Boys don’t cry… A call to action… The war party… Traveling to Cuba… Bill vs. Hill… Burning questions… The best medicine… Correction…
Boys Don’t Cry
Re “Are Men OK?,” by Eamon Whalen [April 2025]: I was taken with Richard Reeves’s idea that some boys and men might benefit from a boys’ and men’s support culture that is not built around toxic models of manhood but instead recognizes that some boys and men need more help with adapting to cultural changes or learning so-called “soft skills” than others. I take issue, however, with his conclusion that all boys should be held back a year before starting school. Putting aside the income, transportation, housing, healthcare, childcare, and employment challenges facing most parents at this time, there is still the key matter of individual development. We cannot have just one blanket policy for all boys, especially when it is based on a category like biological sex. There are sensitive, eloquent boys and rough-and-tumble girls, and most of us have multiple traits that are associated with both genders. We also live in a society that tries to delineate personality, health, and functionality based on extra-narrow, outmoded ideals of sex and gender that cause real harm to us both individually and collectively, by perpetuating stereotypes and rules of conduct that do not take into account our varied lived experiences as human beings who cannot fit neatly into single-silo, either/or categories.
Holly L. McEntyre
sanibel, fl
Give us half the seats in the government, give us sovereignty over our own bodies, give us equal pay, and then we’ll talk about whether men are OK.
Susan Connell
emmet, nd
A Call to Action
Current Issue
I agree with Kate Wagner’s assertion that the California housing crisis is no longer just an issue of supply and demand [“We’re Not Prepared,” April 2025]. Her article brilliantly highlights how the commodification of housing and the relentless growth of wealth inequality have led to a crisis in which the poor and working classes are the ones who suffer the most during catastrophic events. As she points out, climate change has exposed the unsustainability of continued overdevelopment in high-risk areas, yet the system continues to cater to the rich. The fact that families displaced by the Los Angeles County fires are being surveilled and price-gouged rather than supported exemplifies these systemic flaws. The shift away from homeownership as the pinnacle of prosperity toward a more equitable, resilient system is long overdue. Wagner’s article is a call to action to rethink our housing policies and create a system that can withstand both climate crises and market shocks.
Sunny Garcia
buena park, ca
The War Party
Re “A New Strategy” [April 2025]: While Jee Kim and Waleed Shahid’s article rightly highlights the Democratic Party’s disconnect from the working class, it overlooks one crucial factor: the Democrats’ active promotion and funding of—and benefits from—war. The party doesn’t just support military interventions abroad; it actively promotes and funds them, diverting taxpayer money from urgent domestic needs to endless wars that benefit the military-industrial complex. This has left many voters feeling betrayed, as they see the Democrats more invested in global power than in addressing the rising costs of healthcare, housing, and childcare. Voters are beginning to realize that both major parties are part of the same system, indifferent to the struggles of everyday Americans. Until the Democratic Party confronts its role in perpetuating the war machine and refocuses on the needs of working people, it will continue to lose their trust.
Layle-Stav Kashi
brooklyn, ny
Traveling to Cuba
I read David Montgomery’s article about Cuba with great interest, since I had recently returned from my first tour of Cuba [“Life Under Sanctions,” April 2025]. I was astounded by the beauty of the country and the resilience of the Cuban people, how they make do with what they have and still create great art, music, and dance. I tell everyone that it is possible for Americans to visit the country, and I urge those who can to do so. Under this current administration, perhaps this is what is left for us to support the Cuban people, and perhaps such tourism will change our attitudes about Cuba and create the momentum needed to change this pointless sanctions regime. We can learn from the Cubans how they have coped under a difficult economic and political system as we enter into our own evolving repressive regime.
Noelle Gillies
san jose, ca
The Best Medicine
I enjoy most of The Nation, but I have to admit I subscribe for Elie Mystal. His piece on airline deregulation was not only informative but spew-my-lunch, laugh-out-loud funny [“Who Gave Away the Skies to the Airlines?,” April 2025]. And don’t we all need reasons to laugh lately.
George Kramer
ashland, or
Bill vs. Hill
Bill Clinton is certainly no hero of mine, but I’m afraid he gets a bit of a bum rap in Lily Geismer’s article “The Dead Hand of Clintonism” [March 2025]. In 1981, when Tony Coelho became chair of the DCCC, he made a deliberate decision to compete with the GOP for corporate cash, evidently on the assumption that the working class could be taken for granted since they had nowhere else to go. Clinton, however, began his presidency as a real progressive, with Robert Reich in his cabinet, Joe Stiglitz as economic adviser, and Les Aspin, a former congressman somewhat critical of the Pentagon, as his first secretary of defense. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was the very personification of the corporate Democrat.
J.R. Ranney
san diego, ca
Burning Questions
A word of thanks for Lazo Gitchos’s article about the need to rethink the relationship between nature and the built environment [“Rethinking Fire,” March 2025]. What are the solutions? Would it help to keep our firefighting apparatus operational year-round? Do we need a national plan, with strategies and tactics that can be adapted locally? Mr. Gitchos’s powerful essay leaves me interested in ideas that might bring more balance to that relationship.
Peter Macy
andover, ma
Correction
The name of the French socialist leader and activist Jean Jaurès was misspelled in John Banville’s review “All Is Unfinished,” in the March 2025 issue.
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