Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Question of the Week

I’m still making my way through your many emails about trans issues; I expect the roundup to go out next week. Meanwhile, feel free to keep correspondence on that subject coming.

Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.com.

Conversations of Note

The singer, actor, and activist hero Harry Belafonte died yesterday in New York City at age 96. Rising to fame in the 1950s, the charismatic performer of Caribbean folk music marshaled his celebrity and wealth in service of the civil-rights movement. Obituaries and other remembrances that detail his contributions will doubtless abound; those many achievements aren’t the bailiwick of this newsletter. Our lodestar is, instead, the proposition that civil, substantive engagement across seemingly intractable differences can improve the world.

Belafonte made a powerful case for that theory in a 2002 interview with the journalist Anthony Lewis that doubles as a window into the struggle Black people of his generation faced. An excerpt:

Having been victimized by McCarthyism and having shared the anguish and the pain of so many others who were victimized by McCarthyism, my introduction to Bobby Kennedy was on the dark side. His relationship to that committee and what it did to so many American lives tainted our sense of him. When he became Attorney General, it was with some sense of anxiety, to say the least, that we looked upon this appointment, because we knew that our movement depended so heavily on the federal government … Dr. King asked some of us to discuss what this meant or would mean to us, and after many aired their feelings about Bobby Kennedy and their great doubts about him coming to our assistance in some meaningful way, Dr. King made the observation that regardless of what his history had been up to that moment, we had to view him in a new context: a man whose hand was on the throttle of justice and who was going to have to be dealt with on the issues that we were facing. And that although there was much for us to bemoan about what his history had presented, it was to be our task to find his moral center, find if there was a greater truth in who he was and to work on that and to win him to our cause. And a lot of us looked at that moment with some sense of bewilderment and frustration, but we were given our direction and our directives, and we did just that.

We decided to approach Bobby Kennedy based upon the truth of our struggle and the honor of our mission and to test his knowledge of us and his knowledge of poverty, his knowledge of racism, his knowledge of pain and see the extent to which we could grade him and know how much work we would have to do in order to get him to see our vision and to embrace our cause. Let me just say that as much doubt as all of us entered into this relationship with the Attorney General, it was to the same extent that we embraced him in the end.

The transformation of Bobby Kennedy for us was very, very significant. It was a great victory for human behavior, a great victory for that which could be done that appeared undoable. White, Irish-Catholic, anticommunist, wealthy — all of these were, for us, obstacles. And as we greeted each obstacle and dealt with Bobby Kennedy, he found his humanity, he found his sense of caring. It was not without its difficult moments. We had clashes, and we had differences of opinion. A lot has been written about meetings that we had — one in particular, when he called for a meeting with James Baldwin and Lena Horne and Dr. Kenneth Clark and others. Things took a fierce moment, he was quite upset and quite angry and quite frustrated, and we were of the sense that we would lose him.

But to the contrary, what that evening did was awakened a lot in him. I think it made him go back into life, into his own life, and begin to measure how he would do things, or would like to do things. And slowly but surely, he became much more involved, he because more hands-on, he became more directly exposed to the environment in which we were all living, and identified himself with much that we were trying to achieve. And in the end, of course, we all know that he turned out to be this remarkable human being.

Belafonte meant to praise Kennedy, but it seems to me that King, Belafonte, and others who sought to convince Kennedy of the justice of their cause, despite all of the understandable doubts that they had about him, are the wise and courageous heroes of the story.

The State of American Capitalism

David Brooks argues that it is strong:

The Economist magazine published a report on American economic performance over the last three decades. Using an avalanche of evidence and data, the main thrust of the article is that far from declining, American capitalism is dominant and accelerating.

Back in 1990, for example, America’s gross domestic product per capita was nearly neck and neck with that of Europe and Japan. But by 2022 the U.S. had raced ahead. In 1990, the U.S. economy accounted for 40 percent of the nominal G.D.P. of the G7 nations. By 2022 the U.S. accounted for 58 percent. In 1990, American income per person was 24 percent higher than the income per person in Western Europe. Today, it is about 30 percent higher.

The sources of this strength are many. I was especially struck by how much America invests in its own people. America spends roughly 37 percent more per student on schooling than the average for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a collection of mostly rich peer nations. ChatGPT and mRNA vaccines are not the only signs of American technical prowess. The United States accounts for 22 percent of the patents in force abroad, up from 19 percent in 2004. That’s more than any other nation. The level of education is one reason American labor productivity increased by 67 percent between 1990 and 2022, compared with a 55 percent increase in Europe and 51 percent in Japan.

American companies continue to generate amazing value. If in 1990 you had invested $100 in the S&P 500, an index of American companies, you would have about $2,300 today, according to The Economist. If you had invested that $100 in an index of non-American rich-world stocks, you would have about $510 today.

The Myth of Broke Millennials

In The Atlantic, Jean Twenge writes:

Millennials, as a group, are not broke—they are, in fact, thriving economically. That wasn’t true a decade ago, and prosperity within the generation today is not evenly shared. But since the mid-2010s, Millennials on the whole have made a breathtaking financial comeback.

This is terrific news. And yet it’s not all good news, because the belief that Millennials have been excluded from the implicit promises that America makes to its people—a house for most, middle-class security, a better life than your parents had—remains predominant in society and, to go by surveys and the tenor of social media, among Millennials themselves. That prompts a question with implications for the cultural and political future of the United States, a country premised, to a large extent, on the idea of material progress: What if the American dream is still alive, but no one believes it to be?

In fact, she continues, Millennials are doing better than prior generations did:

By 2019, households headed by Millennials were making considerably more money than those headed by the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, and Generation X at the same age, after adjusting for inflation.

That year, according to the Current Population Survey, administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, income for the median Millennial household was about $9,000 higher than that of the median Gen X household at the same age, and about $10,000 more than the median Boomer household, in 2019 dollars. The coronavirus pandemic didn’t meaningfully change this story: Household incomes of 25-to-44-year-olds were at historic highs in 2021 … Median incomes for these households have generally risen since 1967, albeit with some significant dips and plateaus. And like each generation that came before, Millennials have benefited from that upward trend.

It’s always good to see people getting a leg (or an invisible hand) up.

Poland’s Remarkable Rise

Anna Gromada describes it in The Guardian:

My country has changed beyond recognition. Poland has experienced uninterrupted growth over three decades, the longest in European history. Its GDP has increased tenfold nominally, sixfold when corrected for the cost of living. It has a record low unemployment rate of 3%, lower infant mortality than Canada, higher female life expectancy than the US and less violent crime than the UK.

Gromada goes on to argue that, as a consequence of its growing prosperity and changing economy, Germany is treating Poland as a direct competitor rather than just a source of cheap labor, and that the “China-US rivalry may soon be echoed in regional (and friendlier) miniatures, such as a Polish-German divide. As eastern Europe grows in power, it is questioning its role in the pecking order.”

Provocation of the Week

In How Democracy Ends, the University of Cambridge professor David Runciman writes:

The kind of respect provided by representative democracy may prove insufficient for twenty-first century citizens. The premium democracy places on personal dignity has traditionally been expressed through extensions to the franchise. Giving people the vote is the best way to let them know that they count. But when almost all adults are able to vote, we inevitably look for new ways to secure greater respect. The rise of identity politics is an indication that taking part in elections is not enough any more. Individuals are seeking the dignity that comes with being recognized for who they are. They don't just want to be listened to. They want to be heard. Social networks have provided a forum through which these demands can be voiced. Democratic politicians are struggling to know how to meet them.

The politics of recognition is an extension of democracy's appeal rather than a repudiation of it. Authoritarianism is no answer here, regardless of how pragmatic it is — it just results in political leaders who try to drown out demands for recognition with even louder demands of their own. You want respect? the authoritarian says. Then respect me! But representative democracy may not have the answers either. It is too mechanical to be convincing, once the stakes for respect get raised. Elected politicians increasingly tiptoe around the minefield of identity politics, unsure which way to turn, terrified of giving offence. If this continues, then the attraction that has held democracy together for so long will start to fray. Respect plus results is a fearsome combination. One without the other may not be enough.

Regular readers will probably anticipate my reaction: that it’s a bad idea to look to politicians, or strangers of any sort, to secure respect––it gives those who deny you respect more power than they ought to possess while making oneself an easier mark for panderers who are only pretending. Better to maintain self-respect that flows from an accurate sense of one’s intrinsic dignity as a person, bolstered if necessary by family members, friends, clergy, or a good therapist.

That’s all for this week––see you on Monday.

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When the writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret as a fourth grader, she felt an overwhelming sense of relief. The Judy Blume novel’s 11-year-old protagonist helped clarify her own confusing emotions. Like Craig, Margaret worried about her flat chest, felt her parents couldn’t solve every problem, and asked existential questions to try to make sense of her anxieties. Craig found comfort in Margaret’s tale of moving with her family to the New Jersey suburbs, questioning her faith, and, yes, preparing for her period to arrive—a coming-of-age story that has resonated with millions of other young women since Blume’s beloved book hit shelves in 1970.

A few decades later, Craig had a significantly different response to the novel as an adult. She’d been rereading Blume’s books with an eye toward potentially adapting her work; when she reached the end of Margaret, she bawled. In the final chapter, Margaret gets her first period and tells her mother; together, they laugh and cry, and Margaret, in her mind, thanks God “an awful lot.” Something about the scene devastated Craig, she told me over breakfast in Culver City, California, earlier this month. “I was like, What happened to me?” she recalled. “Why has this struck me so deeply? I swear, I walked around for three days trying to articulate it.” Finally, she had an epiphany: Margaret’s words reminded Craig more of her present-day reality than of her fourth-grade self. Her concerns—how she’s doing as a mother, whether she’s succeeding as a filmmaker—may be more grown-up now, but that same innocent need for guidance, spiritual or otherwise, persists. “I feel like that question mark,” Craig explained, “has never gone away.”

In other words, Margaret isn’t merely a book about the mortifying messiness of puberty; it’s also a subtle examination of how, for women, growing up can be a never-ending experience. Craig’s film adaptation, the first mainstream-studio take on Blume’s work, understands that intimately. In theaters Friday, the movie is faithful to the novel’s most memorable scenes—“We must, we must, we must increase our bust!”—while juxtaposing the story of Margaret Simon (played by Abby Ryder Fortson) with that of her mother, Barbara (Rachel McAdams), and her grandmother Sylvia (Kathy Bates). By imagining the interior lives of the adults, Craig allows their narratives to parallel Margaret’s.

The result is a film that feels nostalgic and fresh, a rare story of a tween that considers an often overlooked truth: Adults, too, continue to change all the time. Craig’s work exhibits the same sharpness that made her directorial debut, 2016’s The Edge of Seventeen, a modern young-adult classic. Margaret avoids cliché in favor of emotional truth, showing how simultaneously tender and confusing the experience of negotiating your identity can be at any age. “Anytime you’re on the precipice of something new,” Craig explained, “it just feels like, I don’t quite know how to be this new version of myself … In a lot of ways, we’re coming of age over and over and over again.”

Margaret the book often reads like the journal of an extremely precise, extremely observant 11-year-old. The “simple poetry” of Margaret’s voice, as Craig put it, can be illuminating, capturing the insecurities of the women around Margaret with the same childlike directness with which she details, say, the cute boys in class. She notices, for instance, how Barbara’s constant presence is both a comfort and somewhat of a burden. There she is, welcoming Margaret back from school, but there she is, too, going over the instructions “three dozen times” for Margaret’s solo visit to Sylvia in New York. “My mother’s always telling me about when she was a girl,” Margaret thinks. “It’s supposed to make me feel that she understands everything.”

[Read: The importance of the coming-of-age novel]

In lines like these, Craig saw herself. In 2015, she had to leave her 2-year-old son for more than two months so she could shoot The Edge of Seventeen in Canada; upon returning, she felt so guilty that she vowed to be the most attentive mother ever—to be everything her son could possibly need. “I’m going to do all the things; I am going to be there; I’m going to do playdates; I’m going to cut up fruit, you know, and do nothing else,” she recalled thinking, with a sigh. “And then I got to the end of about three months of that, and I just felt so depressed, honestly, and miserable. I just felt like this other part of me was starving.”

Dana Hawley / Lionsgate

The experience of being too involved as a mother drove Craig’s vision for the film, as well as her pitch to Blume. After exchanging emails with the author, Craig, along with her mentor and co-producer, James L. Brooks, visited Blume at her Key West, Florida, home and spoke of how rewarding the novel was to reread. Craig said Barbara, by way of Margaret’s observations, had unlocked a feeling she’d been trying to understand—about her approach to parenting, about why Margaret is considered timeless. To her, the story seemed to be “three women in life transitions running in tandem.” She wanted the film adaptation to be a true period piece, set in 1970, in which the emotional journeys of Margaret, Barbara, and Sylvia collapse the time between the past and the present.  

Blume was on board immediately, and told Craig to imagine as much of Sylvia’s and Barbara’s backstories as she wished. Craig began theorizing, pulling from Blume's matter-of-fact prose. In Barbara, who’s described as an artist in the book, Craig infused much of her own unease about balancing a creative career with domestic duties; she came up with scenes of Barbara trying to devote herself to a life as a full-time, stay-at-home, PTA-assisting mom. As for Sylvia, Craig noted how Margaret seemed conflicted about her grandmother’s attachment to her. (“Grandma’s always reminding me of how nobody lives forever and everything she has is for me,” Margaret thinks in the novel. “I hate it when she talks like that.”) She imagined Sylvia living vicariously through Margaret, and feeling unmoored by the Simons leaving New York City. In one scene that Craig wrote, Sylvia sits at her desk looking at a to-do list on which she’s written only two tasks—dusting and doing the crossword—both of which have already been completed.

These glimpses into Barbara’s and Sylvia’s lives feel Blume-ian, mundane yet enlightening at the same time. Like Margaret, Barbara and Sylvia are trying to fit in—not with a clique of teenagers, of course, but with what’s expected of them. “Barbara goes to the extreme of quitting both painting and teaching art,” McAdams told me over email, “to be more like everyone else, because maybe they’ve figured out something she hasn’t.”

Bates, meanwhile, saw Margaret as a story about the importance of self-awareness. Because the novel was published when Bates was in her 20s, the 74-year-old actor didn’t read it until she signed on to the film. She saw herself and women she knew in Blume’s words. Margaret’s confusion about her body reminded Bates of her childhood spent in a girls’ school in Memphis, she told me over the phone, where she and her classmates learned how to be “proper young ladies” who wore garter belts to formal tea parties years before learning about sex. Sylvia reminded her of her sister, who set aside her acting ambitions to look after her family, and of her aunt, who always theatrically doted on Bates. Blume’s Margaret could see how every woman was still developing, Bates explained. “To me, Margaret was very, very deep,” she said. “This is a young girl who has the wisdom to think for herself … [She has] the intelligence to step back and look at the women around her.”

[Read: The Edge of Seventeen is an instant teen classic]

Craig did the same, examining how the figures around Margaret felt. “Everything I write, I put myself into the story and I have to start with ‘Where does it hurt?’” Craig explained, putting her hand on her heart. “Like, when I feel myself as that character, what aches? … With Barbara, it’s a real deep question of Am I a good enough mom? With Sylvia, it’s What is my life about now, if the center of it has suddenly been removed?”

Each character finds that the answer requires tapping into a child’s mindset. “When we’re young,” Bates pointed out, “we have imagination”—the kind that can push past the belief that people must accomplish certain things, figure out certain ideas, by a certain age. She told me to read a poem by Billy Collins called “On Turning Ten” after our call to better understand what she meant. So I did. It includes these lines:

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.

Among the many lessons it teaches about growing up, Margaret the book shows the importance of that “beautiful complexity.” The youthful mix of self-consciousness and self-awareness—of vulnerability and curiosity—isn’t a phase, but an ongoing experience. Turning 12 can be as confounding as turning 43 can be as confounding as turning 75. “I don’t know when I don’t feel like Margaret,” Craig said, laughing. “It’s kind of always.”

Late in the movie, Barbara sits with her daughter and says, “It gets tiring, trying so hard all the time, doesn’t it?” The line, written for the film, distills the magic of Craig’s adaptation. The tension comes not from dramatic set pieces, but from the turbulence of negotiating one’s identity and place in the world. Margaret wrestles with choosing a religion, Barbara struggles to adapt to suburban parenthood, and Sylvia contends with the idea of fending for herself. Countless circumstances, the movie makes clear, can lead to feeling 11 again, small and worried and seeking assurance that life won’t always be so uncontrollable. Are you there, anyone at all? we might as well be asking all the time. If we’re lucky, we get to figure out an answer for ourselves.

A Lebanese gold mining magnate in Canada and an Egyptian economist in the US are both successful Arabs living abroad.