidate reached the threshold of 270 electoral votes required for victory.

Finally, the Electoral College is far more balanced than it appears, even accounting for flaws in its design or dark influences on its origins. For example, while it theoretically favors smaller states, the prevalence of the winner-take-all accounting method means that huge states like Texas or Florida can produce outsized electoral benefits with small changes in the popular vote. They’re not in any danger of being forgotten when small states get their voices heard.

ILLU STR ATION BY A N D R É DA LO BA

NOVEMBER 2024

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MODERN FAMILY

EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY AND EVERY PET CHANGES A FAMILY FOR THE BETTER

BY JE N N I F E R G R A H A M

I

am not a dog person,” I said, when my daughter, then five years old, began her campaign for a dog.

At various times in my life, I’ve been a horse person, a cat person, a donkey person and even a hermit-crab person. But amid a rotating cast of family pets, occasionally supplemented by wounded wildlife en route to the animal emergency clinic or the grave, it’s clear I lacked some essential dog-person gene — a gene I’d somehow passed on to my daughter.

In my eyes, dogs seemed the most high-maintenance of animals — requiring walks and flea treatments, training and play dates, and more grooming than I even gave myself.

Undaunted, my daughter checked out books about dog breeds at the library and pored over them. She made lists of how the family would benefit from a dog. (We’d get 20

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more exercise! We’d spend more time outside!) She would take care of him all by herself, she said, and I believed this grand lie, just like every other parent who consents to get a dog for their kid.

JASON READILY ACCEPTED US AS HIS NEW FAMILY, EVEN THOUGH HE’D HAD NO SAY IN THE MATTER.

Although I was not a dog person, I am very much a Katherine person, and so of course, the day eventually arrived when we went, as a family, to pick up Katherine’s dog.

It was a practical — certainly not an emotional — decision, I convinced myself.

It’s been widely reported that more American households have pets than children living at home, which is alarming, but also makes sense. Pets provide order to our days and, more often than not, infuse our lives with humor and joy. Some make us safer, serving as guardians of our household and other animals. (Donkeys and peacocks are famous protectors of livestock.) Nearly all Americans who have pets consider them to be part of their family, Pew Research Center has found, and just over half say they are just as much a part of the family as the humans are.

But while human beings are able to connect with a wide range of animals — some even keep boa constrictors as pets — some animals are easier to connect with than others. Namely, dogs.

Dogs benefit people — and yes, children, to Katherine’s point — in myriad ways.

ILLU STR ATION BY LE XI N I LS O N

NOVEMBER 2024

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MODERN FAMILY

Studies have shown that living with a dog improves markers of physical and emotional health. As the authors of one study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science wrote: “We have seen that interacting with a dog can have stress reducing impacts in the biological realm such as decreased cortisol, heart rate, and blood pressure, and increases in oxytocin. In the psychological realm, stress reduction can be a driver of immediate improvements in self-report measures of stress, mood, and anxiety, and more delayed improvements in overall mental health and quality of life.”

When it came to picking up my daughter’s new pet and imagining all the infernal walks to come, I didn’t feel these studied truths applied to me.

KAT H E R I N E ’ S D O G WAS a black-and-white

AT AGE 10, HE KNEW SOMETHING IT TAKES MANY HUMANS A HALFCENTURY TO LEARN: BEING WITH THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE IS HAPPINESS ENOUGH.

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border collie whose previous owner had named him Jason because his spots had reminded her of the murderer in the “Friday the 13th” horror movies, which I hadn’t seen, but knew enough of to know that this might not be a good sign. He was already a year old, though, so there was no sense in renaming him. Jason, he would remain.

I’d once bought a horse advertised as the “deal of the year,” which was most definitely not, but Jason was, in fact, a deal, because he was free. He had been the runt of his litter and his owner was happy to finally find him a home where he’d be lavished with love and attention by Katherine and her three siblings. But certainly not me.

In fact, I was so much not enthused about our new pet that a few months into this experiment I decided I’d had enough.

This was the second, or maybe it was the seventh, time that Jason escaped the yard or leash and gone gallivanting through the tick-infested woods behind our house. We searched for a panicked half-hour before we caught him, matted and muddy.

The next day, I called the farm and asked if there was anyone else who might want this energetic dog — perhaps someone with sheep that needed herding. There was not. Which was a good thing, because the

moment the question was out of my mouth, I was flooded with uncertainty and guilt, most of which had to do with Katherine, not Jason. But the truth was, for all the trouble he was, the dog had started to burrow into my heart, just a little.

He was accompanying me on runs, for one thing, and I found I kind of liked that.

Unlike human companions, he didn’t want to chat and didn’t care about the pace. Faster, slower, an abrupt stop to inspect something by the side of the road … it was all wonderful to Jason. Everything was wonderful to Jason. Sticks. Naps. Puddles. Chipmunks.

Hole digging. Ball chasing. Leaf raking.

Dinner eating, even when it was the same boring brown kibble night after night.

But most of all, he liked being with his people, and he had readily accepted us as his new family, even though he’d had no say in the matter.

During the day, after the kids went to school, he’d lay down by my desk and quietly lie there while I worked. He would wait with me for the school bus, and his joy was palpable when Katherine disembarked. I’d never seen a horse or a cat look at a person that way: his brown eyes wet and shining, his fluffy tail ticking like a metronome. I will fight anyone who says it wasn’t love I saw in those eyes.

Later, I read that a key difference between wolves and dogs is that dogs look at people’s faces, which seems to explain a lot.

It appeared like all Jason needed in the world was Katherine’s attention.

In truth, people probably need dogs more than dogs need people, a subject that has been explored in the 2021 book “A Dog’s World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World Without Humans” by Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff. Pierce, a bioethicist, says that, contrary to how most of us see dogs, about 80 percent of the world’s dogs already live unmoored from human support — free range, as it were.

Visiting Ecuador a few years ago, I was smitten with the homeless dogs that roamed beaches and streets. While many were unkept and a few clearly in need of

EVERYTHING WAS WONDERFUL TO JASON. STICKS. NAPS. PUDDLES. CHIPMUNKS. DINNER EATING, EVEN WHEN IT WAS THE SAME BORING BROWN KIBBLE NIGHT AFTER NIGHT.

veterinary care, they were surviving and some even appeared well fed. (One enjoyed half of my lunch at an open-air cafe.) It’s a fool’s errand to ascribe human emotions to animals, but more than one mutt that I saw trotting purposefully alongside a rural road, free of leashes and other human means of control, looked — dare I say it? — happy.

You can’t say the same about a dog person who, for whatever reason, finds themself without a dog.

I N JAS O N ’ S L AT E R years, he had his own

chair, a pale yellow, faux leather recliner we’d gotten from a yard sale. It sometimes took one or two tries to hoist himself onto it, but he’d sit in the recliner and watch us watching TV, like some sort of wizened, wolfish grandfather.

He never seemed to harbor any resentment that we never had sheep, that some essential purpose of his breed, herding, went unrealized. At the age of 10, he knew something it takes many humans a half-century or more to learn: that just being with the people you love, just sitting around on a secondhand recliner that’s seen better days, is happiness enough.

There were times that I yearned for our

pre-Jason life — a time when I didn’t have to factor in a week’s stay at the kennel into the cost of a vacation, a time when I didn’t have guilt knowing how miserable Jason was without us, either in a kennel or at home. The guilt slayed me every time we went away, whether for a day or a week.

Which should have been a clue that I was becoming a dog person.

Yet, I was largely oblivious as the years passed, especially when the kids, one by one, went off to college and the dog chores were left to me during the school year.

I didn’t realize the transformation was complete until the morning we lost him.

He had been slowing down, those wide, sassy hips struggling to make it up the hill near our house on our walks. I’d attributed it to arthritis. But it was likely that the tumor that had been removed 14 months ago had come back, and stoic that he was, Jason had never complained.

On his last night, he slept on the floor outside of Katherine’s room, keeping watch one last time as I slept in her bed.

I knew he was sick; he had not eaten the previous day and had not wanted to go on his evening walk. The vet didn’t open until 8:30 a.m. and I planned to take him first

thing, but he passed quietly an hour before, a final heroic courtesy.

I laid on the floor beside his still body, my face in his fur, and sobbed until I had no tears left, a dog person at last.

Do not think, for one moment, that the decision to bring a dog into your family is a casual thing, that the dog will be part of your family’s life for only eight years, or 12, or however long that dog lives.

Matthew Scully, a speechwriter for former President George W. Bush and many other political stars, was a toddler when a dog named Lucky joined his household.

Now old enough for senior discounts, Scully still writes tributes and dedicates books to “the memory of my friend Lucky.”

I am here to tell you that yes, one can become a dog person, and it is a violent transition and it will break you and heal you in so many ways, and you will never understand why you care so much about a dog — a dog! — and it will cost so much money and inconvenience you in ways you can’t even imagine, and you will probably lose your security deposit if you rent.

And yes, you should get your kid that dog, anyway.

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THE WEST

NOBODY’S HOME THE WEST IS HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS ON SECOND HOMES

BY JU L I E B R OW N DAV I S

A

melia Richmond knocked on the apartment door, squeezing a clipboard under her arm. No one answered. She waited another minute before crossing the patch of dirt to the next door. This time, a woman with glasses and long brown hair opened the door and two small dogs ran outside, barking and circling Richmond’s feet.

“Hi, good evening,” Richmond said.

“We’re gathering signatures to get an initiative on the November ballot.”

It was a Tuesday evening in April during one of the first warm weeks of spring, but the air still had enough of a bite that Richmond wore a blue puffy jacket to stay warm while she walked door to door. She was one of 85 volunteers canvassing South Lake Tahoe to get a new tax measure on the ballot.

At first, the woman who lived in the apartment didn’t seem all that interested in signing. “Probably not,” she said, almost shutting the door, but Richmond kept talking. She explained that, in this lakeside California community, 44 percent of the housing units are vacant more than six months out of the year. That adds up to more than 7,000 homes. The petition proposes a 24

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tax on those properties — $3,000 the first year and $6,000 every subsequent year they remain unoccupied. Called a vacancy tax, it would raise up to $34 million a year for housing, road repair and public transit.

“No one that lives here would have to pay it,” Richmond continued. “Just the ones that are empty for more than half the year,

THESE DAYS, LOCALS CAN’T COMPETE WITH OUT-OF-TOWN BUYERS LOOKING FOR SECOND HOMES.

so we can raise more money to build more affordable housing.”

The door stayed open. South Lake Tahoe is like many resort towns in the West, where tourism is the main driver of the economy, and has been for the last century. Today, the Tahoe area sees an estimated 15 million visitors a year. A vast majority of jobs are in the service industry. Half of the city’s residents earn less than $49,000 a year.

With a $655,950 median sales price for single-family homes, locals can’t compete with out-of-town buyers looking for second homes. So, like many mountain resort communities where housing and wages are grossly mismatched, South Lake Tahoe is losing its full-time residents.

“Tourism promises much but delivers only a little,” writes Hal K. Rothman, in his book, “Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West,” an authoritative read on the social and economic consequences of tourism that’s just as relevant today as when the book was first published almost 30 years ago, in 1998. In Tahoe, the repercussion has been the hollowing out of the community. “The inherent problem of communities that succeed in attracting so many people is that their very presence destroys the cultural and environmental amenities that made the place special,” he writes.

Today, half of South Lake Tahoe’s workforce lives outside of the Tahoe Basin, in cities across the border in Nevada, trading cheaper housing for longer commutes — especially long in Sierra Nevada blizzards. South Lake Tahoe schools have seen a 35 percent drop

L E F T: IN TOWNS AC ROSS T H E WE ST L IK E PARK C IT Y, U TAH , AND S OU T H L AK E TAH OE , C AL IF ORNIA, H OU S E S T H AT S IT E MP T Y F OR MORE T H AN S IX MONT H S OF T H E Y E AR ACCOU NT F OR OV E R 6 0 P E RC E NT OF RE S IDE NC E S .

B E LOW: ST E V E TE S H A R A O F S O U TH LA K E TA H O E B E LI E V E S TH AT TAXE S A N D R E G U LAT I O N S O N S E CO N D H O M E S A R E N ’ T TH E R I G H T FI X FO R A N I N C R E AS I N G LY TI G H T H O U S I N G M A R K E T.

S O M E R E SIDE N TS O F SO UTH LA K E TAHO E , LIK E A ME LIA R IC HMO N D ( F RO N T) A N D N I C K SP E A L , SE E TAXE S O N SE CO N D HO M E S AS A N O P P O R TUN ITY TO ST R E N GTHE N THE CO MMUN ITY.

PHOTOGR AP H Y BY J E FF R OSS

NOVEMBER 2024

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THE WEST

in enrollment since the school district’s peak in the 1990s. Meanwhile, across the entire Tahoe Basin, vacation homes take up half to nearly two-thirds of the housing stock, and given Tahoe’s strict environmental regulations, building new housing is not only difficult but expensive.

South Lake Tahoe can’t build its way out of the problem fast enough, Richmond says.

The rate of new construction is outpaced by the growth in second-home ownership.

This predicament — where local workers can’t find places they can afford to live, yet neighborhoods are dark and empty for most of the year because they are mostly vacation homes — is a common one in the region. In Park City, Utah, 66 percent of the homes are empty six months out of the year or more, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey data in 2022. Compare that to Salt Lake City, one mountain pass and a county line away, which has a vacancy rate of only 5 percent, and it becomes evident how this particular element of the housing crisis isolates itself to small mountain communities that rely on a local workforce. In Aspen, Colorado, 38 percent of homes are empty half of the year or more. It’s about the same ratio in Gunnison County, home to Crested Butte, while to the north, in Sun Valley, Idaho, almost 75 percent of residences are vacant, likely second homes used once or twice a year. That’s comparable to the north shore of Lake Tahoe, about an hour’s drive away from South Lake Tahoe, where about 68 percent of the housing stock are second homes.

“You can’t find a ski town in which this hasn’t been the case, because the incentives are there,” Richmond says. “If you have the capital to come in, buy a property, use it when you want, and ride the property value up, it’s a good deal.”

Richmond believes the vacancy tax would shift the market incentives, unlock much-needed housing for locals and raise money for affordable housing. It’s an idea that’s percolating across the West — Vancouver has one, so does Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco — though San 26

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Francisco’s Empty Homes Tax is being litigated in court. In Colorado, the state’s association of ski towns, representing 28 municipalities from Telluride to Steamboat, is currently contemplating a tax on empty homes.

Unlike its neighbors in the Tahoe Basin, South Lake Tahoe is incorporated with an elected city council. Here, locals can influence policy with their vote. And in this proposed measure, the tax is structured to offer property owners a clear choice. Stay and live here full time or rent to local residents so the people living in the home are a part of the community, paying sales taxes and enrolling children in local schools. Or, live here part time, use the home occasionally, and pay a vacancy tax that funds housing and transportation solutions that will help

IN SOME TOWNS IN THE WEST, UP TO 75 PERCENT OF HOUSES ARE VACANT, LIKELY SECOND HOMES USED ONCE OR TWICE A YEAR.

Tahoe solve its mounting issues. The last option is to sell.

Richmond held up the clipboard and a pen. “This just gets it on the November ballot so we can vote as a community.”

The woman signed the petition.

BY THE TIME ballot initiative deadlines ap-

proached, local volunteers collected enough signatures, and the vacancy tax was added to the November ballot as Measure N. Soon after Measure N was announced, people who own second homes in South Lake Tahoe began to receive a curious letter in the mail that was postmarked from a suburb of San Francisco. The letter outlined steps to mislead election officials and register to vote at the address of their vacation home, which is illegal. One person who received

the letter, however, was a California state assembly member and they tipped off the El Dorado County elections department, alerting them to keep an eye out for any suspicious voter fraud. But the county was already aware — they’d noticed an uptick in false voter registrations for South Lake Tahoe since February. By the first week of June, they’d counted almost 200 questionable forms.

The debate began to appear in the editorial pages of the two local news outlets, like a game of pingpong, going back and forth about the tax’s merits or drawbacks, depending on the perspective of the writer.

At a June city council meeting, when staff presented a report analyzing the vacancy tax, public comment stretched for hours into the night. People were angry, emotional. One side shared stories about how impossible it is to find a home they can afford, or even rent. The other side described second homes their families have held onto for generations.

An opposition movement began to coalesce, calling itself “No on Measure N.” A group organized a town hall in August, livestreaming and uploading it to YouTube so people who did not live locally could still watch. In the video, Duane Wallace, the South Tahoe Chamber director, stands in front of a crowded room and speaks into a microphone on a podium.

“Whenever you have this large of a group of people who are in opposition to something, there will be some disagreement,” he said. The opposition was being organized

by South Lake Tahoe’s two chambers of commerce, the association of realtors, the lodging association, an influential property owners association for a wealthy lakefront neighborhood, and the restaurant association. In August, the National Association of Realtors contributed $625,000 to the opposition campaign. “But really what the coalition is, is you,” Wallace said, looking out to the audience. “It’s property owners who inherited a property, who had grandparents who built a little cabin up here and whose memories are tied up into this.”

Steve Teshara, director of government relations for the Tahoe Chamber of Commerce, stepped up to the podium to outline the ongoing work to solve the housing crisis. “The hard work of solving housing takes going to meetings, day in, day out, month in, month out, year in, year out.

That’s the hard work that they (the proponents) don’t want to do. And that’s the hard work that we do,” Teshara said.

Jerry Bindel of the lodging association outlined the major flaws of the tax, starting with the cost to administer, enforce and legally defend the tax, based on a likely assumption that it would be challenged in court if passed by voters. He also emphasized how a tax like this would invade people’s privacy, requiring everyone — full-time residents, renters and vacation homeowners — to show they were in their home for more than 180 days a year with records to prove it.

Already, word of the vacancy tax is affecting the real estate market, scaring away potential buyers, added Sharon Kerrigan, executive vice president of the South Tahoe Association of Realtors. “We believe that the second homeowners are absolutely integral to the fabric of our community,” Kerrigan told me when I called her after the town hall meeting. “The other side is trying to paint them as not contributing. We disagree.”

Second homeowners pay property taxes, Kerrigan says, though in California, Proposition 13 means that neighbors next door to one another could pay vastly different rates, depending on the value of their property when they bought it. Second homeowners pay utility bills. They go to restaurants, bars and rent kayaks or stand-up paddleboards from concessionaires. They pay into the home building, repair and maintenance cottage industry that’s been propped up for decades in South Tahoe, with everyone from snow removal plow drivers to house cleaners working for people who do not live here all the time.

“Not all these folks are uber-, uber-wealthy,” Kerrigan says. “Sure, we have some of those, but we’re hearing from a lot of people

who are moderate second homeowners, like teachers, firefighters, folks that have had second homes from intergenerational transfer. They might be the third generation that holds it. They might be retired on a fixed income. They might have an 800-square-foot cabin. They don’t have the 5,000-square–foot mansion. They’re all going to be taxed the same.”

Little research exists to show exactly how a vacancy tax would impact a place with so many second homes. Shane Phillips, a housing policy researcher at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA, says that other vacancy taxes in Washington, D.C., Vancouver or Oakland are all in metropolitan areas with very low vacancy rates, a sharp contrast to a ski town where almost half its homes would be impacted. “All of these places have exceptionally low vacancy rates, like 2 or 3 percent,” Phillips says.

“That’s basically just the amount of vacancy you have from people who rent and move pretty frequently, just leaving their unit vacant a month while the landlord seeks the new tenant.”

Even so, only the most punitive policies — like in Vancouver, where the tax is a percentage of the assessed property value, not a flat fee — tend to unlock housing, but these are usually high-cost homes, so even though they’re back on the market, they’re still not within reach for people who need housing the most. What’s more significant, Phillips says, is Vancouver’s ability to raise millions of dollars every year for affordable housing. Since the Empty Homes Tax launched in Vancouver in 2017, $142 million of net tax revenue has been allocated to affordable housing. “In the case of South Lake Tahoe and cities like it, I think the fact that such a large share of units are these kinds of second home, vacation home type places, means it’s hard for me to know or predict what the effect would be.”

SOME BELIEVE THAT A VACANCY TAX CAN SHIFT MARKET INCENTIVES, UNLOCK MUCH-NEEDED HOUSING FOR LOCALS AND RAISE MONEY FOR COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT.

WHEN STEVE TANCREDY inherited his grand-

father’s log cabin, located less than a mile from the state line in one of South Tahoe’s older neighborhoods, he had to remove NOVEMBER 2024

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layers and layers of peeling, bubbling paint to restore the wood to its original glory. It’s a 20-by-30-foot cabin, two stories tall, 900 square feet in all. Somehow, it fits three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Tancredy lives in his childhood home in Walnut Creek, but he comes up to his family cabin in Tahoe as much as he can. When he worked the graveyard shift — he splices cables for a communications company — he’d leave from work as soon as he clocked out on Friday morning, with an ATV in the truck bed and jet skis towed behind, getting a head start on the weekend traffic. Over the years, three generations of his family have poured countless weekends and dollars into that little cabin. But it’s getting harder to hold onto it. He was recently dropped from his private homeowner’s insurance company due to wildfire risk and had to sign up for California’s FAIR plan, doubling the amount of insurance he pays every year. Adding another $6,000 tax to the bill on the cabin would crush him, he says. “Nobody’s pay has gone up that much.”

Some ski towns are paying second homeowners to rent long term to locals, as a way to unlock those unused houses.

The “Lease to Locals” program started in Truckee during the pandemic and quickly spread to South Lake Tahoe, Mammoth Lakes, as well as municipalities in Colorado, Idaho, Vermont, and even the Massachusetts seaside town of Nantucket.

But many second homeowners, including Tancredy, don’t want to rent their houses to strangers. He had two bad experiences with former tenants in the 1980s when his dad owned the cabin. “The neighbor next door at the time, he ended up calling the police because of all the yelling and screaming,” he says. “When we did get it back, the refrigerator door was broken.

The oven door was broken. Doors were kicked in. The windows were broken.”

That was the last time the Tancredys rented their cabin to long-term tenants.

Lately, the thing that’s making Tancredy upset is that people think his house is vacant. “It’s fully furnished. All the utilities 28

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are on. I could relocate up there right now.

All I’d have to do is go to the store and load up the cupboards with food. It’s livable right now. To me, vacant sounds like somebody who has an empty cabin and never goes up there.”

Yet, it’s easy to sort the vacation homes from the full-time residences on any given street. When I met Richmond at her home in April, she pointed out the sliding glass door to a large house on the other side of her backyard. Their lights are off most nights, she said. It’s tough to see so many homes go unused when people who are moving to

“WE’RE HEARING FROM A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO ARE TEACHERS, FIREFIGHTERS, FOLKS THAT HAVE SECOND HOMES. THEY MIGHT BE THE THIRD GENERATION THAT HOLDS IT. THEY MIGHT BE RETIRED ON A FIXED INCOME. THEY MIGHT HAVE AN 800-SQUAREFOOT CABIN. THEY DON’T HAVE THE 5,000-SQUARE-FOOT MANSION. THEY’RE ALL GOING TO BE TAXED THE SAME.”

South Lake Tahoe to work at the hospital, fight wildfires, fix cars and groom ski runs are having such a hard time finding just a place to live.

At a meeting the previous winter, Sierra Riker told the city council about moving to Tahoe in 2021 after joining Americorps to fight wildfires. “Housing was impossible to find on my meager stipend, even with the option of roommates,” Riker said. “I had to rent a small room from someone willing to go far below market value.”

Now, she makes $30 an hour, and still, all the house she can afford is a 450-square-foot

apartment built in the 1950s. “And I am much more fortunate than others,” Riker says. “If I can’t afford more than a tiny rundown one-bedroom apartment, then how is someone making $20 an hour able to live here? Many houses are left empty most of the year and the issue is only getting worse.”

Roderick Martin, a 23-year-old mechanic, says the same thing. “No one can afford to live here,” he told the city council. “I can confidently say that if something doesn’t change, there will be no more population of young people in South Lake Tahoe.”

Teshara, of the Tahoe Chamber, doesn’t deny Tahoe’s housing challenges. He experienced the volatile real estate market during the pandemic firsthand — selling his house and receiving cash offers, which he turned down to sell to a local family instead, and then getting outbid when he was looking for a new house. “We scraped every coin we had, we put down an offer, and it wasn’t enough. Somebody comes in and says, ‘Hey, here’s my offer,’ and we were just out of luck. That was hard. It was very frustrating.”

Charging a flat tax on second homes isn’t the answer to Tahoe’s housing crisis, Teshara adds. “What we do about it is we go to city council meetings. … We go to county meetings. We try to advocate for different types of affordable housing.”

Yet, even Teshara admits that policy work moves slowly — too slow for people frustrated with decision-makers and leaders for talking too much and not taking action to stop the bleeding. In 2018, South Lake Tahoe voters banned short-term rentals. Teshara thinks it was an extreme response that stifled local businesses. The controversial measure passed by just 58 votes. “By the time the city woke up and tried to do something, it was too late,” Teshara says. He’s motivated to not let a repeat scenario play out with Measure N. “It’s not a patient world, and solutions take time.”

Though, when rent is due at the end of the month, time is not a luxury that people have.

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LETTERS FROM THE FIELD

THE ISLAND OF TREASURED CHILDREN IN JAPAN, FAMILY TRADITION IS DEFYING GLOBAL TRENDS

BY H I KA R I H I DA

I

t was over two decades ago when Yuki Matsuoka first set foot on Tokunoshima, a subtropical island that rises gently from the cerulean waters of the East China Sea. Located 800 miles southwest of Japan’s capital, the island’s lush landscapes and the soothing rhythms of the waves quickly captured her heart. But it wasn’t just the natural beauty that drew her to this remote corner of Japan; it was something she had learned, something she hadn’t expected.

“I was used to the idea that two children were plenty,” Matsuoka, who was living in Tokyo at the time, recalls with a laugh. “But here, three or four is normal. Six or seven?

Not uncommon at all.”

Matsuoka moved to Tokunoshima two years later to give birth to her first child, a daughter.

Tokunoshima stands as a quiet anomaly in Japan, a country that has long grappled with one of the world’s lowest birth rates.

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With a fertility rate of just 1.37 — compared to 1.70 in the United States — Japan faces a demographic challenge that’s common across many developed nations, where replacement-level fertility of 2.1

TOKUNOSHIMA FEELS LESS LIKE A FANTASY AND MORE LIKE A GLIMPSE INTO THE HEART OF A PLACE THAT PUTS ITS FUTURE IN THE HANDS OF THE NEXT GENERATION.

children per woman is increasingly elusive.

The global trend toward smaller families is driven by economic pressures like rising living and housing costs, as well as social shifts such as expanded access to education

and career opportunities for women, which delay marriage and childbearing. Since the 1960s, fertility rates have plummeted from a high of 5.02 to 2.2 in 2021, with projections anticipating a drop to 1.59 by 2100.

While the rest of Japan — and much of the world — wrestles with the challenges of an aging population and shrinking families, this small island, just 95 square miles with a population barely exceeding 21,000, has become a cradle of life. Here, the birth rate soars to 2.25, almost double the national average. Walk around, and you’ll hear the sounds of children playing freely until nightfall.

AS THE PLANE descends toward Tokunoshima, emblazoned across the terminal building, a singular phrase comes into view: "Tokunoshima Kodakara Kuko" — the children's airport. It’s an unusual greeting, but one that speaks volumes about what the island most cherishes.

L E F T: TOKU NOS H IMA’S E CONOMY IS B U ILT U P ON AGRIC U LT U RE , AND L IV E STOC K — E S P E C IAL LY B U L L S — ARE E CONOMIC AL LY AND C U LT U RAL LY IMP ORTANT TO LOC AL FAMIL IE S .

PHOTOGR AP H Y BY KOS U K E O KA H A R A

B E LOW: “ K I DS A R E B O R N I N TO SA FE T Y H E R E — PA R E N TS WO R RY LE SS ,” SAYS S H I N O B U YOS H I DA , T H E D I R E C TO R O F H E A LTH PR O M OT I O N AT TO KU N OS H I M A TOW N H A LL.

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LETTERS FROM THE FIELD

Y U KI M ATSUO KA A N D H E R YO UN GE ST DAU GHTE R , M AC HIKA .

Y U KI ’ S E L DE ST DAU GHTE R R E C E N TLY M OV E D AWAY F R O M TOKU N OSHIMA F O R CO L L E G E .

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Located in Kagoshima Prefecture, just an hour’s flight from the mainland city of Kagoshima, Tokunoshima lies between Okinawa to the south and Amami Ōshima to the north.

The name, shortened to “Kodakara,” was coined in 2012, on the 50th anniversary of the island’s airport. The image it conjures — children laughing and running along the sandy beaches of its three small towns — feels less like a fantasy and more like a glimpse into the heart of a community

that places its future in the hands of the next generation.

Despite its idyllic image, Tokunoshima is not a place of material wealth. The island’s economy is built upon traditional industries such as fishing and sugar cane production — hardly the kind of economic engines that generate prosperity in the modern world.

Yet, in Japan’s annual birth rate surveys, the towns of Tokunoshima consistently rank among the highest in the nation. It’s an anomaly that defies easy explanation.

Sonny Bardot, a Ph.D. graduate of International Christian University, spent six months on Tokunoshima writing his thesis on the island’s dating culture. He recalls one conversation that encapsulates the community’s unique pressures. A woman confided about the expectations placed on her by both her parents and the wider community to have more children.

“Women often told me that after three children, it’s basically the same,” Bardot explains. The community’s perspective is that once a family has several children, the older siblings naturally take on caregiving roles for the younger ones. “There’s no additional work between three to six kids.”

Understanding this positive perception of large families requires a look at the islanders’ deep connection to their home. In a recent local government survey, 95.5 percent of respondents expressed a strong sense of pride in being from Tokunoshima. According to Matsuoka, traditions play a pivotal role in this shared pride. “There are customs here that people ‘remember deeply’ from childhood, and they’re incredibly important.”

One such tradition occurs at key moments in a child’s life: one month after birth, upon entering elementary school, and again at 20 — the official age of adulthood in Japan.

Attended by nearly 100 guests, the host family prepares a feast including mochi rice cakes, and goodie bags filled with treats, in exchange for modest monetary gifts. Matsuoka, who experienced this tradition 18 years ago when her oldest daughter was celebrated shortly after she had moved to the island, remembers the exhaustion of the preparations, but also the overwhelming warmth. “The kids who experience that feel like they are truly welcomed by the community,” she reflects. “When you reach adulthood, you find yourself wanting your own children to go through the same wonderful experiences.”

FOR FAMILIES ON Tokunoshima, commu-

nity support is crucial, especially given the financial burdens that they may face.

TOKU NOS H IMA IS A QU IE T IS L AND T H AT F E E L S U NIQU E LY R E M OV E D F ROM MANY OF TODAY ’S COMMON L IF E ST Y L E S AND ST RE SS O R S .

With local wages often less than half of that in Tokyo, the island’s economic realities necessitate a collective approach to raising families.

“Here, if everyone else is out working the fields, sitting at home just isn’t an option,” Matsuoka explains. Yet, “there are always

“EVERYONE HAS THE NANTOKA NARU,” OR “IT WILL WORK OUT SOMEHOW” MINDSET.

‘hands’ to help and ‘eyes’ to watch over the children,” says Shinobu Yoshida, the director of health promotion at Tokunoshima Town Hall. “Kids are born into safety here, parents worry less.”

Before thinking about money, “everyone has the nantoka naru mindset,” or the

“it will work out somehow” mindset, says Tomokazu Hiro, head of the Care and Welfare Division at Tokunoshima Town Hall, due to all the surrounding support.

In contrast to urban centers like Tokyo and Osaka, the three towns on Tokunoshima, despite their differing governmental approaches, are widely regarded as child-friendly. For instance, out of the eight elementary schools in Isen Town, four are considered small schools, with fewer than 20 students each. According to the Ministry of Education’s guidelines, these numbers should justify reducing the town’s elementary schools to just three. But the town’s mayor, Akira Okubo, who has served for six terms, made a bold declaration a decade ago: No schools would be closed on his watch. Even when one school faced closure with only 11 students, Mayor Okubo chose instead to construct public housing nearby, attracting families with children and thus revitalizing the student population.

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IN A RECENT SURVEY, 95.5 PERCENT OF RESPONDENTS EXPRESSED A STRONG SENSE OF PRIDE IN BEING FROM TOKUNOSHIMA. TRADITIONS PLAY A PIVOTAL ROLE IN THIS PRIDE.

This strategy has paid off, not just in keeping schools open but in drawing back those who once left the island. Many young people leave Tokunoshima after high school to pursue further education or employment elsewhere. However, the construction of new public housing has sparked an increase in “U-turn” migration — where individuals return to their hometowns after spending time away. Some towns on the island offer scholarships of around 50,000 yen ($350) per month for students in fields like health care and caretaking, effectively making their education free if they return to work on the island for five years.

But government officials on the island are quick to downplay any notion that they are doing anything extraordinary to boost fertility rates. “We were already No. 1 in Japan before a lot of these subsidies,” Hiro says, adding, “I think we try to listen to the people and that is what makes good results.” In some towns, services such as school lunches and medical care for children up to middle school are provided free of charge. Nursery schools, which are notoriously difficult to access in metropolitan areas like Tokyo, are not only readily

“ K IDS. . . F E E L LIK E THEY ARE TRULY WELCOMED BY THE COMMU NIT Y,” SAYS Y U K I MATS U OKA, WHO M OVE D TO TOKUNOSHI MA FROM TOKYO TO G IV E B IRT H TO H E R F IRST C H IL D.

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available on the island but are either free or offered at a low cost.

One of the most significant supports for women on the island may be the financial assistance provided for in vitro fertilization. Last year, 12 women in Tokunoshima Town alone benefited from this subsidy, which even covers travel costs to Kagoshima City for those who prefer not to be seen in local clinics.

But when asked why they have so many children, island residents rarely cite these government initiatives. As one woman put it, no financial incentive — certainly not half a million yen — is enough to have a sixth, seventh or even a second child if you don’t genuinely want one.

U N L I K E M U C H O F Japan, where marriage

and childbearing are increasingly delayed, on this island, the norm is for women to marry and start families at a young age.

In fact, 45 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 24 are married, a stark contrast to the mere 7 percent nationwide.

This early marriage rate is closely tied to Japan’s broader social expectation that children are born within wedlock — only 2 percent of children in Japan are born outside of marriage.

While dekikon — marriage due to pregnancy — is often stigmatized in other parts of Japan, nearly all marriages on Tokunoshima begin this way, according to Bardot’s research. Here, dekikon is seen differently. Rather than being viewed negatively, it often represents a natural progression in relationships, deeply integrated into the local culture.

Divorce, too, is approached differently. The island has a much higher divorce rate compared to the rest of Japan, but this hasn’t led to societal ostracism. The community is notably accepting of single mothers and blended families.

Bardot shares a poignant example of this cultural flexibility, recounting the story of a 28-year-old woman who had her first child at 18, only to divorce shortly after. When she later met another man, she carefully

NURSERY SCHOOLS AND COMMU NIT Y FAMILY C E NT E RS ARE E AS ILY ACC E SS IB L E AND COME AT L IT T L E TO NO COST F OR FAMIL IE S ON TOKU NOS H IMA.

considered whether he would accept and care for her child from her previous relationship. After confirming his commitment, they started a family together, with the new husband becoming the child’s father in every sense. Such stories are not uncommon on the island, where the “Tsurigo system” allows children from previous marriages to seamlessly integrate into new family units.

Matsuoka, the transplant from Tokyo, emphasizes that while the island has its taboos, people here are generally logical and straightforward when it comes to marriage and divorce. Unlike in many parts of Japan, where single parents often face social stigma — she herself is a single parent — Tokunoshima’s community is more accepting, she says.

This approach to relationships reflects the island’s broader social dynamics, where community support and a focus on well-being take precedence. Japan has the oldest population in the world, with almost 30 percent of its population aged 65 and older. Tokunoshima mirrors this trend.

However, unlike many parts of Japan where policies overwhelmingly focus on the aging population, this island has shifted its attention toward nurturing the next generation.

In Isen Town, a longstanding tradition involved giving celebration gifts to elderly residents aged 85 and older. The budget for this initiative stood at around seven million yen ($49,000) annually. However, several years ago, during a community meeting, a surprising request emerged from the elderly residents themselves: We don’t need the

celebration money anymore, so could you allocate that money to the younger generation instead?

This request, which faced almost no opposition, led to a significant policy shift. Starting in 2012, the funds that were freed up were redirected toward child-rearing initiatives.

Since towns on the island were declared as having the No. 1 birth rate in the country, NGO leaders, politicians and sociologists have visited in hopes of catching a note of the baby fever. However, most leave the island “disappointed,” says Matsuoka.

“It’s not a casual culture that could be built somewhere else; it’s something deeply ingrained in the life here,” she says. “We don’t just possess some secret here that you can take home and emulate.”

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Persecution Complex HOW DID A M E R I C A B EC O M E SO AGGRIEVED?

BY Frank Bruni

ILLUSTRATION BY Virginia Mori

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I warn my students.

At the start of every semester, on the first day of every course, I confess to certain passions and quirks and tell them to be ready: I’m a stickler for correct grammar, spelling and the like, so if they don’t have it in them to care about and patrol for such errors, they probably won’t end up with the grade they’re after.

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I want to hear everyone’s voice — I tell them that, too — but I don’t want to hear anybody’s voice so often and so loudly that the other voices don’t have a chance. And I’m going to repeat one phrase more often than any other: “It’s complicated.” They’ll become familiar with that. They may even become bored with it. I’ll sometimes say it when we’re discussing the roots and branches of a social ill, the motivations of public (and private) actors, and a whole lot else, and that’s because I’m standing before them not as an ambassador of certainty or a font of unassailable verities but as an emissary of doubt. I want to give them intelligent questions, not final answers. I want to teach them how much they have to learn — and how much they will always have to learn.

I’d been delivering that spiel at Duke for more than two years before I realized that each component of it was about the same quality: humility. The grammar-and-spelling bit was about surrendering to an established and easily understood way of doing things that eschewed wild individualism in favor of a common mode of communication. It showed respect for tradition, which is a force that binds us, a folding of the self into a greater whole. The voices bit — well, that’s obvious. It’s a reminder that we share the stages of our communities, our countries, our worlds, with many other actors, and should thus conduct ourselves in a manner that recognizes that.

And “it’s complicated” is a bulwark against arrogance, absolutism, purity, zeal. I’d also been delivering that spiel for more than two years before I realized that humility is the antidote to grievance.

The January 6 insurrectionists were delusional, frenzied, savage. Above all, they were unhumble. They decided that they held the truth, no matter all the evidence to the contrary. They couldn’t accept that their preference for one presidential candidate over another could possibly put them in the minority — or perhaps a few of them just reasoned that if it did, then everybody else was too misguided to matter.

They elevated how they viewed the world and what they wanted over tradition, institutional stability, law, order.

Party leaders who consent to end gerrymandering are being humble about what they can and can’t predict about their future dominance and humble in their exercise of power. They’re recognizing that there are issues bigger than the magnitude of their present spoils. Politicians who reexamine the necessity of college degrees are humbly compensating for our tendencies to extrapolate from our own backgrounds and success stories to what works best in the broad and diverse world beyond us. And people who attend bridge-building exercises, whether in the halls of Congress or the hills of Appalachia, are humbly making an extra effort to understand strangers with whom they don’t usually meet and humbly accepting that civic repair is worth a personal investment of time and energy.

They’re the antonyms of the insurrectionists. humility comes up often in Jonathan

Rauch’s superb 2021 book “The Constitution of Knowledge,” a contemplation of truth and exhortation for free speech in the age of grievance. Rauch, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, defines the term in his book’s title as a global network of “reality-based institutions” — universities, reputable media outlets, courts of law, scientific organizations — that are committed to finding truth through a structured process of conflict and debate. They are “liberalism’s epistemic operating system: our social rules for turning disagreement into knowledge,” Rauch wrote, noting that the defense of the reality-based world against a rising tide of purposeful disinformation and a sea of trolls is a constant struggle. It demands much of us, including, perhaps most importantly, intellectual humility, or what he calls “fallibilism” — the ethos that any one

“It’s complicated” is a bulwark against arrogance, absolutism, purity, zeal.

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of us might be wrong, and we must therefore keep ourselves open to contradictory views and evidence.

“Being open to criticism requires humility and forbearance and toleration,” Rauch explained. “Scientists, journalists, lawyers, and intelligence analysts all accept fallibilism and empiricism in principle, even when they behave pigheadedly (as happens with humans).”

Scientific findings can be replicated or refuted by new experiments; laws can be challenged through freshly discovered evidence and refined arguments; journalists ideally keep digging toward a deeper and more nuanced comprehension of events. That’s the nature of the Constitution of Knowledge. It’s a shared endeavor, an evolving quasi document, its nature an acknowledgment that no one person holds all the answers or cards, its health and growth dependent on most people accepting that.

Intellectual humility allows us to revisit our assumptions, and the necessity of that is proven by how often we’ve been wrong or wrongheaded.

Scientific racism was a rage in progressive circles in the early 1900s; in the 1990s, the global march of democracy looked inevitable to much of the political establishment, a thinking emblemized in Francis Fukuyama’s premature elegy to history. On both fronts, we know better now, and we know better because we weren’t arrogantly stuck in our thinking.

To be grounded in truth is, paradoxically, to remain open to the idea that the understanding of truth may need to shift as we learn more and as some of those lessons lay bare our prejudice and ignorance.

“You must assume your own and everyone else’s fallibility and you must hunt for your own and others’ errors, even if you are confident you are right,” Rauch wrote.

People who attend bridge-building exercises, whether in the halls of Congress or the hills of Appalachia, are humbly making an extra effort to understand strangers with whom they don’t usually meet.

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“Otherwise, you are not reality-based.” His “you” is a universal one, a caution and a summons to various stakeholders.

WE NEED HUMILITY F RO M O U R P O L I T I C A L LEADERS Charlie Baker served as governor of Massachusetts from 2015 to 2023, and was consistently ranked one of the most popular governors in the nation, despite being a Republican in a blue state. Something else about him has always piqued my curiosity and drawn my attention, and perhaps it’s entwined with that popularity: He repeatedly stresses the importance of humility in an effective leader. He’s fond of quoting Philippians 2:3; he invoked it as a lodestar for his administration. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit,” it says. “Rather, in humility value others above yourself.”

That’s great practical advice for anyone in government, where almost everything is teamwork, almost everything is consensus, and almost nothing of real and lasting consequence is accomplished alone. Governing, as opposed to demagoguery, is about earning others’ trust, commitment and cooperation. Exhibiting an interest and a willingness to listen to and to hear them goes a long way toward that. It’s a demonstration of humility.

“Insight and knowledge come from curiosity and humility,” Baker wrote in a 2022 book, “Results,” whose co-author was his chief of staff, Steve Kadish, a Democrat.

“Snap judgments — about people or ideas — are fueled by arrogance and conceit.

They create blind spots and missed opportunities. Good ideas and interesting ways to accomplish goals in public life exist all over the place if you have the will, the curiosity, and the humility to find them.”

Humility was also something that Bill Haslam, the former two-term governor of Tennessee, extolled. He’s a Republican

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who ran a predominantly Republican state, so humility wasn’t an attribute that aided a necessary appeal across the partisan divide. But he deemed it essential to making the changes in Tennesseans’ lives that he’d pledged to make — to avoiding any prideful attachment to his first-blush ideas and a schedule of glitzy appearances and cable news interviews that would have detracted from problem-solving. And he indeed amassed a record of substantive accomplishment that was impressive in its heft and its occasional deviations from conservative orthodoxy. He made community college free for Tennesseans. He cut taxes on food while raising them on gasoline. He vetoed culture-war distractions such as a bill to make the Bible the official state book of Tennessee. A few years after leaving office in early 2019, he wrote a reflection on leadership, “Humble Leadership? Yes, and Humility Can Restore Trust,” for The Catalyst, a journal published by the Bush Institute. “Humble leaders who can admit fault are key to uniting a nation,” read an italicized precede to his essay. Haslam’s opening line: “It has been said that those who seek the high road of humility in politics will never run into a traffic jam.” His closing one: “And think how much better served we are by leaders who have the humility to want to get the best answer, not just their own answer.”

Humble politicians don’t insist on one-size-fits-all answers when those aren’t necessary as a matter of basic rights and fundamental justice, and in a society like ours now, when there’s scant trust between partisans and when resentment toward political opponents runs high, both parties should consider devolving power to the state and local levels when possible. Republicans have traditionally supported that in theory and then routinely contradicted themselves, in an unhumble fashion, when that suited them. They should do better at living their stated principles about local control, and Democrats shouldn’t be so quick to assume that local control equals a reckless opportunity to 42

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wriggle free from federal safeguards. In some of the blue cities within red or purple states, local control would mean more respect and freedom for aggrieved people whose progressive ideals are squashed at the statehouse (just as it would mean more respect and freedom for the aggrieved rural denizens of blue states).

In my home state of North Carolina, where Republicans have maintained a big majority (and sometimes contrived a supermajority) in both chambers of the state Legislature through gerrymandered districts, they’ve prevented local officials in places such as Durham from enacting the sorts of gun safety and environmental measures that an overwhelming majority of the city’s hundreds of thousands of citizens want. To what end? The preemption of local laws by broad state edicts has been on the rise in recent years, and it’s a trend that intensifies grievances.

WE NEED HUMILITY F RO M J O U R N A L I S T S In late April 2018, then-President Donald Trump traveled to Michigan for a rally, where his remarks were a mash of favorite themes. He bragged about what a fabulous job he was doing. He bellyached about all the injustices he endured. And he bashed the news media. Oh, how he loved to bash the news media.

“Very dishonest,” he said.

“They don’t have sources. The sources don’t exist.”

While he was painting this unflattering portrait of us, what image were we projecting? That night, at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, journalists swanned into a ballroom as thick with self-regard as any Academy Awards ceremony. They hobnobbed with the Hollywood stars whom they’d invited — and in some

Intellectual humility allows us to revisit our assumptions, and the necessity of that is proven by how often we’ve been wrong or wrongheaded.

To be grounded in truth is, paradoxically, to remain open to the idea that the understanding of truth may need to shift as we learn more and as some of those lessons lay bare our prejudice and ignorance.

cases competed over — to be guests at their tables. And they listened to the comedian Michelle Wolf do what she was hired to do: savage Trump and his aides in vicious and occasionally vulgar terms that predictably caused the media’s enemies to trumpet that we journalists are no more dignified than the president whose indecency we lament.

“Every caricature thrust upon the national press — that we are culturally elitist, professionally incestuous, socioeconomically detached and ideologically biased — is confirmed by this train wreck of an event,” the journalist Tim Alberta wrote in Politico. He got it right. We keep behaving in a manner that hastens the public’s erosion of confidence in us. We keep playing into the grievance era’s taxonomy of insiders versus outsiders. And we thus keep undermining our credibility when we try to speak truth to grievance, on those occasions when we do try.

We responded to Trump’s excessive (and usually dishonest) focus on our vices by focusing excessively on our virtues. The New York Times began its “The Truth Is” ad campaign: “The truth is hard,” “the truth is hidden,” and so on. On the top of the front page of its printed paper and the home page of its website, The Washington Post placed the legend “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

All that self-congratulation prompted the longtime media critic Jack Shafer to write, in Politico, that while he wouldn’t “dispute that journalists are crucial to a free society,” he nonetheless felt that “the chords that aggrieved journalists strike make them sound as entitled as tenured professors.”

That works against us and against a healthy society, because the Post is right on the merits: Democracy does die in darkness. Trustworthy journalists doing trustworthy work bring a crucial light, providing a check on government and redress

for people whose voices are unheard. So how do we make ourselves and our work more trustworthy? We go further in leavening our self-interest with public interest.

When we’re not writing or speaking in a venue or under a rubric that signals the subjective opinion in our words, we take greater care not to let our political orientations and biases drive our coverage, not to Trojan-horse subjectivity into supposedly objective accounts. We resist the forging of personal brands that are contingent on predetermined and inflexible viewpoints, which make us ripe for dismissal. And as an industry, we try, within the inevitable constraints of profitability, to create more spaces that earnestly welcome and showcase a diversity of perspectives and allow truth to emerge in the manner that Rauch rightly venerates, from a contest of arguments designed to yield something deliberate and dependable.

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WE NEED HUMILITY F RO M A C T I V I S T S Across many causes, many advocates traffic in an absolutism that’s born of grievance and spawns yet more of it. The hubristic and wholly unrealistic reach of the Green New Deal did as much to drive apart people on opposite sides of the debate over how aggressively we should fight climate change as it did to guarantee the best and wisest action in the present or near future. If a cause’s advocates are interested in durable progress, and if they respect the importance of an entire society’s stability, they should be reasonably humble about what’s essential, what’s utopian, what’s doable and what demonstrates as much respect for others as they’re demanding for themselves. They should be clear-eyed about whether and when a righteous bid for dignity becomes a self-righteous magnet for hostility.

They should consider the message delivered by Loretta Ross, a longtime racial justice and human rights advocate, through a class that she taught at Smith College, a popular TED Talk, media interviews and an essay that she wrote for the Times in 2019.

Troubled by the frequent targeting and pillorying of people on social media, she urged the practice of calling in rather than calling out those who’ve upset you. “Call-outs make people feel fearful of being targeted,” she wrote in her Times essay. “People avoid meaningful conversations when hypervigilant perfectionists point out apparent mistakes, feeding the cannibalistic maw of the cancel culture.” Instead, she advised, engage them. If you believe they need enlightenment, try that route, “without the self-indulgence of drama,” she wrote. She was preaching humility.

She was also recognizing other people’s right to disagree — to live differently, to talk differently. That doesn’t mean a surrender or even compromise of principles; a person can hold on to those while practicing tolerance, which has fallen out of 44

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fashion, supplanted by grievance. But tolerance shares DNA with respect. It recognizes that other people have rights and worth even when we disagree vehemently with them.

WE NEED HUMILITY F RO M O U R S E LV E S We carry wounds, and some of us carry wounds much more numerous and much graver than others. We confront obstacles, and some are unfairly big, unjustly unyielding and especially senseless. We must tend to those wounds. We must push hard at those obstacles. But we mustn’t treat every wound, every obstacle, as some cosmic outrage or mortal danger. We mustn’t lose sight of the struggle, imperfection and randomness of life. We mustn’t overstate our vulnerability and exaggerate our due.

That’s part of what Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff are saying when they lament the “safetyism” of contemporary education: the increasingly absurd demand that students be insulated from unkind words, troubling ideas and all other manner of unpleasantness.

That insulation is more than a roadblock to a robust, real education. It gives excessive power to those words and ideas and that unpleasantness, creates the unreal expectation that they can be kept at bay, and sets up young Americans to feel aggrieved — victimized — when that doesn’t happen.

“The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically,” they wrote in the article in The Atlantic that preceded and grew into their bestseller, “The Coddling of the American Mind.”

Lisa Damour, a prominent clinical psychologist who works with teenagers, has also sounded the alarm about pathologizing normal, everyday hardship. “Much of the time, the presence of distress, the experience of distress, is evidence of mental health,” Damour told my Times colleague Ezra Klein in a May 2023 interview for his

podcast. “What I mean by that is there are lots of circumstances in daily life where we fully expect to see distress.” Treating perfectly rational emotions as psychological emergencies and unfair burdens can set a dangerous precedent, and Damour emphasized the importance of not getting carried away with our natural and understandable instinct to protect young people from grief and pain. “There’s something kind of extraordinary about how much maturation arrives as a function of them actually grappling with a very painful feeling,” she told Klein. “They become more broad-minded.

They become more philosophical. And there’s actually, for me, almost a universal marker of when this is happening, which is that they become actually very annoyed with their age mates for having concerns that feel, to them, very petty or minor.”

While grievance blows our concerns out of proportion, humility puts them in perspective. While grievance reduces the people with whom we disagree to caricature, humility acknowledges what Eboo Patel, the founder and president of Interfaith America, wrote in his 2022 book, “We Need to Build”: “People are endlessly complex and fascinating.

“You can never tell simply from someone’s group identity how they will experience the world, or know from their experience what conclusions they will draw.”

I watched only the first season of the Apple TV+ series “Ted Lasso”; after that, life — and other Apple TV+, Netflix and HBO Max shows — got in the way. But like many other Americans, I adored it. I adored Ted, a man whose wife has moved on, whose heart is broken, whose new home of Britain is a bit of a mystery to him, whose new job as a soccer coach there is a setup for failure, and whose humble response is to try his hopeful best to turn all of that around.

The show’s out-of-the-gate conceit is that a protagonist inhabiting the stereotype of the

“People avoid meaningful conversations when hypervigilant perfectionists point out apparent mistakes, feeding the cannibalistic maw of the cancel culture.”

blissful fool is wiser than the rest of us and has more to teach than to learn.

“Ted Lasso” began streaming in 2020, when, my Times colleague Margaret Renkl astutely observed, we were all “mired in an America we no longer recognized, a nation so dangerously polarized that many people would think nothing of cutting off their closest family members if they didn’t vote the ‘right’ way.” And the show struck a nerve, Renkl added, because there was “something about Ted Lasso’s sunny optimism and faith in silliness as a social lubricant, something about his openness and his unshakable kindness, that lifted Americans’ pandemic-worn hearts.” Renkl recalled a particular scene in which Ted tells a player who is stewing over a defeat which animal is the happiest in the world: “A goldfish. It’s got a 10-second memory.”

By all reports, “Ted Lasso” grew darker as it and he aged. Maybe some subconscious premonition turned me away from the show before it could bring me down.

Ted himself had a memory much longer than 10 seconds, as his pining for his wife proved; the finned paragon that he held up for that player is absurd, even dangerous.

But the idea that we’re too often held hostage by our grudges, too frequently fixated on what in our lives isn’t exactly as we’d like it to be? There’s indeed something there.

And an amalgam of kindness, openness and silliness might be an effective solvent for grievance. We could try a dab of that.

Or we could unhumbly cling to the conviction that we’re singularly unappreciated and cruelly situated against hostile forces in a disintegrating world that compels us to wrest what we can while we can, before it disintegrates even further. That’s the road we’ve been on for a perilous while now. It’s not too late to turn around.

F R A N K B R U N I H A S W R I T T E N F O R T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S S I N C E 1 9 9 5 A N D I S P RO F E S S O R O F T H E P R A C T I C E O F J O U R N A L I S M A N D PU B L I C P O L I C Y AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y. T H I S E S S AY I S E X C E R P T E D F RO M “ T H E A G E O F G R I E VA N C E ,” PU B L I S H E D BY AV I D R E A D E R P R E S S , A N I M P R I N T O F S I M O N & S C H U S T E R , L L C . C O PY R I G H T @ 2 0 2 4 BY F R A N K B R U N I .

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illustration by Klawe Rzeczy

by James Walker

THERE ARE MORE REFUGEES ON THE PLANET THAN AT ANY TIME IN RECORDED HISTORY. WHAT HAPPENS TO THE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO LEAVE HOME TO SURVIVE, AND CAN NEVER GO BACK?

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TANDING BY A SURVEILLANCE CAMERA AND A SIGN MARKED “KRIMINALFORSORGEN” — DANISH FOR “PRISON SERVICE” — I FIRST NOTICE KIA’S GRAY EYES. THEN A LOOK OF SURPRISE, IF NOT DISAPPOINTMENT, WHEN I ASK IF HE CAN SHOW ME AROUND THE SJAELSMARK DEPORTATION CENTER. HE HAD HOPED INSTEAD FOR A CHANCE TO LEAVE. The 26-year-old ushers me to a dreary security checkpoint, where a guard checks my ID through a hatched glass window.

She gives us each a simple form to fill out while she outlines the rules, saying visitors must always be accompanied and leave by 10 p.m. With that, Kia leads me inside the gates. I follow his broad shoulders and slow, purposeful gait.

An eerie silence saturates Sjaelsmark.

Tucked away in the leafy countryside an hour north of Copenhagen, it was built as an army barracks at the onset of the Cold War in the 1950s, then decommissioned in 2004. Dozens of brown- and red-brick buildings line the inside of the fence like dominoes on a board, numbered and 48

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rundown, browbeaten by time and neglect.

Staff, distinguished by conspicuously red T-shirts, shuffle past and nod as we make our way down a cobbled path. “It’s not a prison,” Kia says, almost defensively, when I suggest it looks like one. He’s right; it’s not. But there is the metal fence surrounding us. There’s a young Black man in blue shorts jogging alongside it. And there’s a concrete yard, where two young men — who, like Kia, are from Iran — sit silently at one of several wooden picnic tables.

The men look toward us, attentively watching out of, perhaps, curiosity, or maybe just boredom. Movement, and those who are doing the moving, are tightly controlled at Sjaelsmark. The residents — refugees

who have ended up here from all across the globe, from Ukraine to the Middle East and Central Africa, who have fled due to war, religious persecution and human rights violations — are tracked by electronic key tags, which let them into their rooms or, if they miss a curfew, lock them out. Breaking the rules can lead to a criminal conviction and time served in prison.

He leads me to Block 79, where he lives with a dozen others. Just as we are about to pass through the doorway, he turns around and abruptly apologizes. “The buildings are not very clean here,” he explains. We make our way past a communal bathroom caked in dust and mud. Cobwebs cover what the grime doesn’t.

K I A, A KUR D ISH R E FUGEE WHO FLED I RAN AND ARRI VED I N D E N M A R K VIA ITALY, REQUESTED THAT HI S FULL I D E N TITY R E MA IN P ROTECTED FOR THI S STORY.

Kia — who has requested to be identified they say the risk … is not big enough.” But by first name only — and the 200 or so many of those in Sjaelsmark, she says, are other refugees who call Sjaelsmark home what are known as “Dublin” cases. A result have not been accused or found guilty of of the EU’s 2014 Dublin Regulation, the statany crime. Howevute allows one EU er, their applications country to refuse to for asylum in Den- WHEN YOU EXIST BETWEEN A process the applimark have been re- HOME YOU CAN’T RETURN TO cation of a refugee jected. “It could be AND A CLOSED DOOR TO A FRESH who was first registhat the authorities START, SOME ARE STUCK WITH tered as a potential don’t believe part of NOWHERE ELSE TO GO. asylum-seeker in the story and thereanother EU country. fore they say there’s Those seeking asyno risk (to remain in a home country),” says lum often can’t be sent back either, as the Eva Singer, director of the Asylum Depart- countries they first reported to also refuse ment of the Danish Refugee Council. “It to accept them. could also be that they believe the story but In the meantime, they stew in deportation

centers like Sjaelsmark. When you exist between a home you can’t return to and a closed door to a fresh start, some, like Kia, are stuck with nowhere else to go.

Worldwide, refugee numbers have more than doubled in the past decade — from nearly 17 million in 2013 to over 43.4 million in 2024. We are in the midst of a crisis unlike anything known in recorded history.

The global number of people forcibly displaced reached 120 million earlier this year.

And increasingly, people find themselves leaving homelands that are no longer viable only to be faced with different, but still precarious and uncertain, circumstances that make settling impossible.

Currently, 76 percent of the world’s refugees are hosted by poor, low- and middle-income countries, and 85 percent of refugees live in what are considered developing regions, according to the International Rescue Committee. Countries in the Middle East and Africa — which take in the most asylum-seekers — are overwhelmed.

The holes left behind in conflict-stricken nations are becoming too large for the rest of the world to patch. Even the doors to wealthy, progressive countries — like Denmark — are slowly closing. Resources are finite, they say, and the priority must be taking care of their own citizens.

In Denmark, unlike the United States, this rhetoric is inextricable from the country’s comprehensive social welfare program. Universal health care, generous unemployment benefits and robust social services all come at a cost. The system relies on a small population of 5.9 million Danes paying income taxes as high as 52 percent to keep the machine running. But while the United States and other countries have a lower tax burden, most still largely perceive refugees who can’t immediately contribute and integrate as a financial and social burden. If there’s no room left at the metaphorical inn, what happens to those who desperately need a place to stay?

KIA HAS NIGHTMARES. What would have happened if he hadn’t left Iran plays NOVEMBER 2024

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out in front of him, and he’s his own cap- from holding political office or positions of tive audience to the horrors that could have power unless they become Shiite. Kurds are been. He sees “(the Iranian regime) execut- passed on even for simple bank loans. ing me in front of my mother’s eyes.”

This sets a city of people who have enIn the summer of 2022, Kia felt like his dured generations of discrimination, and life was unfolding before him as he would war crimes, back even further. have planned as a young Kurdish kid with Known as the Second Hiroshima, Sarbig dreams. The eldest son of a middle-class dasht was the first city to witness a masfamily, he graduated with a degree in civil sacre of unarmed innocent civilians since engineering from a university in the city of World War II, when Saddam Hussein Mahabad, two hours away from his home- dropped four chemical bombs on June 28, town of Sardasht. After graduation, he de- 1987. More than 8,000 of the small popucided to move back to Sardasht — a small lation of 12,000 were wounded, and over Kurdish city on the Iran-Iraq border — to 100 died.

In many ways, Sardasht has never recovbe near his family.

Kia has always been close to his parents, ered from that day, nor from the Iran-Iraq his brother and his sister. During those war, which lasted from 1980 to 1988. years, they would travel every weekend to Thousands of land mines still litter the Shalmash Falls, a cluster of three waterfalls countryside, killing or injuring dozens evon the outskirts of town, for a family bar- ery year and hollowing out a once-thriving becue. There was joojeh kebab — skewers agricultural industry. Like many Kurdish of cubed chicken slathered with saffron cities, it is devoid of investment from the and grilled over glowing charcoal. Kia can Iranian regime, passed over in favor of the close his eyes and remember his favorite, capital, Tehran, and other dominantly Perghormeh sabzi, an herb-infused stew made sian regions. Today, Sardasht has one of the highest unemhearty with meat and beans. Someployment rates in WITH JUST THE CLOTHES ON HIS the country. After times they’d play volleyball, or just BACK AND A SILVER RING HIS moving back to Sarlaugh and talk, the BROTHER GAVE HIM, HE MET THE dasht, Kia couldn’t mountains and SMUGGLER HE’D ARRANGED FOR, find work, despite their faces awash in PAID HIM $8,000, AND WAS LED his education. the sun.

Many young men AWAY FROM HIS HOME AND INTO In between the of Kia’s age are THE DARKNESS. warm moments, pushed into what in life can be hard for Kurdish is known as Kurds in Sardasht. The Iranian regime dis- “Kolbari” (porterage) as a means of survivcriminates against Kurds because they are al — carrying deliveries of tax-free goods as seen as an “existential threat” — partly due heavy as 150 pounds on their backs across the to religion — says Ahmad Mohammadpur, dangerous Zagros Mountains that guard the an Iranian Kurd and a professor of sociolo- Iran-Iraq border. There are estimated to be gy at Bentley University in Massachusetts. around 300,000 “kolbars” (smugglers) on The most common religion among Kurds the border, transporting millions of pounds is Sunni Islam, a denomination that is the of contraband. This year, nearly 400 have most common worldwide but is dwarfed been shot by Iranian border forces, accordin Iran by the more orthodox Shiite Islam. ing to Iran International.

About 90 percent of Iranians practice ShiIran is not a land of many choices for ite Islam. Sunnis are discriminated against, Kurds, and some, like Kia, have joined often by acts of violence, including demol- Komala — a left-wing political party that adishing Sunni mosques, or prohibiting them vocates for Kurdish self-determination. But 50

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the Iranian regime is quick to violently clamp down on dissent, particularly of the separatist persuasion. In 2023, at least 834 people were executed in Iran on dubious charges, some noted as “waging war against God” or “corruption on Earth.” The number of Kurds persecuted in this manner — particularly those who are registered with parties like Komala — accounts for a disproportionately high number of executions. Nearly half of the Iran regime’s political prisoners are ethnic Kurds, despite Kurds making up only 10 percent of the country’s total population.

Kia would sometimes know those who were imprisoned or executed. “In a small city, everyone knows each other,” he says. He knew the risks of being affiliated with Komala, too.

“When you are part of a Kurdish group, it’s dangerous. You know that something bad could happen.”

But nothing could prepare Kia for when he was told to leave the country. His heart sank, his body went numb. He was petrified. “They (the Iranian government) would have imprisoned me first, then tortured and executed me,” he says.

AFTER BEING TIPPED off on his impending arrest, Kia made a plan. In the dead of night, he gave hasty goodbyes to his parents and siblings — unsure whether he’d ever see them again. With just the clothes on his back and a silver ring his brother gave him, he met the smuggler he’d arranged for, paid him $8,000, and was led away from his home and into the darkness.

Then, a blur. He doesn’t remember much of the next few days, just a loop of watching one foot fall in front of the other as he traversed the sky-grazing Zagros range along an invisible border more than 14,000 feet above sea level that held so much power — that of life and death — he could feel its weight. Then there was a safe house. Then another. He was transported between a string of cities across Turkey.

Looking at a map, Kia still doesn’t know exactly where he was on any given day, or what his path would look like drawn out with waypoints. Smugglers don’t readily give

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73%

OF THE WORLD’S REFUGEES ORIGINATE FROM JUST FIVE COUNTRIES:

AFGHANISTAN SYRIA VENEZUELA UKRAINE SOUTH SUDAN

KURDISH POPULATION:

30-45 MILLION ONE OF THE LARGEST STATELESS NATIONS IN THE WORLD

DURING THE LAST 8-9 YEARS, DENMARK HAS SEEN MAJOR CHANGES IN THE ARRIVAL OF ASYLUM-SEEKERS:

21,000 ARRIVED IN 2015 (PEAK YEAR)

2,482 REFUGEES APPLIED IN 2023

out information during the journey. It’s too risky, with authorities from the EU continuously looking at ways to disrupt smuggling networks operating from Turkey, as well as Libya and other North African nations. Kia could have been a hazard to the operation, so his cellphone was confiscated and he was given no information about his journey or whereabouts. He sat, surrounded by strangers, uncertainty and silence. “You cannot ask anything. You have to have faith,” he says. “It’s the only way.”

One night, Kia found himself on the rocky Turkish coast — the point of his departure to cross the deadliest migration route in the world — the Mediterranean Sea. He traded glances with other refugees from countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Turkey — some loners like him, and others with their families. There was an undeniable tension as 100 strangers were told to board a 40-foot wooden boat to a shoreline unknown. A smuggler ushered them down into the boat’s hull. Cramped body to body, Kia could barely move in the mess of tangled legs. “No one can come out until we arrive,” the smuggler said from the deck.

Then he closed the hatch.

In the corner of the hull were two toilets, one of which broke within the first few hours. It was hot. Sweaty. The stench quickly became unbearable. Over five days, he only ate a couple of apples. Fights broke out.

Sometimes it was over the lack of space, other times it was over the lack of water.

Then long bouts of silence. Kia sat, the boat rocking to and fro, wishing and hoping to make it to shore. He lost track of time and spoke to no one. “I was in shock, I had a lot

of stress,” he says. But he didn’t regret his decision. “It was my only way out,” he said.

“All I had was hope.”

WHAT CAME TO be known as Europe’s — and now the world’s — refugee crisis began in 2015, when more than 1.3 million people flocked to the continent from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, seeking refuge from violence, persecution, poverty and the effects of climate change. That year, at least 3,771 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean Sea — including 800 deaths in a single shipwreck near Italy’s Lampedusa in April. A few months later, 71 people were found dead in an unventilated food truck, being smuggled near the Austrian capital of Vienna.

The influx threw Europe’s borders into bedlam. Emergency camps set up at common refugee landing points in Greece and Italy overflowed. Columns of desperate people filtered from country to country in their attempt to find a haven. The response from EU governments varied greatly. Germany accepted most of the refugees — over a million. Many others reacted by closing borders or tightening regulations. Denmark took in more than 20,000 — a notable number given its population of just below 6 million — although it accepted far fewer asylum-seekers than its neighbor, Sweden.

Since that year, Denmark — a country long touted as one of the world’s most progressive — has ushered in some of the world’s harshest policies for refugees.

Current Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of the center-left Social Democrats has openly stated Denmark’s ambition to NOVEMBER 2024

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K I A’ S SM A LL B E D R O O M A N D T HE CO MMUN A L TOI L ET HE USE S AT S JA E LSMA R K . THE D E PO R TATIO N C E N TE R U S ED TO HO LD FA M IL IES U NT I L STUDIE S SHOW ED T HE C E N TE R WAS D E T RIM E N TA L TO THE M EN TA L HE A LTH O F C H I L DR E N .

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bring net migration to zero — bringing her government’s policies more in line with the country’s far right. This has included significantly tightening the criteria for granting asylum and regularly reviewing whether a refugee’s residency can be revoked. In 2019, the government deemed Syria’s Damascus region to be safe and notified 1,200 already-accepted refugees that their residency permits would be reviewed, and possibly revoked. Since then, 150 residency permits have been officially revoked, according to Reuters.

Chief in the country’s arsenal to deter asylum-seekers from coming to the country are its deportation centers. There’s Sjaelsmark, where Kia stays, and the former open prison Kærshovedgård — which former prison governor Bodil Philip says is now, as a center for asylum-seekers, “in many ways, more strict than it was” for convicted criminals.

The Danish government has been more explicit than most in saying that the conditions of these deportation centers are purposely unpleasant to pressure people whose asylum applications have been rejected, regardless of whether it is possible for them to deport or not. Inger Støjberg, former Danish Minister for Immigration, Integration, and Housing, said in 2016 that the deportation centers were meant to “make life as intolerable as possible” so that asylum-seekers self-elect to be deported back to their home countries.

Her statement ignited heated criticism over the legality and morality of the refugee detainment centers. A report from the Council of Europe Anti-Torture Committee, based in France, has criticized conditions, leading to the threat of legal action through the European Court of Human Rights for the prison-like conditions at the centers, a “carceral and oppressive” environment and “clearly inappropriate” material conditions, including rooms and sanitary facilities in a “deplorable state of repair.”

For the 500-or-so asylum-seekers still in Sjaelsmark and Kærshovedgård, many of whom are on “tolerated stay” and don’t leave out of fear of torture or execution in

their home country, the wait to go “home” — wherever that is — can be interminable.

“The Danish government accepts that they cannot return to their home country,” says former Danish prison governor Philip — who now works for the Danish criminal policy think tank Forsete. “They are in a limbo.”

This place — between danger and safety, the past and the future, acceptance and rejection — holds a liminal quality to it emotionally. Kia isn’t angry or scared or relieved or happy. He and the other residents have been at Sjaelsmark for such a long time he describes it as a void. “Because of our situation, nobody has any feelings.”

THE SUN BEAT DOWN on a sandy beach off the coast of Italy, and, for the first time in weeks, Kia sighed in relief. It didn’t take long for Italy’s border police to swarm the group and march them to a nearby processing center.

When he was allowed to go, he met some fellow Iranians and another smuggler and was packed into the back of a cargo truck.

Kia didn’t know where he was going. After a daylong journey, he was dropped off in a residential area. He asked some passersby where he was. “Copenhagen,” they answered. They gave him directions to Center Sandholm — the first stop for refugees in Denmark.

It was a clear night when he arrived in the fall of 2022. Staff greeted him and brought him to a clean room. When they handed him a phone, the first thing he did was call his family. It had been nearly a month since he had left. “I am alive, I’m in a good place,” he told them. His mother started crying.

The call was short, and Kia was wary to give too much information in case it endangered them in some way. There was just one message that mattered for her to hear, and for him to hear himself say.

“I’m safe.”

DENMARK’S DECISION TO close its doors to refugees didn’t happen in a vacuum. “There’s a lot of political context and coincidences along the years that made

Denmark the first country in Europe to go this way,” says Michala Clante Bendixen, who is the head of Refugees Welcome Denmark and editor of refugees.dk — a news site for refugees in Denmark.

Even in the early 1980s, as asylum requirements eased and expansive family reunification rights were established, an undercurrent of skepticism persisted. Danes worried that immigrants and refugees could drain their welfare system, one of the most generous in the world. In the 1990s, the Danish People’s Party (DPP) — a party that developed a staunch anti-immigration platform — ran on total refugee bans and deporting those in the country.

It was a convincing pitch for large parts of the Danish public, especially after the 2008 global recession and the accompanying European debt crisis. “Denmark’s welfare system is based on everybody paying a large part of their income in taxes,” Bendixen says. “It’s kind of a contract society, where you are part of a club and all the members of the club are supporting each other.”

Denmark’s income taxes rank fourth highest in the world, but education is free, even at the university level, where students are also given a stipend of $900 a month from the state. Parental leave is 32 weeks (with 24 weeks paid for by the state) and health care is free, among other benefits.

“So when new members apply — foreigners or refugees — we want them to pay, to contribute to the club like we do,” Bendixen says. “And very easily you get this suspicion that they’re just coming to exploit the system because the system gives you a lot of things for free.”

Bendixen explains that, at least compared to Denmark, going to America as a refugee is very different. “You have to pay your own way, find your own income,” she says. “But in Denmark, when you get a residence permit, you will have access to free education at the highest level, free government study grants … and free access to the health care system.” But residence permits for refugees are temporary, given for either one or two years at a time and can then be extended, or

revoked, at any time. The amount of bene- attempted to enact its own Rwanda partfits granted to refugees is also roughly half nership. But that plan was sunk by the of that given to Danes, with reduced child incoming U.K. Labour government due support and disability pension, for exam- to multiple legal challenges. A similar fate ple. To benefit fully from the system, it’s befell Denmark’s plans, which were tempoa long eight-year wait before refugees can rarily abandoned, although the government apply for Danish citizenship. is still looking to revive them. “There is a In 2015, the DPP found a foothold with need for new solutions that create a more concerns over Denmark’s stagnating econ- humane and fair asylum system while adomy and became the second-biggest party, dressing the significant consequences,” taking 37 of the 179 seats in the Danish par- Kaare Dybvad Bek, the current Danish minliament during elections that year. It was a ister of Immigration and Integration, said shock to Denmark’s political establishment. last November.

Since then, even parties on the Danish left At an international conference on imhave increasingly adopted the DPP’s restric- migration in Copenhagen in May, leaders tive views on refugees. met to discuss “durable solutions” and DenIn 2019, the center-left party, led by Prime mark re-proposed the plan. This came on Minister Mette Frederiksen, won the elec- the tail of Italy announcing plans to build tion on a plan to incamps in Albania to house migrants trytroduce the strictest THE HOLES LEFT BY THOSE WHO immigration and ing to come ashore FLEE IN CONFLICT-STRICKEN refugee policies in and German ChanNATIONS ARE BECOMING TOO Europe. Frederikcellor Olaf Scholz indicating that he sen used the same LARGE FOR OTHER COUNTRIES TO would be open to argument DPP made PATCH. RESOURCES ARE FINITE, look into Italy’s in the 1990s — that THEY SAY, AND THE PRIORITY deal. The United a generous policy MUST BE TAKING CARE OF THEIR betrayed the workNations Committee OWN CITIZENS. ing class, and the Against Torture, increased presence meanwhile, conof refugees endangers welfare — both the demned the move, citing worries about the resources of social welfare programs and the safety and rights of asylum-seekers. safety of Danish citizens.

Frederiksen’s party has kept that energy, KIA APOLOGIZES AGAIN as we enter pledging that “the goal is zero refugees in his room in Sjaelsmark, which is small Denmark.” In 2023, a total of 2,482 refu- but tidy with two wooden beds separated gees applied for asylum, plummeting from by a shaggy, dark gray rug. He walks over 21,225 in 2015. to a black desk in the corner, pulls out Denmark now leads a group of 15 EU two plastic chairs, and opens the window, member states calling for new ideas to low- which overlooks a small, abandoned player migration to Europe, including advocat- ground. Families used to live here, but not ing for partnerships with third countries if anymore. Children at Sjaelsmark started migrants can’t be sent back to their home showing signs of mental distress in 2018. countries. That idea — which Denmark en- Some refused to eat in the cafeteria, others acted into law in 2021 with a plan to send had crying fits and disturbed sleep. A Danasylum-seekers to Rwanda for processing, ish Red Cross report found that as many asylum and resettlement — has inspired as 61 percent of the children detained here other countries to try to do the same. were experiencing mental health issues seThe United Kingdom, under the for- rious enough to warrant a psychiatric dimer right-wing Conservative government, agnosis. In 2020, it was deemed unlawful NOVEMBER 2024

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to detain children in the center due to the poor conditions.

Kia also struggled with his mental health when he first arrived in Sjaelsmark in August 2023 and found out his application was rejected because his fingerprint was taken in Italy. He didn’t know at the time, but this automatically classified him as a Dublin case, the EU statute that determines which country is responsible for an asylum application. “(The Italian border force) just did it. They didn’t ask if I wanted to stay in Italy,” he says. But while the Danish government refuses to process his application for this reason, the Italian authorities also refuse to take him back. Faced with rejection and an indefinite amount of time spent in this deportation center, he slumped into a depression, barely leaving his room.

Kurds were historically and traditionally nomadic people before they became one of the world’s largest peoples without a state.

The enforcement of national borders after World War I split the population apart. Today, there are an estimated 30 million to 45 million Kurds in the world, creating sizable minorities in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Searching for a sense of belonging and a place to call home has been the story of the Kurdish people in Iran and neighboring countries for a hundred years. So has rejection. “It goes back to 1925, basically to the rise of the modern state in Iran with Reza Pahlavi as the new Shah,” says Mohammadpur, the professor of sociology.

“He basically declared non-Persian culture and non-Persian history as tribal, local and backward.” Kia wasn’t taught in his native Kurdish at school and was bullied. “They would say that I have no rights here and work for Persians,” he says. “That I don’t belong in this country.”

Now, the Danish government is telling him that he doesn’t belong in Denmark, either. “I thought that I could really make a new life for myself here in peace,” he says.

Little did he know, he’d still be waiting for that chance over two years later.

But as we make our way to Center Sandholm, I notice a little spring in Kia’s step.

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Center Sandholm, the initial asylum processing center in Denmark, is a 30-minute walk from Sjaelsmark along a busy two-lane highway. Kia has walked or cycled this route nearly every day for the past few months while volunteering for the Danish Red Cross. The organization, as part of a contract with the government, helps operate both Sjaelsmark and Sandholm, as well as organize medical centers and various activities for residents. “It’s good to have that responsibility,” he says. He credits the volunteer job for getting him out of the depression he felt when he first arrived at Sjaelsmark.

“From my point of view, what we are lacking is the understanding that everybody wants to contribute,” Bendixen says.

“And maybe we should help them to.” The argument that refugees are here to drain the welfare system is contradictory to current government policy that doesn’t allow refugees to begin working and supporting themselves until after their applications for asylum are processed. A state allowance of 136 KKR (roughly $19) is dispersed every two weeks to Kia and the other residents at Sjaelsmark, barely covering a coffee and a return bus ride from Copenhagen.

Some anti-immigration groups in the United States see Denmark as an example of international best practice. “Open-borders apologists usually portray mass migration as an unstoppable force that national governments are powerless to stop,” says Michael McManus, the director of research for the Federation of American Immigration Reform, in a post on the organization’s website.

“However, Denmark has shown that good policies can and do reduce mass immigration and protect a country’s economy.” He added that America “can and must” look into “what can be applied in our own context.”

On the other hand, immigrants may be exactly what Denmark needs: The latest OECD Economic Survey suggests that Denmark’s aging population poses the greatest risk to the Danish social security system. Like other industrialized nations, Denmark’s birth rate has been dropping steadily since the 1960s, and the only

BY MAY 2024:

120+ MILLION PEOPLE WERE FORCIBLY DISPLACED WORLDWIDE AS A RESULT OF PERSECUTION, CONFLICT, VIOLENCE OR HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS. THIS INCLUDES:

36+53+11

43.4 MILLION REFUGEES

63.3 MILLION INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE

THE FIVE COUNTRIES THAT HOST THE MOST REFUGEES ARE:

IRAN TURKEY COLOMBIA GERMANY PAKISTAN

“I HAVE HOPE. I HAVE TO SUCCEED. BECAUSE THIS IS MY LIFE.”

K I A VO LUN TE E R S W I TH T HE R E D C R OSS TO O R GA N IZE AC TIVITIES — L I KE R UN N IN G GR O UPS A N D CO F F E E B R E A KS — F O R OTHE R R E F UG E ES IN DENMARK.

demographic that is growing in the country are those 80 and older.

To manage its aging population, the government has rushed through measures to encourage longer working lives and address persistent labor shortages, especially in long-term care and digital service. “Easing obstacles to international recruitment in shortage areas would help,” the report adds.

If given a resident permit, Kia hopes to one day work at the center full time. He has a lot of experience, after all. “I can be a translator for refugees,” he says. “I see a lot of people like myself. They don’t have anyone. They don’t have anywhere. And I can help them.”

Inside Sandholm, we approach a group of two dozen newly arrived asylum-seekers in running gear. “These are my friends,” Kia says as he goes up to greet several of them.

A Danish Red Cross employee, Rahid, approaches and invites both myself and Kia to join today’s activity — a 5K run around the surrounding countryside. Before long, two dozen of us set off.

The group is a mix of nationalities. Mehrtash, 32, is one of Kia’s friends and isn’t a fan of jogging. With short, black, curly hair and a bright red Barcelona tracksuit top, he brings up the rear. Mehrtash tells me he left his home country of Iran after getting

involved in protests against the government last year, first living underground “like a ghost” for six months before escaping and, eventually making it to Denmark. Ivan, 40, is from the Kherson region of Ukraine. He left just two weeks ago, and hopes to soon reunite with his wife, who plans to join him in Denmark.

Inside Sandholm, Kia shows me where he makes coffee for the residents. He spends as much time here as possible. “I keep everything that makes me nervous in Sjaelsmark and come here to put my worries aside,” he says. “Sometimes it’s bothering me. I’m tired of the situation.

But still, I have hope and I have to succeed.

I will fight for that, never give up. Because this is my life.”

I see the verve fade with the sun. Every evening, Kia makes his way back to Sjaelsmark. The journey feels longer in this direction, heavier. The turnover at Sandholm means he may not see the same group next week, or even the next day, as people are moved to other camps or start their new lives in Denmark. He looks over at me, with eyes that flash the same conclusion I saw on that first sunny day. Something bright, then a fade to disappointment. “The only one who stays here every time is me.”

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BEYOND VICTORY AS A WRESTLER, OLYMPIAN AND COACH,

CAEL SANDERSON

IS ONE OF THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED FIGURES IN SPORTS HISTORY — WITH A COUNTERINTUITIVE SECRET TO SUCCESS

BY ETHAN BAUER

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ILLUSTRATION BY NATE SWEITZER

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H

HE’S HARDLY NOTICEABLE in the sea of bodies. So many bodies. A few of them bop their heads to the Red Hot Chili Peppers tune blasting from the old-school megaphone-shaped speakers, but most of them are fixed in place, moving only their lips as they fill Penn State’s Rec Hall gymnasium with the chatter of anticipation. Thanks to the unseen man.

The bodies form clusters of navy and white, with few exceptions. One woman sports a construction-orange hoodie, with sprinkles of scarlet for tonight’s visitors, the Ohio State Buckeyes, but most of the crowd is Penn State faithful. Even beyond the bleachers, in the standing-room-only area atop the arena, fans jockey for space along the rusted white railing. “It’s gonna be wild,” the team’s media relations director tells me, as though that’s any different from how it usually is. He adds that tonight’s contest marks either the 69th- or 70th-consecutive sellout for Penn State wrestling. He can’t remember which.

To appreciate the scene is to understand what came before. Longtime fan Jack Raudenbusch has followed Penn State wrestling for 45 years and has held season tickets for 15. Before Cael Sanderson became the head coach in 2009, it wasn’t bad. The team was usually competitive. But it wasn’t this. “When Cael came,” he tells me, “the excitement level, the intensity of

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the matches — everything went up an order of magnitude.” Sanderson’s team just keeps winning, despite — or maybe because of — the fact that it’s taken on his minimalist, easy-going personality. “There’s some wrestlers that are a little on the crazy side.

They’re eating broken glass, wrestling with broken bones,” Raudenbusch says. “They’ll go to other schools. Here at Penn State, with Cael, it’s a more mellow attitude.”

The mellow vibe, combined with excruciating hard work, allowed Sanderson to reach heights rivaled by few athletes or coaches in history, in any sport. In college, at Iowa State, he compiled a record of 159-0, the only person to ever go undefeated over four full years, winning four national titles along the way. This accomplishment alone earned him recognition from Sports Illustrated as the second-most-impressive achievement in the history of college sports (trailing only Jesse Owens breaking four world track records in a single day, in 1935).

Sanderson followed it up by winning a gold

M A R K SELD ERS/PENN STAT E AT HLET ICS

CAEL SANDERSON, FAR LEFT, I S KNOWN FOR BOTH HI S I MMOVABLE, STOI C APPEARANCE ON THE SI DELI NES AND, I RONI CALLY FOR SUCH A WI NNI NG ATHLETE, HI S I NSI STENCE THAT WI NNI NG I SN’T EVERYTHI NG.

medal at the 2004 Olympics, then took up coaching — first at his alma mater, and then at Penn State, where in 14 years his team has won 11 national championships.

Yet for all his accolades, Sanderson comes across as stunningly … normal.

He shuns the spotlight, trying as much as possible to shift it toward his athletes.

During pre-meet introductions, for example, when the arena turns dark and fans shine their cellphone lights toward the mat, he doesn’t enter with the wrestlers.

He doesn’t get a personal introduction. He remains the unseen man.

With a new collegiate wrestling season beginning this month, Sanderson’s stoic approach will once again be on view for the wrestling world, with his team favored to claim another title. Yet most casual sports fans have no idea who he is. That’s surprising since America — American sports fans, in particular — loves nothing more than a winner. Sanderson’s lack of mainstream notoriety owes itself, foremost, to the fact

that college wrestling is not a glitzy, spectator sport. Even at the Olympic level, the Games’ governing body voted to drop wrestling in 2013 before reversing its decision several months later. But it could also have something to do with Sanderson’s unique philosophy. It’s a philosophy that goes back to his roots in Heber City, Utah, where he absorbed a formula that has allowed him to become one of the winningest winners in the history of winners — yet also an outlier in the world of modern competitive sports.

Understanding that formula, the one that has led to unprecedented success as a wrestler, an Olympian and a coach, requires watching him closely.

At Rec Hall, when Penn State’s 125-pound freshman Braeden Davis takes the mat to begin the competition, and the lights flash back on and the crowd roars, 45-year-old Sanderson appears seemingly from nowhere on the sideline. If you didn’t recognize him, you probably wouldn’t peg him as the head coach of this national juggernaut.

SANDERSON’S THE ONLY COLLEGIATE WRESTLER TO EVER GO UNDEFEATED OVER FOUR FULL YEARS.

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He scratches his well-defined chin and his bald head and his cauliflower ears, then hardly moves until the first round finishes at 0-0. Even then, he leans back in his chair, says nothing. Hardly anyone seems to notice.

Just the way he likes it.

“HE WAS ACTUALLY THE ONLY COACH, WHEN HE CAME TO VISIT, TO ASK WHAT MY GOALS WERE. THAT STOOD OUT TO ME.”

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W H AT E V E R R E N O W N H E lacks nation-

ally, Sanderson’s success has made him a household name in Central Pennsylvania. At the Happy Valley airport, I notice the man beside me at the rental car desk wears an Olympics wrestling hat. I ask if he’s here for the meet. He is. I tell him I’m here to write about Cael. “Oh, terrific,” he says. “This might be the best wrestling team ever. Ever.” The Enterprise clerk chimes in, too.

“He’s ridiculous,” the clerk adds. “A hundred fifty-nine and oh.”

“And he might be an even better coach,” Olympic hat says.

“Sheeeesh,” adds the clerk, off to retrieve our keys, not sure of the right answer himself.

At my hotel in Bellefonte, about 20

minutes from campus, I tell my server that I’m here to write about Penn State’s wrestling coach. “Oh, Cael!” she says right away. Back at Rec Hall, it’s easy to see why.

The action against Ohio State picks up with Davis opening up a lead against his Buckeyes opponent. With the final seconds ticking away, the opponent nearly secures a match-altering takedown, but Davis narrowly avoids it. When the match ends 4-3 in favor of Penn State, Ohio State’s coach is furious. He challenges the result, contending that his wrestler did secure the takedown and deserved the win — and everyone in Rec Hall hears him do it. Sanderson, meanwhile, hardly moves. Again, he says nothing. He just keeps his hands folded and looks on.

The observant, patient posture goes back to his youth, growing up in a wrestling family. His grandfather, Norman “Jiggs” Sanderson, was one of the founders of youth freestyle wrestling in Utah. “If you have fun and work hard,” Jiggs liked to say, “winning will take care of itself.” Cael’s father, Steve, used that philosophy to become a Western

SAND ERSON FAMILY SAND ERSO N FAM ILY

C AE L’ S FATHE R , STE VE SA N DE R SO N , LE F T, WAS A STA N D O UT W RE STL E R AT BYU A N D LATE R COAC HE D AT WASATC H HIGH S C H O O L IN HE B E R C I T Y, UTA H.

RA MZ I HA IDA R/A FP V IA GE TT Y I MAG ES

N O R MA N “JIG G S” SA N DE R SO N , LE F T, C AE L’ S G R A N DFATHER, WAS O N E O F THE F O UN D E R S O F YO UTH F R E E STYLE WR E STL I NG I N UTA H.

SA N DE R SO N WO N G O L D IN F R E E STY L E W RE STL IN G AT THE 2 00 4 O LY M P IC GA MES I N ATHE N S, A F TE R A DO MIN A N T 1 59 - 0 CO LLE GE R E CO R D.

Athletic Conference champion at BYU, and he passed it on to his four boys, all of whom found success at the NCAA level. But none more so than Cael. He was so far ahead that in high school, he made it his goal to go undefeated — and failed. He still remembers all three of his losses. He still tells stories about them to his team today. The last one, in his junior year, came against a guy who would eventually be his roommate at Iowa State. Ironically, Sanderson arrived there having abandoned his goal of never losing.

The legend nevertheless began to grow when he went undefeated as a freshman, then exploded his junior year when he secured his third title by besting Daniel Cormier — a man who would go on to become the UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion, and is widely regarded as one of the best mixed martial artists in history (today he serves an analyst for the UFC).

As a senior, he opted for a new challenge, moving from his past weight class of 184 up to 197. Again, he dominated, and heading into his final collegiate match, ESPN2’s broadcasters had a hard time explaining just how singular his success had become.

“I too have been wrestling with words for how to describe him,” one said. “Phenomenal. Unique. Unprecedented.” After he won, the broadcasters asked Sanderson whether he recognized the enormity of his accomplishment. “I just know that I’m tired and I’m getting old,” the 22-year-old said, demonstrating the wry humor he’s become known for. Then they posed the question that continues to swirl around him to this day: What makes him better than everyone else?

“Just a lot of luck, and just having support from my family, and the competitiveness we had growing up,” he explained, with typical understatement. “This is all about family. All about family.”

Tonight at Rec Hall, Ohio State loses its challenge, and Penn State wins the match.

But Ohio State wins the next one. Competitive early matches are something of a rarity around here. At least since Sanderson arrived in Happy Valley after three seasons of

coaching at his alma mater, where he didn’t have the resources to succeed. “I loved my time at Iowa State,” he says, “but … I didn’t really feel like I had the support of the alumni and the administration.” Penn State hired him away with promises to give the then-29-year-old all the support he needed, and the school delivered. Sanderson repaid the Nittany Lion faithful by clinching a national title in his second year — and then grabbing the next three titles, too.

Zain Retherford, a former Penn State All-American who went on to compete for the U.S. in the 2024 Paris Olympics, credits Sanderson’s unusual humanity as one key to his success. It was obvious to him from the very first time they met. “I just could tell that he had something different to offer from these other coaches,” he remembers. “He was actually the only coach, when he came to visit, to ask what my goals were. That stood out to me.” That continued when Sanderson coached him.

For one, Sanderson loves to get on the mat himself and show his team a thing or two.

He also loves telling stories and fables and instilling life lessons in his practices and pre-match pep talks. Before one formative match in Retherford’s freshman year, Sanderson offered some advice that, eventually, helped carry him to the Olympics. “Just go have some fun, and make some mistakes,” Sanderson told him.

Rick Kaluza, the team’s administrative liaison, admits Sanderson’s laid-back approach is something he himself could personally never embrace, even when coaching youth sports. But it just comes so naturally to Sanderson. “His words just have so much power behind them,” Kaluza says. Then he gestures toward the packed stands at Rec Hall, the championship banners in the rafters — fruits of Sanderson’s labor. “Right now,” he says, “this is the benchmark for collegiate sports — not just collegiate wrestling.”

On this particular night in February, that benchmark continues to rise. Penn State wins the second challenge, and aside from a surprising pin against the Nittany Lions in the 184-pound match, they cruise NOVEMBER 2024

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M I N U T E S L AT E R , I N a room beneath the

Rec Hall bleachers, in front of reporters, he seems … disappointed? Surprised? It’s hard to say. “It’s easy to come away from the match and think we didn’t wrestle well,” Sanderson says, his eyes unreadable beneath the brim of a white Nike cap, “but when you wrestle really good opponents, sometimes that happens.”

Ohio State entered the competition ranked sixth in the nation, and Penn State won all but two matches. Talking about how his team fell short, how they didn’t wrestle well, doesn’t seem to fit the mood, but Sanderson is serious. Later, he tells me that tonight is nothing to celebrate.

“We didn’t wrestle great today. Obviously, if you win eight out of 10 matches against Ohio State, that’s good,” he explains. “But I just felt like our enthusiasm level was a little low tonight. So yeah, we’re not celebrating anything.”

This is the standard Sanderson has set: thorough dismantling of opponents, every time. But here’s another part of his secret to success: Even on nights like tonight, when the team falls short of that standard and needs to make changes, he isn’t too hard on himself, or on them. He’s adamant about keeping wrestling in proper perspective. “I mean, it’s just a game, right?” he tells me.

“We want to win, and people want us to win, and the kids — it’s important to everybody.

But just keeping things in perspective. …

We spend all year preparing them for those big moments,” he adds. “But when it’s time to go, it’s up to them.”

A devout Latter-day Saint, Sanderson leans on his faith to make sure he, as well as the athletes he supervises, can maintain that perspective. “I just really enjoy learning and applying what you learn in your faith to what you’re doing in your sport and in your career and in your family.” In other words, life — and sports — can be a 62

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lot richer than success alone. And knowing that, Sanderson tries to avoid ultimatums.

“I don’t want to add any more burden to the kids,” he says. “They’ve already got enough on their plate.”

Which is why afterward, even when he isn’t pleased with the results, he can still make jokes. When one reporter asks what adjustments he needs to make, Sanderson answers with sarcasm and a chuckle. “Just, like, wrestling stuff,” he says. “Just trying to score some points.”

That wry humor is a Sanderson signature.

He takes his job very seriously — but not too seriously. Wrestling is plenty intense, but it doesn’t have to be life-and-death, either. And his attitude has paid off, in past years and in this one. Following the Ohio State meet, Penn State finishes the regular season undefeated; wins the Big 10 title; and heads to the national championship meet as the heavy favorite.

“IF YOUR FOCUS IS ON WINNING AND LOSING AT AN EARLY AGE, I THINK THAT REALLY STEALS YOUR ENTHUSIASM.”

W R E S T L E R S AT T H E NCAA finals get

their own entrance music, starting with the 285-pound heavyweights. For Penn State, that’s Greg Kerkvliet. It’s late March, and Kerkvliet jogs toward the mat surrounded by green stage lights and fog machines, with his chosen tune — “Stronger Than Ever,”

by Christian rapper Alex Jean — filling the arena. Once the theatrics cease, he quickly dismantles his opponent, winning Penn State’s first individual title of the day. Nine matches later, the Nittany Lions have four national champions, two runners-up, and two more in the top five. Their team score of 172.5 is more than 100 points ahead of second-place Cornell, and the highest point total of both the Sanderson era and in NCAA wrestling history. Another high bar in a career full of them.

A few months later, I ask Sanderson whether he’s ever marveled at his own success. Whether he’s ever pondered what it is that makes him different. If he has, he doesn’t want to say. Instead, he spreads the credit around to his assistant coaches, who have been with him from the beginning. “As a staff, we’re always

SAND ERSO N FAM ILY

to a 28-9 victory. The win marks their 57th consecutive dual meet triumph. Sanderson, as usual, doesn’t say much as he exits the arena.

F ROM L E F T, C AE L SANDE RS ON AND H IS T H RE E B ROT H E RS , CY L E R, CODY AND COL E , TAK E N WH E N T H E T H RE E OL DE R S IB L INGS WE RE WRE ST L ING TOGE T H E R AT IOWA STAT E .

HUNT ER M ART IN/GET T Y IM AGES

SANDERSON’S STRENGTH AS A COACH RELI ES, I N PART, ON HI S ABI LI TY TO CONNECT WI TH HI S ATHLETES, LI KE JASON NOLF, SEEN HERE WI TH THE COACH AT THE 2018 NCAA WRESTLI NG CHAMPI ONSHI PS.

looking ahead. We don’t inhale when we’re successful, because we’re thinking about next year or the year after that,” he says. “It’s just small steps, and just out-working people. That’s the truth. And that never, never gets old.”

Sanderson wants his two sons, a high school senior and an eighth grader, to believe they’re destined for success, too, whether in athletics or anything else. But that can be challenging. Overwhelming, even, especially in today’s high-stakes youth sports atmosphere. He often recalls his own parents, and what they taught him about the value of athletic competition. “We were very competitive. … We worked hard,” he says. “But I don’t remember (my dad) yelling at me, or being upset with me, when I didn’t win.” His dad just wanted his sons to try hard; the results, he figured, would follow naturally.

Just like his father before him. “He was always positive,” Sanderson says. “And that really goes a long way.” So with his own kids — both biological and on his Penn State squad — he tries to follow that model. Because if not, he believes the result is a warped, unhealthy view of what

competition should be. “You just can’t make winning more important than it really is,” says the winningest athlete and coach in the history of sports. “Because the real value that comes out of sports, and a sport like wrestling, isn’t whether you win or lose. And if your focus is on winning and losing at an early age, I think that really steals your enthusiasm.”

When those kids get to the collegiate level, he’s observed, they crumble. “Kids (who) put the most pressure on themselves usually aren’t the ones that compete the best in the big moments,” he says, “because they may have made it … more important than it really is. And the weird, strange effect is that that holds them back.” The antidote is what he told Retherford all those years ago: Train hard, work hard, compete hard — but have fun! Make mistakes! Sports are supposed to be about the act; not just the result.

And inverting that formula, he believes, has far-reaching consequences. “They’re more afraid to lose,” he explains, “than they are excited to go win.”

It all sounds so simple, but the incentives of youth sports and “amateur” collegiate sports make it hard to implement on

a wide scale. Even outside of sports, in any discipline requiring a high degree of expertise and experience to be successful, worrying too much about winning most often manifests as a fear of losing. As burnout.

And what Sanderson tries to instill in his wrestlers is that life is a lot fuller than a fear of failure. So work hard. Train hard.

Try your best. Absolutely! But try to worry less about the result, and more about what’s happening in each moment.

In March, after his team had clinched yet another championship, breaking records along the way, Sanderson sat before a room of reporters with a national championship hat perched atop his usual Nike one. Someone asked him to reflect on the team’s unprecedented, blowout victory.

“Can you kind of put it into words,” the reporter said, “what it’s like?” Sanderson smirked. He paused briefly and glanced down. Results like this don’t happen quickly. They take years to develop, to build up to. And they only happen with deliberate effort. With enjoying the process more than the outcome. “It’s time,” Sanderson said, looking back up, “to get ready for next year.”

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IDEAS

AMERICAN PROMISE THE CONSTITUTION RESPECTS DISAGREEMENT AND REVERES UNITY

BY Y U VA L L E V I N

T

he Declaration of Independence, which launched our nation into existence, announced an act of separation. It did not proclaim the birth of a new people but rather asserted that Americans had found themselves in a situation in which it had become “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” It implied that the British and the Americans were already two peoples and, therefore, that the Americans were already one.

But after winning independence, as they gradually turned their attention from the struggle for separation to the work of self-government, the people of the United States came to see that simply saying they were one people was not enough. Unity would take even more work than separation and would require a structure of government built for the task. So in the summer of 1787, they sent a group of their best politicians back to Philadelphia, to the very room where separation from Britain had been proclaimed, to formulate a framework 64

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for governing their new republic, rooted in the principles they had declared a decade earlier and geared to holding a dynamic, fractious, growing society together. Unity was much on the minds of those delegates.

But just what did they mean by unity? And what might we mean by it now?

IN A COMPLEX AND FREE SOCIETY, UNITY WOULD CONSIST LESS OF THINKING ALIKE THAN OF ACTING TOGETHER.

Ironically, the meaning of unity has always been a contentious question in America. But the Constitution does point toward an answer. It offers up an ideal of unity that is rooted in the practical nature of political life and that works to make common action possible. Such unity requires some agreement about who we are and what we believe

as a society, but that very general agreement is only a starting point for political life.

Ultimately, politics exists to deal with differences, and so assumes disagreement.

And in a free society, where politics cannot involve the coercive quashing of differences, it exists instead to facilitate common action despite differing beliefs and priorities.

That means unity is less a condition than a way of life. It does not need to be tranquil in order to be genuine, does not need to be calm in order to be productive, and has at least as much to do with disagreeing better as with agreeing more. The various capacities of the Constitution to facilitate greater cohesion, therefore, point us to a distinct idea of unity with much to teach us now. They suggest that unity is less about thinking alike than about acting together and, therefore, that unity is more within our grasp than we might think.

ALTHOUGH THEY DID not simply define uni-

ty, the framers were forthright about two assumptions related to it that seem, at first,

ILLU STR ATION BY J O N K R AU S E

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to contradict each other but that ultimately illuminate their particular conception of the term. On the one hand, they assumed that unanimity of views was not an option for a free society. On the other hand, they assumed that political union, marked by genuine cohesion and togetherness, was an absolute necessity for their new nation and that this must be a union of the people, not just of the states.

James Madison, who reflected most deeply on this challenge, was adamant on both points. In Federalist 10, he wrote: “As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.” And writing in Federalist 14, he warned against the lure of division and of fragmentation of the union: “Hearken not to the unnatural voice which tells you that the people of America, knit together as they are by so many cords of affection, can no longer live together as members of the same family; can no longer continue the mutual guardians of their mutual happiness; can no longer be fellow citizens of one great, respectable, and flourishing empire.”

So unanimity was not an option, but unity was both possible and necessary. How could that work? Madison’s gesture toward affection is surely one part of the answer.

American life is not simply politics, and discrete disagreements need not loosen what Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist 15, called “that sacred knot which binds the people of America together.” Averting bitter fracture in an often fragmented society would have to be a central purpose of American political life, so that the heterogeneity of American society did not make a shared political existence impossible. In this sense, unity would have to be at least as much a product as a premise of American politics.

That distinction, which clarifies the complicated tension between Madison’s assumption of permanent differences and his insistence on a robust union, amounts to the beginning of a definition of unity. In a complex and free society, unity would consist less of thinking alike than of acting together.

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But how can people act together when they don’t think alike? That is the question that motivated a great deal of the work of the Philadelphia Convention. Indeed, some of our most divisive constitutional debates are about whether we need to ask that question and, if so, how we ought to answer it. A great deal of the dysfunction of our contemporary political culture is a consequence of failures that stand in the way of putting the Constitution’s distinct answer to that question into effect. That answer, and the definition of unity that it implies, has roots that run deep in the political tradition of the West. It can be hard to pin down because it combines classical, Christian and modern insights with republican and liberal aspira-

WE HAVE GROWN LESS CAPABLE OF DEALING WITH ONE ANOTHER BECAUSE WE HAVE EMBRACED AN APPROACH TO AMERICAN GOVERNMENT THAT DEEMPHASIZES DEALING WITH ONE ANOTHER.

tions. Teasing these apart just a little could help us clarify the character of Madisonian unity and appreciate the complex roots of our regime.

THE APPROACH TO political unity that char-

acterizes Madison’s defense of the Constitution owes a great deal to Greek philosopher Aristotle’s idea that politics (and political unity) is best understood as a mode of bringing the people involved closer to one another as fellow citizens. Madison thought this kind of process could change how people understood their own aspirations. By being forced to work together toward common goals, we come to understand ourselves as sharing a life in common.

A political community shares a common life. Its politics is not just a venue for negotiating treaties among hostile, unconnected individuals or groups, and its form of government is not just a framework of procedural rules. Citizens also share a general sense of what their life together aims to do.

But that sense is often just a starting point for disagreement. This is surely true in the United States, where that sense is articulated in the Declaration of Independence and pervades our political rhetoric.

The declaration puts forward a set of truths about the human person: that we are all created equal and that we are all endowed with certain basic rights. That set of truths commits our society to a politics of equal citizens, where the answer to the question of who rules is not “the one,” “the few” or even “the many,” but “all citizens.”

That means our consent is the root of the government’s legitimacy. Our commitment to these principles is, in fact, very widely shared. The framers of the Constitution had to take it for granted in doing their work, and people involved in American politics ever since have too.

There are a few people on the fringes of our two broad political camps who would deny these principles and openly reject the Declaration of Independence, but they are broadly perceived as radical outliers. For the most part, our political differences are about what these principles actually mean or demand, not whether they are true. We implicitly understand them to define the foundation of our common life and in a decisive way. President Calvin Coolidge articulated this point on the 150th anniversary of the declaration in 1926: “It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.

But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created

equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.

No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”

It is easy to wave away such talk in modern America and insist that we no longer think this way, but our political life suggests that we certainly do. The very popularity of arguments accusing political opponents of betraying the declaration’s core principles testifies to the hold those principles still have on us.

F O R G I N G U N I T Y I S the ongoing work of American life. After an election, after an arduous legislative process, after more than two centuries of producing the common together, we are far from done negotiating and competing, pushing and pulling. The Constitution’s distinct idea of unity has made sure of that.

This complex conception of unity can be very attractive, but it has its downsides and its adamant detractors. Some critics have long found politics by internal tension to be counterproductive and self-defeating. They seek to express and represent a unified national purpose through focused acts of government power rather than to create common ground through accommodative negotiation. Because this approach prioritizes action over negotiation, it tends to empower narrow majorities. And because it values unitary executive action over plural legislative bargaining, it tends to raise the stakes and the temperature of our politics.

We have grown less capable of dealing with one another because we have embraced an approach to American government that deemphasizes dealing with one another. This change has not been driven by a desire for disunity. It has been driven by impatience with American government and by a passion for democracy that is both understandable and well-intentioned.

American federalism has been reconfigured to combine state and national power in pursuit of national ends, leaving less room for states and communities to differ and compete. Congress has been centralized and consolidated to better enable party leaders to stage-manage performative party conflict, making narrow majorities more cohesive but giving them less reason to

CITIZENS WHO WANT TO SEE OUR SOCIETY GROW STRONGER SHOULD APPROACH ITS INSTITUTIONS IN A SPIRIT OF REPAIR.

seek broader coalitions and to legislate. The presidency has moved to fill the vacuum and, in the process, has become the focal point of ideological conflict — embodying the exaggerated hopes and fears of opposing camps but becoming less capable of steady administration and durable action.

The courts are called on to resolve political and cultural conflicts rather than to police the boundaries of constitutionalism. The parties have lost their roles as facilitators of coalition building and have, instead, become mere brand names for two opposing camps keen to remain terrified of each other at a distance.

By grasping that our divisions have been deepened, in part, by our abandonment of the constitutional system’s core approach

to unity, we could find our way toward a constitutional restoration and, with it, a recovery of both our capacity for unity and our desire for it. This cannot be a partisan enterprise. We will need to choose to prioritize cohesion, coalition building and the forging of trust.

We should begin by recognizing that these are among the original aims of our Constitution and that today’s intense disunity has been driven in part by our broken constitutional practice, which has undermined the means by which these aims are pursued in our system. To recover those means and better pursue those aims, we will need to recover the understanding of unity that undergirds the Constitution, grasp its appeal and its truth, and think about reforms in its light.

That aspiration suggests not only an agenda of reform but also a particular spirit in which to approach the work. Citizens who want to see our society grow stronger should approach its institutions in a spirit of repair — informed by a sense of what is missing and has gone wrong and inspired by a sense of what is good in what we have and could serve us well. Our era tempts us to repudiate our inheritance, but it requires us to renew it. Americans are frequently angry at our Constitution now because we sense that it has broken down. But if we grasped that we have broken it, we could see that it needs us if it is to serve us. By rising to repair it, we could enable it again to repair our society and bring us closer together, as it was made to do.

Y U VA L L E V I N I S T H E D I R E C T O R O F S O C I A L , C U L T U R A L , A N D C O N S T I T U T I O N A L S T U D I E S AT T H E A M E R I C A N E N TERPRISE INSTITUTE. F RO M T H E B O O K “A M E R I C A N C O V E N A N T: H OW T H E C O N S T I T U T I O N U N I F I E D O U R N AT I O N —A N D C O U L D A G A I N " BY Y U VA L L E V I N .

C O PY R I G H T © 2 0 2 4 BY Y U VA L L E V I N . R E P R I N T E D BY P E R M I S SION OF BASIC BOOKS, AN IMP R I N T O F B A S I C B O O K S G RO U P, A DIVISION OF HACHETTE BOOK G RO U P, I N C . , N E W YO R K , N Y. A L L R I G H T S R E S E RV E D.

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SCROLLING ALONE IN A SOCIETY INCREASINGLY ISOLATED BY TECHNOLOGY, DO RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES HOLD THE ANSWER?

BY JOS H G O O D

F

or several years, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has been warning of a “national loneliness epidemic” hiding in plain sight. Our new technologies and glowing rectangles hold power to connect and isolate us, leading more Americans to experience anxiety and depression, “increasing our risk of heart disease (29 percent), dementia (50 percent), stroke (32 percent),” and even premature death (“comparable to smoking daily”), Murthy reports.

Our need for human connection is as essential for survival as food and water, Murthy says. Yet, it’s strangely diminished in the current era, as we turn to partisan bickering, racial stereotypes, social retreat, information rabbit holes reinforced by algorithms and negative news that leads to disconnection. The resulting isolation has created a powder keg of animosity.

Education levels impact the commonality of close friendships, it turns out. Since 1990, the number of college graduates who tell researchers they “have zero close 68

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friends” increased from 2 percent to 10 percent. But among high school graduates, the lack of friendship rose from 3 percent to a whopping 24 percent.

And yet, even if the surgeon general is calling us toward relationships for our own good health, “the average American adult

COMPROMISE IS A GIFT. OVER TIME, IT TAKES US FROM “FREEDOM FROM” TO “FREEDOM TO.”

spends approximately 10 hours on mediated devices each day,” retired Harvard professor Robert Putnam recently told a group of clerics and philanthropic leaders convened by the Aspen Institute. If television for three generations most motivated people to go “bowling alone” — a term

Putnam coined to describe the breakdown of social bonds created through community engagement — today it’s smartphones.

That’s a surprising turn, given our long tradition of fostering associations, starting clubs, and building civil society in thousands of diverse ways. Consider Alexis de Tocqueville’s assessment after touring the country in 1831: “Americans of all ages, all conditions and all dispositions constantly unite. … Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools. Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate.”

Why isn’t that happening today?

TWO CENTURIES AGO, religious association

was essential for human connection and deeply woven into the social and political

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OUR RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATIONS STILL ENLIVEN SOULS, SPUR VOLUNTARISM, SHIFT OUR DIRECTION, SUPPORT FORMER PRISONERS AS THEY REGAIN THEIR FOOTING AND PROVIDE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR SERVING NEIGHBORS.

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reforms that shaped our democratic life.

There’s no way to properly understand abolition, women’s suffrage, Prohibition, the Civil Rights Movement or countless other American reforms without understanding the deep role of faith communities and religious convictions in undergirding those moments.

But in the 21st century, our religious engagement has been rapidly declining — which counterintuitively hurts our capacity to deal with differences.

“It was our religious conviction and commitment combined with religious tolerance that set us apart,” Putnam told our group.

And today, that’s sharply down.

From 1930 to 2000, at least 71 percent of Americans were members of a church or religious house of worship. But in this century, Gallup reports that membership and religious engagement levels have fallen to 47 percent — a seismic shift. More of our leisure time is privatized, not enjoyed together.

Smaller and smaller numbers of Americans learn skills or cultivate habits to work out problems through congregational life.

And for society generally, Putnam cautions, it’s disconnected young men — most commonly in their 20s and 30s — who end up falling hardest, either causing the most trouble by resorting to violence or becoming incarcerated, struggling to date and settle down, or unraveling permanently from the workforce.

But Gen Z faces a new problem. On a recent tour of American college campuses, Murthy observed that the room that had always been noisiest at his alma mater in the mid-1990s, has today become the quietest.

It’s the dining hall. Today, a majority of young people at our most elite colleges sit side by side at the lunch or dinner table, smartphones in hand, scrolling and eating in silence. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with corresponding via text to assess a visiting lecturer, or using a digital platform to set plans for Frisbee golf after dinner. But the human connection is still minimized.

This trend is eerie, and it’s becoming increasingly normative.

MURTHY IS CALLING on the medical com-

munity for help, reminding us of a national suicide hotline, asking Congress to require a warning label on social media and encouraging more of us to set aside our cable-news habits in favor of rekindling friendships and community. That’s certainly a start.

But a growing number of sociologists and leading experts — Jonathan Haidt at New York University, Jean Twenge at San Diego State, Christian Smith at Notre Dame, John DiIulio at the University of Pennsylvania, Robert Wuthnow at Princeton, James Davison Hunter at the University of Virginia, Brad Fulton at Indiana University, and many others — have joined Putnam in arguing religious life has a role to play, too.

Whether that’s an argument from history or present-day sociology is an unsettled question. But asking how our leading faith communities could help us transcend contemporary polarization — particularly for Americans who increasingly distrust most public institutions — is a deeply urgent question. How might deep spiritual conviction align with a healthy, even generous, vision of equitable public pluralism?

Putnam points out in his newest book, co-authored with Shaylyn Romney Garrett, that America has experienced downswings and upswings when it comes to renewing association. A century ago — and in particular from 1910-1965 — hundreds of thousands of local community leaders committed to solving hard problems largely by a rebirth in clubs such as the Boy Scouts, Big Brothers Big Sisters, the YMCA and a bevy of other startup institutions “that were fun, bridging, and morally serious.”

Could we do it again? Putnam says we would need both connection with like-minded, similar individuals — “bonding social capital,” through friendship with those of similar education levels, political instincts, ethnic background and interests — but also “bridging social capital” in which we interact and learn from people of fundamentally different backgrounds and interests. Rather than media silos and isolation cul-de-sacs, Putnam wants

us to learn through practice and habit that “we’re all in this together.”

Religious life — particularly for faith communities that teach deep convictions but also help give us psychological and theological security to be open to new views, curious about them, and free to explore with open ears — is essential to a free society.

It reinforces the kinds of norms needed to renew or challenge the status quo.

And it’s down, but not out. Even today, there is a still-strong contingent of religious Americans, including evangelicals (25 percent), Catholics (21 percent), mainline Protestants (14 percent), Black Protestants (10 percent), Jews (2 percent), Muslims (1 percent) and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (1 percent).

Around the world, there are 2.4 billion Christians, 1.9 billion Muslims, 1.1 billion Hindus, more than 500 million Buddhists and so on — and journalists, diplomats, business leaders and public officials should work with the grain of that reality, not have a blind spot concerning it.

But here in America, the fastest-rising group tracked by religious surveyors in recent years has been the religious “nones,” comprising 28 percent of Americans. Of that group, 17 percent identify as atheist, 20 percent say they’re agnostic and 63 percent say they’re “nothing in particular.” A clear majority believes in God or a higher power. Nearly half tell surveyors they think of themselves as spiritual or spirituality is important to them.

In other words, while a growing cohort of millennials, Gen Z and Alphas no longer attend religious services, many are still spiritual and still curious. In that sense, even if fewer than half of us are in church on a given Sunday, we’re still a highly religious country.

There’s no doubt that in recent years we’ve seen a broad “de-churching,” particularly in the wake of Covid, amid the political infighting of the Trump years and in the midst of police violence and strained race relations that caused deep unrest in many congregations. In 2021, nearly 38 percent of U.S. pastors told the Christian research

group Barna that, due to increased stress and political divisions impacting their congregations, they considered quitting.

But even in spite of engagement levels that have recently fallen, our religious associations still enliven souls, spur voluntarism, shift our direction, support former prisoners as they regain their footing and provide infrastructure for serving neighbors. They still hold the power to renew. religious life borrows a playbook from our politics, rather than the other way around. Recently, SOMETIMES, THOUGH, OUR

THERE’S NO WAY TO PROPERLY UNDERSTAND ABOLITION, WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE, PROHIBITION, THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT OR COUNTLESS OTHER AMERICAN REFORMS WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING THE DEEP ROLE OF FAITH COMMUNITIES AND RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS IN UNDERGIRDING THOSE MOMENTS.

some Trump supporters have told pollsters they’ve decided to become “evangelical” despite never setting foot in a church. The categories can get confused in search of a tribe that wants to banish political enemies.

That’s backward politics and bad religion.

We do want a public square with disagreement — but with better disagreement. We want arguments that begin from places of conviction and make the case that particular policies can help the most people. But too often, our politics have become “all or nothing,” as if electing a particular candidate will crush one’s

opponent, “lock her up” or somehow do away with another candidate’s voters. Video memes mock the idiocy of the other side, as if it’s all “polititainment.”

We can do better. In a liberal democracy like ours, no single faction is a permanent majority. The times are too serious for a politics of burn-it-all-down. As Yuval Levin argues, “we’re not supposed to think alike; we’re supposed to act together. Our constitutional system is designed to bring peace, but not quiet.”

What does that mean? I think it’s that our deep differences are here to stay — and that the moral communities we inhabit should teach us to pursue the common good, love our neighbors, and reimagine basic manners and civic decency. All of us want a secure base from which to launch daring exploits, as the psychologist John Bowlby describes.

But in a modern democracy that also means no one tribe wins out. Equitable public pluralism allows us to honor human dignity, deepen human rights, advance the rule of law and share public spaces in ways that give others a fair footing. That compromise is a gift — over time, it takes us from “freedom from” to “freedom to.” Like fellow citizens of no faith, citizens of deep religious faith need not fear entering public conversations — or new friendships — with those of other backgrounds. Bridging capital, it turns out, is fun — but also morally serious and essential.

Seasons of turning inward may have their place. Who among us doesn’t enjoy scrolling through the latest news, viewing a comic or reading liberally to try to understand larger forces such as national populism?

But eventually, we look up from the glowing screens in our hand to see a physical world — a campus dining hall that’s too quiet. At some point, we realize a topsy-turvy presidential election cycle isn’t just social media political entertainment.

And we realize we need a bigger vision.

JOSH GOOD IS DIRECTOR OF THE ASPEN INSTITUTE’S R E L I G I O N & S O C I E T Y P RO G R A M .

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DANCE, DANCE, REVOLUTION HOW HIP-HOP AND A FOUNDING FATHER MADE AMERICA FEEL LIKE HOME

BY M A R C N I E L S E N

T

here’s something grand about a live performance at the theater, even if it’s also a history lesson. A teenage girl regales her family about character growth and the complexity of this musical’s lyrics.

We’re kindred spirits. I’ve been in the Eccles Theater in downtown Salt Lake City for an hour, watching people arrive, some dressed to the nines, when a voice on the loudspeaker finally calls us to our seats.

In reality, I’ve been waiting almost a decade, since I first heard the beats and rhymes of “Hamilton: An American Musical” on a friend’s car stereo. As a teenager, I felt lost. I’d given up on my father’s America and was plotting an escape to Spain, my mother’s home country. As an immigrant’s son, I’d grown up feeling alone and out of place (at their separate houses), but this soundtrack spoke to me. The flawed but idealistic hero from humble origins was a historic figure I could relate to. Clearly, I was not alone.

The packed theater makes me feel small as I watch the stage from the second of four stacked tiers. The lights go out, the audience falls silent. Long piano notes resonate over a spare beat as a series of 72

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cast members in Colonial garb recount the destitute Caribbean childhood of one of the Founding Fathers. Nearby, a woman gesticulates in time, quietly echoing each line. “Inside, he was longing for something to be a part of,” one narrates, in rhythm. “The brother was ready to beg, steal, borrow or barter.”

BORN INTO POVERTY, ALEXANDER HAMILTON USED WORDS TO ELEVATE HIMSELF, THEN DIED VIOLENTLY BECAUSE OF THOSE WORDS. “THAT’S A CLASSIC HIP-HOP STORY.”

runs in Chicago, London, Hamburg and Puerto Rico, and tours across Australia and North America. What is it about this story that appeals to so many people from such different backgrounds? When I found out it was coming to my hometown, I knew I had to see for myself.

Staccato cello strains fill the theater as a man raps on stage. “Get your education, don’t forget from whence you came / and the world is gonna know your name,” he cries. “What’s your name, man?” The target of his question struts to the middle of the stage, his hair in a short ponytail: “My name is Alexander Hamilton,” he replies.

The crowd erupts, cheers smothering his next lines. “And there’s a million things I haven’t done / But just you wait.”

AMERICA’S FIRST TREASURY secretary was

When “Hamilton” first premiered off-Broadway in 2015, starring its creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, it was an instant sensation. It quickly moved to Broadway, raking in awards for adapting what could have been a stodgy biography to the musical stage. And it never stopped, with successful

an unlikely subject for Broadway. Hamilton was an architect of the economy, founder of the first national bank and co-author of the Federalist Papers, which persuaded readers to support the Constitution. His climb from obscurity is a classic story, but Miranda appealed to modern audiences by eliding historicity, building a cast as diverse as the

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country is today, and embracing a musical genre that arose from Black struggle.

Hip-hop was born nine miles from Broadway in 1973, at a house party in the Bronx hosted by a Jamaican American DJ called Kool Herc. There was something resourceful in his use of twin turntables to sample “breakbeats” — brief percussive instrumentals between verses — from R&B or funk records, “scratching” and playing them like his own instrument. Guitars and drum kits were out of reach, but soon DJs were playing events across the city. Herc tapped into an emerging aesthetic, an optimistic resilience, as Black creators came of age with unprecedented freedoms and familiar economic troubles. And maybe he amplified it.

Hip-hop culture boomed. “B-boys” invented an athletic dance form called “breaking,” which later became an Olympic event.

Street artists used abandoned buildings as their canvas, presaging the murals we see today. Underground designers crafted their own fashions from existing shirts or sweatpants in early iterations of streetwear. And “emcees” rapped over the beats, developing a rhythmic style of spoken word from “rap battles” — where competitors would exchange insults couched in artful rhymes and wordplay — infusing them with elements of street poetry, brash self-confidence and defiance of the mainstream that it would later overtake.

By the 1980s, hip-hop became a fixture on the Top 40, but some rappers explored the genre as a form of literature or citizen journalism. In 1982’s “The Message,” Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five describe inner-city poverty in brutal detail. “A child is born with no state of mind / Blind to the ways of mankind/ God is smilin' on you but he's frownin' too / Because only God knows what you'll go through.” That song is cited as a source in the “Hamilton” playbill. Over time, many rappers earned controversial reputations with R-rated lyrics and scandalous behavior, but some also told honest stories of their people in a way nobody else could.

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That’s what appealed to me as a teenager, growing up as far from the Bronx as you could get. I lived in a safe neighborhood in a quiet city. I loved to read and write.

But when we moved here from Spain, kids made fun of me for messing up words in English. Teachers told my parents I needed to “fix” my accent. By high school, I made being an outsider my identity. I refused to get a driver’s license, preferring to walk like they do in Europe. I challenged my classmates’ political ideas, smug at their small horizons. And I longed to get out.

America wasn’t a dream to me. It felt distant and inaccessible.

THE SHOW APPEALS TO MODERN AUDIENCES

BY ELIDING HISTORICITY, STARRING A CAST AS DIVERSE AS THE COUNTRY IS TODAY, AND EMBRACING A MUSICAL GENRE THAT AROSE FROM BLACK STRUGGLE.

Hip-hop became my soundtrack. Sometimes it offered a choir for my anger, but Kanye West taught me to believe in myself.

Brother Ali spoke truth to power. K’naan, a Somali émigré who lives in Canada, showed me how to find joy in adversity. And Tupac Shakur gave me hope, with that iconic bandana tied around his shaved head. His baritone echoes as if it came from a pulpit: “There’s no need for you to fear me / If you take your time to hear me, maybe you can learn to cheer me / It ain’t about black or white, ’cause we human.”

What I didn’t understand then was that hip-hop couldn’t be more American.

T R A F F I C L I G H TS S L I D E past the window.

I’m in the passenger seat of a friend’s sedan packed with college students my age, though I’ve got no plans to join them at the university. The driver cues up an album. The hip-hop vibe pulls me in and the vocalist intrigues me. The theater kids in the back harmonize as he raps, “Hey yo, I’m just like my country / I’m young, scrappy, and hungry / And I’m not throwing away my shot.” At home that night, I devour the entire soundtrack. The story piqued my curiosity..

Soon, I started reading “Alexander Hamilton,” by Ron Chernow, and learned about the man behind the musical. Born in the Caribbean, Hamilton was left destitute as a child when his father abandoned him and his mother died from yellow fever. Like me, he loved to read and write. He showed so much talent as an adolescent clerk that his guardian and boss sent him to the North American colonies for an education, funded by donations from the community. He eventually moved to New York and enrolled at King’s College — now Columbia University — where he became embroiled in literary and revolutionary fervor. He made a name for himself as an officer in the war. He served as George Washington’s aide-de-camp and later joined his cabinet, after helping to get the Constitution made law. He did it all with wit, bravado and conviction.

The men who built this country had always seemed more like symbols than human beings to me. Now I was becoming obsessed, reading about them and their ideas. I learned that Thomas Jefferson was an ardent defender of democracy. The writings of John Adams changed how I viewed education. And Thomas Paine echoed what I’d heard in the musical: “The strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fears of resisting it.” Together, they showed me that hope and idealism can overcome, that we can change the world around us and build a place for ourselves, no matter where we are.

That was a heritage I could be proud of, but it was Hamilton the man who inspired me most, less by what he did than how he did it. He made himself a part of

the conversation, against all odds, determined to stand up for what he believed no matter the cost. My heart would race with the drum line every time I replayed the soundtrack and heard him pleading with his friend Aaron Burr to defend the Constitution: “For once in your life, take a stand with pride / I don’t understand how you stand to the side.”

Of course, those last two lines drip with disdain, true to the man’s propensity to pick fights with anyone, including fellow American officers, in defense of his vision for the new country. That was always going to be a problem. His story felt destined for tragedy.

TUPAC, AS SHAKUR is known to fans, also

came from a tough upbringing. But on a Saturday night in 1996, he was on top of the world, riding through Las Vegas in a friend’s black BMW, with two chart-topping albums to his name. Some critics said he’d strayed from the social consciousness of his early work, becoming the face of “thug life” amid a gang-tinged rivalry between West and East Coast hip-hop artists. Still, he leaned to the window to chat with passing fans until a white Cadillac pulled up alongside. Gunshots rang out. He died from his wounds six days later.

No wonder “Hamilton” felt so familiar.

I was a child back then, but any serious hip-hop fan knows about the conflict that got Tupac killed — including the musical’s director, Tommy Kail. “In Alexander Hamilton, you have someone born into very difficult circumstances — profound poverty, no parents, no support — who used words to elevate himself out of those circumstances, and then died violently because of those words,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald. “That’s a classic hip-hop story.”

Miranda, too, had a hip-hop life. Born to Puerto Rican parents in 1980, he grew up in Inwood, a predominantly Dominican neighborhood at the northern tip of Manhattan. As a boy, he was bullied for reading books. He tells the story in “Wrote My Way Out,” adapted from the musical in 2016: “Oversensitive, defenseless, I made sense

of it by penciling.” No wonder he identified with Hamilton. Both broke through as tenacious and successful writers. Later, as an established artist, Miranda worked for years crafting a collection of songs he called “The Hamilton Mixtape,” for love of the art, before the musical.

I found myself identifying with both author and character, but I was missing some tenacity. So I got to work. I went back to school. I canvassed for political campaigns and ranted to friends on the importance of voting. I traveled to Washington, D.C., to join a peaceful protest outside the Capitol, calling for the protection of democratic principles. I spent a morning at the Lincoln Memorial, toured the museums on the National Mall, and found a spot near the

they do again when Jefferson strikes a sharp riposte. The scene is electric, and foreshadows Hamilton’s most infamous “beef.”

In hip-hop, a beef is a grudge or rivalry between groups or individuals. Sometimes it plays out in “diss tracks,” songs that take the shape of long-distance rap battles.

Last summer, for example, LA’s Kendrick Lamar KO’d Toronto’s Drake after the two exchanged vicious jabs in a series of singles recorded in response to each other.

But sometimes, the fight gets real. Nobody knew who shot Shakur until 2023, when police said a former informant had killed him for money. Stories like these cast the genre as a salacious underworld, but after all, artists are as human as anyone else.

As “Hamilton” shows us, so were the Founders.

HUSHED SNIFFLES FILL the dark. Hamilton’s

THE MEN WHO BUILT THIS COUNTRY HAD ALWAYS SEEMED MORE LIKE SYMBOLS THAN HUMAN BEINGS. NOW I WAS BECOMING OBSESSED, READING ABOUT THEM AND THEIR IDEAS

Treasury building where I could stand on my toes, crane my neck and catch a glimpse of Hamilton’s statue through the cold metal bars of the surrounding fence. It isn’t always easy to break in, but as I write this, I’m finally on track to graduate in history.

Thanks, in part, to a play.

But I don’t need a degree to appreciate how Miranda recasts an ordinary cabinet meeting as a rap battle near the musical’s dramatic peak. Over a steady bassline, Hamilton doesn’t just argue for his plan to rethink the federal government, he snipes at his opponent. “If we assume the debts, the union gets / A new line of credit, a financial diuretic / How do you not get it?” The various secretaries respond with “oohs,” as

habit of arguing and obstinately standing on principle has left him isolated and vulnerable. Across the stage, his old friend Aaron Burr raises a dueling pistol and fires. The crack rips through the theater.

The music falls silent, the lights dim, and time freezes as Hamilton delivers a final soliloquy: “America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me / You let me make a difference, a place where even orphan immigrants / Can leave their fingerprints and rise up.”

I find myself tearing up as we give a standing ovation. The show hits different in person, but still reminds me that there is a place for me here. Or rather, a duty: to work on my country, to make it better for those who come after, like Hamilton and all the others did before me. And when somebody feels like they don’t belong, I can help them to understand that they do. Because America isn’t so much a place as a project, and we all have to work on it together.

Outside, as people wait for rides or say goodnight and head their separate ways, I walk past a Spanish restaurant where I ate tapas for dinner. I can still taste the garlic on my lips. It was delicious, and felt like home, but so do these streets.

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ODE

KODACOLOR AN ODE TO THE ANONYMOUS ANTIQUE

BY N ATA L I A G A L I C Z A

T

he antique store overflows with left-behinds. Tattered rag dolls spill from wooden crates onto the carpet, model planes dangle from the ceiling, and parked tricycles and kick scooters clutter the narrow aisles. It’s a Saturday afternoon and I’m not looking for anything in particular, until I find it. Past a glass display case replete with salt shakers and porcelain figurines, I find a nondescript cardboard box that smells like musky vanilla, the sweet aroma of aged paper. I lift the dust-coated lid to discover a trove of photos — memories of people I will never meet.

Antique shops, like other secondhand stores, offer a master class in what it means to be human. Every object in this small store in downtown Salt Lake City once meant something to somebody. Now it waits, discarded, for a new person to come along and give it some new value or meaning. I was drawn here by the sentimental relics I typically turn to in such places, like postcards, rolls of exposed but undeveloped film, letters and photographs, all windows into the lives of others. They remind me that I’m part of a larger storyline, that all these little moments speak to something universal. Looking through them feels both intimate and anthropological.

I gently file through the photos, fingertips grazing the edges.

Some are almost a century old and it feels like they could crumble under even slight pressure. I see a happy family on vacation and 76

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smile back a little. I see mountain peaks and find it easy to presume the person behind the lens has been to the top. I see polished vintage cars and consider the hours their owners must have devoted to their care. Then I find it, the one I didn’t know I was looking for: a square image of a rolling pasture, stained sepia by time. There is no labeled name or location, only the words, “THIS IS A KODACOLOR PRINT. MADE BY EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY. JANUARY 16, 1943.”

The image is not breathtaking. The landscape is sparse and monotonous. Sun-bleached grass, tame hillsides, scattered sagebrush. Not a posed figure or notable landmark in sight. Yet it feels authentic. The photographer seems to have stumbled across something they found to be beautiful and this is how they paid tribute. Maybe they lived there once, or hoped to live there one day. Maybe they just admired a stretch of uninterrupted land at a time when life was on hold — at the height of the Second World War, when most Americans were left wanting for food or gas and missing their loved ones in the service. I wonder who that person was and what else we might have in common besides this photograph and the urge to bear witness.

For 50 cents, I leave the shop with a new connection to a person I’ll never know. That’s more than I walked in with. More than enough.

PHOTOGR AP H Y BY D E S E R E T N E WS STA FF

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POETRY

MISSING

BY S H A N A N B A L L A M

the moon is close to being full again

on the foothills almost white

today is the nine-month anniversary

we haven’t seen the great blue heron in weeks

of my stroke I’m still struggling

or the kingfisher who perches above the scuzzy pond

to walk further in the wetlands than we have ever gone open water a waterfall of birdsong then silence a wash of light pale yellow

I’m concerned that the feeling in my right foot won’t return the russian sage is finally blooming a spray of fuzzy purple blossoms a secret patch of yellow aspen glows on the high slope

T H I S P O E M A P P E A R S I N S H A N A N B A L L A M ’ S R E C E N T C O L L E C T I O N , “ F I R S T P O E M S A F T E R T H E S T RO K E ,” W R I T T E N A F T E R A M E D I C A L E V E N T L E F T H E R W I T H O U T S P E E C H A N D T H E U S E O F T H E R I G H T S I D E O F H E R B O DY. S H E I S T H E P O E T L AU R E AT E O F L O G A N , U TA H , A N D A S E N I O R L E C T U R E R AT U TA H S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y.

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THE LAST WORD

JU L I A H OTZ

THE SOCIAL CURE AN ANCIENT PATH TO GOOD HEALTH IS MAKING A COMEBACK

BY MATTH E W B R OW N

S

olitude has become such a widespread issue that the U.K. started appointing a minister for loneliness in 2018.

That news piqued the interest of a student named Julia Hotz, who was pursuing a doctorate in sociology at Cambridge. Inspired by her own curiosity, Hotz designed a study that explored public opinion on what this new bureaucrat should do. Respondents consistently wanted better infrastructure to help remedy their solitary lives.

“They said, ‘I wish the government would invest in third spaces and places for people to meet,’” Hotz recalls. The thinking was that helping lonely people — primarily seniors — to gather with others who shared similar interests would take pressure off the overburdened physicians of the National Health Service. Waiting times had become notoriously long in a system bogged down by patients who needed attention as much 80

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as they needed medical care. A pill could often cure but rarely prevent the ailments that stem from loneliness.

Memories of those surveys resurfaced for Hotz when the Covid lockdowns of

THE SHIFT FROM “WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU” TO “WHAT MATTERS TO YOU” RESONATES WITH PEOPLE BECAUSE NOBODY LIKES BEING DEFINED

BY THEIR SYMPTOMS.

2020 put loneliness in the news. She was back in the United States, pursuing a career with the Solutions Journalism Network, when she started writing about what

communities were doing to address the health risks of forced isolation. That’s when she first came across the term “social prescribing,” where health care workers direct patients to take nature walks, tour art museums or volunteer in their communities to treat nonmedical, socially determined ailments — like loneliness. Suddenly, a bigger picture emerged. “Oh, this is what people who were lonely called for years ago,” she realized. “So, why don’t we see what’s really behind this?”

Her journey of discovery took Hotz to several different countries over the next three years and is chronicled in her book, “The Connection Cure.” Her comprehensive story stitches together the history of a movement with origins that date back millennia up to its modern-day revival in the U.K. and discusses how it can address shortcomings in health care.

WHO COINED THE TERM “SOCIAL PRESCRIBING”?

It’s not clear who came up with it, but the concept started in the mid-1980s in the U.K., where doctors realized a lot of the patients they were seeing were not in need of medical support. At the same time, community organizations were noticing that the people attending art class or a cycling group were less depressed or anxious and lonely afterwards. All those sectors mobilized to address a need that all of them faced. Eventually, they convinced the government that social prescribing could relieve pressure on the NHS and allow its physicians to better manage those needs that did require a medical prescription.

HOW DID IT CHANGE THE HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS’ APPROACH?

The shift from “what’s the matter with you” to “what matters to you” was described by a founder of social prescribing in the U.K., Dr. Sam Everington. It resonates with people because nobody likes being defined by their symptoms. What I’d heard from a lot of patients was that when they just focus on the symptoms, providers start to view them through that lens and maybe limit what a person could do. But when you take the time to get to know a person’s unique interests or talents, that’s a much more accurate way of viewing them. And it’s actually better for their recovery when the patients themselves are focused more on what matters to them.

YOU SEPARATE THESE PRESCRIPTIONS INTO FIVE CATEGORIES. HOW DID YOU IDENTIFY THEM?

As I researched what was happening in different countries, it occurred to me that every single social prescribing program had elements of those five: movement, nature, art, service and belonging. And I think that’s true for a couple of reasons. No. 1, most of our daily lives back in the ancient, big, bad, wild times involved those things. We were moving our bodies. We were paying attention in nature. We were creating and ILLU STR ATION BY KY LE H I LTO N

consuming art, telling stories. We evolved to survive in groups. That’s why a lot of the research doesn’t study social prescribing in particular but the impact of nature or art on our health and that points to universally positive outcomes: It improves our mood, our attention, calms our nervous system, that sort of thing.

every single provider who gets a standard education and works for a health care facility could start offering social prescriptions in addition to medical ones?

DID ANY OF THE FIVE SURPRISE YOU?

It’s already happening here, from the Cleveland Clinic to Boston Medical Center to individual doctors, because it is improving health outcomes. We’re seeing more private insurance companies such as Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield getting behind arts prescribing for the same reason some are also starting to cover gym classes because of the way that it can reduce health care costs over time. And I think we’re seeing it because people are saying, “Do you have anything else besides taking a pill” or maybe “this procedure isn’t sitting well with me.” And I should also say here, the goal is not to replace those options. The goal is for this to be a complement on the menu for providers and patients alike.

A lot of it is intuitive. I should be moving my body more. I should probably try to get outside. But the extent to which it’s helpful for symptoms of things like attention deficit, anxiety, depression, chronic pain, dementia, trauma, stress, surprised and excited me. And what most surprised me was service, and the story of a woman who

WE WERE MOVING OUR BODIES. WE WERE PAYING ATTENTION IN NATURE. WE WERE CREATING AND CONSUMING ART, TELLING STORIES. WE EVOLVED TO SURVIVE IN GROUPS.

had struggled with chronic back pain. Volunteering made her pain feel like less a part of her life. And that was so interesting. The research supports the idea that when we focus on other people or some other cause, we literally do feel better. Our bodies catch up with our minds.

IS THERE A TENSION BETWEEN THIS NEW TREATMENT AND RESPECTING ITS ANCIENT ROOTS?

I struggle with that. On one hand, this is based on millennia of science and theory.

On the other, there’s something compelling in giving a name to what all of these disciplines are independently concluding about how our environments affect our health.

And wouldn’t it be great if this wasn’t just left to art therapists and certain medical doctors? If this were mainstream so that

COULD THIS IDEA TAKE HOLD IN THE UNITED STATES, WHERE THERE ISN’T A NATIONAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM LIKE THE U.K. OR CANADA?

WHO DO YOU MOST WANT TO READ “CONNECTION CURE” — THE PATIENT OR THE PRACTITIONER?

If I had to pick, I would suggest that this is for the patient. There are some great books on the practice targeted at an audience of implementers. I would hope that this book could reach the everyday person who knows someone who is struggling with loneliness or depression or anxiety or ADHD or dementia and is curious about what else might help them. Change happens when there’s demand for it, when people mobilize around an idea, so I would hope that the everyday reader could read this book and talk to their doctor about social prescribing.

WHAT IS YOUR LAST WORD?

Even if people don’t feel sick, social prescribing can help us because what it’s all about underneath the movement, nature, art, service and belonging is helping us to be more human.

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