Long Reads That Caught Our Eye This Week

We 💜 to read. . . Your weekly roundup of longreads that caught our eye. Be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray [View this email in your browser]( We love to read. Here are a few longreads from around the web that caught the attention of our editors this week. When a Stranger Decides to Destroy Your Life Kashmir Hill | Gizmodo Monika Glennon has lived in Huntsville, Alabama, for the last 12 years. Other than a strong Polish accent, she fits a certain stereotype of the All-American life. She’s blonde. Her husband is a veteran Marine. Her two children, a boy and a girl, joined the military as adults. She sells houses—she’s a real estate agent at Re/Max—helping others realize their own American dream. But in September 2015, she was suddenly plunged into an American nightmare. She got a call at 6 a.m. one morning from a colleague at Re/Max telling her something terrible had been posted about her on the Re/Max Facebook page. Glennon thought at first she meant that a client had left her a bad review, but it turned out to be much worse than that. [Read More]( The Paradox of Our Safety Addiction Frank Furedi | American Interest How the zero risk mentality breeds a culture of anxiety and a hunger for authority. --------------------------------------------------------------- Western society has become addicted to safety. Virtually every institution claims safety as one of its core values. Safety has become an end in itself, and even the mere hint that a particular product or form of behavior is unsafe causes it to be denounced as immoral. Perversely, the very obsession with safety fosters a climate of anxiety that makes people feel more insecure, not less. When safety turns into a supposed supreme problem that touches on every domain of human experience, people’s capacity to make sense of their fears diminishes. Throughout history, communities have deliberated on the relationship between safety and fear. “Fear is the foundation of safety,” noted the early Church Father Tertullian, reasoning that concern with safety motivates people to deliberate and plan. And indeed the aspiration for safety has been usually expressed through individuals and communities taking sensible precautions to limit exposure to harm. But the meaning attached to safety has become radically transformed in recent times. [Read More]( How a Notorious Gangster Was Exposed by His Own Sister Patrick Radden Keefe | The New Yorker Astrid Holleeder secretly recorded her brother’s murderous confessions. Will he exact revenge? --------------------------------------------------------------- Astrid Holleeder has arresting eyes—they are swimming-pool blue—but that’s all I can reveal about her appearance, because she is in hiding, an exile in her own city, which is Amsterdam. For the past two years, she has lived in a series of furnished safe houses. She prefers buildings with basement parking, in order to minimize her exposure during the brief transit to a bulletproof car. She bought the car used, for fifteen thousand euros. She also owns two bulletproof vests. She thinks a lot about how she might be assassinated, gaming out fatal scenarios. Whenever she stops at a red light and an unfamiliar vehicle sharks up alongside her, she clutches the wheel, her heart hammering. Then the light changes, and she exhales and keeps moving. Amsterdam, a city of fewer than a million people, is a difficult place to stage your own disappearance, particularly if you grew up there. Fortunately for Holleeder (which is pronounced “Hol-lay-der”), she guarded her privacy even before her life became threatened, and no photographs of her as an adult can be found on the Internet. Today, she arranges furtive visits with a small circle of friends, but otherwise stays mostly at home. When she moves through Amsterdam, she does so in secret, and sometimes in disguise: she has a collection of fake noses and teeth. Holleeder typically dresses in black, but if she suspects she’s being followed she may duck into a bathroom and emerge in a wig and a red dress. Occasionally, she has posed as a man. [Read More]( It’s Not ‘White Threat’ Harming Our Politics, It’s Tying Race To Destiny Kyle Sammin | The Federalist The changes in the way race plays into national politics are not a reaction to Barack Obama. They are a reaction to the world progressives built and are still building. --------------------------------------------------------------- Ezra Klein’s Monday article in Vox addressed race in politics, comparing the election of Barack Obama with the election of Donald Trump. It was longer and more nuanced than most of what is published there, but still missed the major point. The changes in the way race plays into national politics are not a reaction to Obama. They are a reaction to the world progressives built and are still building, a world that has seen the Left’s default position go from aspiring toward color-blindness to one of grievance-nursing along every possible intersectional axis. The political world that gave us Trump is different than the one that gave us Obama, but the difference is of the Left’s own making. [Read More]( Copyright © 2015 The Federalist, All rights reserved. You are receiving this e-mail because you opted in to receive e-mail updates from TheFederalist.com. Our mailing address is: The Federalist 8647 Richmond Highway Suite 618 Alexandria, VA 22309 [Add us to your address book]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update subscription preferences]( The Federalist · 8647 Richmond Highway · Suite 618 · Alexandria, VA 22309 · USA