Weekend Reads 12/26/15

Why This Was the Year the Traditional Presidential Campaign Died

In a normal year, CARLY's end run around election laws might be a scandal, but 2016 is not normal. Billionaire Donald Trump led the GOP field for nearly four months before running his first TV ad; his biggest campaign expenses have included baseball hats and T-shirts. With the Iowa caucuses fast approaching, Dr. Ben Carson, his closest competitor, took a month off to sell his new book. But his campaign continued to raise and spend vast sums of money through a direct-mail fundraising tactic that gave more than half of every dollar raised to consulting firms. Hillary Clinton is such a magnet for money her outside group has an outside group.

​This Guy Searches Amazon for the Worst Things You Can Buy

A man in a dormitory overseas tests and assembles small circuit boards. A power plant nearby belches dark anthracite coal-smoke, an integrated-circuit technician in the next building over etches a silicon wafer with hydrofluoric acid in a clean-room for sixty cents an hour. All this, so you can press this button once, instead of click your computer mouse or tap your iPad three times. For macaroni.

Check the tag on that “Indian” story

The replacement of real indigenous stories with Christian-influenced, western moral tales is colonialism, no matter how you dress it up in feathers and moccasins. It silences the real voices of native peoples by presenting listeners and readers with something safe and familiar.

The GOP candidates’ appalling hypocrisy on Christianity, refugees and war

Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) defended “carpet bombing,” while Donald Trump explained that being “much tougher” on terrorists meant going after their families and “girlfriends.” ... As my Post colleague Janell Ross pointed out, every tool of foreign policy other than force — aid, economics, diplomacy, democracy promotion — got short shrift Tuesday.

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I am not naive, and I am not a pacifist. But I’d ask a small favor from these candidates: Please stop saying how Christian you are unless you show at least a few signs of understanding the social obligations the word imposes.