Things To Read, 6/19/17

1.  This article by Jerry Useem says that power causes brain damage.  That would be human power, not electricity, say.

I don't have any expertise in the required field, so take this with a pinch of salt*:

Useem's article reminded me not so much about brain damage but about how social intelligence is developed and maintained.  The lower you are on some totem pole, the more social intelligence you need to survive and thrive.  This applies particularly to the ability to read the mood and intentions of the more powerful people, to become "bilingual" in a different sense.

Once someone is sufficiently powerful, the demand for those skills is much less and the skills themselves can rust.  But there are people who have never had the need to develop social intelligence of that type.

2.  Rebecca Traister has interviewed suburban white Democratic women in Georgia's sixth district,  a very Republican area.  These women were not politically active in the past, but the election of Donald Trump woke them up, and they are now very active.

This doesn't mean that Ossoff is bound to win the special election, but it might make those of us more cheerful who were despondent over the number of white women who voted for Trump.  Besides, it's important to read encouraging pieces, too.**

3.  The Republican Senators are designing our health care system and they won't let anyone else look over their shoulders to see what the Senate proposal might contain.  But as Jeffrey Young points out, the result will certainly be something much worse than the Affordable Care Act, except for the quite wealthy.

Still, I detest that secrecy, because its intention is to make it impossible to properly critique the proposal.  Instead, it will be rammed down our throats.

4.  An example of modern sharecropping?  In sharecropping the poor peasants bore all risk while the owners of the land they farmed were guaranteed a certain annual income with no risks.

If the linked story has its facts correct, this modern case is even worse:

It's as if the sharecroppers were promised the chance to buy the fields they farmed by making small regular payments over time.  But one failed harvest or delayed payment would have given the landowner the right to get rid of the sharecropper and also keep all the money that was paid toward the purchase of the field.

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* Social intelligence may not be the correct term, in any case.  Social skills might be a better one, because they are skills most of us can acquire. I know that from having lived in different cultures where body gestures, facial expressions and loudness of voice can mean very different things.

** An article I came across after publishing this post also talks about women waking up in various parts of the US.