Inhoudsopgave van February 1, 2021 - TIME Magazine

THE PAST FEW YEARS HAVE NOT BEEN AN EASY TIME TO BE GOD’S LOBBYIST. A lot of folks claiming to represent the Almighty have been jostling for space in the corridors of Washington, with a lot of conflicting agendas. Their methods often seem mutually exclusive with the Christian tenet that one should love one’s neighbor. So perhaps it’s not surprising that shortly after the events of Jan. 6, the guy whose actual paid job it is to try to get those in power to think about a higher power got about as ticked off as a polite Southern gentleman of faith is allowed to get. “If you can defend this, you can defend anything,” wrote Russell Moore, a theologian who is also the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission…

The pervasive narrative that COVID-19 has been a disaster of feminism, when that description clearly refers only to its effect on professional women, reflects a myopic view of gender rights. Since the early 20th century, the white-feminist ideology has equated white collar earnings and individual accumulation of wealth and power with feminism, but for many women and other marginalized genders, earnings have proved elusive. The disruption of the middle- to upper-class home during the pandemic reveals the ways in which mainstream feminism has not evolved beyond an empowering anthem for white women and those aspiring to their privilege. It’s telling, for instance, that the massive job losses among house cleaners have not been shorthanded as a “disaster for feminism.” In the wake of the pandemic, we must advocate for policies…

I WENT ON A WALK WITH A FRIEND NOT TOO LONG AGO. He’d come to meet me during a three-hour break I had while my kids did “sports” with a couple of other kids in the park. When he got there, I was still watching the kids play, and they ran over, asking where I was going. They’re 8 and 6, but after months of lockdown and remote schooling, and as all my jobs have gone online, they’re no longer used to being separate from me—we’re no longer used to being separate from one another—and they clung to me, wanting to know how long I’d be gone. On the walk, I kept dipping back into mentions of my children: we were talking about a book, and this somehow switched…

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN AND VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS TAKE OFFICE AT A TIME WHEN THE STAKES ARE HISTORICALLY HIGH FOR AMERICA’S DEMOCRACY, requiring them to balance holding themselves accountable to their pledge to move America forward with holding Trump, the Republican Party and all who participated in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol accountable for their actions. To tackle the significant challenges before them, they must do two important things: First, they must stay focused on implementing the agenda that a record 81 million Americans voted for in the face of a deadly global pandemic, voter suppression, and a barrage of dangerous lies and misinformation. Second, after four years of Donald Trump’s politics of polarization, which exploited and deepened historic racial, social, gender, religious and economic divisions, they must…

MARYANNE LARREA, A YOUNG DEVOTEE OF DONALD TRUMP, felt the sting of tear gas for the first time in her life on Jan. 6, when she marched among the crowd that Trump incited to storm the Capitol. A gun-rights activist and hard-line conservative Christian, Larrea, 22, says she did not go inside the building that day; the tear gas was enough to force her away from the front of the mob. But when she got back home to Pennsylvania and started scrolling through reactions to the violence, she realized she might be in trouble. “Everyone is saying it was a terrorist attack,” she told TIME about a week after the riot. “Everyone thinks I’m a terrorist because I was at that event.” It isn’t just the people in her news…

ONE EVENING IN DECEMBER, after a long day working from home, Jennifer Drouin, 30, headed out to buy groceries in central Amsterdam. Once inside, she noticed new price tags. The label by the zucchini said they cost a little more than normal: 6¢ extra per kilo for their carbon footprint, 5¢ for the toll the farming takes on the land, and 4¢ to fairly pay workers. “There are all these extra costs to our daily life that normally no one would pay for, or even be aware of,” she says. The so-called true-price initiative, operating in the store since late 2020, is one of dozens of schemes that Amsterdammers have introduced in recent months as they reassess the impact of the existing economic system. By some accounts, that system, capitalism,…

I CAME TO FOCUS ON CLIMATE CHANGE INDIRECTLY—THROUGH THE PROBLEM OF ENERGY POVERTY. In the early 2000s, I learned that about a billion people didn’t have reliable access to electricity and that half of them lived in sub-Saharan Africa. (The picture has improved since then, though today roughly 860 million people don’t have electricity.) In remote villages, Melinda and I met women and girls who spent hours every day collecting firewood so they could cook over an open flame in their homes. We met kids who did their homework by candlelight. I thought about our foundation’s motto—“Everyone deserves the chance to live a healthy and productive life”—and how it’s hard to stay healthy if your local medical clinic can’t keep vaccines cold because the refrigerators don’t work. And it’s impossible…

THE KREMLIN’S FIERCEST CRITIC, ALEXEI NAVALNY, flew straight into the clutches of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Jan. 17 when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had been recovering from an assassination attempt he blames on Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). Navalny was jailed for 30 days on Jan. 18, accused of violating the terms of a suspended sentence in a 2014 embezzlement case he says was fabricated. He faces 3½ years in prison at a hearing set for Jan. 29. OPPOSITION LEADER Navalny, head of Russia’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, has long been a thorn in Putin’s side; his street protests and government-corruption exposés have helped unseat Putin’s allies in local elections. He was left in a coma after being poisoned by Novichok, a nerve agent, last August;…

For decades, American CEOs studiously avoided wading into controversial issues of the day. There was no possible upside, only risk. But the apolitical CEO is one of the many norms shattered by President Donald Trump. The 45th President has made it acceptable—and now necessary—for corporate leaders to be more outspoken. It’s sort of a no-brainer to speak out, as National Association of Manufacturers president and CEO Jay Timmons put it on Jan. 6, against “armed violent protesters who support the baseless claim by outgoing President Trump that he somehow won an election that he overwhelmingly lost.” There are a number of factors driving this new embrace of the bully pulpit. For one, insurrection, sedition and violence in the streets is bad for business. Big organizations require stability. Tear gas and…

LIKE OUR PANDEMIC RESPONSE, THE U.S. CAPITOL RIOT IS THE LATEST CATACLYSM TO BE BLAMED ON A FAILURE OF IMAGINATION. Who could imagine a virus that crashes the entire global operating system, or an attack that narrowly fails to decapitate the U.S. government? And the obvious answer? Anyone who was paying attention. Just as epidemiologists long warned of a pandemic, the insurrectionists helpfully advertised their violent intentions all over social media. The phrase storm the Capitol, unleashing countless QAnon furies, appeared 100,000 times in the month before the attack, according to Zignal Labs. The President clashed his cymbals and stoked the lie; party leaders largely ignored or pampered him. The day before the attack, an FBI office shared the warnings from online: “Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass…

JUST BEFORE NOON ON JAN. 20, JOSEPH ROBINETTE BIDEN JR. PUT HIS HAND ON A BIBLE AND VOWED TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION AS THE 46TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. It was a first step toward restoring a semblance of normalcy to a shaken democracy. His predecessor, after two months of trying to stay in power by overturning the people’s will, told the American people to “have a good life” before skipping the ceremony. The National Mall was nearly empty, cleared of crowds because of the threat of violence. Biden’s words rang out over a capital under lockdown, fortified by some 25,000 National Guardsmen. It felt like a wartime Inauguration. “We must end this uncivil war,” said the new President, “that pits red against blue, rural vs. urban, conservative vs.…

‘WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?’ JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, A REPUBLICAN CONGRESSWOMAN FROM WASHINGTON STATE, DEMANDED OF HER COLLEAGUES AS THEY CONSIDERED THE SECOND IMPEACHMENT OF DONALD TRUMP. “I’m not afraid of losing my job,” Herrera Beutler said. “But I am afraid that my country will fail.” There is more than fear swirling around the GOP these days. For years, Republicans stood by their President, muttering their doubts in private. They pretzeled themselves to defend his shifting whims, reframed his outrages as silly showmanship and rejected his first impeachment as partisan overreach. Absolute loyalty was what their voters demanded; any sign of deviation was swiftly punished. But in the dramatic final weeks of his term, Trump finally pushed his party to its breaking point—first demanding it reject truth and the democratic process…

DONALD TRUMP HAS LEFT JOE BIDEN WITH PLENTY OF KNOTS FOR THE NEW PRESIDENT TO UNTIE. For foreign policy, the most important of these is the increasingly complicated and contentious relationship with China, and of all the subjects on which Washington and Beijing are at odds, the most intractable is Taiwan. On Jan. 9, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sprang a surprise on both Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping by announcing that the U.S. will drop self-imposed restrictions on how its government and military interact with Taiwan. This move doesn’t shred the “one-China policy” that Washington adopted in 1979, which recognizes the People’s Republic as China’s only legitimate government but refuses to explicitly recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan. And the Trump team could have gone even further. Plans to send…

WHEN FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT WAS SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT ON MARCH 4, 1933, a quarter of Americans were unemployed and multitudes were living in shantytowns. By the end of his first 100 days in office, he had pushed 15 bills through Congress, revamped the financial and agricultural systems, expanded unemployment relief and laid the foundation for economic recovery. Nine decades later, another Democrat, Joseph R. Biden Jr., ascends to the White House at a time of extraordinary crisis. A once-in-a-century pandemic has killed more than 400,000 Americans and erased nearly 10 million jobs. The new President has to contend with climate change, a national reckoning on racial justice and a bitterly divided electorate. As he plots his first months in office, President Biden has been studying Roosevelt’s model. “We are…

STACEY PAVESI DEBRÉ’S YOUNG DAUGHTERS HAD A HABIT WHEN THEY SAW PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP ON TV IN THEIR PARIS APARTMENT. They’d hold their noses and boo. That is, until Stacey’s mother Lonnie Pavesi came to visit for a week, to help take care of her grandchildren. After she left, the elder Debré child, who was about 7, had some strong words for her mother. “Mom, you lied to me,” she said. “You told me Trump was bad. Actually he’s not. Ama told me he’s making America better.” It transpired that Lonnie had mixed in some political discourse with her grandmotherly duties. “She had brainwashed our daughters behind our back,” says the girls’ father, Guillaume Debré, with amusement. He’s a French journalist who has written a book on Trump, but he…

IT’S LUNCHTIME IN SHANGHAI’S LEAFY FORMER FRENCH CONCESSION, and every table is crammed at David Yeung’s new café and grocery, Green Common. Office workers and shoppers huddled against the January chill are wolfing down plates of katsu curry, noodles and spicy dumplings. For Yeung, the popularity of his first outlet on the Chinese mainland is a source of considerable pride, given that its doors opened barely two weeks earlier. But he’s more pleased by its other distinction: no animal products grace the menu at all. Instead, plant-based alternative proteins, sourced from China, Korea and the U.S., are used in these traditionally meat-based dishes. “The idea is to showcase some of the best products from around the world so that people can enjoy a mind-blowing vegan meal,” says Yeung, who is also the…

JUST WEEKS INTO 2021, THE NEW YEAR ALREADY FEELS UNCOMFORTABLY SIMILAR TO THE ONE THAT CAME BEFORE IT. With renewed COVID-19 lockdowns and headlines dominated by news both distressing and sad, let’s face it: in this bleak season, we need a laugh. Enter the upbeat audiobook. As regular audiobook listeners know and newcomers will be delighted to learn, the immersive format works especially well for funny and uplifting stories, especially when narrated by celebrated comics like Ali Wong and Steve Martin. Here, in no particular order, are essay collections, memoirs and original audio comedies to bring humor and comfort to the gloomiest of days. 1. Let’s Never Talk About This Again When Sara Faith Alterman’s father begins experiencing symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, he asks for her help in continuing his secret…