2024
September
10
Tuesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 10, 2024
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The U.S. armed forces struggle periodically to fill their ranks. But the details in Anna Mulrine Grobe’s report today offer arresting detail on just how big the challenge is at the moment. There’s the chief Army recruiter characterizing 2024 as one of the toughest environments he’s seen in 33 years. The three-quarters of 17-to-24-year-olds who can’t meet fitness standards. Americans’ wavering support for the military across the political spectrum.

The Fort Jackson Future Soldier Preparatory Course in South Carolina is one effort to get candidates ready for basic training not by lowering standards but by lifting up skills. Everything is up for discussion, from gauging a candidate to transforming the role of drill sergeant. Join Anna as she explores the work that one brigadier general says is sparking cautious optimism for the future.


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Today's stories

And why we wrote them

A deeper look

Alfredo Sosa/Staff
Trainees in the Future Soldier Preparatory Course pause to rest while practicing basic marching drills at Fort Jackson.

The U.S. armed forces face recruiting shortfalls. Many potential recruits want to serve but don’t qualify. The Department of Defense has a plan to lift them up and make them soldiers.

Today’s news briefs

• U.S. incomes rebound: The inflation-adjusted median income of U.S. households last year roughly matched 2019 levels, restoring most Americans’ purchasing power. The proportion of Americans living in poverty also fell slightly.
• Missiles to Russia: Russia has received ballistic missiles from Iran and will likely use them in Ukraine within weeks, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
• Reining in Big Tech: Google lost its final legal challenge against a European Union penalty for giving its shopping recommendations an illegal advantage over rivals in search results.
• Amazon water levels still dropping: Brazil is enduring its worst drought since nationwide measurements began over seven decades ago, with 59% of the country under stress.
• Age limit for social media: Australian lawmakers cite concerns about the mental and physical health of children. Digital rights advocates warn the measure could drive dangerous online activity underground.
• RFK Jr. and the ballot: The North Carolina Supreme Court affirmed that the former presidential candidate should be omitted from that state’s ballots, while the Michigan Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and kept him on its ballot.

Read these news briefs.

Can reason overcome emotion during a national emergency? Warnings from Israel’s security and judicial establishments that Jewish extremists are causing the country great harm are struggling to be heard amid a barrage of traumatic news.

A professor’s lament on social media about her college students got us thinking about the best way to encourage the joys of reading. To find out more, we asked the experts: teachers. 

Chris Carlson/AP/File
James Earl Jones poses with his honorary Oscar at the 84th Academy Awards Feb. 26, 2012, in Los Angeles. Mr. Jones overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen, most known for his sonorous voice.

James Earl Jones’ legacy as a voice of reason is a reminder of what we might overcome when we face our trauma and find our purpose. His voice was a well of dignity, a reservoir of resonance that echoes not only from his career, but in all of us who heard him.

Maro B. Enriquez
Rich Orbeta, photographed in Laguna, Philippines, is the áte, or eldest daughter, in her family – an experience that can be isolating. But finding an online community of átes has helped her feel less alone.

In the Philippines and beyond, eldest daughters are often expected to take care of their families – but who takes care of them? Turning to the internet, some have found comfort, community, and resilience among strangers.


The Monitor's View

If only a minority of Americans watch this year’s second presidential debate, chalk it up to the fact that some people may be looking elsewhere for models of civility. As candidate etiquette during the debates has declined, more voters are turned off by national politics. In April, even before this year’s first debate, a Pew Research Center poll found nearly two-thirds of adults said they were worn out by the campaigns – higher than during the last two presidential election cycles.

Yet the debates give a false picture of political civility in much of America where it counts. At the state level, it turns out, civility among elected leaders is the best predictor of whether a state legislature is productive, such as in passing a budget on time. Most notably, in states where political parties are the most competitive, lawmakers tend to get along and pass more bills, according to a new survey by the University of Arkansas.

“Legislative civility can compensate for the ill effects of polarization,” one of the study’s authors, political science professor William Schreckhise, told a radio podcast at his university. The survey tapped into the views of those closest to the work of legislators: more than 1,200 lobbyists in state capitals.

One conclusion of the study: Lawmakers who recognize that an opponent’s point of view is legitimate can get the most done. Treating each other as moral equals, in other words, leads to harmonious outcomes.

The task ahead, said Dr. Schreckhise, is on citizens to ensure they elect leaders who can form bonds of trust and reciprocity across party lines. “So as long as we encourage our legislatures to behave in a civil way,” he said, “then I think we can look forward to a future where states continue to be fairly productive.” Maybe, just maybe, he added, American society is arriving at the point of rethinking “how we disagree with people on politics.”

At the state level, both the National Governors Association and the Washington-based National Institute for Civil Discourse have worked hard in recent years to promote civility in state capitols. Sometimes that means being humble enough to compromise. In a May survey for the nonpartisan group The Common Good, 89% of Americans said they favor lawmakers with the “political courage” to make a tough decision even when it puts their career in jeopardy.

When people of opposite political stripes actually talk, their dislike of each other can plummet, according to experiments in 2020 at Stanford University’s Social Neuroscience Laboratory. “We think that the average person we disagree with is far more extreme than they really are,” Jamil Zaki, head of that lab, told PBS News Hour. “In many ways, we are fighting phantoms because we don’t interact with people we disagree with as much as we used to.”

“People don’t realize how caring, generous, and open minded others are,” Dr. Zaki wrote in a new book, “Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.” In many state capitols, rivals are learning just that, setting an example for the national stage.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

When we stick to divine Love’s point of view, we see more of life’s inherent goodness.


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Gerald Herbert/AP
Workers from the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-West close the barriers along the Harvey Canal in anticipation of Tropical Storm Francine, in Harvey, Louisiana, Sept. 10, 2024.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for reading the Monitor today. Tomorrow, Cameron Joseph will take a look at the dynamics of Tuesday’s debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

More issues

2024
September
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Tuesday
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