Longer Reads Recommendations

My parents are visiting Malawi right now. Like my in-laws, who visited earlier this year, they consume a good amount of news. I remember sitting downstairs watching the National and the Journal with them 30 years ago (Knowlton Nash – come on it is right in the name KNOWlton; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowlton_Nash and Barbara Frum; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Frum). All four of them regularly read papers and are very up to date on all that is going on. Hot topic these days is Trump’s bullying of Canada on NAFTA.

Since moving out of the States in 2011 I’ve shied away from news. My blood pressure seems to go up. With Trump’s election I wasn’t sure I could stay healthy and submit to his lies by daily reading the news. I still wanted to engage with the world so I do it through longer reads now. These are the kinds of pieces that take a long time to research, write, and read. The time is important because it lets things distill.

Anyways, to help get the blog up and running again, I’ll be posting a Longer Read rec every week. Take it or leave it but I think these are interesting reads that might take 10 to 15 minutes.

The first one is about governance in Africa and why the “strong man” continues to dominate. It is by a Kenyan intellectual named David Ndii.

https://www.theeastafricanreview.info/op-eds/2018/05/26/of-politics-without-romance-bandits-tribal-chiefs-warlords-and-political-messiahs-or-the-lack-thereof