Author: Andrew Sullivan

Hannah Newman takes stock of the burgeoning “invasivore” movement:

Norman’s Cay is currently the only American restaurant north of South Carolina serving lionfish, but that’s likely to change soon, thanks to a fast-spreading trend seeking to use our appetites as a way to control the vast numbers of plants and animals colonizing new habitats and destroying native species.

Yet as the second lionfish taco quickly disappeared from my plate, I couldn’t help but wonder: Can we really take down invasives with knives and forks? If more of us eat lionfish, wild boar tenderloin, Asian carp fritters, or garlic mustard pesto, will it make a difference?

Experts are skeptical, pointing out that once a foreign species has entrenched itself in a new place – such as the Indo-Pacific lionfish that has now virtually taken over the waters of the Western Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico – eradication is almost impossible. Critics argue that encouraging consumption might have the unintended effect of spreading harmful species even more widely. But the invasivores are undeterred, noting that their campaign is not only selling books and changing restaurant menus; it’s also spreading awareness of a crippling environmental problem that is rapidly homogenizing the world’s ecosystems and costing over $130 billion a year in the United States alone.

(Photo: The red lionfish [Pterois volitans] is one of two species of lionfish to colonize the the east coast of North America and the Caribbean. It’s pictured above its native habitat in Indonesia. By Jens Petersen)

Mulling over the link between “time poverty” and economic want, Konnikova contends that “in the case of someone who isn’t otherwise poor, poverty of time is an unpleasant inconvenience. But for someone whose lack of time is just one of many pressing concerns, the effects compound quickly”:

We make a mistake when we look at poverty as simply a question of financial constraint. Take what happened with my request for an extension. It was granted, and the immediate time pressure was relieved. But even though I met the new deadline (barely), I’m still struggling to dig myself out from the rest of the work that accumulated in the meantime. New deadlines that are about to whoosh by, a growing list of ignored errands, a rent check and insurance payment that I just realized I haven’t mailed. And no sign of that promised light at the end of the tunnel.

My experience is the time equivalent of a high-interest loan cycle, except instead of money, I borrow time. But this kind of borrowing comes with an interest rate of its own: By focusing on one immediate deadline, I neglect not only future deadlines but the mundane tasks of daily life that would normally take up next to no time or mental energy. It’s the same type of problem poor people encounter every day, multiple times: The demands of the moment override the demands of the future, making that future harder to reach.

So here’s a reason to be cheerful: this fantastic vignette of American democracy alive and well in Mississippi. It’s a Coffee Klatch of octagenarians at Kroger’s in support of Chris McDaniel, and a Democrat walks by:

“How, with no seniority and a promise simply not to get along with anyone, will you accomplish any of the things you want to accomplish?” shouted John Davis, a 77-year-old retired teacher who was shopping at Kroger’s grocery when he noticed Mr. McDaniel about to begin a meet and greet session with about a dozen local retirees.

“What have they accomplished lately by putting us in debt?” shot back Mr. McDaniel, who outpolled Mr. Cochran in the June 3 primary but is facing in a June 24 run off because he did not break 50%.

Mr. Davis, with finger-wagging emphasis, retorted, “What have they accomplished? They have accomplished airports. They have accomplished roads. They have accomplished schools.’’

Shit is going down. The Democrat is really way too loud and won’t sit down, but it only gets a little bit tense:

“Dissent is a good thing in this country but you don’t do it in that manner,” said Mr. McDaniel. He found a way to turn the confrontation into a dig at Mr. Cochran, who has refused to meet his primary opponent in a debate and has been criticized by Mr. McDaniel for not talking more about issues. Mr. McDaniel said of Mr. Davis, “He said more about his positions than Thad Cochran has said in his entire campaign.”

One woman praised Mr. McDaniel for maintaining his composure but told him to be tougher if he gets elected to the Senate. “When you get to Washington, don’t be that nice,’’ said Geri, who asked that her last name not be used.

The video is awesome too. Or maybe I’m just sick of Sunni and Shia and seeing some ancient Southerners have it out at Kroger’s is a balm.

So, anyway, it was Neocon Hathos Day on the Dish and you can get your dose of Cheney here. Kristol here. NPod here. Their unnerving fondness for Hillary Clinton here.

I threw up my arms at the CIA’s latest hopes for a war in Iraq and Syria, while trying to make sense of the resilient resistance to the most important breakthrough in HIV prevention in two decades. Oh, and Boies and Olson are channeling Jo Becker. In some cases, it doesn’t get better, does it?

Plus: the challenges of standing for a month for fitness’ sake; and what taking a simple walk is like if you have autism. Major ’80s nostalgia here.

The most popular posts of the day were Obama Caught Another Terrorist And The Right Can’t Handle It, followed by Have the Cheneys Finally Jumped The Shark?

Many of today’s posts were updated with your emails – read them all here.  You can always leave your unfiltered comments at our Facebook page and @sullydish. 15 18 more readers became subscribers today. You can join them here – and get access to all the readons and Deep Dish – for a little as $1.99 month.

See you in the morning.

(Photo: the triped this evening)

Reviewing Victor Brombert’s Musings on Mortality, a collection of essays on how a number of literary figures approached death, Joseph Epstein recounts Montaigne’s advice for considering your eventual demise:

Putting death out of mind as best one can is a mistake, or so Montaigne thought. Wiser, he felt, to think constantly about death, not so much to confront it—how, in any case, would one do that?—but to get used to the idea of its ineluctability, and also of the suddenness with which it may visit. “How can we ever rid ourselves of thoughts of death,” he writes, “or stop imagining that death has us by the scruff of the neck at every moment.” Better to familiarize oneself with the idea. “Let us deprive death of its strangeness,” he wrote, “let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death.” Montaigne himself claims regularly to have been besieged by thoughts of death, “even in the most licentious period of my life.”

… All learning, he believed, was to make us ready for the end, to prepare us for death. “To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die” is the title of his essay, and major statement, on the subject. He hoped that when death finally did appear, “it will bear no new warning for me. As far as we possibly can we must have our boots on, ready to go.”

Slogging his way through Norman Davies’ two-volume history of Poland, Dale Favier wonders if it’s really worth it, given how many of the book’s details he’ll forget. Why he answers in the affirmative:

When I was young and foolish, I thought I could learn all of history and have it all available in my head, or at least a lot of European history, or at least a lot of English history. Now I know that almost all this stuff will fall right back out of my head again. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not worth doing. There is another kind of knowledge building up, a synoptic sense of what people have done and will do, what sorts of organizations have succeeded, what sorts have failed, and some of the common notions of why. It’s all terribly vague and unsatisfactory, and the more you read the more you realize how variable and subjective the notions are, but as it accumulates I find that I’m far less likely to be fooled by the demagogues and politicians of the moment. I’m no better at predicting the future than anyone else, but I recognize the rashness of betting on my predictions better than most. History has a way of wriggling out of what people expect.

And there is a sense one gets for the fullness, depth, complexity of any one place and its people. It’s like looking at pond water under a microscope: suddenly you become aware of the incredible richness and diversity referred to — but also concealed — by a name like “water” or “Poland.” … That, too, is worth knowing: and you gradually obtain the conviction that the parts of the world that have not yet been given thousand-page histories by an Oxford or Harvard don are every bit as diverse and complex. You may not have looked at them yet through the microscope; you don’t know what’s there; but you know that if you did, they would resolve into new worlds and new constellations of sub-worlds. That, I guess, is what you really gain by reading these fat narrative histories: a sense for just how large the human universe is.

Tyler Lopez is dismayed that Palestinian activists still accuse Israel of “pinkwashing” – i.e., using its mostly positive gay rights record to distract from its human rights abuses in the occupied territories – and are discouraging gay tourism to Israel during pride month:

Pinkwashing advocates are trapped in their own gender studies/international relations fantasyland. Legitimately concerned with human rights abuses in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, they have created an entire academic language in order to hype up a concept that draws an unrealistic correlation between their cause and the gay rights movement. Because of this, any LGBTQ person traveling to take part in a gay rights demonstration is a homonationalist, unwittingly part of the pinkwashing agenda. It’s no longer appropriate to label any city as “gay-friendly” or “homophobic,” because, according to pinkwashing activists, pro-gay legislation and LGBTQ visibility aren’t the appropriate barometers with which to measure social change. Gays, perhaps it’s time to book your tickets to Saudi Arabia. (Don’t worry about finding a hotel; if you’re openly gay, the Saudi government will be happy to provide accommodations.)

Of course, LGBTQ rights aren’t the only marker of social change or human rights. But suggesting that they’re separate from any other universal human right is dangerous. An accusation of pinkwashing presumes that gay human rights causes are less salient than Palestinian human rights causes, when in fact they’re all equal.

I rendered a similar verdict on “pinkwashing” way back in 2011. I see no reason to change my mind. It is perfectly possible to decry the brutal occupation and the relentless settlement building of the Israeli government in the West Bank while also celebrating Israel’s amazing commitment to gay freedom. In its region, Israel isn’t just an exception; it truly is a shining city on a hill. The tragedy of Israel is that so much of its democratic energy has been diverted into the oppression of another people. I favor engagement, not disengagement; argument, not sanctions.

(Photo: Russian tourists attend the annual gay pride parade in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on June 13, 2014. By Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images.)