The Atlantic Daily: The Post-Truth Convention

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1. Events in Kenosha are “unfolding with the inevitable logic of a nightmare,” George Packer writes.

If President Trump wins in November, George argues, the situation in Kenosha, Wisconsin, this week will be one reason—but “Joe Biden has it in his power to spare the country a second Trump term.”

2. The Republican National Convention closed with a speech from the president that was riddled with disinformation.  

Our White House correspondent Peter Nicholas attended the event in person. “I was struck by the lack of safety protocols in place,” he writes.

3. Hurricane Laura is yet another calamity on top of wildfires, wind storms, and the pandemic.

“For some years now, I’ve covered climate change, which means covering the day-to-day convulsions of the Earth system,” Robinson Meyer writes, “and quickly it became clear to me that August, September, and October make up the season of disaster.”

9 Suggestions for the Weekend

Look to ancient philosophers to find peace in turbulent moments.

“Accepting the uncertainty inherent in life—particularly pandemic life—is better than fighting a constant battle against it, one we are bound to lose, the Stoics would say,” says Eric Weiner, who writes about philosophy.

Embrace a principle borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous: Take it one day at a time.

Molly Jong-Fast, a journalist and novelist, shares how AA prepared her for the pandemic: “Over the past 23 years, I’ve worked to trick my brain into staying in the moment, and not dwelling on the future or the past.”

Consider keeping a journal.

Your personal record might help inform history: “Future generations may use [diaries] to understand what daily life was like during the pandemic,” Morgan Ome reports.

Get outdoors before the weather turns cold.

Joe Pinsker warns that the winter will be worse.

Tour America from your couch.

Our “Fifty” project, from photo editor Alan Taylor, highlights extraordinary photography of each U.S. state. This week’s selection is home to more than 10 million residents, as well as Pilot Mountain, pictured above. Can you guess which state that is?

Listen.

This week marks the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Floodlines, a podcast hosted by Vann R. Newkirk II, revisits the fallout from that deadly storm.

If you’re a Supreme Court watcher, a music nerd, or just a person looking to make sense of the world: Find a little something on this list of nine podcasts worth starting now, as selected by writers and editors around our newsroom.

Watch.

Pick one of these 25 half-hour shows, curated by my colleague Sophie Gilbert, to binge over the weekend. (A personal favorite from Sophie’s list is HBO’s Barry.)

Read a poem.

“When the Bad Thing happened, I saw every blade,” the poet Franny Choi writes in “Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness.”

Earlier this month, our staff selected nine poems for this fraught moment. Their picks include the work of Audre Lorde, Mary Oliver, and more.

Or revisit a fascinating (non-coronavirus-related) tale.

From 2019, here’s Rachel Monroe on the real-life con man who wrote true-crime from prison.

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