Toward a Manifested Courage

The Unfortunate Reality of Dry Shampoo

Olga Khazan

It’s convenient, but bad for the scalp. So bad it might lead to hair loss.

There’s a common pattern with socially constructed beauty norms. Society insists women do a ridiculous thing to look good (see: unnaturally small waists; looking awake and vibrant 24/7; heels as standard formalwear.) Women, being people, clamber to find short-cuts to accomplish said thing as easily as possible (see: corsets; makeup; removable heels.) The arms race continues until the norm goes away (see: menswear-for-women) or a harder-to-imitate beauty trend emerges (balayage).

You can see this dynamic at work in a newish, miraculous, terrifying innovation called dry shampoo.

The stuff is the best friend of the lazy-yet-vain. When sprayed onto hair, it soaks up oil, giving the impression of freshly washed and styled coif in seconds. Since I discovered dry shampoo a few years ago, I have regularly slept in for an extra 15 minutes while the rest of the world climbs groggily into their showers like a bunch of chumps. (Well, everyone except Jim Hamblin). Then, I would get to skip the blow-drying and heat-styling in which chumps of the female persuasion often engage—another 10 or 15 golden snooze minutes. With just one product, I was able to ~~add another reality TV show to my rotation~~ read more books for work.

Why Hillary Clinton Can't Escape Controversy

Clare Foran

Recent investigations provide her opponents with plenty of material for continued attacks.

It has been quite a week for Hillary Clinton. On Tuesday, FBI Director James Comey recommended against criminal charges in the wake of an investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server during her time as secretary of state. It was the second piece of good news for Clinton in a matter of days: A week earlier, House Republicans found no new evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton in an investigation into the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

That is, it’s good news for Clinton up to a point. Investigations into the e-mail server and Benghazi attacks have loomed over the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee like a dark cloud. Clinton undoubtedly hopes to put these scandals behind her with the Democratic National Convention less than a month away. Yet both investigations have yielded results that Donald Trump, and other opponents, can seize on to reinforce the perception of many voters that Clinton is a corrupt politician who can’t be trusted—effectively guaranteeing that the criticisms will persist regardless of how hard the Clinton campaign works to distance itself from controversy.

How American Politics Went Insane

Jonathan Rauch

It happened gradually—and until the U.S. figures out how to treat the problem, it will only get worse.

It’s 2020, four years from now. The campaign is under way to succeed the president, who is retiring after a single wretched term. Voters are angrier than ever—at politicians, at compromisers, at the establishment. Congress and the White House seem incapable of working together on anything, even when their interests align. With lawmaking at a standstill, the president’s use of executive orders and regulatory discretion has reached a level that Congress views as dictatorial—not that Congress can do anything about it, except file lawsuits that the divided Supreme Court, its three vacancies unfilled, has been unable to resolve.

On Capitol Hill, Speaker Paul Ryan resigned after proving unable to pass a budget, or much else. The House burned through two more speakers and one “acting” speaker, a job invented following four speakerless months. The Senate, meanwhile, is tied in knots by wannabe presidents and aspiring talk-show hosts, who use the chamber as a social-media platform to build their brands by obstructing—well, everything. The Defense Department is among hundreds of agencies that have not been reauthorized, the government has shut down three times, and, yes, it finally happened: The United States briefly defaulted on the national debt, precipitating a market collapse and an economic downturn. No one wanted that outcome, but no one was able to prevent it.

Would a Work-Free World Be So Bad?

Ilana E. Strauss

Fears of civilization-wide idleness are based too much on the downsides of being unemployed in a society premised on the concept of employment.

People have speculated for centuries about a future without work, and today is no different, with academics, writers, and activists once again warning that technology is replacing human workers. Some imagine that the coming work-free world will be defined by inequality: A few wealthy people will own all the capital, and the masses will struggle in an impoverished wasteland.

A different, less paranoid, and not mutually exclusive prediction holds that the future will be a wasteland of a different sort, one characterized by purposelessness: Without jobs to give their lives meaning, people will simply become lazy and depressed. Indeed, today’s unemployed don’t seem to be having a great time. One Gallup poll found that 20 percent of Americans who have been unemployed for at least a year report having depression, double the rate for working Americans. Also, some research suggests that the explanation for rising rates of mortality, mental-health problems, and addiction among poorly-educated, middle-aged people is a shortage of well-paid jobs. Another study shows that people are often happier at work than in their free time. Perhaps this is why many worry about the agonizing dullness of a jobless future.

Would It Be Legitimate to Deny Donald Trump the Nomination?

Conor Friedersdorf

The debate illuminates different theories of government.

As the Republican National Convention approaches, and a faction of GOP delegates continues to ponder the possibility of denying Donald Trump the nomination (if it can manage the long-shot maneuvers that would be required for that outcome), political observers are confronted with a test of their theories of government.

Where do you come down?

Are you a democrat who believes that, regardless of Donald Trump’s fitness for office, the nomination is rightfully his, because he won the most primary votes and delegates?

Are you a republican who believes that delegates aren't mere vestiges of an antiquated system, that they’re around for a reason, and that they have a moral obligation to vote their conscience, at least when it is in radical conflict with voter preferences?

The War on Stupid People

David H. Freedman

American society increasingly mistakes intelligence for human worth.

As recently as the 1950s, possessing only middling intelligence was not likely to severely limit your life’s trajectory. IQ wasn’t a big factor in whom you married, where you lived, or what others thought of you. The qualifications for a good job, whether on an assembly line or behind a desk, mostly revolved around integrity, work ethic, and a knack for getting along—bosses didn’t routinely expect college degrees, much less ask to see SAT scores. As one account of the era put it, hiring decisions were “based on a candidate having a critical skill or two and on soft factors such as eagerness, appearance, family background, and physical characteristics.”

The 2010s, in contrast, are a terrible time to not be brainy. Those who consider themselves bright openly mock others for being less so. Even in this age of rampant concern over microaggressions and victimization, we maintain open season on the nonsmart. People who’d swerve off a cliff rather than use a pejorative for race, religion, physical appearance, or disability are all too happy to drop the s‑bomb: Indeed, degrading others for being “stupid” has become nearly automatic in all forms of disagreement.

The Myth of the Millennial Entrepreneur

Derek Thompson

The generation cheered for its start-up mentality is actually starting companies at the lowest rate in 25 years. Why?

"Millennials are on track to be the least entrepreneurial generation in recent history,” John Lettieri, the co-founder of the Economic Innovation Group, testified last week before the U.S. Senate. The share of people under 30 who own a business has fallen by 65 percent since the 1980s and is now at a quarter-century low, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Federal Reserve data.

These statistics go against the typical media portrayal of an American start-up: a phone app built in an open-plan office with dedicated lanes for 22-year-old executives on hover boards. Businesses like American Express have declared that "Millennials Could Be the Most Entrepreneurial Generation Ever" and Britt Hysen, the editor-in-chief of MiLLENNiAL magazine, claims that "60 percent of Millennials consider themselves entrepreneurs, and 90 percent recognize entrepreneurship as a mentality."

What ISIS Really Wants

Graeme Wood

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

What is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

Britain's Iraq War Reckoning

Krishnadev Calamur and Matt Ford

The long-awaited Chilcot report found Britain joined the U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein before “peaceful options for disarmament” had been exhausted.

What we know:

—Britain’s long-awaited Chilcot report found former Prime Minister Tony Blair joined the U.S.-led invasion before “peaceful options” to disarm Saddam Hussain had been exhausted.

—The report says there was “no imminent threat” from Iraq before the war started and its legal justifications were "far from satisfactory.”

—Parliament is planning two days of debate on the report’s findings.

—Blair will attempt to mount a defense of his actions later this afternoon.

—We’re live-blogging the major findings, and you can read how it all unfolded below. All updates are in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5).

7:57 a.m.

Sir John Chilcot, in his statement, outlined the U.S. and U.K.’s attempt to win the UN Security Council’s buy-in for an invasion of Iraq. When it became clear that was not going to happen, because “most members of the Security Council could not be convinced that peaceful options to disarm Iraq had been exhausted and that military action was therefore justified,” Blair and Jack Straw, his then foreign secretary, blamed France and claimed to act for the international community “to uphold the authority of the Security Council.”

The Conservative, Christian Case for Working Women

Jonathan Merritt

An evangelical Christian and avowed feminist argues that God intends every woman to work.

The final episode of Leave it To Beaver aired in June of 1963, but many conservative Christians still promote a vision of womanhood reminiscent of June Cleaver. When Tobin Grant, political-science professor at Southern Illinois University, analyzed General Social Survey data from 2006, he found that nearly half of evangelical Christians agreed with this statement: “It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.” Forty-one percent agreed that “a preschool child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works.” For these evangelicals, a woman’s place in the world is to get married, bear children, and support her breadwinning husband.